As a superpower, America has the self-awareness of a toddler

I won't reference any single work out there in this admitted rant, as I bump into these triggers on a daily basis.

My gripe is this: we are constantly bombarded with these analyses concerning the "mistakes," "myths," "naiveté," "blunders," etc. of those "experts" who "assured us" that such-and-such a world trend or national grand strategy would: (a) go on [and work] forever and (b) permanently fix our nation and/or the world system.

Globalization was supposed to fix all interstate tensions and turn all dictatorships into democracies!

Expanded trade with the world was only going to benefit America and not impose any competitive challenges!

Expanding NATO was supposed to quell all tensions in Europe and prevent any future issues from Russia!

Trade with China would make it accepting of America's global order and its sub-ordinance to our international will!

All these "lies" were peddled by experts who were and are "fools" because, if something doesn't give us 100% of what we want, then it is a "devastating" development perpetrated by "treasonous leaders."

Globalization may have lifted more humans out of poverty in 50 years than had been lifted over the previous 500 years, but it did not result in universal peace! Russia is still Russia, and China is still Chinese! We were lied to!

[NOTE: the most narcissistic version of this pathology is our embrace of conspiracy theories to explain the "dark truth hidden from us," which frankly only refers to our vast capacity for self-delusion and childish tendency toward tantrums to get our way -- Trump being the apogee of that character flaw.]

What makes us like a toddler is this: we can't handle -- much less accept -- transitions from one era to the next. At each of them, we demand a path that meets all our needs and desires and fears -- with little to no change on our part -- while we expect the rest of the world to make do without daring to challenge our order/power/standing etc.

We spent decades encouraging Asia's peaceful rise. We were and continue to be enormously successful. For the first time in world history, we have rising/risen powers (Japan, South Korea, China, India, etc) across Asia with no war.

But we have arms buildups! And security tensions! And loose talk of confrontation and even war! Shouldn't all of this trade and investment and economic connectivity make that all disappear?

No, nothing makes all frictions disappear. In fact, the stronger the positive forces, the greater the negative frictions generated. But the reality remains: we sought a peaceful, risen, multipolar Asia and we -- as guiding superpower -- pulled it off. Not perfectly and not without mass bloodshed at points, but we pulled it off.

And now we face new and better problems that demand change and new directions from us and not simply some brain-dead resurrection of Cold War solutions (Contain China!).

But see, we can't "pivot" like that, despite our frequent employment of that term WRT Asia. Instead, we have to declare all our previous efforts a "lie," "myth," "self-deception," "blunder," etc. If it was right for years and even decades until it stopped being right? No matter. The fact that the logic did not hold forever means the whole endeavor was a complete "debacle" that we were led into by "foolish dreamers."

So I say America is like a toddler as a superpower because, like a pre-schooler, we have problems transitioning from one reality to the next. To accept the new reality is to necessarily throw a hissy fit about the last -- a pattern of behavior that yields two modes: bullish acceptance of internationalism versus bearish rejection of internationalism. We can never come close to threading any such needle; we are either on or off and those are our two settings.

Our current bout of economic nationalism illustrates my point: we spent decades -- in market-making mode -- building up an international liberal free trade order. It beget a majority global middle class -- something long deemed impossible by the foreign policy establishment and academia. Now we find ourselves in a far more competitive global economy, where we need to tone down our market-making persona and re-embrace a more, admittedly selfish, market-playing persona.

Sounds easy enough right?

But we can't make that transition without decrying our past market-making efforts (We were betrayed by globalists!) and going overboard on economic nationalism (Trump's crude mercantilism, still far too prevalent throughout the Biden Administration).

I have worked in this field just long enough to grow oh-so-weary of our manic-depressive condition (and the professionals who feed this narrative with their godawful analysis). It is the worst aspect of our national brand, even as it is, in many ways, one of our great strengths -- a democracy's safety-valve of regularly renewed/replaced leadership (Throw the bums out!).

We simply need to be able to accept that nothing -- NOTHING! -- works forever, and when it is time to reassess and readjust, we do not require a frantic and damn-near hysterical repudiation of the past, because that need to demonize what came before makes us dysfunctionally untrustworthy on a global basis -- on a regular basis.

When we were at our best -- like with FDR during the Great Depression and WWII, we would try damn near anything to solve a problem. If something worked, we ran with it -- with a clear understanding that enemies and nefarious forces/dynamics would adjust and force our further adaptation. When it didn't, we simply stopped that track and tried ten others in its place.

What made the Greatest Generation great was its flexibility and can-do spirit, not some slavish adherence to past patterns of behavior. That generation evolved to a magnificent degree, so harkening back to that period with the phrase "make America great again" fundamentally misunderstands their actual achievements, which is that they left America far different from how they found it -- elevating it, expanding it, and making it far more powerful a force on this planet to the rest of the world's great benefit.

That was genuine leadership, which we lack today in this idiotic political atmosphere where politicians brag about having never changed their minds about anything their entire lives.

Honestly, who wants that sort of dumbass as a leader? My dachshund could do better.

The Boomers have been the worst political generation of leadership that his country has ever suffered -- truly. They will end up leaving us smaller, more divided, and less powerful in this world -- something no other generation of US leadership has ever accomplished. Almost all of their damage on our system has been self-inflicted and selfishly motivated.

Gen X's political leadership cohort is almost as bad -- I mean, brain-dead bad.

This is why I place my faith in the Millenials and Gen Zs. They are digital natives. They are climate change natives. They are Whites-as-majority-minority natives. They are post-Cold War natives. Name a problem and they have grown up with it, along with a gamer's mindset that says failure is an option so long as you keep trying until you succeed.

As I argue in America's New Map, they are our salvation in waiting.

Those in the way should all figuratively jump off a cliff, as far as I am concerned. They are wasting time and resources and opportunity -- all of which are costing us our global standing, something that is far more valuable than any of us realize.

A pox on both their generations, please.