America will never be back like before, but the world still needs democratic leadership | Timothy Garton Ash

In the aftermath of Biden's Afghanistan debacle, we should consider the alternatives to a Washington-led order

America is back," said President Joe Biden earlier this year, and the entire democratic world breathed a sigh of relief. But as we watch the debacle of the United States' withdrawal from Afghanistan - Kabul as Saigon 2 - a ghostly voice whispers to us: what if America is not back? What if it is never coming back? What happens then? The Chinese century? Europe as new leader of the free world? Or just plain old international anarchy?

If only this were like Saigon in 1975. The US humiliation in Vietnam, following Watergate, marked a low point for America's reputation in the world. But within a decade, the US was back. By 1995, it seemed to be bestriding the globe as an unchallenged hyperpower. Everyone knows that this time is different. The United States' self-inflicted domestic problems are 10 times more profound and structural than they were in the mid-1970s - partly because, following the pattern of over-extended empires throughout history, it has spent trillions of dollars in places such as Afghanistan and Iraq, rather than doing more nation-building at home. Abroad, it faces not a declining Leninist-ruled superpower, the Soviet Union, but a rising Leninist-ruled superpower, China. Climate change is the only hyperpower now.