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My new special, "How the World Sees America," airs tonight @ 9pm ET on @CNN.
A few conclusions I’ve drawn:
A few conclusions I’ve drawn:
We used to know exactly who we were--the world’s sole superpower w/ the strongest alliances in history. If not that, who are we? Trump has insulted allies & embraced tyrants, putting the US into a great retreat from ldrship. Global trust in the US is @ a low, while China rises
China has seized on US withdrawal from multilateral trade & int'l orgs, wooed Trump w/ pageantry, & ramped up its Belt & Road Initiative as it gains global clout--while Trump's trade war has hurt US businesses more than it's hurt China
Covid-19 has reversed US ldrship on diseases: As @SlaughterAM says, the US hasn’t “put even a basic testing strategy in place." Germany & South Korea, meanwhile, are succeeding. Trump's US has w/drawn further, quitting the WHO & spurning vaccine cooperation
This all comes after two crises--the Iraq War & the '08 financial crisis--fueled a sense around the world that America's elites had blown it, dented US global standing, & allowed for the rise of a populist demagogue
In the '90s, the American dream had become the global dream. Pioneering the information revolution, America looked more powerful & respected than any country since the heights of the Roman empire. It didn't last long. Washington squandered its supremacy.
@ a moment of ascension, the US acted in ways that were arbitrary, unilateral, & self-interested (attacking Iraq, withdrawing from treaties, & levying sanctions on allies). The path to extending liberal hegemony is to be more liberal & less hegemonic. US was the opposite.
Trump might be seen as an aberration & expression of America's demons--distrust of the world, allies, & foreigners. But there’s another America, one that built the UN, World Bank, & WHO. The question for the US is: Can it recover that older tradition? It is still not too late.
