Nineteenth century Europe had two dreams: socialism and America. Those who wanted to improve their lives could either fight for a more egalitarian society at home or move across the Atlantic to join a new nation. The 20th century has seen the triumph of America -- if by America one means democratic pluralism. America has won not only the ideological battle but the cold war as well. Socialism, certainly in its Soviet Marxist incarnation, has failed. The Soviet Union retains large military forces, but it is no longer a superpower; in fact, it finds itself fighting for its very survival.
America is immensely popular in Eastern Europe. Newly liberated, East Europeans crave for America, for them a mixture of freedom and modernity, of the Statue of Liberty, of Coca-Cola and of blue jeans -- a symbiosis between liberating principle and pop culture. West Europeans, celebrating the regained unity of the Continent and the prospect of a renaissance there, also yearn to keep close to America. Still not autonomous in terms of security, they want Americans to stay on European soil, not only to provide a balance vis-a-vis the remaining military power of the Soviet Union but also vis-a-vis the inevitable political and economic weight of Germany. More profoundly, Europeans see the continuation of an American presence as insurance against the possible return of dark nationalist and xenophobic impulses from their past.
In the Persian Gulf, the U.S. has the dubious honor of being virtually by itself in the front line. There is simply no substitute for American leadership: for the time being, the U.S. stands alone in the global power category.
Yet the contrast between America's global position and its internal condition is painful. Just stroll through America's cities and consider the dark side of daily life. As someone who travels regularly to the U.S., who was partly educated there, whose vision of life has been transformed by the openness and dynamism of American society, and who cherishes the generosity of its political principles and respects the strength of its democratic creed, I can only witness the deterioration in American life with dismay and sorrow.
A country that is bound to lead should not have cities whose centers look like Third World slums or sections of Beirut. It should not have a lackluster educational system or an infrastructure that is falling apart. It should not have people being turned away by hospitals because they lack insurance, or dying in the street of drug overdoses, or becoming victims of random crime because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The great society dreamed of by John Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. and planned by Lyndon Johnson has not come to pass. America's racial problem is exacerbated by the de facto exclusion of blacks from the core of national politics, in part because, traditionally Democrats, they face an age of Republican hegemony in the White House. In an era of weakened Federal Government, blacks feel increasingly isolated. It was the Federal Government, after all, that saved them twice in history: from slavery in the 19th century; from segregation in the 20th. The reduction of that government's powers by a new American consensus has led to the political marginalization of blacks.