Opinion: How an arrogant and pathological America could lose the new cold war by Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in economics, a professor at Columbia University and chief economist at the Roosevelt Institute.
The following are direct quotes from an Stiglitz’s article published in MarketWatch and Project Syndicate:
The United States appears to have entered a new cold war with both China and Russia. And U.S. leaders’ portrayal of the confrontation as one between democracy and authoritarianism fails the smell test, especially at a time when the same leaders are actively courting a systematic human-rights abuser like Saudi Arabia. Such hypocrisy suggests that it is at least partly global hegemony, not values, that is really at stake. For nearly two decades after the fall of the Iron Curtain, the U.S. was clearly No. 1. But then came disastrously misguided wars in the Middle East, the 2008 financial crash, rising inequality, the opioid epidemic and other crises that seemed to cast doubt on the superiority of America’s economic model.
Cold wars ultimately are won with the soft power of attraction and persuasion. To come out on top, we must convince the rest of the world to buy not just our products, but also the social, political and economic system we’re selling.
The West must once again make our economic, social and political systems the envy of the world.
The U.S. also must win the hearts and minds of billions of people in the world’s developing countries and emerging markets — not just to have numbers on its side, but also to secure access to critical resources.
The credibility gap is even wider when it comes to climate change, which disproportionately affects those in the Global South who have the least ability to cope. While major emerging markets have become the leading sources of greenhouse-gas emissions today, U.S. cumulative emissions are still the largest by far. Developed countries continue to add to them, and, worse, have not even delivered on their meager promises to help poor countries manage the effects of the climate crisis that the rich world caused.
Especially after the Trump years, America no longer holds any claim to the moral high ground, nor does it have the credibility to dispense advice. Neoliberalism and trickle-down economics were never widely embraced in the Global South, and now they are going out of fashion everywhere.
The lesson, at least to me, is very clear. Stiglitz is saying that Europe and America excel at lecturing others on what is morally right and economically sensible. But the message that usually comes through is:
“do what I say, not what I do.”