Since the end of World War I, the United States has had to maintain two balances simultaneously: domestic and global. They are consciously the police and regulator of the world, while ensuring the stability of the most complex society on the planet: the United States itself. However, rarely in the past have they faced such a complex challenge as now, when the main problem of the world order is simply domestic Disorder of the United States seems to be.
It should come as no surprise that the British are the ones who know the Americans best. Since there are three episodes, this column uses the wonderful title “The Impassive American”, from the translation of “The Quiet American”, a great novel by Graham Greene, one of the best storytellers in the English language of the last century, the one Police use anecdote and espionage to create a finished picture of the US’s attitude towards the rest of the world. And of course there is Churchill’s famous rant: “Americans will always do the right thing only after they have tried everything else.”
I am confident that US democracy will know how to meet the most difficult challenge in its modern history: the challenge posed by the dissolution of the Republican Party’s traditional conservatism and the rise of the far right championed by Trump but still managed to attract more dangerous characters, like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
The US cannot blame anyone for the current fate of its democracy. Its antiquated electoral system and the relative demographic decline of its white and Protestant population have led to an angry and very dangerous reaction from traditional Americans who are ceasing to be average in the face of the dramatic increase in racial diversity that has attracted the economic success of this country in the last decades.
The United States has an unrivaled advantage: its ability to develop new technologies that transform the world through repeated waves of relentless innovation. In the 1960s, a nonconformist, disruptive culture was part of the ferment that created the most important engine of innovation in the last quarter of the 20th century and continues to drive the modern economy in this century. No country or bloc of countries can compete with the market power and innovative ability of Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook and Silicon Valley. The rest of the world has resigned itself to being just a consumer, with the exception of China.
Over the past five years, the US has reached a very rare bipartisan agreement: it is necessary to contain the economic (first) and geopolitical (as a result) rise of China, as it represents the only real challenge to US hegemony in the world . . Trump erected a protectionist and financial fence against China and its companies, and Biden not only failed to reverse it but also built additional levees.
The symbiotic relationship between China and the US has been a turning point since the pandemic. For decades, the relationship was net beneficial. American companies produced and sourced ever cheaper goods and services from China, and China grew its economy to absorb hundreds of millions of people migrating from the countryside to the cities, creating unprecedented prosperity. But the net winner of that relationship, in Americans’ eyes, was a China whose exponential wealth fueled geopolitical ambitions and global control, challenging the post-Cold War balance that had made the United States the sole world power.
The Chinese influx allowed companies like Ali Baba, Pinduoduo, Tencent and others to challenge the Silicon Valley giants on an equal footing on the global stage. The global success of China’s TikTok, for example, has never come close to being matched by any Silicon Valley company.
The United States is at a crucial crossroads. Internally, the country’s democracy is in danger because the white minority refuses to accept that their nation is part of an ethnic mosaic; Externally, its hegemony is being challenged by a model, the Chinese one, that rivals its own in efficiency and competitiveness. How will they resolve this crossroads? This Churchill boutade is unforgettable: let’s see if it applies on this occasion.
