Can the US Reinvent Itself ?

 Engaging the US in permanent military conflicts abroad is not the way to solve the serious problems at home, but a way to court disaster. America can and should reinvent itself, not as an "indispensable nation", but as a normal country.

The gaping ruins in Ukrainian cities, the thousands of deaths and millions of refugees now pouring into the West are spelling the end of the US's unipolarity in international affairs. The same conflict, however, is important for a vastly different reason: that of bringing into sharper focus the West's internal strife and the accelerating decay of its political systems and societies. 

Through the extrapolation of observable tendencies, one can safely assume that unless the US and the countries making up the Western alliance reinvent themselves and adapt to the world as it is, their very survival could be at stake. For this to happen, there are some major issues the Western alliance countries must urgently attend to. These encompass the military, diplomatic, economic and social fields. 

From a military point of view, the US's first priority is the long-overdue dismantling of Nato. As matters now stand, Nato is held responsible for a mindless expansion to the East which has led to the war in Ukraine. Undaunted, the foreign ministers of Nato countries and some from the Indo-Pacific have recently reunited in Brussels and have decided to change the organisation's European focus into a global one. This can only mean that Nato members could be involved in far-away military conflicts in the South China Sea in the future. Such an outcome was predictable ever since the US decided to use Nato in its quest for maintaining its global hegemon status. 

The war happening now in Ukraine, however, has proved beyond a doubt that the Russian army is much less powerful than the Red Army during the Cold War era and cannot conceivably represent a credible conventional military threat for Europe. It follows, therefore, that enrolling new Nato members has been done through deception, with the hidden agenda of expanding the US military-industrial complex's customer base.

The preference for unipolarity springs from the fact that American military and political elites consistently draw the wrong conclusions from their study of history. To give but one example, soon after the US became a nation-state, its elites emulated not the philosophers of the Enlightenment, but those of Ancient Greece. As a result, those elites decided that their democratic system of government was fully compatible with the institution of slavery. Consequently, they kept slavery going for more than 50 years after all other European nations outlawed it, one after the other. The result of such a skewed reading of History was the American Civil War of the 1860's, which made tens of thousands of victims and almost jeopardised the unity of the country. (It was rather fortunate for the US that Abraham Lincoln did not attend an Ivy League university or have a classical education)

Closer to our own times, American pundits became infatuated with the study of the Roman Empire, identifying with Rome as the foremost military power in ancient times. These type of studies increased in intensity after the fall of communism and were used to provide the historical arguments in order to maintain America's unipolarity well past its due date, like in the case of the 19th century slavery issue. We are all familiar with the results of this flawed reading of Roman history, and so are the Serbs, the Afghans, the Iraqis, the Syrians and now the Ukrainians.

The US is also fully engaged in preventing China from replacing it as world hegemon, an effort that could result in war in the Indo-Pacific. The lens through which American policymakers interpret China's rise is that of the "Thucydides Trap", which also forms the basis of US foreign policy. Again, the study of Ancient Greek historical thought has led some otherwise highly educated Harvard historians to import ideas from the infancy of humanity into a mature and highly complex society which the United States is today. Considered one of history's deadliest patterns, it almost mandates that countries involved in such a "Trap" must go to war with each other. Sadly, it has not occurred to American historians and pundits that the two rather small city-states of Ancient Greece - Athens and Sparta - can by no means be a model for the enmity that exists between the US on one side and China on the other, today.

For its part, China has time and again assured the US that while it disagrees with American unipolarity, it does not intend to substitute itself in its stead. Rather, the Chinese preference is for a 19th century European type of multipolarity, revamped to suit the management of global affairs in the 21st century. To be more precise, China seems to be in favour of an institution like an enlarged G7 - which is to include both established and emerging economic and military powers - that would take over the management of global affairs from the United States. Unfortunately, the ancient model of Thucydides Trap still exercises a strong fascination over the minds of American policymakers, a fact that could have catastrophic practical consequences. 

For the United States, another emergency is an overhaul of its diplomatic service, which has to include the sacking of all neoconservatives who are lurking in the hierarchy of the State Department. The neoconservatives are the foremost supporters and enablers of American unipolarity, which saw the US dragged into needless wars and nation-building fiascos in Afghanistan, Iraq, Bosnia and now in Ukraine, all with disastrous consequences. Given their propensity to push for the wrong foreign policy measures and initiatives, such people should not be allowed nowhere near the State Department or its embassies abroad. Instead, the US should start a major education program for top State Department bureaucrats and diplomats, aimed at making them understand the finer points of multipolarity and how it is to be implemented and operated in practice.

One of the biggest headaches in the Western world during modern times has also been the presence of Catholics in positions of leadership in major European countries or in the US. Indeed, practically all modern times' crusades were led by Catholic leaders, from Napoleon and Hitler to Tony Blair, or Boris Johnson and Joe Biden today. There is currently an unholy alliance between neoconservative bureaucrats in the State and Defence Departments and Catholic political leaders like Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi and Boris Johnson, who have joined forces to unleash the latest crusade on Russia via Ukraine. The US cannot reinvent itself with Catholic leaders in control of its foreign policy and neoconservatives in charge of its diplomatic service.

There is a great need also of an overhaul of the American military-industrial complex, and of limiting its access to federal legislators and administration officials alike. During the Obama administration, some initial efforts were made to trim the US defence budget by some 10 percent. The defence budget is the lifeline of this complex, which unfortunately has been amply funded by both the Trump and Biden administrations. Consequently, its representatives have a vested interest in expanding the US military, in the expansion of Nato and what is commonly called the "forever wars", which have become a fixture of US involvement abroad.

Being a highly secure country positioned between two oceans, the US should have reduced the size of its military significantly after the fall of communism. Again, only the Obama administration started a process of downsizing the American military, a commendable effort that wasn't followed through by the next two presidents. Unfortunately, having an oversized military and a huge defence budget is bound to ignite ever larger conflicts abroad to justify the expense. This is in part what we are witnessing in Ukraine, and an explanation for the push to paint China as a US strategic competitor, to prepare for war with it.

Finally, there are other urgent measures that have to be taken in order to make the American economy more performant and less dependent on global supply chains, as well as make American society fairer and more egalitarian. However, not being a specialist in these fields, I would not attempt to recommend solutions, but just to highlight the need to fix these problems. Like the military and diplomatic fields, the West has to find the appropriate remedies to its ills and reinvent itself if it is to survive and thrive in the future. As Americans are bound to find out, there is life after unipolarity after all.