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PGTS Humble BlogThread: Only in the USA |
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Gerry Patterson. The world's most humble blogger |
| The era of the political assassin is over, and thank God for that. -- Tony Abbott, August 2018 | |
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The End of "Pax Americana" --- The Decline Of The USA |
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Chronogical Blog Entries: |
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Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2026 23:00:00 +1000The USA appears to be in a state of decline brought on by an erosion of trust. |
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A recent poll by the Lowy Institute found that only thirty-one percent of Australians trust the United States to act responsibly in world affairs - the lowest level recorded by the institute. Even more striking was the finding that trust in China had risen to a record twenty-eight percent. Two decades ago such a result might have belonged in the pages of a dystopian novel. Few Australians would have imagined that confidence in an authoritarian communist state - one criticised for its treatment of Tibet, Hong Kong, dissidents and ethnic minorities, and for its increasingly assertive posture towards Taiwan - would approach confidence in a long-standing democratic ally that helped shape the post-war international order. Yet by 2026, at least among those surveyed, Australians appeared almost evenly divided between the two powers. That, more than any individual poll number, illustrates how dramatically perceptions of American leadership have changed.
As much of the democratic world looks on in dismay, around one third of American voters continue to support the administration of President Donald Trump, despite being one that increasingly appears detached from any coherent political strategy. Rather than strengthening the United States, many of its policies seem to be diminishing its international reputation, economic influence and diplomatic standing.
The most encouraging aspect of Trump's approval ratings is that they now sit at around thirty percent. The discouraging aspect is that they still sit at around thirty percent. Although one might take some comfort from his declining popularity, it remains remarkable that roughly one third of those Americans most likely to vote continue to approve of his presidency, with the overwhelming majority identifying as supporters of the MAGA movement. Increasingly, however, "MAWA" - Make America Weak Again - seems a more fitting description. Even if they had set out deliberately to do so, it is difficult to imagine a strategy that could have done more to weaken America's reputation, influence and economic position than the haphazard policies pursued by the current administration at the direction of a single individual whose judgement and leadership are increasingly being questioned.
The USA still have a powerful military, in fact, the most powerful in the world. However there have been instances in the previous century that the USA failed to prevail by the application of force alone. Two of the most striking examples were Korea and Vietnam. And if we needed further examples, we should consider how at least three mighty military powers, two of them super-powers also failed to prevail in Afghanistan, which on paper at least, is nothing like a global military power. Furthermore, today, it seems that warfare can be conducted effectively with relatively inexpensive digital weapons. After declaring that he would achieve "unconditional" surrender, Trump has delivered on his promise. The only problem is, it appears to be the USA that has surrendered. This is not all that unexpected. Since his first term, Trump seemed willing to surrender to Russia. And after talking tough about China, he recently travelled there and failed to achieve anything of substantial benefit, apart from all but surrendering Taiwan to the Chinese. Trump has always appeared to be more determined to insult and criticise allies and trading partners and to politely agree with autocrats and dictators, unless he perceives of them as weak. And in the case of Iran, he has made the mistake of assuming that they were weak. Which was why, against the advice of experts who knew better, he authorised a decapitation strike against them. Now after threatening to completely destroy them, and despite having a superior military force, the administration accepted a settlement that fell short of its earlier rhetoric.
The foolhardy and destructive war in Iran has had serious impacts on the reputation of the USA and on the cost of fuel and chemicals, triggering a supply shock that is now affecting the US and the entire global economies, and may once again, raise the spectre of another global recession. And it has contributed further to the erosion of trust in the USA.
Threatened by shadows at night
And exposed in the light
The influence the USA has had over the global economy for the past eight decades has not been due solely to military might. It has been largely due to trust and the prodigious torrent of product pumped out from US media and Hollywood combined with technological supremacy, especially in the area of computing and IT. These have been the main drivers of American dominance. The powerful military was mainly built on a powerful economy, which grew rapidly last century due to access to the many natural resources that the continent was blessed with and geographic isolation from Europe and Asia that afforded a strategic advantage during WWII. And as US influence expanded, they gained further access to global resources. This was enabled by trade and monetary agreements, that were facilitated with American economic power and trust. US citizens, even those on the bottom rungs of the economic ladder, participated in the legal, political and economic systems in the USA. Some of them may have grumbled a little because the rules seemed heavily skewed towards those who had accumulated a relatively larger slice of the economic pie. But most US citizens benefited from the pre-eminence of the American economy. And most importantly they trusted the institutions that interpreted rules and ran elections. The USA is the oldest modern, continuous democracy in the world. As such it has some flaws, inherited from 18th century attitudes and prejudices, especially with regard to race and gender. In the past hundred years, the evolution of large multi-national corporations and their integration with the US political system has resulted in a rigid two party system, funded by large inflows from said corporations, resulting in the status quo, in which roughly equal numbers of voters would consistently vote for either of the two main parties, almost forty percent would not vote and a small percentage would actually swing the result. This system seemed remarkably stable. And it locked out participation from any possible third-party contender in the political system. It generated wealth and prosperity and seemed more stable than the alternative system of communism which dominated much of eastern Europe for the latter part of the previous century.
Then the four decade long post-war status quo was disrupted. The massive Soviet empire collapsed. In the aftermath, Soviet citizens took to the streets and pulled down the statues that were dedicated to great communist leaders. Those statues, that had confronted us for so long with their implacable gaze, had stood on massive foundations and seemed so well-founded, so rooted in terra firma. Surely, we had all thought, they would last for centuries, perhaps even as long as the pyramids? But they were in fact, hollow inside. In order to topple them, all the protesters needed to do was attach a few ropes and/or chains to them and pull ... Images appeared on televisions around the world of massive statues, which had seemed to be solid to their very cores, falling like the hollow straw men that they actually were. We all watched in fascination and some unease as the seemingly vast monuments, under which so many had lived in fear and uncertainty, for almost the entire second half of the twentieth century were swept away like chaff in a stiff breeze.
The fall of the iron curtain was one of the greatest tectonic shifts in the global economic and political order since WWII. At first, the reaction from many in the USA, was an unjustified triumphalism. They celebrated that they had won the cold war. However, the reality was that the Soviet Union had lost the cold war. And there is a difference! As if to prove the point, the US/UK alliance between them went on to show how they could also lose the cold war. The USA failed to address the issues arising from the support of fascism in general and Islamic fascism in particular, that had prefaced the collapse of the Soviet empire and in the hey-days of celebration and the drunken after-party, allowed speculation in the dot-com boom to expand into an unsustainable bubble. Then in the 21st century they tried to address the issues of the dot-com crash and the 9/11 terrorist attacks with an expanded home-land security apparatus, quantitative easing, sub-prime mortgages and collateral debt obligations, which eventually resulted in the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) of 2008, which was then addressed by giving trillions of dollars to the people who were mostly responsible for the crash. The ripples from the GFC spread around the world, causing a global recession that affected most countries with the exception of Australia, New Zealand, and because they were not as tightly integrated with the US, China, India and Indonesia.
Eight years later, after a remarkable decision by a British PM to attempt to address a political problem he had with a right-wingers in his party by calling a referendum, voters across "the pond", feeling disgruntled about the failure to address the GFC crash adequately, elected to inflict harm upon those they perceived as responsible, and who right wing elements contended were responsible. But to a greater extent, they inflicted grievous self-harm upon themselves. After the referendum, the populist scammers who misled them and persuaded them to vote for Brexit celebrated when none of the dire consequences that the remainers predicted transpired. Of course, there was no immediate catastrophic collapse of the UK economy because Britain did not actually leave the EU on the day after the result of the referendum was announced. Instead a slow burning fuse was lit. It would be four years or so before the Brexit chickens came home to roost, largely on the heads of those who had voted to "leave".
Meanwhile back in the "home of the brave", voters who were equally angry about the GFC crash and the sub-prime mortgage debacle that had triggered it, also elected to inflict national self-harm by voting for a leader who was obviously not qualified, a twitter troll, reality TV show host and who many critics, including his own niece, would claim, suffered from a serious personality disorder.
You wore out your welcome, with random precision.
Caught on the steel breeze.
Although he hasn't shown many signs of deliberation or consistency in most of his policies, Trump does seem to have been steadfast in his efforts to destroy the trust that the Pax Americana was built upon. In his first term he was surrounded by political appointees who managed to check some of his more destructive impulses. But still he refused to follow norms and conventions, accused the media of fabricating news, asserted that the greatest threat to the USA was enemies within, withdrew from international agreements and treaties and attempted to use government agencies to disguise his fraud and prevent scrutiny of his tax records. However the greatest harm to US democracy was his refusal to observe the long established norm of the "peaceful transfer of power", which has been a cornerstone of the modern two-party political system that the USA has developed in the previous two centuries. It has been observed by every president since the civil war. This refusal and the fraudulent attempt to over-throw the result of the election, along with the cowardly failure of Republican political representatives to condemn his criminal behaviour, and lastly the re-election of Trump have set the USA into a downward spiral of divisiveness and distrust. The trust that the American century has been built upon took many decades to build and to consolidate. And yet Trump has managed to weaken it significantly.
In the UK, the Brexit chickens have come home to roost. Of all of the dire consequences that were predicted, it turns out that the actual problem, not mentioned often, even by the remainers was not a catastrophic collapse but a steady decline. It has generated uncertainty about agreements concerning immigration, labour, construction, manufacturing, exports, imports, customs declarations and the increase in bureaucratic costs and impediments for dealing with them ... The white-ants of uncertainty have gradually eaten away at the UK economy. It has has become a drag on investment and economic growth and turned the entrance at 10 Downing street into a revolving door. The USA is now experiencing the same problems. Trump's irrational fondness for tariffs and the inconsistent and illegal manner that he has attempted to impose and remove them, switching them on and off numerous times, and withdrawing from treaties and agreements, some of which he had signed himself, has started a descent more rapid than the slow motion deterioration the UK experienced as they gradually extracted themselves from Europe, over a period of more than four years. Trump's immigration policies, championed by figures such as Stephen Miller, have accelerated the downturn. They have pre-emptively removed immigrants that had been providing a labour pool for tasks that native-born Americans were reluctant to perform. This was not only a betrayal of promises previously made, but a rejection the sentiments etched on the plaque at the base of the Statue of Liberty, the iconic poem Emma Lazarus that welcomed immigrants to the United States The combined erosion in trust and increases in costs, demographic decline and Trump's threats to destroy NAFTA have created a distinctly American version of "Brexit", that could have more serious consequences for the global economy. Similar US-versions of the white-ants of uncertainty are now eating away at the foundations of the US economy. The impact is being felt, especially by medium and small businesses. Investment is slowing and inflation is rising. The erosion of trust in the rule of law, corruption, insider trading, housing availability and cost of living are all contributing to the decline. The only sector showing signs of growth has been the tech sector, which is experiencing an extraordinary and probably unsustainable AI boom that has eerie similarities to the dot-com bubble, we saw at the turn of the century.
Just as the great Soviet empire had been held together by fear, the Pax Americana had been held together by trust. And now, over the last year and half, increasing numbers of US citizens are coming to the realisation that trust is easy to destroy but it may take decades to rebuild. And in some cases it may never be rebuilt.