The predominance of the United States is not new. This country, which built itself territorially through wars and hyper violence, notably that of the Civil War of 1861-1865, began to assert its primacy on the world stage at the turn of the 19th century.e and XXe centuries.
After acquiring Alaska in 1867, almost completing the conquest of the West and then taking possession of the Hawaiian Islands and the Philippines in 1898, it became for good the thalassocracy of the Pacific, before becoming the world’s leading agricultural and industrial producer.
Since then, particularly with its interventions in European and Asian wars, the United States has established itself as the world’s leading financial, technological and, above all, military power, which it has remained.
This economic and military hegemony was gradually accompanied by an imperial policy, the country becoming the first imperialist power, very temporarily almost the only one, but not in the traditional sense of subjugation of territories and their populations. It achieved this rather by controlling, manipulating and even dictating the destiny of many states throughout the world, particularly in the Americas, thus revealing itself to be a curious model of democracy.
Dictatorships
Today, and indeed for some time now, this primacy is fortunately and seriously being called into question, but is the way to counter it the right one? Is it desirable to replace American imperialism with Chinese imperialism, while the latter is associating itself with a growing number of autocracies?
For there is no doubt that the current combined surge of dictatorships is very real. Thus, in a very recent essay, Anne Applebaum (Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World2024) paints a portrait of this growth that is at once documented, sober and analytical. It demonstrates the extent to which collaboration is tightening between autocracies – notably Russia, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, China, North Korea, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Zimbabwe – most of which are led by resolute kleptocrats, which is even the case of the Iranian theocracy.
Applebaum even underlines the extent to which other still democratic but at least shaky countries, such as Turkey and Hungary, are tempted to join this veritable brotherhood (the term is mine). Finally, with many examples to support her, she recalls how the central project of this brotherhood is increasingly revealed as a concerted attempt to control the world order, ” to run the world “, as she writes.
But before it can redefine and, even more so, ensure this new order, as Applebaum sums it up, the Brotherhood must destabilize these democracies. How? By misinforming and denigrating, by preaching doubt, alternative truth, intolerance, even hatred and violence.
The first targets of this destabilization project are of course the large countries that still firmly adhere to democracy, those that still manage to legally elect their political leaders. The first among all is, even more obviously, the American State, already weakened from within by all sorts of excesses, increasingly signed by Donald Trump and Co. Here we are.
Choice
Therein lies the central paradox. Beyond all the problems that humanity faces, beyond all the ecological and religious excesses as well as all the inequalities that afflict it, it must, it will have to rely for a good while yet on American democracy, shaken as it is at present. Because what State other than the United States can unite, I say unite, resistance to the growing power of autocracies?
What other state has the means necessary to rally the surviving democracies? Certainly, the United States is neither a social model, nor a cultural model, nor even a political model, gangrened as it is by money and by the myth of the wealthy, omnipotent man. Why then turn to a country partly manipulated in its choices by extremely rich entrepreneurs, themselves autocrats at heart (Musk, Bezos, etc.) and therefore not giving a damn about electoral democracy?
More clearly still, how can this country serve as a guarantor of resistance to autocracy if it is led at the presidential level by the Republican Donald Trump, himself an aspiring autocrat, not only deeply dishonest but already highly qualified as a kleptocrat? Here, the answer appears simple. If he becomes president of the United States again, the global progression of autocracies and the equally global regression of democracies will be favored.
In short, the imminent electoral duel between the two candidates for the presidency of the United States will have immense consequences, difficult to measure both locally and globally. But one thing remains certain: the most determining consequence for those who believe in democracy is that the victory of Mrs. Kamala Harris will be promising.