"The past two years were the years of the global pandemic. So far, 2022 is looking like a year of global pandemonium. It began with sanctions on Russia and has gone on to feature rising tensions between the U.S. and China, the collapse of the Iran nuclear deal, and a budding economic crisis that has set off inflationary spirals, financial panics and even political upheaval around the world.
Trapped between rising geopolitical tensions and deteriorating economic outlooks, none of the world's major powers are in a good place today. China, where aggressive zero-Covid policies continue to exact massive social and economic costs, faces its gravest financial crisis yet as it struggles to manage the biggest real-estate bubble in world history. Japan's foreign minister told Washington think-tankers last week that the "logic of brute force" was replacing the rule of law in Japan's part of the world even as slow growth, demographic decline and a weak currency raise doubts about Japan's long-term prospects.
Rising food and fuel costs pose major problems for India's economy. With Pakistan and Sri Lanka embroiled in political and economic crises, China pressing on the border, Afghanistan on the boil, and Myanmar's civil conflict growing bloodier and more bitter, India's home region is less stable than at any time since Bangladesh's war of independence in 1971.
Europe is faring no better. The sanctions on Russia have plunged the Continent into its worst crisis in decades. Germany is looking at the collapse of the economic and geopolitical assumptions that have guided its policies and underwritten its prosperity since the end of the Cold War. France can neither reform itself nor shape the political environment beyond its frontiers.
Brexit backers in the U.K. had hoped that in a rapidly globalizing world a Britain freed from the constraints of European Union regulations could become a vital offshore financial center enjoying close relations with Russian and Chinese firms. In today's deglobalizing world, that dream has faded, and it isn't clear how or whether Britain can make Brexit work.
The Biden administration has so far struggled to rise to the occasion. Sadly, that difficulty could be with us for a while. The president's abysmal poll ratings and the prospect of losing at least one chamber of Congress in the midterms limit the White House's political authority at home and undercut its power abroad. The combination of bad domestic economic news and challenging events overseas doesn't bode well.
Few observers think that a beleaguered administration can pass many more $40 billion aid bills for Ukraine through Congress. How, in the absence of such aid, Washington can help Kyiv bring its actions to a successful conclusion is a question without easy answers.
Especially striking is the virtual absence of strong American economic leadership at a time of global crisis. In past world economic crises, Americans such as Paul Volcker, James Baker and Robert Rubin provided crucial intellectual and policy leadership. If the White House or the Treasury Department has a compelling and practical agenda to put the global economy back on course, it has yet to be revealed to an anxious world.
Part of the problem is structural. What Charles Krauthammer called the "unipolar moment" in world history, the era of American supremacy that followed the Cold War, is over, and it is harder for any American president to shape world events when faced with active and powerful adversaries out to break up the American order.
But the problem is intellectual as well. Too many of the Obama veterans filling key Biden administration posts are still marinating in Obama-era ideas that are even less suited to conditions today than they were five years ago.
To take just one example, the mere existence of common threats doesn't inspire the nations of the earth to common action. The 2020 pandemic made governments more nationalistic and inward-looking. So far, the pandemonium of 2022 is having the same effect. Countries respond to threats like the Iranian nuclear program, climate change and sanctions on Russia based on their assessment of their national interests much more than on their respect for global values.
Both the Obama and Biden administrations overvalued the importance of sweet reason in international affairs. Foreigners, even friendly ones, are often less impressed by American arguments about common interests and global goals than by their assessments of American power, shrewdness and will. Good intentions matter less than success.
President Biden can still put his administration, the country and the world on a more hopeful course. But you can't fix a problem until you acknowledge you have one. Until and unless Team Biden can shake off the failed assumptions and habits of the Obama years, American foreign policy seems fated to flounder as geopolitical and economic storm winds continue to rise.” [1]
1. From Pandemic to Pandemonium
Walter Russell Mead.
Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]. 02 Aug 2022: A.13.
