By JOHN BUNDOCK
STAFF WRITER

The prospect of a “post-American world” may bring images of a prosperous China and India and a shift away from viewing the United States as some sort of “world policeman” engaging in so-called “cowboy
diplomacy. The term was first popularized in Fareed Zakaria’s 2008 work of the same name,
But, what the so-called anti-imperialists and neo-isolationists will not tell you is that the “post-American” world of tomorrow will be far more brutal and anarchic and will disregard human rights norms and international law. Lavish lifestyles for the elite diplomats may well be in the future, but for the people of countries that are in the crosshairs of anti-liberal, theocratic and authoritarian states, a policy of American isolationism will be very grim.
Political scientists like as Ely Ratner and Thomas Wright, argue that the United States is not in an economic decline, particularly compared to the previously rising BRICS, Shanghai Cooperation Organization and IBSA states. According to “America’s Not in Decline – It’s on the Rise,” their joint opinion published in The Washington Post, the United States’ recent economic turnaround, energy innovations and enduring military strength support their argument that America is still a force to reckon with. That may well be the case, but their optimism on the present course of international security policy is incredibly naive. Maintenance of human rights and international norms is fundamentally dependent on the capability of states to enforce clear punishments against those who would violate these universal standards. When states decide to retreat from this responsibility to protect, unchecked atrocities ensue.
Consider Syria, where Russian and Chinese vetoes on the Security Council have repeatedly shot down any hope of UN-backed intervention. To Ratner and Wright, the presence of weapons inspectors is to be counted as a sort of “triumph,” and Secretary of State John Kerry continues to claim the conflict can be managed “at the negotiating table.” This idea is a trite fantasy because the rebels who are actually on the ground would never negotiate with a regime that has killed tens of thousands of civilians over the past two and a half years, unless the negotiation was focused on the status of that regime’s capitulation. As for the inspectors, the total decommissioning of chemical weapons, as described recently by Michael Weiss in Foreign Policy, remains an incredibly elusive and risky prospect, dependent upon a regime that knows only brute force and has no credibility whatsoever.
Without an intervention directly against the regime, Assad’s war — and all of its horrors — continues unabated. Amir Taheri described the administration’s policy best in Asharq al-Wasat:
“By refusing to take sides, the Obama Administration gives the powers that support Assad, notably Russia and the Islamic Republic in Tehran, an advantage by reducing the costs of their policy of repression in Syria. The Obama–Kerry decision to accept defeat without even attempting to make a stand could enter political history as a model of what one might term: preemptive surrender.”
On the subject of negotiations to disarm Iran’s nuclear program, the administration’s diplomacy has not gone far enough. According to The New York Times, France opposed the present deal, as it does little to curb Iran’s uranium enrichment or to stop the development of a reactor capable of producing plutonium.
Foreign Policy Executive News Editor Noah Shachtman accurately observed, “You know the world has officially gone nuts when a French socialist is the new neocon poster boy.”
The specter of a nuclear Iran could lead Saudi Arabia to obtain the same kind of weaponry at will from Pakistan. So much for a non-proliferation policy. This is to say nothing of Iran’s blatant conventional threats; supporting dictators and terrorist groups like Assad and Hezbollah remains an unchanged policy. Qassem Suleimani and his “Quds Force,” are not going anywhere anytime soon because of half-hearted symbolic gestures.
Even though the United States economy may be improving, prosperity does not guarantee the stability of international politics or the defeat of authoritarian aggressor states. States in economic decline are not somehow precluded from military aggression or becoming more dictatorial: Russian occupation of Chechnya and parts of Georgia, continues even as the U.S. considers overtaking the state in oil and gas production. In Venezuela, the Maduro government just unveiled a “Ministry of Supreme Social Happiness” amidst spiking inflation, high crime rates and rolling blackouts.
The United States may not be entering a “post-American world,” but those pundits and policy-makers believing in such an era are incredibly misguided. By pursuing a path of non-intervention in the world, the United States will only see more brutality brought about by opportunistic regimes and non-state actors.
As journalist Terry Glavin wrote for the Ottawa Citizen, “The other penny that hasn’t dropped is that there is no such thing as an America that is a force for progress in the world any more, either, at least not for the moment. History’s clock has turned backwards.”
John Bundock, FCRH ’14, is a middle east studies and international political economy double major from Pelham, N.H.