The United States appears oblivious to world events because it has become so powerful that those events are of little consequence to it. What seems to be incomprehensible inconsistency is, on careful analysis, explicable as fundamental indifference. The United States does not provide leadership because its power has grown so enormous that it genuinely does not feel that it requires followers. It does what it wants as it wants. To the rest of the world, the United States appears simultaneously arrogant and indecisive.
American arrogance is rooted in a rational appreciation of the situation.
Its indecision is rooted in a profound indifference borne from a sense of relative invulnerability. It is less a problem of American demands on the world, than of American indifference toward it. This is a situation that is increasingly intolerable to the rest of the world. The fact is that, sooner or later, virtually every nation in the world must deal with the United States on matters that are of fundamental interest to it, but about which the United States is indifferent. This asymmetry of interest is at the heart of a global discontent.