The writer is an FT contributing editor, chair of the Centre for Liberal Strategies, and fellow at IWM Vienna
“Without the cold war, what’s the point of being an American?” quips John Updike’s character Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, lampooning his country’s missionary zeal and sense of self-righteousness. “Rabbit,” a white middle‑American everyman whom Updike used to track shifts in US culture and politics, would probably have voted for Donald Trump in the last election.
Americans and non-Americans alike have become exhausted by decades of double standards and liberal hypocrisy issuing from Washington. That’s why Joe Biden’s attempt to resurrect the cold war struggle between democracies and autocracies in the wake of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine failed so spectacularly. Washington’s move to aggressively sanction Russia instead caused (democratic) India to initially radically increase its purchase of Russian oil, while (democratic) South Africa came close to siding with Moscow in what Putin billed an “anti-imperial” struggle.