Steven R. Hurst — Sense Of Unease Growing Around The World As U.S. Government Looks Befuddled

An unmistakable sense of unease has been growing in capitals around the world as the U.S. government from afar looks increasingly befuddled — shirking from a military confrontation in Syria, stymied at home by a gridlocked Congress and in danger of defaulting on sovereign debt, which could plunge the world's financial system into chaos.

While each of the factors may be unrelated to the direct exercise of U.S. foreign policy, taken together they give some allies the sense that Washington is not as firm as it used to be in its resolve and its financial capacity, providing an opening for China or Russia to fill the void, an Asian foreign minister told a group of journalists in New York this week....

"The paralysis of the American government, where a rump in Congress is holding the whole place to ransom, doesn't really jibe with the notion of the United States as a global leader," said Michael McKinley, an expert on global relations at the Australian National University....

Germany's influential newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung bemoaned the U.S. political chaos. ...What is clear, though, is that America is already politically bankrupt," it said....

...Cordesman said, [there is] "is a real concern about where is the U.S. going. There is a question of trust. And I think there is an increasing feeling that the United States is pulling back, and its internal politics are more isolationist so that they can't necessarily trust what U.S. officials say, even if the officials mean it."

The Huffington Post — World
Sense Of Unease Growing Around The World As U.S. Government Looks Befuddled
Steven R. Hurst | Associated Press' international political writer in Washington