The Puny Superpower -- James Rubin, Newsweek
America's role in the world is steadily shrinking .... and that's nothing to celebrate.
The diplomatic debacle over Syria that is unfolding before the eyes of the world represents more than just a conflicted president struggling with a thorny problem of whether to use military force. And it is not merely about the narrow question of humanitarian intervention—whether America should seek to prevent or deter mass atrocities. Rather, it reflects a profound transformation that appears to be taking place in American foreign policy—a transformation that I fear we will regret.
In the years before World War II, as isolationism took hold across America, an alternative way of thinking emerged to counter those who argued that events in faraway countries with unpronounceable names were not America’s concern. This philosophy—which came to be known as liberal internationalism—drove the responses of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman first to Hitler’s fascism and then to Stalin’s communism. John F. Kennedy was invoking this tradition when he famously called for America to “bear any burden ... in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” The idea was that American foreign policy could not simply be a matter of looking out for ourselves, but ought to be tied to larger ambitions—among them, the creation and preservation of a world order in which democratic values and economic freedom could thrive; the championing of a rules-based international system; the mitigation of regional conflicts and instability; and opposition to oppressive ideologies. As the Cold War unfolded over the subsequent decades, American foreign policy certainly varied from president to president. Yet there remained a basic consensus among policymakers in favor of this core idea.
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My Comment: James Rubin's analysis is probably right .... we are entering a new world order but not in the way that many thought would happen a decade or two ago.
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