Trump at the G20: The End of the American Century

If  Donald Trump’s presidential goal was to “Make America Great Again,” he has a funny way
of going about doing that.  If anything, the G-20 Summit demonstrates how after barely six months as president the United States is a weaker country than it was before he took office.  The weakness resides in the decline of American soft power internationally.
Two elements were critical to the creation of what LIFE magazine editor Henry Luce declared in 1941 as the coming  American Century.  First, coming out of World War II the United States was militarily the strongest nation in the world.  That position was only enhanced by it being the first nuclear club member and persists today as the United States spends more on defense at $611 billion than the next eight countries combined spend at $595 billion.  US hard power is the greatest in the world.  The US simply has the fire power to muscle its hegemony across the globe.
But equally if not more important to creating the American century has been its soft power.  The term soft power was developed by Harvard scholar Joseph Nye in his 1990  Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power.  It is the power to influence world opinion by way of its culture, political values, and foreign policy. In many ways, soft power is the international equivalent of Richard Neustadt’s power to influence in Presidential Power–both describe the less coercive but equally important and effective ways that power is leveraged.  Paul Kennedy’s The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers credits the dominance of the United States as building a world in its image via both the strategic use of hard and soft power.  Soft and hard power work together much like carrots and sticks.
From World War II to the president there has been a Washington consensus on how to maintain American power.  Beyond significant military spending, supporting free trade, relatively liberal and democracy values, and exporting US culture have been instrumental.  So has been inviting foreign students to study in the US, allowing for business investment overseas, and pursing foreign policies and multilateral treaties.  While the US has not always been consistent in it values and goals, and the benefits and burdens of its policies have not always been equitably been distributed, there is no question from Truman to Obama there has been more consistency that disruptions in US foreign policy.
Trump’s presidency is challenging all of that, and not for the good. Pulling back on free trade and retreating from the world means less influence for the US.  To be the dominant player in the world the US has to be a player, and Trump does not want that.  At the G-20 summit the European Union and Japan have finalized a trade agreement that leaves the US out.  Trump has decimated the State Department making it difficult to engage in diplomacy.  He has pulled out of the Paris Accords, questioned NATO, bashed our allies, and alienated partners that we need to bring stability to the world.  North Korea’s recent missile launch show how with a decline in soft power the US options are narrow.  Even a military solution seems fraught because without soft power, hard power is vastly weaker too.
It would be easy to create a laundry list of all the things Trump has done to damage America’s reputation and soft power.  But the point is that entering G20, the meeting with Putin, the crises with North Korea, Syria, and maybe ISIS, Trump has undercut the very conditions that made it possible for the US to be great, powerful, and influential.  His presidency is proving less about making America great again and instead it relegating the US to a more marginal player in an international chess game that once placed the country at the center in terms of its influence.

Donald Trump and the End of America’s Century

Donald Trump’s call to place “America first” as he declared in his inaugural speech is propelling him
into direct conflict with his campaign slogan to “Make America great again.”  Already in his first week in office he has undertaken a series of actions that do more to weaken rather than strengthen the United States.
It was Time publisher Henry Luce who proclaimed in a 1941 Life Magazine editorial that the twentieth century would be the “American Century.”  And to a large extent it became so after World War II and then clearly after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union.  In the former case the USA emerged from WW II as the strongest country in the world, in the latter, it was ,as Francis Fukuyama declared in The End of History and the Last Man, because of its dominance as the last standing superpower in the world that had won the Cold War and the battle for ideological ideas.
America’s  strength was not just measured by military might but also by being the  richest and largest economy in the world.  America’s power was also measured by it cultural exporting of its values, it role as the leader of the free world, the leading democracy, and moral leader of the world.  Its willingness to engage in alliances, trade, and political adventures across the world gave it what historian Paul Kennedy in the Rise and Fall of Great Powers the soft power to be great.  To be a world leader the USA had to be hegemonic, and it was.
But the worlds of 1946, 1989, or 1991 are far different than the one that exists today.  The  political world is not bi or monopolar but multipolar.  The EU has a larger GDP and economy than the US, as does China.  Whether anyone likes it or not, the global economy is global as Thomas Friedman pointed to in The World is Flat, with a degree of global interconnectedness that in many ways is impossible to reverse.  And the USA is no longer the best educated, most technologically advanced, or singularly-dominant country in the world.   The USA is a first nation among rivals and friends, and America’s ability to remain a leader resides in adapting to a changing world and continuing to engage with others.
This is what Trump fails to understand.  Whatever “Making America Great Again” means  it is impossible and perhaps undesirable to turn the clock back to some halcyon days of old the US dominated the world, when White guys worked in union scale manufacturing and mining jobs that built  cars, steel, and dug coal, and women stayed home and dressed in heels and skirts like Donna Reed while raising 2.3 children.  That world does not exist anymore and no matter what one does, it is not coming back.  The same is true internationally, especially if Trump continues along the path he has already taken.