Nathan Weyand: What does America deserve?
About the writer: Nathan Weyand is about to begin his senior year at McMinnville High School. He is concentrating on engineering and medicine, but has a longstanding passion for writing, politics and foreign affairs as well.
I have made an exercise of asking people I meet what they think America deserves. The answers range.
My neighbor, very much a creature of the suburbs, answered, “security.” A school administrator answered, “a future,” which felt very on brand.
A friend of a more cynical persuasion responded ominously, “what it’s got coming.” And perhaps the most dramatic answer belonged to a respondent on a political forum, “oblivion.”
Following the conclusion of the World War II, the United States was uniquely equipped to define the 20th century, wielding both the economic and political leverage to build the postwar rules-based order. It built the system in the name of democracy, liberty, equality and all those fine ideals that so enticed crumbling colonial empires.
This order, however, rests on a number of convenient lies that helped generate the characteristic abundance coming to define the late 20th and early 21st centuries. What was sold as a partnership of coequal nations was quickly realized as a way for great powers to extract concessions from small nations that had been seduced by the niceties of economic integration, while they regulated among themselves, ignored by their larger neighbors.
The principles of the U.N. and similar institutions have always been somewhat at odds with the reality of global politics, with superpowers skirting or ignoring regulations they found inconvenient, while leaning on those same systems as the basis of their international legitimacy, using them as a casus belli to go around the world pursuing their own agendas.
The world looked away as the United States and other great powers betrayed the principles expressed in the Charter, in the UDHR, and in their own constitutions. They looked away on the assumption that the Americans were negotiating in good faith.
This assumption allowed middling powers to ignore certain incongruencies. But it has recently been proven incorrect.
The past year has made clear how America views its relationship with other members of the international community — not as partners, but as pieces that are to be manipulated to serve short-term economic goals and ill-advised policy agendas.
The world has long mistaken subservience for friendship. American hegemony has been propped up with terror and absolute military superiority.
Since its inception, America has found itself in a leveraged position. Other nations have always needed the United States.
At its founding, Europe still required the vast resources of the New World. After the First World War, Europe’s restructuring was financed by America’s wealth, and once again, following World War II, the world needed America to rebuild.
Americans have often mistaken their luck for signs of their industry, or for the success of American idealism. America has been in the right place, at the right time, and has managed to always stay valuable.
Going into the 21st century, however, America’s continued superiority seems more down to inertia than any particular quality of its population. The world’s richest economy produces little but carbon and national debt.
A number of great powers have maneuvered themselves into a position where they can exert influence over small and middling powers, simply by adjusting their domestic trade policies. These powers have used this economic leverage to extract concessions and dictate foreign policy.
In this scenario, sovereignty is virtually non-existent. But this relationship is not acceptable.
The purpose of international economic institutions, including the WTO, IMF, UNCTAD and World Bank, is to promote the healthy exchange of goods across countries, not to hand economic weapons to aspirant autocrats.
The international system has been built upon 19th-century ideals of multilateralism and collective security. These doctrines imagine states as rational actors, responding logically to incentives and disincentives.
This can only succeed if the players are placed on relatively equal footing, or if great powers are willing to concede in the spirit of liberalism. In the current geopolitical climate, many individual states have little to no bargaining power, and the basis of internationalism may thus be called into question.
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