A year ago, one could hope that the United States would emerge from the multiple quagmires in which it was entangled. These hopes have been dashed.
Our neighbors had good reason to be optimistic at this time last year. The vaccines were coming, the economy was picking up, Trump was defeated, and there was a wave of hope – the hope of getting out of it. But 2021 was the year of failed releases.
PANDEMIC
It was shaping up well. After the incredibly rapid vaccine development spearheaded by the Trump administration, the Biden team was exceeding expectations in distributing vaccines with extraordinary efficiency. But politics ruined everything. Without it, the pandemic would not have disappeared suddenly, but stubborn resistance to vaccination and health measures, fueled by unbridled populism, has made it needlessly deadly.
ECONOMIC CRISIS
It’s a little unfair to say that the United States has missed its exit from the economic crisis, while employment is back in 2021 and the stock markets have overheated. But, even if the Biden administration had little to do with it, inflation turned an exemplary exit from the crisis into a political failure. Worse, the discontent it provokes weighs down the ability of the Biden administration to tackle other even more difficult challenges.
TRUMPISM AND DEMOCRATIC CRISIS
Donald Trump’s authoritarian drift plunged American democracy into a crisis that was hoped to emerge after his electoral defeat. So far, it has failed. After a coup attempt to overturn the election, it would have taken just a little courage for a dozen Republican senators to show Trump the door. Far from emerging from the Trumpist quagmire in 2021, American democracy has sunk deeper into it.
INSTITUTIONAL PARALYSIS
This paralysis leads to disillusion, which fuels Trumpist authoritarian populism. Democrats’ control of the presidency and Congress gave hope for a way out, and it was almost achieved with the passage of a transformative stimulus package and the conclusion of the infrastructure saga. But the Democrats’ inability to unify to counter the systematic obstruction of Republicans to the most innovative measures of their program prolongs this institutional paralysis.
LACK OF INTERNATIONAL LEADERSHIP
The Trump presidency seriously damaged the international leadership of the United States and Biden was relied on to fix it. That is going to take time. Why would democracies trust a country that threatens to slide into authoritarianism and cannot keep its promises? To restore its international leadership, the United States will first have to emerge from its democratic crisis and its institutional torpor.
AFGHANISTAN
The withdrawal from Afghanistan was another failed exit. Joe Biden had little to do with it, because he only suffered 20 years of failures from his predecessors. There is no elegant way out of a long lost war and the image that will persist will be of a failed exit.
CULTURAL WARS AND SOCIAL DIVISIONS
After the strong social tensions of 2020, we could hope for progress in 2021. There has been a little, but one only has to look at Fox News or follow the release of passions on social networks to understand that the “cultural war” that plagues American society – and threatens to infect its neighbors – is far from over.
Some even fear that it could degenerate into civil war. Why worry? Unfortunately, these crises from which our neighbors cannot get out also affect us. Even if we are not immersed in it as deeply as they are, we must be aware of their reality so as not to be drawn into it in spite of ourselves.
