And surely he has seen enough to recognize that soft power grows out of the barrel of a gun? It isn't soft power that keeps Putin in power in Russia. Women's reproductive rights? Stiglitz seems to be unaware that Europe regulates abortion far more strictly than the U.S. Isn't that democracy in action? And if Stiglitz steals COVID-related intellectual property from drug companies where will the vaccines come from next time a pandemic strikes the world? The bunglers at CDC, FDA and NIH? Don't make me laugh. prioritizes Americans in making vaccines available. But what? The US is far away the leader in developing medicines that save the lives of millions people the world over, including developing countries, but Stiglitz doesn't mention that except to complain that the U.S. Then there is his claim that the US may be good at making bombers and missile systems but. Isn't it funny that the country that Stiglitz calls racist and unequal is a magnet to millions of black, brown - and white - people? Apparently they know something that Stiglitz hasn't figured out. Not only is its population four times larger than America’s its economy also has been growing three times faster for many years (indeed, it already surpassed the US in purchasing-power-parity terms back in 2015). But it is simply inevitable that China will outstrip the US economically, regardless of what official indicator one uses. Of course, America does not want to be dethroned. Moreover, between Donald Trump’s election, the attempted coup at the US Capitol, numerous mass shootings, a Republican Party bent on voter suppression, and the rise of conspiracy cults like QAnon, there is more than enough evidence to suggest that some aspects of American political and social life have become deeply pathological. But then came disastrously misguided wars in the Middle East, the 2008 financial crash, rising inequality, the opioid epidemic, and other crises that seemed to cast doubt on the superiority of America’s economic model. Such hypocrisy suggests that it is at least partly global hegemony, not values, that is really at stake.įor two decades after the fall of the Iron Curtain, the US was clearly number one. And US leaders’ portrayal of the confrontation as one between democracy and authoritarianism fails the smell test, especially at a time when the same leaders are actively courting a systematic human-rights abuser like Saudi Arabia. NEW YORK – The United States appears to have entered a new cold war with both China and Russia.
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