A Psychiatrist’s Take on Those Holding Global Power in 2024
OPINION — As President Joseph Biden enters a key election year in which many national polls show him trailing former President Donald Trump – his administration struggles with a complicated ‘multipolar’ world.
Ongoing challenges include the war in Ukraine, the Israel-Hamas war, Iran’s heightened regional aggression, inflationary economies, rapid advances in novel technologies and their national security implications, continued supply-chain disruptions, massive regional migrations/humanitarian crises and their disruptive effects, and our adversaries’ sustained approaches to asymmetric and traditional warfare.
President Biden has struggled to unite a deeply-divided America, and his vision – that this generation’s struggle against autocracy is the signature foreign-policy challenge of our time – has not fully taken root domestically or in the ‘global south.’ On the contrary, our adversaries have successfully embraced and propagated alternative narratives, e.g., that America is in decline, and that the global south is rising, and that ‘multipolarity’ is the new norm in an increasingly complex world.
Our key adversaries, such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Iran’s Ebrahim Raisi, North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, and China’s Xi Jinping, remain even more formidable and problematic than they were a year ago. They can collectively best be understood by applying a moniker of the ‘Three R’s:’ ruthless, rational, and resilient. There is no room for wishful thinking or magical realism here. These adversaries continue to believe that time and history – and their very legitimacy and governance outcomes – are on their side. A strong argument can be made that – for the time being – they are ‘winning,’ and America and its allies are faltering…
