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The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had exhausted the United States. They made room for Russia’s revanchism and China’s rise. They divided America’s European allies and increased Iran’s influence. Along with the financial crisis, these wars challenged US global power.
But it was precisely the Russian attack on Ukraine that resurrected the United States as a superpower. The former president of the Swiss National Bank, Philipp Hildebrand, stated almost a year ago in an interview with the “Handelzeitung”: “The way in which the USA uses economic and financial policy as a weapon has reached completely new proportions.”
Since then, the US under President Joe Biden has shown a leadership that one would not have expected from the “exhausted superpower” and after the years under ex-President Donald Trump. Neither does Russian President Vladimir Putin.
America First again soon?
The question is how reliable this old, new US role is. Ex-President Trump, who wants to become president again in two years, has just launched a new campaign platform. The title: an “America First trading platform” that wants to “smash globalization with a sledgehammer”. «Sledgehammer» against globalization. These are Trump’s original words. His target: primarily China.
China makes US nervous
That China is making the US nervous is nothing new. As President, Barack Obama already wanted to shift the focus of the USA away from the Middle East and towards the Far East. We are witnessing the formation of new blocs, particularly between a US-led West and China, regardless of who will be in the White House after the next election. The reason for this is the “splitting of the former global consensus”, as Philipp Hildebrand calls it, a change in times initiated by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, intensified by the financial crisis and the pandemic, driven further by the war in Ukraine.
Rockets vs Balloons
The so-called balloon affair has only just shown how frayed the nerves in the USA are with regard to China. After the Biden government came under pressure from what was believed to be a Chinese spy balloon that had drifted across the United States, the most powerful air force in the world shot down not only this balloon – but also three other not immediately identifiable flying objects that later turned out to be harmless research balloons or even toy balloons.
The majorities in the House of Representatives and the balance of power within the Republican Party will lead to the culture war in the USA escalating further in the next two years and taking away any sense of prudence. With the increase in power in the course of the Ukraine war, the USA has once again become a superpower. In view of the uncertainty in the political orientation of the USA, however, it has become an unpredictable superpower.