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Forget about the war with Iran for a moment. The conflict inside the US, with universities, foreign students, immigrants, and the polarization between interventionists and isolationists, may have far more impact on the country’s future as a world power or on the empire it has built itself up to be in the 20th century. In this conflict, the US is at war with itself and has much to lose.

When the dust settles, what will matter is whether what the US achieved through war can be preserved in times of peace. We have seen how that failed in Iraq and Afghanistan, when after a military victory and occupation, the US did not succeed in creating a local government that could control the country as its ally. For an empire, military power is important for expansion, but empires consolidate their control by recruitment.

Former empires controlled vast territories with very few people because they could co-opt the locals who then ruled on their behalf. Romans ruled most of the known world for almost a millennium because the conquered could become Romans, absorbing the culture and language and serving the empire. Some emperors, such as Septimius Severus and Philip the Arab, were from Carthage or the town of Shahba in the Roman province of Arabia, now in Syria. The British in India ruled over tens of millions with tens of thousands, incorporating officials, administrators and the military. Several early Ottoman grand viziers were also originally recruited as slave boys in the Balkan provinces, such as Serbia and Croatia, and rose through the ranks both through meritocracy and by joining Sufi religious orders.

The empire that America built is ruled by global corporations and cultural influence through technology, education, innovation and lifestyle. You know you have landed in one of its provinces from the signs in the streets, the way people dress and, to a certain extent, what can loosely be described as American values. It is a system that anyone can join and become part of. Immigrants become Americans in ways that they can never become Chinese or Russian.

When the dust settles, what will matter is whether what the US achieved through war can be preserved in times of peace

Nadim Shehadi

America spread its influence through education, immigration and its belief in a universal mission to uphold and preserve American values of freedom, democracy and human rights. This universalism is deeply rooted in puritan beliefs and emphasizes education and equality among people as a model — the city upon a hill that was meant to be a model for all nations. These are the three pillars of American soft power.

America was always a reluctant empire. After all, it revolted against the British Empire and is composed of a population that left Europe to create a free and egalitarian society. So, the pendulum swings between interventionism and isolationism, with one administration dismantling what the previous one achieved.

I lived in the US for seven years and barely began to understand the complexity of its society. But then again, I am also Lebanese and, believe me, I can recognize acute and toxic polarization when I see it. I am not sure if the Trump phenomenon is behind the polarization of the country, whether it is a symptom of it or if it is a kind of backlash against a system that has become so rigid that half the country feels alienated by it. The result is what we have now — a feeling that the country is imploding under the tension of extreme polarization, which future historians will probably describe far better than I can.

Symptoms of the American malaise are obvious: complicated phenomena like the conflict between the Trump administration and universities such as Harvard, together with the protests in California about immigration policies. America has also proved to be an unreliable ally when each administration reverses the policies of its predecessors.

When foreign students are seen as a threat to the US, it means that the country is losing confidence in itself, its cultural values and recruiting power. An experience of living and studying in the US should be seen as producing assets to America and a threat to students’ own strict societies if, say, they come from China, Russia or Iran. Even when they protest against the US itself, these foreign students are learning that protests are possible and realize that they are not possible at home. They are becoming American.

US power is challenged by China and its BRICS allies, but America has the upper hand as long as students choose it for education

Nadim Shehadi

It is also absurd to think that the protests in California are directed against the application of immigration laws. It is precisely because the US is a country that is governed by the rule of law that it attracts immigrants, especially those escaping the rule of drug cartels and failed states in Latin America. If faith in the rule of law is no longer there, and immigrants are no longer welcome, then this is far more dangerous to what America stands for.

Silicon Valley, which produced many of the leaders of the tech industry, was also part of that recruitment ability. The brightest and most creative, whether products of Syrian, Indian or South African immigration, all became part of America’s empire, together with countless executives of American companies and banks.

In occupied Iraq, the US lost its alliances among both Shiite and Sunni because it proved to be an unreliable ally when President Barack Obama fixed a date for withdrawal as an election campaign promise. The Iraqi Shiites were eventually recruited by Iran, which gained more control in the country. The Sunnis also felt abandoned after Sunni tribes had worked with the Bush administration to fight Al-Qaeda in the north. Afghanistan is another story.

American power is challenged by China and its BRICS allies, but America has the upper hand as long as students choose it for education. Every emigrant wants to become American and its allies will not worry that the next administration will reverse policies and abandon them. In the war with Iran, these are battles that cannot be lost and that will affect the outcome as much as, if not more than, the military operations.

• Nadim Shehadi is an economist and political adviser. X: @Confusezeus