The World Still Watches America Fears of waning soft power aside, the U.S. remains the example of free democracy. By Walter Russell Mead
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-world-still-watches-america-11604360015?mod
For the 58th time since George Washington headed to New York for his first inauguration, U.S. voters are choosing the president, and again the eyes of the world are firmly fixed on the spectacle.
This is partly because American policy still matters. Will Donald Trump or Joe Biden be strong enough to manage a deteriorating U.S.-China relationship—and smart enough to still preserve the elements of cooperation that benefit both parties? What role will the president play in the global recovery from the pandemic? Will he embrace international institutions like the World Trade Organization and agreements like the Paris climate accords, or will he undermine them? How will he deal with rancorous countries like Russia, Turkey and Iran? Will he side with traditional allies in Europe and the Middle East, or will he look for new relationships in an era of shifting geopolitics? Will he open America’s borders to migrants, or will he try to slam them shut?
Not only U.S. voters care about these issues. So do people around the world whose lives will be directly affected by the choice Americans are making this fall.
The world’s love-hate relationship with the U.S. is about more than military might and policy ideas. For all the talk about decline and the supposed collapse of American soft power, the U.S. remains the unrivaled diva on the global stage—the most arresting figure, if not always the most sympathetic one, whose antics keep all transfixed.
America is the world’s biggest billboard. Nothing that happens here stays here; everything spreads. If Black Lives Matter protests against police brutality spring up in Minnesota, protesters in Lagos, Nigeria, take note. If U.S. rioters start demolishing Confederate memorials, statues of slave traders go into the river in Britain. And if Americans elect a nationalist populist to the presidency, his rhetoric and his ideas will be repeated and sometimes distorted out to the farthest ends of the earth. For good or for bad, the U.S. matters.
America is an experiment in self-governance. The U.S. is a “government of the people, by the people, for the people,” as Lincoln put it. No aristocracy, no cultural or technocratic elite, no religious hierarchy ever quite manages to govern Americans. (Though many have tried, and some are still trying.) And no smooth-tongued demagogue has ever persuaded us to dismantle the constitutional fences that protect our inherited institutions.
Some well-meaning Americans think that our many flaws undermine the power of our example to the world. That is not the whole story. For admirers of liberty around the world, the example of our democracy is all the more compelling because the faults of U.S. society are out in plain view. The history of American democracy is not a story of sages and philosopher kings. The U.S. story is rich with examples of racism, political corruption, hypocrisy and crass materialism. America has left undone things it ought to have done and done things it ought not to have done. Its critics have never lacked for material.
U.S. history is not a tale of preternaturally virtuous people overcoming temptations that lesser nations cannot resist. If it were, the American example would not be contagious. But if boobs like us can make democracy work, then there is a chance for people to make it work anywhere.
All countries face the challenges that are stress-testing the U.S. system. The rise of social media and populist skepticism about the wisdom and beneficence of scientific, cultural and financial elites is not limited to America. The U.S. is not the only country that struggles with legacies of slavery, racism and religious divisions. The economic challenges of the information revolution—upending some industries, plunging millions of families into uncertainty and distress, creating powerful new firms and offering unprecedented opportunities to some—aren’t happening only here. And, of course, Covid-19 is not restricted to America.
More than who wins the U.S. election, the world cares that America makes its system work, despite polarization and immense stress. The success or the failure of the U.S. experiment in self-governance continues to matter, hugely, for billions of people who have never visited America, read the U.S. Constitution or studied American history. If democracy were to fail here, its promise for the rest of the world would be blighted and diminished for generations.
Voting may not seem like the most heroic of tasks, and patiently accepting a disappointing result even less so. But the regular and peaceful performance of these humdrum duties, so long taken for granted in American life, still has the power to electrify the world.
Comments are closed.
