How Bush, Obama and Trump ended Pax Americana

What if three very different U.S. presidents were to succeed each other in office, each focused like a laser on undoing what he saw as the gravely damaging policies of his predecessor? And what if, in so doing, the three actually compounded the damage done by the others? And what if, thanks to the handiwork of the all-powerful God of Irony, the three would someday be seen by history as the central collaborators in writing the closing chapter on Pax Americana, an era of relative world peace, due to the domination of U.S. power. This approximately 70-year period may someday be seen as the pinnacle of U.S. global influence?

This is, of course, the story of the first three U.S. presidents of the 21st century. They were as different as any three presidents in U.S. history. In temperament, professional experience, ideology, character and the advisers with which they surrounded themselves, they couldn’t have been less alike. One was a Republican traditionalist, one was a liberal Democrat, one was a pathological narcissist.

Each had a different idea of what the U.S.’s role in the world should be. And yet in the end, each took steps that alienated U.S. allies, strengthened our enemies, undercut institutions and alliances on which we have depended for three-quarters of a century, and mismanaged U.S. foreign policy in ways that left the United States demonstrably weaker. You probably couldn’t get the three of them to agree on what to have for dinner, but somehow they worked in accidental harmony to diminish an American global leadership role that perhaps was unrivalled by any nation or empire in history.

George W. Bush’s overreach and unilateralism produced alienation among our allies and strengthened our enemies. Barack Obama’s desire to undo Bush’s policies and avoid making the same mistakes led him to retreat too far and to be too indecisive in the face of challenges. And then came Donald Trump. Thanks to his special breed of ignorance, incompetence, incoherence and bluster, he is seen not just as furthering U.S. decline, but as a symbol of it.

World leaders have reacted. German Chancellor Angela Merkel asserted, “The times when we could completely rely on others are to an extent, over.”

Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s foreign minister, said last month in a speech that the United States “has come to question the very worth of its mantle of global leadership.” Even before Trump took office, just based on his campaign rhetoric, China’s leader Xi Jinping told the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that China was ready to lead the international system if the United States would not.

While some in the United States and around the world might have long been hoping for a changed — less onerous or less dominant, respectively — U.S. role in the world, we are swiftly discovering the downsides of such a shift. For example, the United States for years has said the countries of the Middle East should play a greater role in determining the region’s future. But now we are coming to see (as we should have expected) that how they do this might not dovetail with U.S. interests, practices or priorities. And as we have also seen, some of those who are filling the U.S. void are just bad actors — from Russia to North Korea to Iran.

Combine that with weakened international institutions, emerging top powers with less experience and clout than the United States and — barring a deliberate change of direction by the U.S.’s people and presidents — two things are certain.

One is that, thanks to the inadvertent collaboration of Bush, Obama and Trump, we are in for a messy, dangerous period in global affairs. And the second is that the period most likely to follow Pax Americana is one that will likely be defined by nostalgia for Pax Americana.