{"id":273709,"date":"2020-11-01T08:37:29","date_gmt":"2020-11-01T13:37:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=273709"},"modified":"2020-11-01T08:37:29","modified_gmt":"2020-11-01T13:37:29","slug":"as-the-world-watches-the-us-election-the-appeal-of-america-is-diminished","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2020\/11\/01\/as-the-world-watches-the-us-election-the-appeal-of-america-is-diminished\/","title":{"rendered":"As the world watches the US election, the appeal of America is diminished"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Several international polls link the decline in confidence in American leadership to Trump\u2019s mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic, both nationally and internationally. (File photo<\/a>: The White House\/Facebook<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A US presidential election always draws intense worldwide interest, in part due to the spectacle, but also because the leadership of the most powerful country in the world has a significant bearing on international affairs. It is also a moment of immense cultural power which magnifies America\u2019s global significance.<\/p>\n

While political leaders and policy experts will watch the election through the prism of their strategic interests, most of the world will watch with a more nebulous sense that the fate of the world is somehow at stake. For better or worse, around the globe people tend to view the US through the figure of its president. This is certainly the case with Donald Trump, whose global celebrity has amplified feelings about the US.<\/p>\n

The 2020 election symbolically aligns with a paradigm shift in the world order, a disassembling of western and more particularly American dominance. What is at stake here is the idea of the US as the world\u2019s leading nation, an idea that forcefully shaped \u201cthe American Century\u201d and is now fast dissolving.<\/p>\n

Global perceptions of the US are regularly monitored by major polling organisations such as the Pew Research Center and Gallup. There are also myriad regional and national polls seeking information on the US\u2019s reputation and influence. By almost all quantitative measures the US\u2019s global standing has plummeted since the election of Trump and this downward spiral is more often than not associated with his leadership.<\/p>\n

A Pew study<\/a> in September 2020 noted that the number of countries with a favourable view of the US is \u201cas low as it has been at any point since the Center began polling on this topic nearly two decades ago.\u201d The survey showed ratings of \u201cconfidence in the US president\u201d ranging from a low of 9% in Belgium to a high of 25% in Japan.<\/p>\n

Several international polls link the decline in confidence in American leadership to Trump\u2019s mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic, both nationally and internationally. Measuring such perceptions quantitatively has much room for error, but it\u2019s hard to deny that the scale and consistency of these polls are indicators of the US\u2019s maligned and depleted image and influence in the world today.<\/p>\n

That sense of diminishing American appeal is evident not only in the polling but also in global media coverage of the US. This is hardly surprising given the images of domestic turmoil that travel swiftly in real time: scenes of overworked healthcare workers<\/a>, of mass demonstrations over the police killings of African-Americans, of armed vigilantes challenging pandemic orders, and of wildfires raging in California<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The first presidential debate provoked shock and dismay in international news media<\/a>. It was described as a \u201cchaotic and virulent spectacle\u201d<\/a> (El Pais in Spain), as \u201cmudwrestling\u201d<\/a> (The Times of India), as \u201ca joke, a low point, a shame for the country\u201d<\/a> (Der Spiegel in Germany), as a \u201cnational humiliation for America\u201d<\/a> (The Guardian in the UK), and as evidence of the \u201crecession of US influence, national power\u201d<\/a> (Global Times in China).<\/p>\n

Since 2016, the European media has reported on a widespread and increasing sense of European disillusionment with the US, centred on Trump but also pointing to an acceleration of American decline. Writing in the Irish Times in April, Fintan O\u2019Toole observed<\/a>:<\/p>\n

It is hard not to feel sorry for Americans \u2026 The country Trump promised to make great again has never in its history seemed so pitiful.<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Simon Kuper in the Financial Times made a similar observation in October, writing that \u201cEuropean attitudes to Americans are shifting from envy to compassion.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

The end of the American century<\/h2>\n

Underlying this shift in global, and especially western, perceptions of the US is a deep but barely coherent disinvestment in the fantasy of \u201cAmerica\u201d as a liberal and redemptive power, one that acts on behalf of a global common good. This has endured for many national political and popular cultures since the end of the second world war and until recently has been stoked by American soft power and popular culture. It is a fantasy that dramatises and idealises American narratives \u2013 the stock example being \u201cthe American Dream\u201d \u2013 and makes \u201cAmerica\u201d a screen for global desires and discontents.<\/p>\n

The US has long functioned as a global mirror with many nations viewing it as the epitome of modernity and measuring their \u201cprogress\u201d against that imagery. Fascination and contempt are bound together in this fantasy. It is dependent on what is known but cannot be acknowledged: a fear of and desire for American power. It provides other nations with the balm of calling out US hypocrisy in the misuse of its powers, hypocrisy which is often measured in the distance between American soft power rhetoric and hard power actions.<\/p>\n

The US once fed the fantasy with confidence. When the magazine publisher Henry Luce published his famous essay The American Century<\/a> in 1941, on the eve of the US entry into the second world war, he provided a mission statement of American exceptionalism. The essay expressed a vision of US political, economic and cultural power, of a pre-eminent US that would lead the postwar world by its example in advancing democratic ideals, free enterprise and \u201cthe American way of life\u201d. It was a compelling vision of American hegemony that joined nationalism and internationalism in the interests of global leadership.<\/p>\n

The fantasy is now fast unravelling as the American Century comes to an end. This has tallied not with the 20th century but more pointedly with the period between the start of the Cold War and the current implosion of the liberal world order. In recent years the relative decline of the US has been much remarked upon as a \u201cpost-American world\u201d<\/a> emerges, and nationalism, particularly an \u201cAmerica First\u201d agenda<\/a>, has displaced internationalism in American foreign policy.<\/p>\n

Cultural power<\/h2>\n

Much international polling and commentary in recent years suggests that the US is losing its power to communicate, and is no longer seen as a cultural or political beacon. The common measurement of this is the claim that American soft power, understood as the power to attract rather than coerce, has been greatly reduced<\/a>, not least because Trump and his administration eschew it as irrelevant to the promotion of \u201cAmerica First\u201d.<\/p>\n

While American liberals fret at the loss of America\u2019s global cultural appeal in terms of soft power, they cling to a crude conception of the way cultural processes work and the impact they have. Cultural power takes many forms and the US continues to provide cultural and political influence across the world, though not necessarily shaped by the office of the president or the diplomacy of the State Department. A recent example is the global impact of the protests for racial justice and the international spread of the Black Lives Matter movement.<\/p>\n

Throughout June 2020, people took the streets across the world in response to the protests in the US sparked by the death of a Black man, George Floyd, while in policy custody. Expressions of solidarity were the most common feature of the protests, but they also invariably connected with and expressed local matters of racial division and injustice<\/a>. As they mutated across borders, the protests triggered activism and debates on police violence, racial profiling, the detention of asylum seekers and the removal of monuments<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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\nRead more:
\nGeorge Floyd protests show how the US has retreated from its position as a world leader<\/a>
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These protests and conversations indicate the symbolic resonance of the American civil rights struggle across the world. A national reckoning with race in the US may go some way to restoring the country\u2019s self-image and standing in the world.<\/p>\n

Tipping point<\/h2>\n

The world should not underestimate America\u2019s capacity for renewal, but nor should it underestimate its capacity for self-delusion and for packaging this belief in American exceptionalism as something to sell to the rest of the world. In short, the death of the fantasy of America as a liberal and redemptive power is not necessarily a bad thing \u2013 and the election of Joe Biden as president would be unlikely to renew it.<\/p>\n

A reality check on American power, including its cultural power, is overdue. This entails taking stock of the ways in which the US has fomented a cultural backlash<\/a> both against liberal democracy at home and the liberal world order abroad. That backlash \u2013 put crudely, the people against the elites \u2013 resonates with ethno-nationalist and populist politics across the world.<\/p>\n

With the waning of liberal democracy we are at a cultural tipping point in the west where opponents do not neatly line up as left versus right and where politics is increasingly defined by cultural values<\/a>. Part of the significance of the 2020 US election as a global cultural moment is its dramatisation of this tipping point, posed between the insurgent forces of nationalism and the residual forces of liberalism.<\/p>\n

The world will be watching, less in fascination than in bemusement and commiseration.\"The<\/p>\n

Liam Kennedy<\/a>, Professor of American Studies, University College Dublin<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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