Blaming America For Things The U.S. Hasn’t Done | The American Conservative:
it is false or extremely misleading to say that the U.S. is responsible
for what is happening. It is absurd to pin these events on American
“retreat,” since for the most part this isn’t even happening.
So-called U.S. “retreat” didn’t cause any of these things, and all of
them would probably still be happening whether the U.S. was “retreating”
or “advancing.” The U.S. is responsible for the effects of its own
actions and policies, and to a lesser extent the actions of its allies
and clients that it supports, but it isn’t responsible for what
authoritarian and illiberal regimes do inside their own countries, and
for the most part it can’t be held responsible for how other major
powers behave. Terrible things happened in the world at the height of
the “unipolar moment,” and they will unfortunately keep happening
regardless of how the U.S. conducts itself in the world.