It turns out that was not far from the doctrine of Donald Rumsfeld, America’s then defence secretary, when the Taliban offered surrender in 2001, a stance now being acknowledged 20 years too late. If there were reason to apprehend Osama bin Laden (which was not obvious—he was just a suspect then) the right procedure would have been a police operation, probably with Taliban co-operation: they wanted to get rid of him. But America had to show its muscle—as it has been doing in recent weeks by sending an armada into the South China Sea. It goes on and on: there is little new in imperial history.

Assessing the future of American power is a highly uncertain undertaking. The question might turn out to be moot. There is no need to tarry on the fact that the world is hurtling towards disaster. If the denialist Republican Party returns to power, the chances of pursuing responsible policies on environmental destruction will be sharply reduced. But assuming the best, we can at least identify the main factors on which American power is based.

First, the international system. The imbalance of military power is so extreme that comment seems hardly necessary. America increased its military spending in 2020 to $778bn, compared with China’s increase to $252bn, according to SIPRI, which tracks such expenditures. In fourth place, below India, is Russia at $62bn. America is alone in facing no credible security risks, apart from alleged threats at the borders of adversaries, which are ringed with American nuclear-armed missiles in some of its 800 military bases around the world. (China has just one foreign base, in Djibouti.)

Power also has its economic dimensions. Sean Starrs, a political economist at City University of London, has observed that American multinationals’ share of profits is more than 50% in many business sectors, and ranks first (sometimes second) in most sectors; others are far behind.

Another dimension of national strength is “soft power.” Here America has seriously declined, well before President Donald Trump smashed the country’s reputation. Even under President Bill Clinton, leading political scientists recognised that most of the world regarded America as the world’s “prime rogue state” and “the single greatest external threat to their societies” (so said Robert Jervis and Samuel Huntington, respectively). In the years that Barack Obama was president, international polls found that America was considered the greatest threat to world peace, with no close contenders.

These sources of power can be illustrated by the way the world accepts America’s torture of Cuba by its refusal to lift the economic blockade, while condemning it with virtual unanimity (a vote of 184 to two at the United Nations in June).

“A decent respect for the opinions of mankind”, as it’s put in America’s Declaration of Independence, has long been discarded. The capacity to issue sanctions that others must obey is another dimension of power, where America reigns supreme.

A rules-based order?

Turning to the trajectory of American power, its core features are familiar. Since its founding, America has scarcely had a year without resorting to violence. As soon as the British yoke was removed, the liberated colonists “concentrated on the task of felling trees and Indians and of rounding out their natural boundaries”—for defence, Thomas Bailey assures us in “A Diplomatic History of the American People” (Prentice Hall, 1940). On the side, America picked up half of Mexico in one of history’s most “wicked wars” (in the words of the general and president Ulysses S. Grant). The natural borders were rounded out with the robbery of Hawaii from its inhabitants by force and guile.

American power extended to Asia with the conquest of the Philippines in a major slaughter. The subsequent years record constant intervention, often with extreme brutality (as happened in Haiti under President Woodrow Wilson), which regularly left a bitter legacy in those places.

There are inflection points. One was in 1945. In February America carried the Monroe Doctrine (which warned European powers not to meddle in Latin America) a step forward by imposing an Economic Charter of the Americas. It opposed “the philosophy of the new nationalism,” which “embraces policies designed to bring about a broader distribution of wealth and to raise the standard of living of the masses,” according to a US government official—a heresy that extended to the idea that “the first beneficiaries of the development of a country’s resources should be the people of that country” (not foreign investors), in the words of a State Dept official.

That was entirely inconsistent with the so-called “rules-based international order” that America was establishing, and has vigorously defended against the “nationalist regimes” which are the main enemy, as government documents emphasise, and history affirms.

Another inflection point was 60 years ago, when President John F. Kennedy sharply escalated the attack on Vietnam launched by President Truman and then extended by President Eisenhower when he was taking time off from replacing the parliamentary regimes of Iran and Guatemala with brutal dictatorships.

One of Kennedy’s most consequential decisions in 1962 was to shift the mission of the military in Latin America from anachronistic “hemispheric defence” to “internal security.” That unleashed a horrific plague of repression throughout the hemisphere, culminating in Ronald Reagan’s murderous wars throughout Central America, still resonating in the tortured countries and in the continued flight of refugees from the wreckage.

The third element of American power is how it justifies itself. The grisly record above is just the barest sample. The record is sometimes partially recognised by some of those who reluctantly defend it. At the left-liberal extreme of policy planning, President Jimmy Carter’s Latin America specialist, Robert Pastor, explained in a scholarly study why the administration had to support the murderous Somoza regime in Nicaragua. “The United States wanted Nicaraguans to act independently, except when doing so would affect USA interests adversely”

That’s a fair judgment, from the days of “felling Indians”, and is hardly unfamiliar in the annals of imperialist violence. Since there has been no change in institutions or in the culture of the political class, the trajectory and current state of global power give some indication of what one might anticipate about the future of American power.

Much of course depends on how the world is likely to change. Will Europe realise its potential as a civilising force, reversing the reaction to the grave crisis of almost a century ago, when Europe succumbed to fascism and Roosevelt’s New Deal led the way to social democracy?

Crises, remedies and action

Now the world is different. Mr Trump has brilliantly tapped poisons running below the surface of American society, stirring up a toxic brew that may destroy the country. The party he now owns is pursuing its long decline to proto-fascism. If that course persists, the reversal from the 1930s will be a cruel irony, particularly poignant for those whose lives it will have framed. And it will be devastating for the world, given American power.

The focus of bipartisan concern is the threat from China. In assessing it, some caution is useful. Hysteria over the “Yellow Peril” has a long history and is easily invoked. For example, over one-third of Americans believe “that the coronavirus was created by the Chinese government as a biological weapon”, according to the Annenberg Center, which adds that there is “no evidence” for the belief.

China aside, the inflation of threats is the norm. It is prominent in the most important internal documents, such as a policy paper drafted by the departments of state and defence in 1950, with its lunatic ravings about the “fundamental design... of the slave state”, the Soviet enemy, and its “compulsion” to gain “absolute authority over the rest of the world”.

China’s growing power is real, often used in very ugly ways. But do these crimes threaten America? Internal repression is severe but is no worse than many other atrocities that America could easily bring to an end instead of expediting: the brutal torture of 2m people in Israel’s Gaza prison with strong American support is just one example.

In the South China Sea, China is acting in violation of the UN Convention for the Law of the Sea, although America, which has long refused to ratify it, is hardly in a strong position to object. The right response to China’s violations is not a dangerous show of force but diplomacy and negotiations led by the regional states most directly involved. The same is true of other conflicts.

The crises that threaten the world have no borders. The future of the United States, and the world, rests on American-Chinese co-operation in a global society of genuine internationalism. But that is too obvious to require discussion.

There are known, feasible remedies for each of the crises that the world faces. An organised and mobilised public can confront the private and state power centers that drive the race to the abyss in pursuit of short-term interests, and can compel policy makers to implement solutions. It's hardly a novel lesson of history. Today, with global warming and the threat of nuclear war, there can be no delay.

Once we Americans abstract ourselves from thinking “we are exceptional”, we start treating ourselves by the same standards that we apply to others. (On moral grounds we should hold ourselves to higher standards, but put that aside.) Why treat ourselves differently? Once we face this question, the world looks very different. ■