‘Returning to Normalcy?’: The United States Now David Holloway ‘Returning to normalcy’is a phrase one hears a lot in the United States today. That is understandable, given the continuing, surging Covid-19 pandemic. The prospect of putting that behind us and recovering from its effects is appealing to people everywhere. But for the majority ofAmericans the phrase expresses a different hope as well: that the end of the Trump Administration will mean a return to a more civil politics and more competent government. What are the prospects for such an outcome? American society is deeply divided, as Joe Biden acknowledged in his Inaugural Address. How does that affect the role of the United States in the world? Can there be a ‘return to normalcy?’And should there be? The question of world order There has been a broad sense in recent years that the existing world order is changing, even if it is not clear where that change will lead. The trends to which people point – the rise of populism; the roll-back of democracy; growing trade protectionism; the weakening of international organisations; the rise of China – suggest that something fundamental is under way. This renewed interest in world order pre-dates the election of Donald Trump as US president, but his term in office has deepened the sense of uncertainty and anxiety about the future. The origins of the present world order are commonly traced (in American studies at least) to the Second World War and the Roosevelt Administration’s ideas for avoiding a repetition of the economic and political disasters of the inter-war period. The United States had emerged from the war as the most powerful state in the world, in a stronger position than any other to define the shape of the postwar order. It would engage with the world, not isolate itself, and it would encourage open trade and political democracy. The Atlantic Charter, the United Nations Charter, and the Bretton Woods agreements were among the most important products of this effort to create a new world order. Studies • volume 110 • number 437 17 Before long, however, the two competing models of the Cold War partially supplanted this vision. The United States and the Soviet Union dominated a bipolar world. Both were committed to economic and political principles that they wanted to extend to the whole world, and each was deeply hostile to the principles of the other side. It was not force of arms that brought the Cold War to an end, but the failure of the Soviet system. Its collapse was a milestone in international relations comparable to the end of a world war, though thankfully without bloodshed on the same scale. For many Americans, the period after the Cold War was a ‘unipolar moment’, in which the United States was not only the most powerful state in the world but also embodied the kind of economic and political order that other countries would aspire to emulate. It was the end of history, in the sense that the great ideological struggles of the twentieth century had been decided: fascism and communism had been defeated; liberal democracy was now anointed by history as the best system of government not only for political freedom, but for economic prosperity as well.1 Instead of competing models, there would now be just one model, which would extend eventually to the whole world. Market economies and democratic politics would become the norm. Barriers to globalisation would diminish. The ‘democratic peace’ theory gained popularity: a democratic world would be a peaceful world, because democratic states do not go to war with one another. Programmes to foster democracy and even, in certain circumstances, the imposition of democratic rule, would further the cause of international peace.This world later came to be described, by its supporters, as the liberal or ‘rules-based’international order, in which American dominance would be maintained – but also constrained – by an open trading system, democratic politics, and multinational organisations.2 There was a large element of hubris in this vision, even though events seemed for a while to unfold as predicted. The collapse of communist rule in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe gave a...
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Feb 25, 2022
Rolf Dieter Lehner 
Open Access
