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Friday, July 11, 2025

The US loss of influence

by

1645 days ago
20210108

In the decades fol­low­ing World War II, the Unit­ed States so­lid­i­fied its po­si­tion as a dom­i­nant eco­nom­ic and mil­i­tary pow­er in the world by tak­ing on the role of set­ting ex­am­ples for oth­er coun­tries to fol­low and en­forc­ing in­ter­na­tion­al rules and norms.

Al­though the US has of­ten been crit­i­cised for com­man­deer­ing the role of de­fend­er and pro­mot­er of free­dom, democ­ra­cy, and hu­man rights, it was most­ly un­chal­lenged in its po­si­tion as the most pow­er­ful coun­try in the world . . . un­til now.

That all changed on Wednes­day when home-grown ter­ror­ists stormed the US citadel of democ­ra­cy, the Capi­tol Build­ing in Wash­ing­ton, DC. It was the lat­est in re­cent as­saults on Amer­i­ca’s im­age but this time it was se­vere enough of a bat­ter­ing to in­flict long-last­ing dam­age.

The role of the US in the world changed and its glob­al in­flu­ence waned in just those hours when hordes of pro-Trump ri­ot­ers struck re­peat­ed­ly at the heart of Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy. The fact that the an­ar­chists were spurred on by the cur­rent oc­cu­pant of the White House on­ly made mat­ters worse.

Don­ald Trump’s cor­ro­sive rhetoric, which has in­creased since his de­feat in the No­vem­ber 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tions, has ac­cel­er­at­ed ero­sion of pub­lic trust in the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic process.

How­ev­er, long be­fore the con­sti­tu­tion­al cri­sis trig­gered by a dif­fi­cult pres­i­den­tial tran­si­tion, the for­eign poli­cies of the Trump Ad­min­is­tra­tion had al­ready sub­stan­tial­ly al­tered US re­la­tions with al­lies and em­bold­ened its foes.

This could have sig­nif­i­cant im­pli­ca­tions for T&T and oth­er coun­tries in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean at a time when there is al­ready some tur­bu­lence in hemi­spher­ic af­fairs such as the T&T Gov­ern­ment’s frosty re­la­tions with the Or­ga­ni­za­tion of Amer­i­can States (OAS).

The moral au­thor­i­ty the US once had to pon­tif­i­cate on mat­ters of free­dom and democ­ra­cy was lost on Wednes­day.

The coun­try seen by the world in these fi­nal days of the Trump pres­i­den­cy is but a faint shad­ow of the su­per­pow­er which, as re­cent­ly as mid-2017, was ac­cus­ing the Nicolás Maduro regime in Venezuela of as­sault­ing “the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic prin­ci­ples of the men and women who fought for the in­de­pen­dence of Venezuela 206 years ago.”

That re­buke from the US State De­part­ment came af­ter pro-Maduro civil­ians and para­mil­i­tary groups stormed in­to the Leg­isla­tive Palace in Cara­cas, Venezuela, wound­ing sev­er­al law­mak­ers. But the ta­bles turned dra­mat­i­cal­ly on the US fol­low­ing Wednes­day’s vi­o­lent in­sur­rec­tion on Capi­tol Hill, with Venezuela’s For­eign Min­is­ter Jorge Ar­reaza de­scrib­ing those de­vel­op­ments as a “re­gret­table episode” and not­ing “the po­lit­i­cal po­lar­i­sa­tion and spi­ral of vi­o­lence” in Wash­ing­ton.

Dam­age con­trol, which may need to be con­duct­ed on a glob­al scale, is one of the dif­fi­cult chal­lenges that will con­front the next US Pres­i­dent from the minute he en­ters the Oval Of­fice. It is im­per­a­tive that Pres­i­dent-elect Biden quick­ly and de­ci­sive­ly deals with those he de­scribed yes­ter­day as “a ri­otous mob — in­sur­rec­tion­ists, do­mes­tic ter­ror­ists.”

Oth­er­wise, the US will see its po­si­tion of pow­er in the world com­plete­ly lost as coun­tries like Chi­na and Rus­sia ad­vance their eco­nom­ic and mil­i­tary am­bi­tions and new glob­al al­liances are formed.


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