- cross-posted to:
- worldnews@lemmit.online
- cross-posted to:
- worldnews@lemmit.online
The documents show the fallout for the US in Bahrain, Indonesia and Azerbaijan as it struggles to catch up with pro-Iran messaging.
The Iran war is risking America’s global security ties and damaging its reputation, especially among the world’s Muslims, according to a set of State Department cables obtained by POLITICO.
The cables, dated Wednesday, described the fallout of the war for America’s standing in three countries in different parts of the world: Bahrain, Azerbaijan and Indonesia.
U.S. diplomats at embassies in the countries’ capitals painted damning portraits of an America under siege in multiple media spheres by pro-Iranian actors that are exceptionally agile in the digital space.
Apart from all the obvious US policy failures, there are also the less obvious ones.
The current admin has no understanding of soft power. The US spent decades building trust in the Voice of America. Sure, it was US propaganda in some ways, but it was often much more truthful about the facts than the local government news. The people who worked at VoA cared about being reporters and wanted to tell the truth. They had bureaus around the world broadcasting in local languages, and it cost almost nothing. It was old fashioned radio, a technology that’s a century old. Something that might have been useful in Iran where the Internet has been cut off for months now. So, Iran can now get their narrative out to all the other countries nearby, and the US has no way of correcting / countering the Iranian propaganda.
The US also used to know the value of diplomats. The Trump admin doesn’t think expertise matters. So, the Iran deals are being conducted by the President’s son in law, and a buddy of Trump’s who’s also a real estate developer. Unsurprisingly, they’re not succeeding. Ambassadors have always been a cushy job, often given to big donors or friends. But, Trump has made it so entire embassies are effectively useless.
The kinds of damage being done in just a couple of years will last for decades. I don’t know if the US will ever recover from this. Many of the problems probably won’t even show up for more than 5 years. Instead of a US military base in a foreign country having a lease that’s easy to renew, the next time it comes up there will be pushback or refusals.
The US dominated world sucked in a lot of ways, but at least it was stable. My guess is that the next few decades will be a lot less stable. Maybe the end result will be better. I’d love it if Europe stepped into the vacuum left by the US. They’re doing a lot of good things when it comes to environmental laws, privacy, anti-monopoly, etc. If it’s China that steps forward, I’m less confident it will be an improvement on the US. Other than those two, I don’t really see any other country or bloc of countries that could try to do the necessary work.
IMO, this is what the goal was. Instability and loss of power. This was a coup, and many if not most of its goals were met.
A coup by whom? Nobody is benefiting from it.
https://www.project2025.observer/
Agreed
Highly debatable.
I think we’re going to appreciate how stable it was soon.
Concerning the ‘will the US recover?’ question, my two cents:
I don’t think the US will be able to recover the lost influence since the prerequisties for it reaching that level if power and influence have changed / are gone. The US dominated ‘the West’ in its fight againgst an authoritarian communist regime and build its global hegemony on the victory in this conflict. Even if the US could regain some trust the current system rival China is way smarter and more convincing in its promises to the regular citizen than the SU was during most of its time… eventhough both systems labeled themselves ‘communis’.
That being said I don’t think the modern US could realistically neither win an arms race based on state finances against China nor make a better promise for the insividuals future. The US hegemony crumbels and imho impossibly will return… if a chinese dominance is better, especially for western citizens, also remains questionable.
The US pivoted seamlessly from an imperial power that was using communism as a reason to overthrow democratically elected leaders, etc. to a cultural behemoth that used its economic power to bend laws in foreign countries so that they privileged US cultural exports and tech companies. It maintained a large military, but if you compare the 50s to the 80s in terms of how much and how that military was used to recent decades, there’s a huge difference.
The Korean war and Vietnam were huge conflicts. They were drafting military-age men to fight in those “wars”. By comparison, the first Iraq war was smaller, and waged with a very wide alliance of countries. The second one was bigger, but still significantly smaller than Vietnam or Korea.
I think the US as a cultural and economic world power could have lasted a very long time. Some countries grumbled about Google and Facebook making it hard for local news organizations. They didn’t do much to stop these companies, only some small fines on occasion. The newest wave of companies, the AI wave, seemed to be happening the same way, with all the major companies being American.
I think most people from rich countries would still prefer the US to be dominant than China. The US at least talks a good game when it comes to freedom of speech, etc. China doesn’t even try to pretend to care about that. But, the US is chaotic and belligerent, whereas China is mostly using soft power these days.
China would at least be better than the US for environmental and anti-monopoly laws, and at this point, I think it’s fair to call it a parallel move on privacy. That’s rough to realize.
I don’t think that’s true. Yes, the Trump admin is horribly corrupt, but a collection of states just won in court, finding that Ticketmaster was an illegal monopoly. There’s a chance that after Trump goes away / dies that whoever replaces him will take monopoly enforcement seriously. It’s a popular bipartisan issue.
Meanwhile, in China, what President Xi wants, he gets. At the moment he doesn’t seem to be doing the Trump speed run of corruption and personal enrichment. But, rule of law in China is limited because ultimately it’s whatever Xi decides.
Privacy is basically non-existent in China. Sure, the US tries to spy on its citizens, but often the FBI is reduced to buying data on Americans from private companies because they can’t spy on people directly. There’s a lot of self-censorship in the US, and oligarchs are buying up media to restrict what views are published. But, that pales in comparison to the Great Firewall of China, and the massive internal censorship network.
And, keep in mind, that’s what China does to Chinese citizens. When they show up in Africa they definitely don’t treat Africans the same way Chinese people are treated. They are happy to help Chinese companies do corrupt deals that would never be permitted in China, but when it’s Africans that suffer they really don’t care. The US was hardly an angel around the world, but at least it made tiny steps towards trying to curb things a bit, like the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
Trump may be speed-running overt corruption and self dealing, but there are still remnants of the old system of laws and rules that occasionally stop some of the things he’s doing. Xi is not as obviously overtly corrupt, but the Chinese system has never been in any way democratic. It has always been one where the people at the top get to dictate how the people at the bottom live their lives. Personally, I’d prefer a fighting chance against a corrupt mob boss style dictator who hasn’t yet fully corrupted the entire system, vs. being ground under the boot heel of a “president for life” who maybe was making decisions that he thought was best for his country, but who isn’t even willing to allow protests or mockery, let alone the free communication of ideas.
Xi has no more absolute power over the government than Mao had (who was forced to step aside). And saying it is in no way democratic is patently false considering all their politicians need to be elected in at the local level. Lastly, Xi’s family was exiled from Beijing and they survived only to have Xi become the leader.
We won’t know how much power Xi had until he has to step aside. Saying he’s no more powerful than Mao, who ruled for more than 30 years and who ruled until the day he died, is an interesting choice.
Considering it was under Mao that Xi’s family was exiled it is a rather salient comparison.
Edit: and we can know how much power Mao had by how big of a power vacuum he left. The fact of the matter is it is a single party republic, and that’s why Mao was replaced with someone more sensible. If there was a sizable power vacuum things would not have turned out this way.
I really wish more Americans understood soft power and how much we used to have. Hell, I was on vacation to Montreal a few years back and I ran into a dude from France there. You know what we did? Quoted American TV to each other, in English. He knew lines from futurama and archer in English.
Hell at work I run into a lot of Germans and French folk and dispite not using imperial they knew how far a mile was in kilometers (1.6 for the curious)