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The US is
losing its world superpower status – and this time,
it might not recover
By Patrick
Cockburn
March 30, 2020
"Information
Clearing House"
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The US may be
reaching its “Chernobyl moment” as it fails to lead
in combating the coronavirus epidemic. As with the
nuclear accident in the Soviet Union in 1986, a
cataclysm is exposing systemic failings that have
already weakened US hegemony in the world. Whatever
the outcome of the pandemic, nobody is today looking
to Washington for a solution to the crisis.
The fall in US
influence was visible this week at virtual meetings
of world leaders where the main US diplomatic effort
was devoted to an abortive attempt to persuade the
others to sign a statement referring to the “Wuhan
virus”, as part of a campaign to blame
China for the
coronavirus
epidemic. Demonising others as a diversion from
one’s own shortcomings is a central feature of
President Trump’s
political tactics. Arkansas Republican
senator Tom Cotton took up the same theme,
saying that “China unleashed this plague on the
world, and China has to be held accountable”.
US failure goes far
beyond Trump’s toxic political style: American
supremacy in the world since the
Second World War
has been rooted in its unique capacity to get things
done internationally by persuasion or by the threat
or use of force. But the inability of Washington to
respond adequately to
Covid-19 shows that
this is no longer the case and crystallises a
perception that American competence is vanishing.
The change in attitude is important because
superpowers, such as the British Empire, the Soviet
Union in the recent past or the US today, depend on
a degree of bluff. They cannot afford to put their
all-powerful image to the test too often because
they cannot be seen to fail: an exaggerated picture
of British strength was shattered by the Suez Crisis
in 1956, as was that of the Soviet Union by the war
in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
The
coronavirus crisis is the equivalent of Suez and
Afghanistan for Trump’s America. Indeed, these
crises seem minor compared to the Covid-19 pandemic,
which will have far greater impact because everybody
on the planet is a potential victim and feels
threatened. Faced with such a mega-crisis, the
failure of the Trump administration to lead
responsibly is proving extraordinarily destructive
to the US position in the world.
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