Bernard-Henri Lévy's Take On What Declining American Influence And Leadership Means For The World
In his new book, “The Empire and the Five Kings: America’s Abdication and the Fate of the World,” renowned philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy (@BHL) argues that America’s influence is declining, and five powers — China, Russia, Iran, Turkey, and Sunni radical Islam — are ready to take its place in the world.
He begins his book with a look at the Kurds, which are a key U.S. ally, and he argues that the U.S. has abandoned the Kurds in stepping back from its world leadership role. Lévy says the decision by President Trump to withdraw from Syria and other conflicts in the region was “more than stepping back. It’s a betrayal.”
“The Kurds were our best allies in the area. They were our boots on the ground,” Lévy tells Here & Now‘s Jeremy Hobson. “They were living ramparts of flesh and blood against barbarity preventing terrorisms, and when the job was finished, we told them, ‘Go to hell.’ The behavior of President Trump when he decided to withdraw from Kurdistan, from Syria and from the Iraqi Kurdistan, was just disgusting. It’s a morale failure, and it is a political mistake.”
The reason why the U.S. fell from leadership is the thesis of his book, Lévy says.
“It happened because America now reasons only on short term,” he says. “There is no strategical aim.“
Interview Highlights
On why the U.S. is losing influence in the world
“For example, in the relationship with the Chinese, what I demonstrate in the book is not that Mr. Trump does not act. Of course, he acts. He tries to make a deal as he says, but on one side, you have people, the Chinese who are thinking on centuries. The Chinese have a long, long grand way of thinking. America thinks, I don’t know, next month, next quarterly, at the maximum next year in these negotiations about tariffs and so on and so on.
“Regarding the Russians, it is the same. [Russian President Vladimir Putin] has a strategy. Trump has a tactic. [Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan] has a strategy, which is to rebuild the Ottoman Empire. We have a tactic, which is to to crush down his currency and so on. … Mr. Trump pretends that Iran is the worst enemy, the most dangerous for America and for the West. But when the occasion arises, he delivers on a silver plate to Mullah of Iran what they want most … which is Damascus and Baghdad, which is the Shia arc. Of course we have the sanctions, but they have Baghdad, and they have Damascus, and they have the strong alliance with Putin. So we are in a situation when our leader of the free world, Donald Trump, plays muscles, but the real strength is on the side, alas alas alas alas, of the five kings: Chinese, Arabs, Iranians, Ottomans (Turks) and Russians.”
On why the U.S. came to be considered an empire
“America has been an empire in very precise circumstances when there was only you to save Europe from suicide in 1914, when there was only you to defeat Nazism in 1942, [1943, 1944], when there was only you to defeat communism, which was another fascism, the fall
