2021, Year of Failed Exits for the United States

A year ago, one could hope the United States would emerge from the quagmires in which it was entangled. Those hopes have been dashed.

Our neighbors had reason to be optimistic this time last year. Vaccines were coming, the economy was bouncing back, Trump had been defeated, and there was a feeling of hope; hope of getting out of it all. But 2021 was the year of blown exits.

PANDEMIC

Things were looking good. After the unbelievably rapid development of vaccines under the Trump administration, Biden’s team exceeded expectations with extraordinarily effective distribution. But politics came and ruined it all. Without politics, the pandemic would not have suddenly disappeared, but the obstinate resistance to vaccinations and health measures, fed by a wild populism, rendered the pandemic needlessly deadly.

ECONOMIC CRISIS

It’s a bit unfair to say that the United Stated blew its exit from the economic crisis, since employment roared back like a lion in 2021 and the stock market has overheated. But even if the Biden administration didn’t have much to do with it, inflation has turned an exemplary exit from economic crisis into a political failure. Even worse, the dissatisfaction that the situation has provoked is compromising the Biden administration’s ability to deal with even more difficult challenges.

TRUMPISM AND THE DEMOCRATIC CRISIS

The authoritarian drift of Donald Trump has plunged American democracy into a crisis that we hoped democracy would overcome after his defeat in the election. So far it has failed to do so. After an attempted coup to reverse the election, we only needed a little courage from a dozen or so Republican senators to show Trump the door. Far from getting out of a Trumpist quagmire in 2021, American democracy has sunk down even more deeply.

INSTITUTIONAL PARALYSIS

Institutional paralysis leads to delusion that feeds a Trumpist authoritarian populism. The control of the presidency and Congress gave us hope that there was a way out, and the U.S. almost made it by passing a transformative stimulus package and ending the infrastructure saga. But the Democrats’ failure to unite against the systematic obstruction by the Republicans in achieving their platform’s most innovative initiatives is prolonging such institutional paralysis.

LACK OF INTERNATIONAL LEADERSHIP

The Trump presidency seriously hurt America’s global leadership, and we counted on Biden to repair the damage. It’s going to take time. Why would democracies trust a country that threatens to slip into authoritarianism and can’t keep its promises? To restore its global leadership, the United States must first get beyond the crisis facing its democracy and beat back its institutional slumber.

AFGHANISTAN

The withdrawal from Afghanistan was another missed exit. Biden did not actually have a great deal to do with it because he was packing up 20 years of failure wrought by his predecessors. There is no elegant way out of a long-lost war, and the image that will remain will be of another failed exit.

CULTURE WARS AND SOCIAL DIVISION

After the powerful social tension of 2020, one could have hoped for progress in 2021. There was some movement, but one only has to look at Fox News or follow the outpouring of passion on social media to understand that the “culture war” that afflicts American society — and that threatens to contaminate its neighbors — is far from over. Some even fear that such tensions could degenerate into civil war. Why should we worry? Unfortunately, the crises that our neighbors cannot seem to resolve affect us, too. Even if we are not as deeply mired in them as Americans are, we must be aware of how real these matters are so we do not get dragged into them in spite of ourselves.