Those who still paid attention to America’s role in the world lacked a definition for it. Having become the world’s only superpower, America had very little idea how to use that power—if, indeed, it should use it that much at all.
It also justified hard trade-offs in foreign policy. It gave presidents a rationale, however thin, for alliances with despots. It argued for patience in building democratic institutions in South Korea and Taiwan like those established in West Germany and Japan. In 1972 it prompted the boldest stroke in late-20th-century American diplomacy: the opening to China.
Twenty years on, the world is not the one Mr Biden hoped for. The framework George W. Bush’s administration adopted for its post-9/11 mission in the world, the global war on terror, certainly put an end to the foreign-policy establishment’s worries about the role of their hyperpower and how fully to use its force.
Mr Biden could have been one of those he had in mind. In a speech given in 2002, during the Senate’s debate over the Iraq-war authorisation, he emphasised the importance ofsupport for an invasion; he spoke of the danger of any country arrogating to itself the right to wage war to prevent a possible, eventual threat; and he warned of the “sin of Vietnam”, of “the failure of two presidents to level with the American people of what the costs would be”. And then he voted for the war.
The next two presidents tried and failed to escape the dynamic of the war on terror. Mr Obama spoke a language of liberal internationalism as grand as Mr Bush’s. “The people of the world want change,” he said in his first speech to theGeneral Assembly, in 2009. “They will not long tolerate those who are on the wrong side of history.” But he did not share Mr Bush’s appetite for unilateral intervention.
Mr. Biden’s confidence in his own judgment, and in America, turned out to be well placed. In the coming years other foreign-policy disasters awaited—in Iran , in Central America, in Lebanon. But so did victory in the cold war.
What terrorism is America talking about?
Actions speak louder than words, and the US has articulated it's values clearly. If those values don't reflect well upon the the citizens, well.... Mirrors are readily available.
Instead it came down with bipolar disorder
Uighurs. The Chinese gvt has apparently been vigorously waging 'war on terrorism.' Like Erdogan. Like some Europeans. American slogans have proven very useful…
Evidence the US is behind the terrorism in Xinjiang.
The US and Al Qaeda remains partners in Syria. Watch 'Former hostage responds to top diplomat calling Al Qaeda a US 'asset' in Syria' on YouTube
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