Democracy implantation backfires on U.S.

The Vietnam War, the Iraq War, and the Saigon moment in Kabul confirm a track record of abject failure in military intervention and in transplanting democracy. America's 20-year war in Afghanistan ironically ended with the Taliban regaining power. In 2002, then U.S. president George W. Bush said, "Our commitment to a stable and free and peaceful Afghanistan is a long-term commitment." In 2021, current President Joe Biden said, "Our mission in Afghanistan was never supposed to have been nation- building. It was never supposed to be creating a unified, centralized democracy." Such a turn of rhetoric means nothing to Afghans who have suffered a tremendous humanitarian disaster.

The political theology of exceptionalism has, it should be said, long been challenged by liberals and cultural leftists. This is even more so in recent years as a result of economic globalization, industrial hollowing-out and America's demographic changes.

From the Charlottesville riot in 2017 to George Floyd's death in 2020, the U.S. has been plagued by racial violence. This not only triggered protests and riots, but also ignited a culture war or what can be termed an alternative civil war: Some Americans, fearing the loss of white dominance, chanted "take America back" and "you will not replace us" during protests, while others, infuriated by the country's structural racial discrimination, shouted "black lives matter" and "no justice, no peace." Confrontation between white identity politics and plural identity politics is escalating throughout the country, heightening divisions on such fundamental questions as "who are we" and "why America is America."

With conservatives and liberals both wielding identity politics as a weapon to gain greater political power and cultural dominance, civilizational clashes within America are bound to continue and will inevitably and inextricably intertwine with racial and class conflicts and lead to an erosion of Americans' cultural identity. To some extent, democracy implantation is backfiring on the United States.