NYT article admits that the US now looks less like a leader of the world and more like the head of a faction - reduced to defending its preferred side against increasingly aligned adversaries.
“The world is no longer divided into two hostile camps,” Bill Clinton declared in 1997, the year he championed NATO’s eastward enlargement. “Instead, now we are building bonds with nations that once were our adversaries.”
Successive administrations expanded U.S. alliances, started frequent wars and aimed to spread liberal democracy, expecting potential rivals to accept their lot in the American order.
Nice, you managed to completely absolve Clinton there!