Source: Chaoyang Shaoxia
Looking back at world history, the first 20 years of the new century are often crucial.
In the first 20 years of the 18th century, the 19th century and the 20th century, large-scale wars such as the War of the Spanish Succession, the Napoleonic Wars, and the First World War occurred respectively, and pre-war contradictions broke out in a concentrated manner, and the post-war order affected the entire century.
The first 20 years of the 21st century were different: there was "no war on the Western Front" between the United States and the major powers, but it fought an "endless war" in the Middle East, and eventually set itself on fire. As historian William Manchester put it in the American history of glory and dreams: "Glory is no more, dreams are shattered." ”
Marx believed that history was sometimes in the "turtle line" period of "twenty years equal to one day". In the 20 years after the 9/11 incident, the United States stagnated in development, contracted its hegemony, and stumbled at the crossroads of success and failure.
The "past of the United States" in the past 20 years has exposed the "four major pain points" and left "three major lessons".
Pain Point 1:
Americans have become sluggish and passive about world change
In the past 20 years, the United States has changed four governments, burned up $8 trillion in war spending, owed $26 trillion in public debt, and more than 700,000 people died due to the new crown epidemic.
The story of the nation is like a personal story, with chagrin, anger, pride, and self-deception. In the past 20 years, the mentality of the American people has changed from the extreme confidence after the victory of the military operation in Afghanistan after 9/11, to the fear of financial overheating and industrial hollowing out after the financial crisis in 2008, to the extreme anxiety about the fading of the American dream under the world changes, the heavy loss of personal identity, and the high degree of division of the country's future and destiny.
As for the national reflection, it has long been reduced to a matter of one discussion, an annual routine performance, and a sense of ritual introspection.
According to a October 2021 poll by the University of Virginia, 52 percent of Trump supporters and 41 percent of Biden supporters believe the United States is experiencing a major divide and that the countries of the Red and Blue States may "be better." 87% of Trump supporters and 72% of Biden supporters do not believe America will be "great again." 84% of Trump supporters and 80% of Biden supporters believe that the opposing party "poses a clear and real threat" to American democracy.
Cover poster for the American documentary "America After 9/11" – In 2001, democratic and Republican lawmakers gathered on Capitol Hill, and the United States was united; in 2021, Trump supporters "stormed" Capitol Hill, and the American people were scattered.
Pain point 2:
The shift in the strategic focus of the United States is difficult to hide the country's overall predicament
In the past 20 years, US strategic thinking has quietly changed: the strongman politics represented by Trump has returned to the White House; the strategic anxiety of rising countries has been raging on Capitol Hill; foreign policy has become an exclusive strategy of "winner-take-all" in the eyes of think tanks; geopolitics and group politics have once again been put on the table by US diplomacy; and the once vigorous era of counter-terrorism has finally dissipated in the farce of the "Kabul moment".
The focus of the United States' global geostrategic strategy has accelerated from the "Greater Middle East" to the "Greater Indo-Pacific." But the United States does not repent of its stereotypical mindset of constantly searching for, defining, and defeating enemies. This is an "ideological seal" that is difficult to get rid of in the US foreign strategy.
Founded on top of Christianity, the United States divided the world into black and white "heavens" and "hells," and preached a great showdown between "good" and "evil."
Marx predicted: "The more thoroughly the primitive closed state of nations is eliminated by the increasingly perfect mode of production, by intercourse and by the division of labour between different nations which arise naturally as a result of intercourse, the more history becomes the history of the world." ”
After all, human society is not a gladiatorial arena for you and me, and human beings always have to get out of the "jungle" of the weak and the strong. With the continuous progress and development of human society, how can the mental mechanism of "fighting" overcome the great righteousness of "peace"?
Pain point three:
The era of a single-handed global order has come to an end
Twenty years ago, 9/11 allowed the United States to quickly build internal consensus, start the war machine, and move toward the peak of power in the international order.
However, the situation is stronger than people, and major events such as the collective rise of developing countries, the great changes in domestic politics in the United States, and the cyclical crisis of capitalism have come unexpectedly. Under the century-long changes, the United States has fallen into a stressful "cognitive dissonance", more selfish, greedy, and aggressive:
Throw out the "seven wounded fists" such as "rebalancing" and "reciprocal" trade, economic deterrence, advanced technology control, energy control, military intimidation, etc., even if they lose one thousand, they are also obsessed with hurting the enemy eight hundred;
Launched various regional strategies, from the "Five Eyes Alliance" to the "Four-Sided Mechanism" to the "Trilateral Security Partnership", pulling up a gangster-like "group within a group".
The Trilateral Security Partnership (AUKUS) small circle is a wake-up call for the EU.
Gentleman Wilder, villain nostalgic. The United States monopolizes huge profits and plunders the world, but it has abandoned the international order built by itself and its allies, and has played the "combination of use, and the abandonment of non-cooperation" to the extreme. Such a simple and crude egoism will eventually lose the hearts and minds of the world. Increasingly, the United States has become a conservative reactionary force in the transformation of the global order.
Just as the Egyptian youth Bash Mori asked a deafening question on the Quora: "The world has been ravaged by the West for 400 years, and developing countries want to continue to be ravaged by the West in the next 400 years?" ”
Pain point four:
The evolution of China policy has witnessed the political tragedy of the United States
Over the past 20 years, the starting point of the US China policy has stemmed from its own internal affairs. The more the White House is unable to resolve internal social contradictions, the more it must look for external threats and consolidate domestic consensus. However, even if the Chinese tree is made into a target, the fragmented domestic factions in the United States will not be able to break the mirror.
In fact, the US strategy toward China is driven by individual interests and further amplified through the capital control system. The interests of military-industrial complexes, financial capital, technology giants, local manufacturing, middle-class, blue-collar workers and other groups are diverse, and their attitude towards China is naturally difficult to reconcile.
What's more, the US partisan struggle has evolved into identity politics, polarization politics has evolved into separatist politics, and each faction has its own opinions and all-round confrontation, which has greatly reduced the room for flexible coordination between one side and China.
The Red and Blue parties in the United States are fiercely confronted, you are dead, the centrists are caught in the line of fire and have nowhere to stay, and the "United States of America" has been reduced to the "American Division.".
Under the struggle of all parties, it is difficult for the US decision-making level to form a joint force, and can only cobble together a unilateral delusional China policy of "doing bad things on the one hand, and taking advantage of the benefits on the other", but China has long since stopped eating this set.
Lesson 1:
Institutional conceit leads to strategic adventurism
After World War II, the United States sent troops to Japan and Germany and carried out institutional reforms in these two countries that were the source of the war. Under heavy pressure, Japan and Germany absorbed foreign political systems and acted as the right and left arm of the United States in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region in exchange for protection and support.
The enemies of the past can be brought under control, which makes the United States proud. For more than 70 years after the war, the United States was immersed in extreme institutional conceit and adopted a series of strategic ventures to try to forcibly transform the world according to American values.
In the past 20 years, the United States has exhausted such means as direct troop dispatch, diplomatic pressure, NGO infiltration, and international public opinion warfare to implement strategic suppression, regime subversion, forced change, and "democratic" transformation in the greater Middle East.
20 years later, the United States has wounded and defeated one "enemy" after another, but the spark of resistance against the United States has never been extinguished - the "Arab Spring" has become the "Arab Winter", and the "Kabul Moment" has sounded the clarion call of the regional people's counter-offensive.
The United States will hardly emerge from the abyss of Afghanistan
The result of the imperialist rampage is not a change of heaven and earth, but a disgraced face, and we have to taste the bitter fruit of arrogance.
Lesson 2:
Absolute victory cannot hide the failure of governance
For 20 years, the United States has firmly believed that it is the only winner, struggling to tighten its monopoly on the international political and economic order, but unconsciously falling into the muddy swamp of the crisis of the capitalist system.
Under neoliberalism, the United States has comprehensively pursued extreme marketization, privatization, and liberalization, exacerbated problems such as improper governance, industrial hollowing, financial bubbles, the gap between the rich and the poor, and social injustice, and the internal economic structure has accumulated and is difficult to return, which has seriously weakened the country's ability to cope with major crises.
Deep debt crisis discredits the U.S. federal government (cartoon | Zhai Navy)
Today's United States, where the income is not enough, the debt is high, the governance system is unbalanced, the market is overinflated, the social structure is deformed, the government capacity is insufficient, and the international credit and moral authority are slipping, which cannot help but prompt people to reflect on whether capitalism is really the "final destination of mankind".
Lesson 3:
Mental laziness leads to difficult repairs
The roman empire did not completely disappear until the fall of Constantinople a thousand years later, and the contraction of US hegemony is likely to be a long historical process. However, the laziness of thought is more dangerous than the decline of hegemony.
Since the founding of the country, the United States has adhered to the power logic of "hegemony is security", sought the hegemonic world of "disobedience and submission", and in its bones was the racism of "non-my race and its hearts must be different", and finally fell into the Cold War mentality and stuck to the creed of the law of the jungle:
Thousands of dollars are scattered, only to maintain absolute military superiority; enwei and use, only so that the allies dare not have a different thought; encirclement and suppression, only to make the opponent breathless. However, the result of the hegemonic strategy has become a hegemonic paradox: military technology has been caught up, the alliance system has deviated from Germany, and the "opponent and enemy" have become more and more frustrated.
The United States tried to paint the world in its own color and eventually isolated itself. (Comic | Chen Xia)
Considering that the internal social turmoil in the United States has the trend of developing towards medium- and long-term normalization, the consensus soil for reflection and reconstruction is becoming increasingly scarce, and it is increasingly difficult for the international community to predict whether the United States will make several "unforced mistakes" such as "lying flat against the epidemic", "Capitol Hill storm" and "Kabul moment", which is also more and more frightening.
Those who govern the country well are good at plotting the situation; those who decide the winner or loser are good at layout. Looking back and summarizing the "American past" in the past 20 years, looking forward to the "China Tomorrow" in the next 15 or even 30 years, the new historical coordinates of "one day equals twenty years" are quietly arriving.
China must and will embark on a path of development that advances with the times, revolutionizes the past, and transcends itself, and a path of peaceful rise that jumps out of the trap of "national strength and hegemony" in Europe, the United States and the Soviet Union.
The revolution has not yet succeeded, and comrades still have to work hard!