Photo: Illustration by Elnur Amikishiyev
To outline his administration’s national security strategy, President Joe Biden released the Interim Strategic Guidance report, thus announcing his objectives. The most recent public antecedent to the plans presented is his article published in the magazine Foreign Affairs, in which he proclaims the intention to take action to ensure that, once again, the United States leads the world.

In the same tone, Secretary of State Antony Blinken stated in his inaugural address that the world is incapable of organizing itself alone, and that when the United States withdrew from any location, another country attempted to occupy it, and certainly not to promote U.S. interests. He likewise asserted that at no other time in his career had distinctions between domestic and foreign policy disappeared, as they have now, given the renovation and power of the United States.

Without even feeling the necessity to question the validity and viability of the above statements, the reader will agree that such ideas are not new, but rather totally consistent with the old, long-promoted “American” myth that presents the U.S. as the champion of equal opportunity and the exceptionality of a people who, chosen by God, received from the creator, as “manifest destiny.” the gift of ruling the world, to shape it in His image and likeness.

But it turns out that the world the U.S. presumes to lead, with its policies (domestic and foreign) and its priorities, is now characterized by the crisis of neo-liberal, post-globalization capitalism, made clear by its systemic crises and accelerated decline.

It is a world in which market fundamentalists lived (and some still live) convinced of the system’s self-regulation via Schumpeter’s “creative destruction” and “new monetary theory.” They underestimated the damage their policies caused the economy, creating deficits they assumed could be covered by “quantitative easing,” that is, issuing money and taking on debt, so much so that deficits are several times higher than the Gross Global Product, with predictably catastrophic results. To give readers an idea, citing the case of the USA, it is enough to point out that the country’s federal debt has reached 28.7 trillion dollars, while its Gross Domestic Product is 21.6 trillion. Moreover, total debt, including mortgages, student loans, credit cards, etc, has reached almost 82.7 trillion, figures that are increasing every second.