T

he hegemony of the US, as we know it, ended in June in California, at least symbolically.

At their June 7-8 introductory meeting, US President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping may have struck a cordial note and may have agreed on many things, including the usual agreement to disagree, however, it is also clear that this was markedly different from earlier summit meetings held between US and Chinese leaders.

We should not read too much into the meeting. An economically powerful China is still far from being the equal of the US, both in terms of its political and military prowess, and besides, Beijing still has to prove it can live up to the responsibilities that come with being a superpower, globally and particularly in Asia.

However, the California summit is a recognition '€” and in the case of the US is an admission '€” of the limitations of American power and influence that have gone virtually unchallenged for more than two decades since its triumph in the Cold War.

The US can no longer see itself as the only '€œlight on the hill'€ and it will increasingly have to turn to alliances and partnerships, including with China, in managing the world as it pursues its geopolitical interests.

Whether we are heading back to a bipolar world dominated by the US and China, or moving toward a multipolar one with more than two superpowers, is a question in the minds of foreign policy experts all over the world.

Those directly involved in foreign policy-making would inevitably want to make sure that whatever global order emerges in the coming decade, it serves to protect their national interests.

Thus, on the eve of July 4 while Americans will be celebrating the remarkable birth of their republic, the search for a new global role '€” one that should be more realistic given the changing strategic scene and the limitations of domestic political and economic resources '€” goes on.

A bitter fight is emerging within the US foreign policy establishment in Washington in the wake of Obama'€™s 2012 decision to rebalance the US military presence (and hence the pursuit of its interests) to Asia at the expense of the Middle East and Europe, which had been the focus of its foreign policy for decades. While it represents a major departure, it has not gone without challenge, interestingly not so much from outside but from inside the Washington Beltway.

This much is clear from our reading of the book The Dispensable Nation '€” American Foreign Policy in Retreat by Vali Nasr, the dean of the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at John Hopkins University. The title is misleading since Nasr '€” who served as senior advisor to the late Richard Holbrooke, the special White House representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan '€” advocates that the Asian pivot should not see a diminishing US role in the Middle East and Europe. Otherwise, he argues, such a trade-off would make the end of US power and influence a self-fulfilling prophesy.

Nasr expresses his belief that the US should maintain a robust global role and writes:

'€œAmerican leadership is still critical to the stability of the world order and the health of the global economy '€” to the expansion of trade and the continued development and prosperity of nations. There is no other power today that could play America'€™s role on the world stage or is willing to step into America'€™s shoes. Nor would the world be better off were that to happen, or even if any and all of the rising BRIC nations and those following in their footsteps tried their hands at it. The world America has built still needs America to lead it. America remains the world'€™s pivotal nation'€.

He recognizes that the world has changed and is still changing. That is why Nasr recommended that the US '€” in implementing its global mission '€” should return to the practice of active diplomacy and economic engagement.

However, we believe that the problem lies not in the manner of engagement with the world at large but the underlying conviction that the US has this '€œmanifest destiny'€ to save the world.

There is no question, however, that America'€™s place in the world will remain important. It is far from dispensable and it is equally incorrect to describe its foreign policy as in retreat, unless one is a pessimist.

Like the rest of the world, America will have to make adjustments to its foreign policy to fit with new realities. Unipolarity under US hegemony is already out of the window. Whether bipolar or multipolar, the pursuit of its geopolitical interests will have to be conducted through the formation of alliances and partnerships. Americans simply cannot go it alone anymore.

A new US foreign policy is clearly still in the making given the raging debate in Washington. It is timely for both camps to read the 1952 seminal work The Irony of American History.

The author, Reinhold Niebuhr, a keen student of American history who taught Christian social ethics at the New York Theological Seminary, saw many contradictions in America'€™s global exercises, as inherent within the '€œmessianic sense of mission'€ that America was destined to act '€œas a tutor of mankind in its pilgrimage to perfection'€.

Niebuhr expresses his penetrating observation:

'€œThe American situation is such a vivid symbol of the spiritual perplexities of modern man, because the degree of American power tends to generate illusions to which a technocratic culture is already too prone. This technocratic approach to problems of history, which erroneously equates the mastery of nature with the mastery of historical destiny, in turn accentuates a very old failing in human nature: the inclination of the wise, or the powerful, or the virtuous, to obscure and deny the human limitations in all human achievements and pretensions'€.

How astonishing that six decades after Niebuhr'€™s observation, not only has it maintained its relevancy, but perhaps is becoming more relevant. It would be helpful if '€œthe wise and powerful'€ of the US foreign policy and defense establishment, in their search for a new US role in global affairs, would ponder Niebuhr'€™s statement.

Perhaps they would reach the conclusion that a more modest global role working in tandem with other nations is a recommended proposition in jointly managing our planet.

The writers are senior editors of The Jakarta Post and are former chief editors. They are recipients of the Nieman Fellowship for Journalists at Harvard University. Siagian has served as ambassador to Australia.