Gulliver at the Crossroads: America’s Strategy During the Global Transition

Abstract

The article discusses the modern stage of international relations as a transition from the US-centric to another, polycentric world order. America has many opportunities to infl uence the formation of the future world order, which it uses for maintaining a dominant role in the world. However, America also has severe weaknesses for making the global transition; the main one considers the psychological unpreparedness of the country’s establishment for a change in the global role of the United States. The country’s transitional situation gives rise to an identity crisis, accompanied by the most heated debates in the political class regarding the development of foreign policy and strategy. In the variety of positions and narratives of the American strategy, one can distinguish (1) proponents of the liberal globalization and maintaining America’s dominant position, (2) advocates of superpower status and resource dominance by coercion and (3) realists or those who call for building a new global balance of power and coordinating the US interests with other powers. This identity crisis is associated with the globally changing position of the country that has been at the center of the international system for the past 75 years. The American political class was never monolithic before and even during the Cold War, representing a range of diff erent foreign policy ideas and positions. However, foreign policy disagreements previously did not question the national identity and fundamental value of the country. For America, these values were associated with a global role in promoting the ideals of freedom and liberal democracy, previously underpinned by confrontation with the USSR. The disappearance of the Soviet power strengthened the position of liberal globalists and enhanced the strategic narrative of the global promotion of American values. The diff erence of the contemporary period is that nationalists and realists no longer accept the arguments of liberal globalists, resulting in a deepening of ideological polarization in the political class and society. The domestic ideational and political crisis splits the elites, delays the transition to a new world order, and makes it impossible to pursue a sound international strategy. Such a strategy will be the result of both an internal political struggle and a response of the country’s leadership to the processes of pluralization and polycentrism developing in the world.