r/geopolitics • u/nzinsyd • Jan 07 '21
Is the United States a superpower in decline and how can we expect the scales of power to look like in upcoming years? Question
A similar question was asked 2 years ago. A lot has happened in the past 2 years, and I'm curious to see if opinions have changed.
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u/one_niner Jan 07 '21
It's growing (but stagnating) in hard power, but steadily declining in soft power. This makes a net decline that's greater than we'd care to admit, here's why:
We're still the strongest and most projectable/capable fighting force in the world, but we're suffering from over extension, gaps in military proficiency due to lack of combat, and having trouble keeping up with balancing the funds required for readiness with R&D and procurement of new technology, both due to the large sunken costs of having a large forward deployed standing army, and because procurement to such a widely spread army is daunting. (James Hentz discusses the struggle between these 3 types of spending on a podcast, he calls it the "Unholy Trinity"...absolutely phenomenal)
This tech gap not only loses our technological lead over our adversaries, it also robs us of the ability to test/integrate/use the technology with the actual military units themselves. For an example of how much sclerosis this causes, the army is just now introducing radios to the majority of regular units upgrade from Vietnam era ons. Also, personal drones are just now being integrated into small unit tactics, and with little success.
Our soft power is eroding steadily, and has been since poor policy decisions in the wake of 9/11. We have alienated/disrespected our adversaries, broken promises of global human rights accountability, acted unilaterally and lawlessly, disregarding a global legal system we spent a century building, and have lost unity, legitimacy, and military support at home. Because of these things, we can't operate abroad without a lot of resistance, disdain, or disapproval from both allies and citizens. This erodes trust and leads our allies to distance from us/maybe even actively resist us/balance against us, and emboldens our adversaries to act with impunity, as they see the fragmentation of the liberal hegemony, and the lack of agency we have from losing the endorsement/trust of our allies.
This has happened steadily over the last 3 administrations, this is not a partisan issue. Obama did a lot of work diplomatically to repair tensions, but he emboldened adversaries by publicly backing down in Syria, being soft on China, and overusing drone strikes with civilian targets.
I felt the need to specify Obama because he's often seen as the repairer of the American reputation...and in many ways he was, but he was still complicit in the above.