What if the US never returns to the world stage as a leading power?

Timothy Garton Ash is Professor of European Studies at Oxford University and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

“America is back,” said President Joe Biden earlier this year, and the entire democratic world breathed a sigh of relief. But as we watch the debacle of the chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan – Kabul as Saigon No. 2 – a ghostly voice whispers to us to: What if America doesn’t return? What if it never comes back on the world stage? What happens then? The Chinese century? Europe as the new leader of the free world? Or just the old international anarchy?

If only it were like after Saigon in 1975. The humiliation of the US in Vietnam that followed the Watergate affair marked a low point for the US’s reputation in the world. But within a decade the US was back. Until 1995 they seemed to rule the globe as the undisputed “hyperpower”.

Everyone knows it’s different this time. The United States’ self-inflicted domestic problems are ten times deeper and more structural than they were in the mid-1970s – in part because, following the pattern of overstretched empires throughout history, it has spent trillions of dollars in countries like Afghanistan and Iraq, rather than in Invest the neglected infrastructure, education and health care of their own country. Abroad, the US is not facing a declining Leninist superpower, the Soviet Union, but a rising Leninist superpower, China. Climate change is the only hyperpower now.

All alternatives to US leadership are worse for democracies

Realistically, one can only expect the United States to “return” as the leading Western power on the international stage, first among equals in a global network of democracies. The bitterness over the bad behavior of the USA in the past in the world, up to and including the current tragedy, should not turn a democrat’s eyes off the fact that all conceivable alternatives to this scenario are worse. And the Biden administration is the best chance we have of the US getting back on the world stage in this way.

Imagine if the pathetic, corrupt, US-funded Afghan government and its supposedly 300,000-strong US-trained army had held out a few more weeks and there had been an orderly exit without the Chinook helicopter Standing in the air above the flat roof of a message – this one image is more powerful than a million words. Surely there would have been a lot of dissatisfaction and a sense of failure. But we would have pondered the fact that the experienced US president is soberly implementing a tough plan to bring America back into a better strategic position internationally for the three major challenges he has identified: Covid, climate, China.

It is still possible that the US will succeed in this despite the Afghanistan debacle. Events, as is well known objects, look bigger and bigger up close. These scenes at Kabul airport will never be forgotten, but in time they may be seen from a different perspective.

China will dominate Asia, but not become the dominant world power

Nonetheless, this is a moment to ponder the unthinkable alternative: that the US could never again assume an international leadership position. So what? China will almost certainly become a dominant power in Asia, but not the predominant power. Japan, India and Australia, not to mention the United States, which continues to be present in the Indo-Pacific region, will do all they can to prevent this from happening.

In China itself, the contradictions between an increasingly Leninist political system, in which power is concentrated not only in the hands of one party but of a single man, and a complex, developed capitalist economy and society, will sooner or later lead to its own internal crisis . The search for more nationalist legitimacy through adventures abroad could be the immediate consequence: Beware, Taiwan.

But this is not a formula for a “Chinese century”, as one could in some ways rightly speak of an “American century” – or at least the two American decades between 1989 and 2009 – and before that a “British century”. China is already very influential in some European countries, but it will not become the leading power in Europe. Russia will be even less successful in this, although President Vladimir Putin, like Chinese President Xi Jinping, will undoubtedly be delighted with this latest US setback.

So how about a more optimistic scenario that would make French hearts beat faster? How about Europe stepping into the breach? The EU becomes the leader of the free world! Reversing the famous dictum of former British Foreign Secretary George Canning, we are calling the old world together to restore balance to the new world.

That’s a great idea. As an English European, I would love to see something like that. With friends from all over Europe, I have spent a lot of time working in the European Council on Foreign Relations to promote a more coherent and effective European foreign policy. But it doesn’t look too good with that.

Macron has the necessary vision for a leading European power, but not the means

One politician in Europe, French President Emmanuel Macron, has the vision but not the means. Chancellor Angela Merkel’s possible successors after the September elections have the means, but not the vision. The UK just left the club and now UK Conservatives leaders are loudly complaining that the US has let us down in Afghanistan. That is hardly a recipe for global leadership.

That leaves a third global alternative: international anarchy. Competing great powers, tribes and interests. A “G-zero” world, as geopolitical analyst Ian Bremmer has called it. At worst, a kind of Afghanistan on a grand scale. Quite apart from the misery that would mean for millions of people, there is then the danger that the planet will burn up. This summer’s apocalyptic forest fires in the Greek islands and the floods in Germany, not to mention the recent haunting warnings from climate scientists, make it clear that we need a much greater level of collective global action to tackle the climate crisis. But the geopolitical situation makes such joint action difficult.

I recently saw the American science fiction film Arrival, in which octopus-like aliens land in the USA, Russia, China, Saudi Arabia and other major world powers. Its aim is to get the warring tribes of mankind to work together, because “we will need you in 3500 years”. And, because this is an American film, they succeed.

However, in the absence of clairvoyant intergalactic octopuses, it’s all up to us. If you look at the big picture, this geopolitical moment requires the active engagement of Europe and China, India, Japan, Australia and many others. And the USA must again play a leading role in the circle of democracies, no longer as a hegemon, but as first among equals. A development economist once ruthlessly stated that there is only one thing for poor countries worse than being exploited: not being exploited. Not only for the West, but for a world that is threatened as a whole, there is only one thing that is worse than American leadership: a lack of American leadership.