From the American Century to the Liberal Century: Stephen Hoadley looks back at America's geopolitical failures and successes during his lifetime and hopes for a more liberal future.

• Author: Hoadley, Stephen

Fifty years ago, as I started my academic career in New Zealand, the United States began withdrawing its forces from the Republic of Vietnam. Three years later that government fell to Ho Chi Minh's communist army and became part of the new Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

Fifty years later in August 2021, the US withdrew its forces from the Republic of Afghanistan. Its rival, the Taliban, took over and established the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. Its leaders immediately proclaimed China as its closest ally.

These were not isolated instances of US set-backs. During my lifetime the United States has been accused of 'losing' Eastern Europe to Stalin at the Potsdam Conference in 1945, Czechoslovakia in 1948, China in 1949, Pakistan in 1951, Egypt and India in 1955, Cuba in 1959, Iran and Nicaragua in 1979, Kuwait in 1990 and Cambodia in 2018. To this list of governments rejecting or down-grading cooperation with the United States in recent years might be added Venezuela, Bolivia, Argentina, Lebanon and Sri Lanka, only four of a number of countries in Latin America and Africa that have slipped from the US sphere of influence, albeit each for complex reasons.

If geopolitics is a zero-sum competition, as Realists would characterise the global political arena, then who steps into the 'vacuum of power' allegedly left by US withdrawals? Yesterday it was the Soviet Union; today it is China. Beijing's ability in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to lend vast sums for infrastructure projects in undemocratic countries is a cynical policy to gain wider influence, and it is working ... up to a point. In contrast, the United States is politically, financially and morally unable to duplicate China's BRI policies despite President Biden's 'Build Back Better World' aspirations. The South China Sea is irretrievably militarized ... by China. Pentagon wargames suggest that the United States could not protect Taiwan from a determined invasion by the People's Liberation Army. Thus, in case after case, China, Russia or in prior years the Soviet Union appear to have gained advantage, and in some cases ground, at America's expense.

Concurrently but not coincidentally, authoritarian regimes have arisen to displace many of the democratic regimes that Washington has attempted to foster. The geopolitical balance appears to have been tilting inexorably against Washington for over a half-century ... and is steepening.

Crucial question

Is this record of diminishing...