Can the United States regain its superpower status?

Can the United States regain its superpower status?

This is partly because for the first time in over fifty years, there is no incumbent President or Vice President running for office and the field is wide-open in both political parties.

The increasing unpopularity of President Bush has also helped to open the field, as there is no candidate willing to carry the flag of his policies. Democratic contenders Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have each already raised about $60 million and debates among the Democratic contenders and separate ones among the Republican candidates have already been held.

One of the early front-runners for the Republican nomination, Senator John McCain is already seeing his campaign implode around him. This is all happening with the actual Presidential election still almost 16 months away.

The irony is that all of these highly talented individuals are fighting so hard for a job, which is going to bring with it a set of complex, intractable, and dangerous problems unique in our history.  The primary job will be to deal with the problems largely created, made worse, or ignored by the current Administration.

The top of this list is, of course, Iraq. First of all, the current Presidential race will be heavily determined by how the candidates portray themselves on Iraq.  One of the principle reasons John McCain's candidacy is in such serious trouble, for example, is that he strongly supported President Bush's "surge strategy." 

It is also inevitable that the next President will be left a mess in which every conceivable option seems either to be unacceptable or carry substantial risks for making the situation even worse than it already is. The considerable danger is that the next President will find his/her term consumed with this issue alone. 

This, however, is only the beginning of the litany of problems, which the next President will confront.  Primarily because of Iraq, the U.S. army has been run into the ground, literally. Its equipment is worn out, its troops exhausted, and the need to maintain its force levels in the face of the unpopular war has forced it to lower its admission standards.

The United States is viewed by more people in the world as a threat to world peace than as a contributor to it. Afghanistan is beginning to develop into a mini-Iraq. Anti-American feeling around the world is at an all-time high. Russia is being increasingly aggressive and autocratic in its policies. Democratic states as a whole are in retreat, while autocratic tendencies around the world are gaining strength. China will soon begin to be more aggressive in asserting political and military clout to match its rising economic power.

The institutions set up in the Post-World War II era such as the World Bank, IMF, and United Nations seem less able to deal effectively with the real problems confronting the world. The "clash of civilizations" between the Western World and Islam seems more and more real every day. The rising demand and falling supply of oil and gas will reach a crisis point in the term of the next President. Global warming just keeps getting worse.

So, why such a fight to take a job? The answer lies in the fact that all of the candidates know full well that, contrary to popular belief, the United States for a variety of reasons remains the world's superpower and will be so for the foreseeable future. Our military remains in a league of its own technologically. The United States spends almost half of the total world expenditures on defense. 

Our economy is the strongest in the world and also is most able to react to changed situations. The pull of our democratic institutions - while damaged considerably under President Bush - remains strong. We are forced to build a fence to keep potential immigrants out, not to keep our citizens inside. Our "soft power" of movies, language, television, and music continues to heavily influence the world.

The problem of the United States - in computer terms - is not the hardware, but the software. In other words, the Bush Administration has woefully squandered, misused, and neglected the real power that the United States has.

The departure of President Bush by itself will be so welcome around the world that the new President will find doors open and a willingness to engage on the part of almost all of our traditional allies.

This is because the current estrangement of the United States, no matter how good it felt to some in the short term, had to have begun some time ago to worry sensible people in democratic countries around the world. There is no question but one of the priorities of the new President will be to re-establish the traditonal ties and good relations we have enjoyed around the world. 

The new President will need to hit the ground running by having strategies in mind such as the following:

a) Restoring America's moral leadership in the democratic world by closing Guantanamo Bay; renouncing the use of "enhanced interrogation techniques"; ending the intrusive practices the Administration has used in looking at financial records and international conversations without traditional judicial oversight. All of this - and more - should be said in the President' Inaugural Address and implemented immediately via legislation and administrative decree.

b) Instituting a "Manhattan Project" to find alternative sources of carbon-based fuel supplies and to make their current utilization far more efficient. This includes raising the price of oil and gas in the United States to encourage conservation; make alternative energy sources more price competitive, and to raise money for research and development. It also includes a strong program of support for nuclear power as one of the major alternative energy sources. Not only will these measures ease the dramatic problem of insufficient supply, but also it will take power from the numerous autocratic states that control oil and gas reserves in the world.

c) Taking a far more aggressive approach to global warming which would include the United States imposing unilateral restrictions on our own emissions, while trying to work with other industrialized countries to do the same. Once this process has begun, we need to gradually impose painful tariffs on goods from countries unwilling to take similar measures. 

d) Begin a search for new international institutions to replace, supplement or reform those set up at the end of the Second World War (the UN, the World Bank, and the IMF) as they are less and less able to deal with the problems the world faces. One change to consider is the elimination of the veto in the UN Security Council. Another is to set up an organization of genuinely democratic states around the world to deal with world problems in a united way.

e) Reinvigorate the Middle East Peace Process. But only after having a clear vision of what we want as a possible outcome and only after we have internally agreed to press all sides to make it a reality. This means a much greater willingness to press Israel to make needed concessions.

f) Increasing the size of our uniformed military. This will enable our National Guard and Reserve Forces to go back to their traditional roles and alleviate the burden on current forces. It will also increase the scope of our options in other crisis situations.

g) Perhaps most importantly, make the above issues the focus of attention and the real priority. Deal with Iraq (probably via a soft or hard partition among the three groups) combined with a pullout of American forces. But at all costs, do not let the Administration be defined by Iraq. Define it by aggressively dealing with the above issues in close cooperation with our natural allies.