The end of U.S. leadership?

One way to look at the significance of America's financial woes (and how the rest of the world is affected by them) is to argue that the United States continues to be central to international affairs, in spite of how it has tied itself down in Iraq and Afghanistan, and in spite of the widespread anti-Americanism around the world. What America does or does not do, or what America goes through, remains of crucial importance in today's interconnected ("globalized") world. Another view comes from today's International Herald Tribune, which quotes Treasury Secretary Paulson on its front page as saying: "This is a humbling, humbling time for the United States of America," and which prints an excellent column by Roger Cohen entitled "The Fleecing of America." Its thesis is that where during the financial crises of the 1990s the U.S. almost automatically took a leadership role to ensure the stability of the international financial system, no other country is stepping up to assist U.S. authorities in coping with the current crisis, in spite of many shared risks. This thesis can, for its part, be interpreted in two--complimentary--ways: One, as Cohen writes, the world feels that the Americans have to reap what they sowed, it's their problem (no reciprocity, no acknowledgement of shared interests, instead: lots of Schadenfreude). Two, the fact that in this U.S.-made, international crisis no other power steps up to shoulder part of the burden shows that while the U.S. may be losing influence on all fronts (certainly compared to a decade or so ago), nobody can take over (or even tries to share) its international leadership role. No single country, no EU, no UN, nobody. National banks are intervening to prop up money markets, but that's mostly in the national interest. Private non-U.S. financial interests, meanwhile, are lobbying fiercely to get a piece of the proposed $700 billion bail-out package. In the end, therefore, we may return to the opening view here: America may temporarily be distracted and "humbled," in the grand scheme of things it remains the only power capable and willing to assume a leadership role.