Washington Post: Other than the military, in every other dimension — industrial, financial, educational, social, cultural — the distribution of power is shifting, moving away from American dominance.” In 2022, that vision of a “post-American world” has gone from theory to truth.
EVEN THE WASHINGTON POST IS REGULARLY REPORTING ON THE DECLINE OF AMERICA
In a Hamburg-based international conference consisting of dozens of young leaders from around the world, “Facing New Realities: Global Governance Under Strain.”
“America has become smaller.”
“America’s light has dimmed”.
We are still watched intently and remain a major power. But it was clear that to many of the conference’s attendees — hailing from Germany to Mongolia, Ghana to Ukraine — the United States has become shorthand for democratic decline and disinformation, home to citizens who react to dissatisfaction by rejecting reality, and to institutions that are increasingly hollowed out.
“I thought about settling in the U.S.,” one attendee, an Ivy League- and Oxbridge-educated internationalist now working for the United Nations, told me. “But I couldn’t imagine living in a place where my children would have to practice” — here, she made mocking quotation marks with her fingers — “active shooter drills.”
The United States’ most famous exports used to be Coca-Cola, Levi’s and jazz — not to mention such ideals as freedom, civil rights and the rule of law. Now, we’re best known for rampant gun violence and gruesome school shootings.
The United States’ reputation has been deteriorating for at least two decades. During the Iraq War, as Bush-doctrine foreign policy was derided across the globe, the trope of American backpackers abroad pretending to be Canadian to avoid shame by association became something of a cliche.
Yet, the past six years have seen an unprecedented acceleration.
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