Synopsis of America the Almighty: The Maverick Hyperpower

By Stephen L. Damours

The power of the United States is unique in world history. Though the U.S. is one nation among 191, our economy constitutes 25% of the world’s economy. We have more military power and spend more on our military than all other nations combined. Including the cost of the Iraq War, our military spending is eight times greater than that any other nation. It seems only natural to expect a democracy with such overwhelming power to lead the world and be in the vanguard of global progress on numerous fronts. Yet there is a profound and growing problem with American leadership in the world. More often than not, U.S. foreign policy since the end of the Cold War has been either backward or bullying or both, slowing global progress on multiple fronts and often instilling fear and loathing in the populations and leaders of other countries, including our allies. We think of ourselves as a leader, but often we are a "leader" with no followers and many resentful detractors. We have alienated our allies and intensified the hatred of our enemies. We have provided powerful new incentives to anti-American terrorists. There is a huge and widening gap between our values and our international behavior.

American citizens and traditions value human rights, enshrined in the Bill of Rights of the Constitution, yet our leaders have refused to ratify two great human rights treaties of the past two decades, the treaties on the rights of women and of children. We stand alone among democracies in rejecting them. Our people and our traditions value impartial justice, yet American leaders have rejected a new International Criminal Court and engaged in a campaign to coerce other nations to exempt our citizens from its jurisdiction. We make war on this Court despite rock-solid protections against political abuse built into its charter by American negotiators. We are concerned about protecting the environment on which our lives and economy depend, but our leaders have rejected a major treaty on global warming and promoted policies that lead to continued pollution of the earth’s atmosphere at a rate that is clearly not sustainable. We believe in peace but our leaders have rejected, withdrawn from, or violated a series of arms control treaties, balked at paying our dues to the UN for over a decade, and launched an unnecessary war against a country that was not a genuine threat to the U.S. The cost to the U.S. in lives, tax dollars, and credibility is immense.
Why does the U.S. behave in this counterproductive way internationally?  Three psycho-social forces and a deeply entrenched cultural habit of thought, when combined, form much of the answer. 

Tribalism, expressed as the tendency to value American lives and American culture above those of other countries, is a core factor. This universal human impulse can easily be carried too far; it then becomes jingoism or patriotism run amok.  It is the opposite of our core national value of universalism, that all are created equal and endowed with certain inalienable rights. Reinforced by fear and anger, tribalism became the dominant force in American foreign policy after 9/11. “We’re the good guys”, others are the not-so-good guys or the bad guys.   This viewpoint is essentially group egotism. 

Tribalism is reinforced by a second major psychological force, the arrogance of power.  We are more powerful than other countries, so we can get our way internationally every time if we use enough force. This approach produces an inevitable backlash, but that fact can be conveniently ignored in the short run. In the long run, we get results like the insurgency in Iraq. Good old fashioned greed as another motive that cannot be discounted. Since international relations is assumed to be a competitive game, it’s O.K. for us to get more than our proportionate share of the global pie of wealth and economic power, and to hold on to it at all costs.  Since we have achieved this economic dominance, clearly we have earned it.

Our deeply ingrained cultural habit of seeing the world in terms of win-lose games (rather than win-win cooperation) provides the justification for allowing the self-interested motives already mentioned to run rampant.  Our elections, our sports, our “reality shows,” even our arts are conducted as win-lose games. Why would we not also conduct our foreign policy the same way? The inevitable backlash, expressed as terrorism in today’s world, is asymmetrical warfare directed against a perceived enemy that is too powerful to take on frontally.

America the Almighty is about these motives and the immense gaps between our noble and sensible values and our self-defeating foreign policy, how these gaps came about, and what American citizens can do to change the picture. We will have to change the picture eventually through support for peace-oriented multilateral institutions, justice and human rights, economic and ecological sustainability as a global goals, and win-win cooperation on the world stage.  The sooner we begin, the less pain we and the world will experience.