Page 52 - AEI Insights Vol. 7 2021

AEI Insights, Vol 7, Issue 1, 2021

Indeed, no successful and enduring empire does merely rely on coercion, be it abroad or at
home. The grand design of every empire in past rested on a skillful calibration between
obedience and initiative – at home, and between bandwagoning and engagement – abroad. In
XXI century, one wins when one convinces not when one coerces. Hence, if unable to escape
its inner logics and deeply rooted appeal of confrontational nostalgia, the prevailing archrival
is only a winner, rarely a game-changer.
How did we miss to notice it before? Simply, economy –right after history– is the ideologically
most ‘colored’ scientific discipline of all.
To sum up; After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Americans accelerated expansion while
waiting for (real or imagined) adversaries to further decline, ‘liberalize’ and bandwagon behind
the US. One of the instruments was to aggressively push for a greater economic integration
between regional and distant states, which – as we see now, passed the ‘End-of-History’
euphoria of 1990s – brought about (irreversible) socio-political disintegration within each of
these states.

A Country or a Cause, Both or None?
Expansion is the path to security dictatum, of the post-Cold War socio-political and (hyper-
liberal) economic mantra, only exacerbated the problems afflicting the Pax Americana, which
acidified global stewardship; hence oceans, populations and the relations to the unbearable
levels. That is why and that is how the capability of the US to maintain its order started to erode
faster than the capacity of its opponents to challenge it. A classical imperial self-entrapment
(by the so-called bicycle theory: keep pedalling same way or topple over).
Clearly, the US post-Cold War preponderance is now challenged in virtually every domain:
America can no longer operate unrestrained in the traditional spheres of land, sea and air, not
in newer ones like the (near and deeper) outer space and cyberspace. The repeated failure to
notice and recalibrate such an imperial emasculation and retreat brought the painful hangovers
3
to Washington, the most noticeably, by the last two presidential elections. Inability to manage
the rising costs of sustaining the imperial order only increased the domestic popular revolt and
political pressure to abandon its ‘mission’ altogether. (E.g. during the peak times of its longest
– still ongoing – foreign intervention, the US was spending some $110 billion per annum in
Afghanistan, roughly 50% more than annual American federal spending on education.)
Perfectly hitting the target to miss everything else …
In short, past the Soviet collapse Americans intervened too much abroad, regulated too little at
4
home, and delivered less than ever – both at home and abroad. Such model attracts none. No
wonder that today all around the globe many do question if the States would be appealing ever
again. Domestically, growing number of people perceive foreign policy mostly as an expensive

3 Average American worker is unprotected, unorganised/disunionised, disoriented, and pauperised. Due to (the
US corporate sector induced) colossal growth of China, relative purchasing power of American and Chinese
labourer now equals. At present, the median US worker would frictionlessly accept miserable work conditions
and dismal pay, not too different from the one of the Chinese labourers – just to get a job. The first to spot that
and then wonderfully exploited it was the Trump team.
4 “A rogue superpower … colossus lacking moral commitments … aggressive, heavily armed, and entirely out
for itself. … some US security guaranties have started to look like protection rackets. … participates in
international institutions but threatens to leave them when they act against US narrow interests; and promotes
democracy and human rights, but mainly to destabilize geopolitical rivals” – enumerates some in the long list of
contemporary US sins prof. Beckley (Beckley, M. (2018) Unrivaled: Why America Will Remain the world’s Sole
Superpower, Cornell University Press).
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