Our So-Called Foreign Policy: More Globalist Fantasies from The Times’ Friedman

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Africa, China, climate change, Cold War, democracy, Europe, global norms, global order, global warming, globalism, human rights, international institutions, Italy, migrants, migration, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, The National Interest, The New York Times, Thomas Friedman, World War II

Thomas Friedman’s New York Times column today shows that the uber-pundit continues to perform a crucial dual public service. He both articulates as clearly as possible the usually unspoken assumptions underlying the globalist foreign policy approach pursued by the establishments of the two major American political parties for decades, and (unwittingly, to be sure) he reveals how childish they are. 

In his discussion of the African migrants crisis faced by Italy and other countries of southern Europe, Friedman once again credits “global cooperation and rule-making” with making “America, Europe and the world as a whole steadily freer, more stable and more prosperous since World War II.”

As I’ve pointed out, these successes owed not to any institutions-based “liberal global order” but to the American power and wealth that underwrote the defense of Western Europe, Japan, and South Korea and the recreation of a functioning international economy (until the Cold War ended, of course, one confined to the bounds of the non-communist world).

But what distinguishes today’s article – and pushes it into the realm of fantasy – is the author’s claim that this order and its institutions and procedures have “managed the key global issues after W.W. II — like trade, migration, environment and human rights….”

How do we know this is fantasy? Because Friedman himself emphasizes here that the migrants crisis remains out of control. Moreover, the world trade system is proving woefully unable to handle the challenge of China’s predatory government-private sector hybrid economy. The management claim, meanwhile, is sure hard to square with Friedman’s own nearly innumerable warnings that climate change is about to destroy the planet unless dramatic steps are taken immediately.

And although the world is unmistakably freer than before World War II, again it’s been American power – not any set of worldwide institutions and rules – that’s been primarily responsible. Further, a major elite commentator meme nowadays of course is that freedom has taken some important hits lately – e.g., because of the rise of allegedly authoritarian populists on both sides of the Atlantic, because Russia’s post-Cold War experiment with genuine democracy proved so short-lived, and because China’s widely anticipated evolution toward greater political (and economic) openness never even got started.

I’m also grateful to Friedman for creating another opportunity for me to explain why dismissing the importance of international institutions and rules does not amount to dismissing the importance of international cooperation in addressing the varied and important worldwide problems that transcend borders.

As I’ve most recently written in my June National Interest article on the superiority of a genuine America First foreign policy, there’s no reasonable question that in order to deal with pollution and disease and climate shifts (whether man-made or not, they can create terrible common problems) countries will need to meet and figure out how to respond jointly.

But since the agreed-on solutions will not affect every country equally, or benefit every country equally, it will be vital for the United States to push for the measures that most effectively promote and preserve its own interests. Further, since Washington will not be able to count on persuasion solely or even largely to accomplish this goal, it will need to make sure that it possesses the only other advantages capable of shaping the outcomes favorably – power and wealth. Accept no substitutes.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: What Could Thomas Friedman Possibly Mean?

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disorder, global order, grand strategy, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Thomas Friedman

A question that should be asked more often by consumers of journalism and policy writing is “What could that possibly mean?” It will help them make the vital distinction between articles and studies and books that are actually worth reading because their arguments and proposals are reasonably tethered to reality, and those that are simply blather. (Of course, policy writers should follow this advice, too, but if they can’t make this distinction without my prompting, they’re probably hopeless to begin with.)

For a good example of writing (and thinking) that flunks the “What can that possibly mean?” test, check out New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman’s latest, which offers some thoughts on how the United States can deal successfully with the shocking disorder into which much of the world seems to be descending.

It’s a vitally important subject, and I don’t fault Friedman, a multiple Pulitzer Prize winner, for failing to present a detailed strategic blueprint given his format’s tight space constraints. But his readers surely have a right to expect more than a warmed over version of “Kumbaya’s” lyrics.

In terms that can plausibly be conceivable to policymakers for the foreseeable future, what could Friedman possibly mean by urging U.S. foreign policy to do more than “hedge risk and preserve a failing status quo”? What could he possibly mean when he advises American leaders “to be builders with enough foresight to shape a sustainable international order”? What are the specific, concrete measures that could achieve those goals?

What could Friedman possibly mean when he recommends supporting “regional leaders committed to the same”? Does he suppose that lots of them are sitting in their offices or tents or wherever waiting, Lana Turner-like, to be discovered by State Department talent scouts? What could he possibly mean by observing that foreign “leaders and their people are going to eventually have to embrace a new, more sustainable source of order that emerges from the bottom up and is built on shared power, values and trust”? What law of history mandates that happy outcome?

Friedman actually does present what he views as a model for such policies. But here’s the problem: It’s the U.S. approach to some of the Sunni lands in Iraq during America’s second war in that country. In Friedman’s words:

“The U.S. partnered with the Sunni Muslim tribal leaders who didn’t want puritanical Islam, or their daughters to be forced to marry fundamentalists, or to give up their whiskey. But we did not just arm them. We brokered an agreement of shared guns, shared power and shared values — about the future of Iraq — between those Sunni tribesmen and Iraq’s ruling Shiite prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki.”

But of course, it takes two (at least) to stabilize, and clearly not enough Shiites bought in. Friedman appears to blame the United States for leaving too hastily – though he doesn’t explicitly make the accusation. But how long does he believe the U.S. forces could have stayed? And how long could they have kept Iraqi factions from each other’s throats?

In his summation, Friedman grants the objection that his prescription “sounds impossibly hard.” But the underlying problem is that he doesn’t even permit the debate to get that far. Because nothing in his column even remotely approaches a prescription or strategy. He simply presents readers with a string of gauzy platitudes – and leaves them to wonder “What could they possibly mean?”