Abortion rights revoked: is the United States in decline?

Is backsliding on abortion rights making America less attractive in the free world? Absolutely, no doubt. But no other great power rivals it in terms of soft power. It is above all the state of democracy in the United States that should cause concern.

With daily shootings, and despite the accumulation of deaths, an inability to supervise, even modestly, the use of weapons, as illustrated, on June 23, a month after the Uvalde massacre, the stop the Supreme Court invalidating a New York State law limiting their transport outside the home, does America still make people dream? After the revelation in broad daylight, by the parliamentary commission of inquiry in charge of the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, of the incredible pressure exerted by Donald Trump and his entourage to influence the result of the presidential election of November 2020, does America still make people dream or does it scare? In the light of the regression inflicted by five of the nine unelected judges of the Supreme Court on the right to abortion, on June 24, fifty years after the validation of the federal guarantee which protected it, does America make people dream or does it revolt?

Seeing Washington getting closer to Kabul or Riyadh in terms of women’s rights, under the Trumpian argument that “it’s the will of God”, is not reassuring.

For those who knew the era of the free world engaged, under the leadership of the United States, in a merciless ideological confrontation with the communist, Russian and Chinese “model”, of which “people’s democracy” had nothing to do with the principles of democracy, America’s loss of attractiveness is disturbing. Whereas his determined but measured activism – so far – in the war in Ukraine could make the fiasco forget the disengagement from Afghanistan under Biden or the pandemonium of rapprochement with North Korea and the sabotage of the Iranian nuclear agreement under Donald Trump, see Washington getting closer to Kabul or Riyadh in terms of women’s rights, under the he Trumpian argument that “it’s the will of God”, does not reassure on the outcome of the duel of the century between the United States and China, one of the most liberal Asian states in terms of abortion.

What competition?

Is the attractiveness of the United States at half mast consecrating their decline? Apple and Space X, the NBA and Netflix, Hollywood and the Sundance Festival, Beyoncé and Kendrick Lamar, scientist Gregory L. Robinson and economist Emily Oster still guarantee them a few cables ahead in terms of potential international influence. And even if, in absolute value, this soft power is handicapped by setbacks in the rights of individuals, by the rise in inequality and violence or by procrastination in the fight against climate change, in relative value, it does not really suffer from competition from the powers of attraction of China, India or Russia. That of Europe, on the other hand…

There is no doubt reason, at this stage, to be more concerned about the damage done to democracy by the ultra-religious fringe of Donald Trump’s supporters, knowing that the exposure of his role in the assault on the Capitol does not deter them from hoping to get him re-elected in 2024.