I| On Preserving and Maintaining American Global Leadership

American leadership has infused in the world not only a differentiable culture but also it has disseminated and promoted the criteria which other countries may use to simulate the results that the U.S. has achieved. Its world-wide leadership, which was manifested since the 2nd World War, promulgated a new era of leadership which promoted “freedom”, “choice”, “individual decision-making” and a culture of relative autonomy.  The culture of American leadership promoted economic reforms, mass industrialization, productivity, competitiveness, raising the standard of living, mass consumption, and solidifying economic growth.

American world-leadership capabilities

The incipient environment that the U.S. faced, following the 2^ndWorld War, was one of conflict because of ideological differences between different actors.  I am referring to the conflict between Socialism and Capitalism.  These two different politico-economic models embrace and promote different behaviors and expectations. 

Leadership required by these two models has different challenges.  Capitalism, adhered to by the U.S., largely focuses or should focus on permeating socialist environments and imbue the socialist politico-economic culture with the differential advantages of a capitalist model, as it defends against penetration of socialist values.  Socialism’s challenge, on the other hand, is largely attempting to defend against Capitalism’s penetration and influence, as it tries to promote socialist values.  These two antithetical models and their individual challenges interface with each other as they try to maintain and preserve their own value systems.  The character of the socialist model would seem to exhibit a more polemic behavior than that of the capitalist model.  This seems to be the case as those models’ core strategies are different, with the capitalist model’s strategy being offensive and the socialist model’s strategy being largely defensive, given the well-known pervasiveness of democratization.  The criteria of leadership used in applying the offensive strategy would include identifying the differences between the two models, the advantages of capitalism’s market orientation, the relative advantages of capitalism vis a vis those of socialism, the long-term impact on cultural values that seem to be congruent with the innate moral and ethical human self. 

New challenges to
American global leadership

Global leadership requires a multidimensional leadership model.  The preeminent reasons for requiring a multidimensional leadership model are the existing polyarchy and technology.  The leadership practiced prior to 1989, the collapse of the Soviet Union, had different challenges than those present in today’s global environment. 

During that era, the world was divided in two, the West and the East.  The leaders, i.e., the U.S. and the Soviet Union, had a well-defined agenda resulting from either philosophical positions or negotiated agreements, for instance, the division of Germany in four sectors, U.S., British, French and the Soviet Union.  The return of Kuril Islands to the Soviet Union, the Yalta conference that allowed Joseph Stalin to make Poland, Hungary, Romania, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria communist countries and further understanding exchanged between the West and the East, such as, agreeing not to interfere in each other's region of control. 

In the present era in which the global environment is delineated by polyarchic exchange leadership challenges are complicated and their complexities have not been measured or weighed.  In fact, their implications are hard to foresee and assess given the presence and growth of technology.  The new challenges to contemporary global American leadership can be categorized in two dimensions: quantitative and qualitative.  Quantitative would address the number of polyarchic actors and qualitative would focus on the level of political, economic and military capabilities of those polyarchic actors.
                            

Designing and Empowering the
“New” American global leadership

It has been established that Polyarchy characterizes the new global environment.  Polyarchy requires a new approach, a new process to managing the contemporary global leadership.  Looking at the structure of polyarchy we can identify actors with specific leadership goals but variant competencies.  For instance, China’s global goals and competencies are, or may be, different than those of the EU, Russia, Germany, UK, France, Japan and others.  One of such required competencies would be flexibility.  Flexibility in a polyarchic environment would be a great mitigating asset providing a unique advantage as global actors attempt to navigate their relationships. For instance, the U.S. should have shown greater flexibility in the recent dispute between Russia and Ukraine.  The advantage of such level of flexibility would have helped avoid the war between Russia and Ukraine.  Recognition and Pragmatism are indispensable qualities which a global leader should embrace.  That is, the recognition to readily see changes and tendencies in the global environment and the pragmatism to develop creative strategies not only to fend off conflict but also to create viable conditions for eliciting actors’ transformative behavior.  Leadership in a polyarchic environment must be integrative so that actors’ individual concerns should be openly communicated and the risk of conflict be alleviated.  Individual partnering, among the global actors, should be pursued and that may be a differential advantage that the U.S. may enjoy, due to the broadly accepted world-wide popularity of the American politico-socio-economic culture. 

The proliferation of technology, which will continue free of meaningful restraint, changes the calculus of traditional international relations and demands a new strategy by which to manage the new global challenges.  The new global environment will be a new experience for all actors, each of them potentially pursuing global leadership.  The rudimentary, yet visionary, skill required in the new global environment will be that of managing transformation.  Those global actors who wish to pursue global leadership will need to embrace a policy of transformation, knowing the dynamics of the new environment and the capabilities needed to help effectuate the said transformation. 

Knowing the dynamics of the new environment would mean, understanding the actors’ strategic goals, their capabilities or lack thereof and their negotiation idiosyncrasy.  Then, actors would need to identify the strategies by which they can get there.  That is, what are the means that would help us get there?  The U.S. has developed a powerful arsenal of capabilities which can help it achieve, maintain and preserve global leadership.  For instance, its political culture which is, by and large, designed to follow the democratic rule, its economy which promotes innovativeness, its financial rigor with an international reserve currency that continues to galvanize trust and confidence, an advanced industrial base which benefits from high efficiencies, a high-tech industry which shows protagonist skill, an advanced defense industry, and, an American culture which enjoys popularity world-wide.

Author: CGP  .+.