Americans are taught at a young age to not only love their country but to marvel at its power. Whether it’s on the stump, during speeches or at a press event, politicians and policymakers on both ends of the political spectrum are quick to marvel at just how impactful the United States is around the world. Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s contention that the U.S. is “the indispensable nation” is still a central part of the American vocabulary. As President Biden told the nation last October, “America is a beacon to the world…We are, as my friend Madeleine Albright said, the indispensable nation.”
It’s hard not to be sympathetic to this line of argument. The U.S., after all, holds a quarter of the world’s gross domestic product. The U.S. military is second to none, with the U.S. spending more on defense than the next nine countries combined. The U.S. has extensive influence in international commerce; 58 per cent of global currency reserves are in U.S. dollars, Washington holds significant influence in international economic institutions like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, and America’s system of alliances is unrivaled by any other major power.
Yet what U.S. policymakers frequently fail to grasp is that power doesn’t necessarily equate to unlimited influence. The architects of U.S. foreign policy all too often assume the U.S. is all powerful, that it can will events out of whole cloth and coerce friends and adversaries alike to adapt their policies to Washington’s liking.
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