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Is this the end of Pax Americana?
The US should aim to be a great power, not a big one.
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American leadership depends on not just power but also on its dependability and decency.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Bret Stephens
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Back in the 1990s, it was fashionable to complain about what Mr Hubert Vedrine, the then French foreign minister, called American hyperpuissance, or “hyperpower”. The left-leaning diplomat believed the “question at the centre of the world’s current powers” was the US’ “domination of attitudes, concepts, language and modes of life”. What was needed, he argued, was a “balanced multipolarism”, which might counteract American “unilateralism”, “unipolarism” and “uniformity”.
With US President Donald Trump, Mr Vedrine finally got his wish, though probably not in the way he would have imagined, much less liked.
