LETTER: Everybody knows the United States is the main superpower in the world. So, why is this country lately behaving like it is already losing out to others who are vying for that position?
One reason is perhaps the way things are turning up inside the US now. Presently, owing to the post-Covid situation the country just like others throughout the world, is undergoing a recovery phase that is dependent on how governments are coping with this.
When compared with two other contenders, Russia and China, the US has not been quick enough in its responses to the post-Covid situation.
Unlike the US, Russia and China have a strong leadership, a resilient economy and a people that have remained united in facing up to the Covid crisis.
The problem with the US as could be observed since the time of president Barack Obama until today, there is a political divide in the government, political parties, businesses, and the banking sectors.
Society has been seeing broad divisions between the Blacks and the Whites, migrants, and locals and the rich and the poor.
The situation has become so untenable to the people and the government that open warfare has started to appear in public as an everyday phenomenon with riots, shootings, and lootings.
But, many inside and outside the US are hopeful that President Joe Biden may yet be able to pull the strings together and open a new chapter in the country's history.
To achieve this the US must strive in the coming years to keep to the path of maintaining a little bit of the old and the new both at home and abroad.
This can mean several things. Americans need to tighten up their belts at home and abroad. They must learn to live with less and rebuild the economy more.
It was an encouraging sign to witness quite recently that the US Senate managed to pass the Bill to spend a vast sum of money for topping up spending on infrastructure, public health, and climate change — a piece of good news at home.
The picture painted by the US abroad since the country's efforts to shore up the government of Ukraine in the face of a war imposed on it by Russia, has told a new and developing story for the world.
It is as if by the positions taken by the present leadership thus far that the US is never going to change course at all.
It is expected to continue playing the same song: keep the Russians away from Ukraine, bring more countries into the Nato, play down China, strengthen the Alliance in East Asia, West Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Australia, New Zealand and Oceania, and the Pacific Islands, Africa, and North and South America.
The tempo of intentions both visible and invisible has picked up in soundbites and image-wise in the recent weeks with the visits of the Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi to Southeast Asia, Japan, Taiwan and South Korea and US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, to Africa.
Why the country has set out on the above 'old as well as new trails' of multilateral diplomacy?
Its open-ended aim is to maintain American greatness and its unrelenting stand on the supremacy of American rule of law as its pillars of strength and well-being in the world.
DR AZHARI-KARIM
Former Malaysian Ambassador
Kuala Lumpur
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of the New Straits Times