Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Still ISO a Coherent Biden China Strategy

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Antony J. Blinken, Asia-Pacific, Biden, Biden administration, China, climate change, Cold War, decoupling, Indo-Pacific, Jimmy Carter, national interests, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, rules-based global order, Soviet Union, strategic ambiguity, Taiwan

In June, 1978, then President Jimmy Carter laid out in a speech the tenets that were going to guide his strategy toward the Soviet Union at a time when East-West tensions were mounting. His clear aim during this key juncture of the Cold War was telling Moscow what kinds of actions it could take to make sure that superpower rivalry was “stable” and even “constructive,” and what kinds would be sure to place it on a “dangerous and politically disastrous” path.

Unfortunately, the speech was widely considered to be such a confusing word salad that rumors quickly spread claiming that what Carter read were drafts from the hawkish and dovish groups of his advisors that he simply stapled together. This rumor turned out to be untrue (at least according to this study of Carter’s foreign policy), but the fuzziness of Carter’s bottom line surely helped ensure that U.S.-Soviet relations continued worsening for most of the remainder of his one-term presidency, largely because the Soviet Union became more aggressive – especially when it invaded Afghanistan.

I bring up this historical episode because Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken just gave a speech laying out the tenets of the Biden administration’s strategy toward China. It, too, seeks to ensure that today’s superpower relationship becomes more stable rather than move ever closer to conflict, but it looks just as incoherent as Carter’s address – and just as likely to produce the outcome it’s trying to prevent.

But I’ll start with a problem that was only barely detectable in Carter’s speech but that’s bound to undermine Mr. Biden’s efforts to deal with China successfully: a failure to identify American interests precisely and concretely. To be sure, the Carter speech wasted a great deal of verbiage on Soviet activity that never held any potential to endanger U.S. security or prosperity – especially in sub-Saharan Africa. Eventually, however, the President specified that “We and our allies must and will be able to meet any forseeable challenge to our security from either strategic nuclear forces or from conventional forces.”

These kinds of specific objectives were at best secondary themes of Blinken’s. Instead, his emphasis from the get-go was on defending and reforming “the rules-based international order – the system of laws, agreements, principles, and institutions that the world came together to build after two world wars to manage relations between states, to prevent conflict, to uphold the rights of all people.”

Not only can this definition of U.S. interests way too easily turn into a formula for wasting America’s considerable but ultimately finite resources on an infinite number of international troubles having nothing to do with the nation’s safety or well-being. But good luck motivating the American population and its military to fight or even sacrifice for an objective this gauzy.

At the same time, the kind of ambivalence so broadly conveyed by Carter toward the Soviet Union permeates the picture drawn by Blinken of China. For example, the Secretary argued that China

>”is the only country with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to do it.  Beijing’s vision would move us away from the universal values that have sustained so much of the world’s progress over the past 75 years”:

>rather than using its power to reinforce and revitalize the laws, the agreements, the principles, the institutions that enabled its success so that other countries can benefit from them, too…is undermining them.  Under President Xi, the ruling Chinese Communist Party has become more repressive at home and more aggressive abroad”:

> “has announced its ambition to create a sphere of influence in the Indo-Pacific and to become the world’s leading power”;

> is “advancing unlawful maritime claims in the South China Sea, undermining peace and security, freedom of navigation, and commerce….”

> “wants to put itself at the center of global innovation and manufacturing, increase other countries’ technological dependence, and then use that dependence to impose its foreign policy preferences.  And Beijing is going to great lengths to win this contest – for example, taking advantage of the openness of our economies to spy, to hack, to steal technology and know-how to advance its military innovation and entrench its surveillance state”;  and

> is “trying to cut off Taiwan’s relations with countries around the world and blocking it from participating in international organizations.  And Beijing has engaged in increasingly provocative rhetoric and activity, like flying PLA aircraft near Taiwan on an almost daily basis.”

In all, according to Blinken, “The scale and the scope of the challenge posed by the People’s Republic of China will test American diplomacy like nothing we’ve seen before.”

So given these malign aims and actions, how could Blinken also insist that

> “We don’t seek to block China from its role as a major power, nor to stop China…from growing their economy….”;

> “We know that many countries – including the United States – have vital economic or people-to-people ties with China that they want to preserve.  This is not about forcing countries to choose.  It’s about giving them a choice….”;

> ”The United States does not want to sever China’s economy from ours or from the global economy – though Beijing, despite its rhetoric, is pursuing asymmetric decoupling, seeking to make China less dependent on the world and the world more dependent on China.”; and that

> “as the world’s economy recovers from the devastation of the pandemic, global macroeconomic coordination between the United States and China is key – through the G20, the IMF, other venues, and of course, bilaterally.”

That last point, and a companion Biden administration argument about climate change, seem compelling – at least superficially. But think about it for a moment: Why would anyone holding the view of China’s hostile actions and intentions laid out by Blinken expect any meaningful cooperation from Beijing on anything?

Even on climate – that supposedly quintessential threat that respects no bordes – it logically follows that the kind of Chinese leadership depicted by Blinken will be working overtime to ensure that China minimizes any sacrifices it makes to prevent dangerous warming, and maximize those required of everyone else. Consequently, the most effective way to spur China to do its share and therefore boost the odds that the climate problem actually gets solved is to deny Beijing the economic power to stay off the hook.

There’s a big (and in my view, legitimate) debate currently underway over whether the United States should continue its longstanding policy of “strategic ambiguity” regarding defending Taiwan from China, or explicitly pledge to do so, as President Biden may or may not have done a week ago (and not for the first time). But there shouldn’t be any debate over whether America’s underlying strategy toward the People’s Republic should be as completely ambiguous – not to mention as nebulous – as the approach just articulated by Blinken.

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Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Will a Russian Victory Really Bring On a World at War?

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Antony J. Blinken, Biden, China, Council on Foreign Relations, East China Sea, globalism, Japan, Kim Jong Un, national interests, North Korea, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Russia, South China Sea, South Korea, Taiwan, The Wall Street Journal, Ukraine, Ukraine-Russia war, Vladimir Putin, war, Xi JInPing

Not only do American leaders seem pretty united on the need for the nation to do much more to help Ukraine defend itself from Russian invaders. They and the (overwhelmingly globalist) American political and chattering classes seem largely in agreement on one of the main consequences either of permitting Russia to win, or permitting him to win without inflicting major, lasting damage on Russia’s economy – a return to a world in which aggressive dictators like Russia’s Vladimir Putin will feel much freer than they have for decades to attack their neighbors.

That fear definitely has a troubling ring of reasonableness – and all the more so since, unlike previous historical eras in which such attacks and invasions were much more common, some of the actors possess nuclear weapons.

But there’s something these warnings are overlooking. However vivid such dangers are in principle, it’s hard to identify actual places around the world where potential conquerors have been bidng their time until receiving just the kind of signal that a Russian success in Ukraine allegedly would send.

If you doubt the prominence of this argument for greater U.S. involvement in the conflict, you haven’t been paying attention. For example, in his first public remarks after the invasion, President Biden claimed that “Putin’s actions betray his sinister vision for the future of our world — one where nations take what they want by force.”

In a speech a month earlier, his Secretary of State, Antony J. Blinken, asserted that one of the post-World War II global order’s guiding principles was a rejection of

“the right of one country to change the borders of another by force; to dictate to another the policies it pursues or the choices it makes, including with whom to associate; or to exert a sphere of influence that would subjugate sovereign neighbors to its will.

“To allow Russia to violate those principles with impunity would…send a message to others around the world that these principles are expendable, and that, too, would have catastrophic results.”

The conservatives on the Wall Street Journal editorial board, who don’t agree with the Biden administration on much of anything, similarly contended that “Whether the West admits it or not, the invasion is setting a precedent for what the world will tolerate in the 21st century.”

But check out this assessment of worldwide hot spots from the Council on Foreign Relations, often called the seat of America’s globalist foreign policy establishment. Where exactly are the Putins of tomorrow whose will to international power would be even be sharpened by a Russian victory in Ukraine?

Certainly not on the Korean peninsula or in the East China Sea. North Korea no doubt has designs on neighboring South Korea, but they’ve existed for decades. Ditto for China and Taiwan. It’s true that Kim Jong Un and Xi Jinping might be emboldened by an inadequate U.S. and international response to Putin’s war. But not from any relief that global norms of behavior that had been holding them back had weakened, or that a Russian victory had set some a kind of precedent – with binding power? Because they take the idea of rule of law more seriously in their treatment of foreigners than they do in their treatment of their own people? Please.

Other than these Asian conflicts – which also include China’s expansionism in the South China Sea, but which also long predate the Ukraine war – where are the aggressors-in-waiting who may feel freer to attack their neighbors? Should we include the other East China Sea dispute, where China is involved, too – even though U.S. allies Japan and South Korea are also contesting each other’s claims to some miniscule islands?

More important, where are the global hot spots where current or potential territorial rivalries could explode into conflict that would imperil global peace and security – including America’s? Nagorno-Karabakh (on the border of Armenia and Azerbaijan, unless you’ve been following this tiff closely)? As Mr. Biden would say, “Come on, man.”

I’m sure that there are flashpoints in sub-Saharan Africa that could eventually embroil entire regions in warfare. But it’s as cold-blooded as it is true that these are regions so chronically dysfunctional (and therefore largely disconnected from the wider world) that even complete chaos has no potential to spread much further – or inspire conqueror wannabees in regions of greater concern.

Closer to home for the United States, according to the Congressionally founded U.S. Institute of Peace, some small countries in Latin America have been quarreling with neighbors over territory since 1990, and if they did ignite conflict, refugees would of course come streaming to U.S. borders. But only once – in 1995 – did one of these feuds result in war (between Ecuador and Peru). And I’m glad I don’t have to make the argument that revanchists in either country are chomping at the bit to get a symbolic green light from a Russian victory in Ukraine.

The big takeaways here clearly are (1) that the world isn’t a tinderbox likely to burst into a series of truly dangerous international conflicts depending on the outcome of Russia’s war on Ukraine; and (2) that the potential conflicts that can affect the United States consequentially are and have long been driven by their own dynamics (including current and longstanding American approaches to these situations).

So as has been the case since Russian policy toward its neighbors became more belligerent, what should be driving the U.S. response should be examinations concerning the nature of concrete, specific U.S. interests that are or are not at stake. Claims that Ukraine’s continued independence and full sovereignty are all that stand between today’s relative calm among countries (if not in terms of civil conflicts) and an entire globe engulfed in war deserve the same fate as previous alarmist concotions like the domino theory – getting tossed onto what former President Reagan memorably called the “ash heap of history.”

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: U.S. Ukraine Policy’s Choices are Anything but Obvious Morally

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debt, deficits, economic aid, guerilla war, military aid, Modern Monetary Theory, morality, national interests, nuclear war, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, public opinion, Russia, sanctions, sovereignty, Ukraine, Ukraine invasion, Ukraine-Russia war, vital interests

I’ve been so concerned about the Russian invasion of Ukraine (and the preceding expansion of the west’s North Atlantic Treaty Organization deep into Eastern Europe) boosting the risks of nuclear war that I haven’t had time to write about some important details that should be considered as Americans weigh a response, and that have influenced my own thinking. In one of my very first RealityChek posts, I actually presented many of these ideas, which concern the role of morality in U.S. foreign policy. But they’re worth reviewing to show how they relate to the momentous – and morally horrific – events of the last week.

Most important:  As a sovereign country, the United States has an inalienable right to respond to this or any other foreign challenge or opportunity however its political system wishes. It doesn’t need to answer to its NATO treaty allies. It doesn’t need to answer to the European Union, the United Nations, or any foreign government or group of governments. It certainly doesn’t need to answer to gauzier supposed realities like “the intenational community” or “global public opinion.” And it certainly does mean that the American political system has an equally inalienable and absolute right to define moral behavior.   

In other words, sovereignty means that the government in question gets the last word (assuming it can enforce its will), and the high degree of security and economic well-being enjoyed by the United States – by virtue of geography, rich resource endowments, economic strength, technological prowess and a host of other advantages – means that the U.S. government has tremendous latitude in choosing what that last word is.

As I’ve argued (e.g., here) joining the fighting would be a choice that’s not only foolish (because Ukraine’s fate has never been seen as vital by American leaders o the public even during the Cold War decades when it was under the Soviet thumb) but possibly suicidal (because it could result in a direct conflict with an enemy possessing a big nuclear arsenal, including weapons that can reach the entire U.S. homeland).

At the same time, if the American people – the ultimate decision-makers in the national political system – want to go to war over Ukraine, despite the risks, and if they make their decision clear through mass protests or any other means, their sovereignty would make that choice entirely legitimate – though IMO borderline insane given the completely marginal self-interest involved.

Thankfully, the public appears to recognize this whoppingly lopsided risk-reward ratio.  And we know this not just becaue  polls have consistently shown opposition to “boots on the ground.” (See, e.g., here and here, although the level of support reported in both were alarmingly high.) We also know it because U.S. leaders seem to understand this public opinion – as President Biden has emphatically ruled out this course, his administration has nixed a similar proposal of enforcing no-fly zones against Russian aircraft over Ukraine, and nearly all Members of Congress have shied away from these options, too.

But a host of lesser responses have also either begun or are being actively discussed as well.  They include providing more economic and military assistance to the Ukrainians both as they’re still putting up a fight, or after a Russian victory – when Moscow could well face a large-scale guerilla war – tightening the economic screws further on Vladimir Putin, his cronies, his entire regime, and his economy; and deploying more U.S. forces to the Eastern European members of NATO to reduce the odds that Putin will move against them.

I’m personally fine with any or all of them in principle – although I do wonder from a logistics standpoint how military supplies will be able to reach the Ukrainians once the Russians are guarding all the borders, and about what dangers could develop from convoys with such supplies approaching territory Moscow controls now or probably will in the coming days and weeks. I’ve also expressed reservations about greatly expanding the U.S. military presence on the territory of the easternmost American allies. 

For the purposes of this post, however, my own views on these matters aren’t what matter. What I’m especially concerned with are three emerging, related, and disturbingly neglected ways in which policy and morality intersect in the Uktaine crisis.

The first I mentioned briefly yesterday – the disconnect between, on the one hand, the ringing calls heard throughout the country (including from President) to “stand with Ukraine” because it’s demanded by simple decency and morality, and on the other hand, and the strong determination of U.S. leaders to shield the domestic economy from the consequences of economic sanctions, above all in the energy sector – much less to avoid actual combat. To me, the morality of such positions is dubious at best. They sound like the classically hypocritical exhortation, “Let’s you and him fight.” And they strongly suggest that expressions of support like this are more about feeling good about oneself than about decisively helping the Ukrainians.

The second involves resource allocation decisions. Some of the Ukraine support steps that will be taken by Washington, like increased military and economic assistance, will require more spending, and more of American leaders’ time and energy.

But the spending proposals so far haven’t been accompanied by any proposals to raise taxes to finance them in the here and now. As a result, these expenditures will add to an already mammoth national debt. If you believe that school of thinking holding that such debts and the deficits that balloon them are No Big Deal economically, there’s no moral problem. If you don’t buy this Modern Monetary Theory, then more deficit spending adds to a national debt that already shapes up as a major burden on future generations (who of course can’t vote). To me that seems as morally problemmatic as the “Let’s you and him fight”-type policies.

The third moral difficulty – which is still more potential than emerging – is also a product of devoting more energy and resources to Ukraine without raising taxes or taking on more debt: This policy could mean less energy and fewer resources devoted to pressing domestic needs with their own big moral dimension. What’s the moral rationale for those taking a back seat, to whatever degree, especially when you consider that solving domestic problems – and doing meaningful, lasting good – is almost always easier than solving overseas problems? That’s because, however challenging those domestic problems, Americans have much more control over them.

All these moral quandaries are further and vastly complicated by another consideration widely ignored in morality-based calls to Do Something or Do More on the Ukraine crisis: No one is more of an expert on morality than anyone else – whether they’re rich or poor, highly educated or barely literate, profoundly eloquent or utterly inarticulate, famous or obscure, or whether they pound tables more vigorously than others or choke up more in official debates or on the air, or whether they’re clerics or laypeople.

If I thought Russia’s invasion of Ukraine threatened genuinely vital American interests – that is, that it endangers national physical survival or political independence, or major, long-term impoverishment – I’d urge sweeping aside these moral questions for reasons that should be obvious except to committed pacifists. I suspect most other Americans would, too.

But to an important extent, in the name of morality, backing is being voiced for U.S. Ukraine policy measures that could gravely and even fatally jeopardize American security or well-being in meaningful ways even though that embattled country isn’t vital.  So for both practical and moral reasons, it’s urgent to examine these moral dilemmas much more searchingly than has been the case, and for the public not to be intimidated or stampeded by the loudest or the most passionate or the most seemingly authoritative or the most widely promoted or covered voices they hear.        

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Time for a Nuclear-Armed Taiwan?

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alliances, allies, Asia, China, East Asia, geopolitics, Indo-Pacific, Japan, national interests, national security, nuclear proliferation, nuclear weapons, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Porcupine Theory, semiconductors, South Korea, Taiwan, vital interests

Since early in the nuclear age, students of international relations scholar from time to time have advanced a dramatically heretical idea: that a world in which more than a few countries possessed nuclear weapons would be safer than a world in which such arms were limited to those countries that already had them. The  reasoning: Attacking nuclear-armed countries is a lot riskier for the aggressor than attacking non-nuclear countries, so the risk of wars breaking out would fall. If you think about the success of the little mammal with big quills, you can see why this notion has become known as the “Porcupine Theory”.

I bring up the subject because I increasingly find myself wondering whether encouraging Taiwan to build a nuclear arsenal would be the best way for the United States to safeguard interests in the island’s independence that have become vital recently because Taiwan has become the world leader in manufacturing advanced semiconductors – which are so crucial to the national security and prosperity of every country, including the now lagging United States.

There can’t be any doubt that the burgeoning importance of Taiwan’s independence and the apparently burgeoning determination of China to reestablish control over what it views as a renegade province, have produced a situation that’s increasingly dangerous for the United States. China, after all, is a power whose conventional military forces may now be strong enough to defeat America’s if it decides to help Taiwan fight off a Beijing attack.

In principle, Washington could resolve to turn the tide by using its own weapons of mass destruction in a battle for Taiwan. But China’s own arsenal is now so powerful that the result could be a full-scale nuclear exchange that brings disaster to the U.S. homeland. In other words, as I’ve written for years, America arguably has lost escalation dominance in Asia, and may have no choice but to acquiesce in China’s takeover of the island and its world class tech capabilities.

Nonetheless, this dire threat so far hasn’t deterred U.S. leaders from moving closer to declaring their intent to defend Taiwan militarily (notably, e.g., as reported here), and ending the posture of “strategic ambiguity” that has so far helped keep the peace in the region. So no one can responsibly rule out push coming to shove in this intensifying crisis.

To date, the United States has opposed countries like Taiwan from crossing the nuclear weapons threshhold mainly because Washington has rejected the Porcupine Theory. In addition, however, this anti-proliferation stance, especially toward allies and quasi-allies like Taiwan, has stemmed from the nuclear weapons parity that the United States enjoyed vis-a-vis the old Soviet Union and today toward Russia, and the overwhelming superiority of its nuclear forces versus those of China and North Korea in Asia. Unfortunately, as mentioned above, the Asian nuclear balance has deteriorated from the U.S. standpoint.

The United States has also always viewed its security alliances with Germany and Japan in particular to be essential to preventing their reversion to the disastrously militaristic ways of the 1930s and 1940s. Nuclear weapons controlled by these two countries were therefore completely out of the question. (Interestingly, a revealing difference of opinion between then President Barack Obama and then presidential candidate Donald Trump was sparked by these issues in 2016.)    

Reliability concerns, however, have also dominated Washington’s position on nuclear weapons spread outside the U.S. alliance network. Specifically, American leaders have always worried about these devices being acquired by unstable governments (which supposedly are less capable of securing them against terrorists and other extremists) and so-called rogue states (which supposedly would be more likely to use them or threaten their use).

A nuclear-armed Taiwan could resolve the prime dilemma for the United States by letting it off the hook for the island’s defense. After all, if China hasn’t yet pulled the trigger on a Taiwan without nukes, it makes sense to believe that it would be much less likely to attack the island if a conflict could bring Taiwanese nuclear warheads falling on Chinese soil.

It’s true that, as I’ve heard various observers argue, that the semiconductor problem may be exaggerated – because, for example, the United States could keep the relevant technology out of Chinese hands by bombing the factories and labs. In theory, the Taiwanese may have plans to blow up these facilities themselves. But it’s also true that these speculations could be way too optimistic – especially since the most crucial knowhow resides in the heads of Taiwanese scientists and engineers, who would need to be protected somehow against a Chinese roundup.

An American endorsement of a nuclear Taiwan could also bring benefits throughout Asia, signaling to Beijing that continuing its bellicose behavior could convince the United States to give a nuclear green light to Japan and South Korea.

Moreover, the longstanding main U.S. anti-proliferation rationales look a lot weaker today. Taiwan is clearly neither a rogue state nor a country with an unstable government. Ditto for Japan and South Korea, for that matter. Besides, precisely because of the weakening U.S. military position in East Asia, and consequently growing worries about Washington’s willingness to make good on its nuclear commitments, many observers believe that all three countries are already latent nuclear powers. (See, e.g., here.) That is, they could build nuclear weapons quickly whenever they wished.

Yet encouraging Taiwan to go nuclear would hardly be risk-free. If and when openly announced, it could spur the Chinese to attack – to enable them to capture the island before its nuclear-ization was completed. A nuclear Taiwan would also be less deferential to American wishes. In fact, its semiconductor superiority has already enabled it to resist some U.S. demands related to plans for increasing microchip production and supply chain security cooperation between the two countries. (The same has held for South Korea, as reported in the linked article immediately above.)

More broadly, nuclear weapons acquisition by Japan and South Korea would certainly undermine America’s post-World War II status as kingpin of East Asia, and all the benefits it ostensibly creates for Americans in one of the world’s most economically important regions.

But even if those benefits were nearly as great as widely believed (and continuing U.S. difficulty opening Asian markets to American exports makes clear that they haven’t been), a nuclear-armed Taiwan would create much bigger benefits: dramatically reducing the odds that China acquires some of the world’s most important technology, and that the risk of a Chinese nuclear attack on the United States if Beijing resulting from a conflict over Taiwan.

The key, as suggested above, would be supporting nuclearization without provoking all-out Chinese aggression – suggesting that this goal deserves more attention in Washington than it’s receiving these days.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Mr. President, U.S. Dealings with China are No Game

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alliances, allies, Antony Blinken, Asia-Pacific, Biden, China, Cold War, democracy, Donald Trump, Indo-Pacific, Jake Sullivan, Kurt M. Campbell, national interests, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Soviet Union

For literally decades, American foreign policy makers, and especially the pre-Trump globalists, fell into the dangerous habit of obsessing about second-order questions (like whether the old Soviet Union was a fundamentally aggressive or defensively-oriented power, whether military force or diplomacy was the nation’s most effective foreign policy tool, whether unilateral or multilateral actions were most likely to succeed, and whether a more or less involvement in world affairs was preferable).

As a result, they typically neglected the paramount first-order questions: Principally, what overseas goals does the United States need to achieve to secure adequate levels of safety and well-being? In other words, which foreign objectives matter decisively for the United States in and of themselves, and which don’t? And those are first-order question because assessing others’ intentions is much more guesswork than science, and because no one can sensibly choose tools for a job without knowing what job they want to do.

(See this 1985 FOREIGN POLICY essay and this 1991 Atlantic Monthly article on the general failure of not only American leaders but of presumed foreign policy experts to think rigorously about national interests. See this 1991 New York Times piece about the hazards of divining intentions as opposed to capabilities. Apologies if the first two are no longer available for free on-line.)

Therefore, it’s awfully depressing to see the Biden administration staging its own version of backwards strategizing. It’s evidently determined to base its China policy on figuring out what kind of relationship it wants with the People’s Republic, and paying much less attention to identifying specific actions the United States wants China to take, stop, and refrain from in the first place.

The Biden approach is completely mistaken for two main reasons. First, whenever relationships are pursued regardless of their impact on particular, concrete interests, these national needs and wants inevitably become subordinated to atmospherics and abstractions and processes – a decidedly unpromising recipe for national success.

Second, the particular relationship on which President Biden and his top aides are focusing – one marked by competition – is so intrinsically ambivalent (especially in the realm of world affairs) that its much likelier to confuse than to provide useful policy guidance. In addition, competition is a concept that evokes the playing field, where both victory and defeat have ultimately trivial consequences, rather than the fundamentally anarchic and much more dangerous international landscape. Consequently, its use tends to downplay even stakes otherwise defined more threateningly.

These obstacles to clear foreign policy thinking and numerous others all rear their heads in statements the new President and his leading advisers have made during the campaign and transition, and since Inauguration Day.

For instance, Jake Sullivan and Kurt M. Campbell, who have become, respectively, Mr. Biden’s White House national security adviser and National Security Council “czar” for the Asia-Pacific region, perceptively noted in a prominent 2019 article that terms used by the Trump administration like “strategic competition,” unless elaborated on, can’t help but connote “uncertainty about what that competition is over and what it means to win.”

They did write of the need to decide what “kinds of interests the United States wants to secure.” And they do dance around some specific objectives, like maintaining unimpeded navigation in Asia-Pacific (or, to use a term more expanive and popular lately because it includes India – “Indo-Pacific”) waters, and preventing China from taking over Taiwan, and safeguarding America’s global technology leadership. 

But the authors also drone on and on about achieving a state of coexistence that “would involve elements of competition and cooperation, with the United States’ competitive efforts geared toward securing those favorable terms” (but never absolutely committed to securing them); and about “accepting competition as a condition to be managed rather than a problem to be solved”; and about how the Chinese competitive challenge differs from its Cold War-era Soviet counterpart; and about how China has become an “essential partner” as well as a formidable competitor with the United States because of the appearance of shared global dangers like climate change and pandemics; and about an “emerging” global contest of social and economic models; and about how to “get the balance between competition and cooperation right.” Indeed, the piece is titled “Competition Without Catastrophe.”

In addition, last year, new Secretary of State Antony Blinken took pains in a lengthy interview to emphasize that although “we are in competition with China,” there’s “nothing wrong with competition if it’s fair” That point is entirely valid in the context of a sporting event, a spelling bee, or other forms of competition with relatively trivial consequences.

At best, however, it’s deeply puzzling when dealing with decisions that can bring either great benefit or harm to an entire nation, and that can create major risks and require massive expenditures of national blood and treasure. In cases where winning and losing matter considerably and even vitally, it should be obvious, that prevailing or figuring out how to cope with defeat are worth the candle. Yet if and when it’s the fairness of the outcome that matters most rather than the outcome itself, why bother competing at all? Worse, these efforts can produce inexcusable wastes of resources that will surely be invaluable in the more important situations sure to come somewhere down the line.

In one instance reminiscent of the Cold War thinking they generally criticize in the China context, Campbell and Sullivan write that winning that competition of social and economic models with Beijing counts significantly because the United States (in unspecified ways to be sure) will be much better off in a world mainly made up of free market democracies than in one dominated by countries that try to emulate China’s totalitarianism.

Their point is fortified by the leading role advanced surveillance systems play in China, which additionally means that the United States must stay ahead in these fields both in order to ensure military superiority when push comes to shove, and to defend itself against Chinese cyber-aggression. Moreover, intuition and common decency lead all Americans to root for the widest possible global triumph of political and economic freedom (realizing of course that the latter can be defined in many different ways).

Even here, though, the framing U.S. strategy as a competition with China can complicate as many choices as it clarifies. For example, a defining principle of Biden foreign policy is that, in the President’s words, “America’s alliances are our greatest asset” in world affairs. Yet if so, then the new administration, as with its Cold War predecessors, will need to recognize that many of its current and desired partners won’t be either political or economic democracies or even close (in Asia, Communist-ruled Vietnam and the quasi-at-best democracies of Thailand and the Philippines come to mind), and that today’s genuine democracies often feel free – as during the Cold War – to ignore or actually undermine U.S. interests (like Germany nowadays regarding both China and Russia).

Finally, it’s all too easy to conclude that the Biden-ites’ focus on second-order questions first and foremost represents a series of word games aimed at masking their inability or unwillingness to identify first-order issues. Take the President’s insistence that he’ll carry out an “extreme competition” with China. Even leaving aside that he immediately proceeded to trivialize the term by declaring that his approach will differ from Donald Trump’s by focusing on “international rules of the road” (another second-order priority), what exactly will be “extreme”? And how does his definition of extreme competition compare with the other varieties of competition detailed by Sullivan and Campbell?

Similarly, Blinken has just ventured that the U.S. relationship with China entails “adversarial,” “competitive,” and “cooperative” aspects. The last category is no mystery. But what’s the difference between the first and the second? Does the first refer to American interests that must be advanced or defended at all costs and risks, or at least major costs and risks? Does the second refer to those situations and interactions where fairness is overriding? 

Sullivan and Blinken in particular admit that they used to belong to the dangerously naive China engagement mainstream of the U.S. foreign and economic policy communities.  But until they, their colleagues, and the President stop talking about the China challenge as if it was a game, ample doubt will be justified as to whether they’ve yet become China realists.           

Im-Politic: On That Trump Inaugural Address

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American First, foreign policy, geopolitics, Immigration, inaugural address, inauguration, internationalism, John F. Kennedy, national interests, national security, Trade, Trump

Wow! That was some inauguration address from President Trump! We’ve literally never heard anything like it either from an incoming president or a new president or a long-sitting president or a former president. In fact, it is so no-less-than revolutionary that I almost hesitate to comment so soon.

But this is the blogosphere, so here’s the biggest takeaway I see so far: If Mr. Trump is as serious as he sounded about taking an “America First” approach to U.S. foreign policy, and trade and other international economic policies, he will not only turn the country upside down. He will turn the world upside down.

The main reasons are that literally since the Pearl Harbor attack, American leaders have defined this concept out of existence. That is, they have not believed that America’s interests can be separated in any meaningful and especially ongoing way from those of the rest of the world and its well-being. As I’ve written, this idea by no means reflects iron realities of America’s own situation, world politics, or America’s relations with other countries.

Instead, it springs from a distinctive ideology – best termed “internationalism” – that is as inherently subjective and imperfectly reflective of reality as any other ideology. And it’s fundamental assumption is that because the United States can’t be adequately secure or free or prosperous unless the rest of the world has achieved the same goals, the nation should assume whatever risks and expenses are necessary at least to generate progress regardless of the impact on America’s own circumstances. If you doubt this, recall (or take a look at) President John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than half a century ago.

The way I see it, Kennedy’s ringing rhetoric about America’s supposedly infinite resolve and ability to defend freedom – especially in its Cold War context – pushed the United States much faster toward disaster in Vietnam, and produced similar fiascoes for decades afterwards. It’s also led Democratic and Republican presidents alike to sacrifice big and highly productive chunks of America’s domestic economy (notably manufacturing) on behalf of liberalizing global trade, fostering third world economic development, and buying and keeping allies.

So I’ve long argued for the imperative of a completely different grand strategy. It rejects as both delusional and dangerous – because unnecessary – the practice of indefinitely striving for a more stable and/or more secure world. And it concentrates on capitalizing on America’s considerable, matchless, and geographically and geologically based potential for more-than-adequate levels of security and prosperity. As a result, I’ve contended that any U.S. initiative in world affairs meet a strict, national interest test: It must strengthen or protect or enrich the United States in direct, concrete ways. And it must do so within a finite period.

This is essentially Trump’s stated approach – which internationalist critics on both the left and the right, at home and abroad, have denigrated as small-mindedly “transactional.” Of course, they also believe that it will destroy arrangements that have prevented great power war and global depression since 1945. My main point here is not repeating that the president and I are right and the naysayers are wrong, but to emphasize just how radical this possible change would be.

At the same time, I stuck “possible” into that previous sentence for good reasons. First, even if this is Mr. Trump’s plan, it’s not going to be put into effect right away. Barring existential crises, like major wars or the Great Depression or Watergate-like scandals, changes this big rarely take place quickly. Second, powerful forces remain aligned firmly against President Trump – in Big Business and on Wall Street, in the two major parties, and in the mainstream media and the rest of the national chattering classes. Don’t think they’ll give in easily. Indeed, from their backgrounds, it’s quite possible that several members of the president’s cabinet and leading advisory circles could be opposed, too.

Third, because events so often call the tune, especially in national security, it’s entirely conceivable that a series of real or apparent crises will result in a Trump foreign policy that’s mainly reactive – and continues along the same strategic lines. And fourth, some of the president’s ongoing rhetoric itself – i.e., on exercising global leadership, or on escalating the war on ISIS in the Middle East, or especially on “reinforcing old alliances” (as promised in the inaugural address) – don’t mesh easily (to say the least) with the idea of America First.

More optimistically (from my standpoint), the chances of changing America’s course on trade and immigration issues sooner rather than later seem higher. The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal, brought to you by former Presidents Bush (the 43d) and Obama, has now been scrapped. Mexico has announced that negotiations to transform the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and to deal with other bilateral issues, will start next week. Presidents also have impressive authority to impose various types of tariffs unilaterally, as well as to overhaul American approaches on other economic fronts – for example, on further curbing investments in the U.S. economy from China. And don’t forget how that Mr. Trump can repeal the controversial Obama executive orders on immigration with the stroke of a pen.

Finally, it’s important to note that any big change, even necessary big change, rarely comes without tumult. In addition, you can count on the mainstream media to exaggerate its severity whenever possible, as well as to blame Mr. Trump for much domestic and foreign turmoil even when he’s not remotely responsible. Even an alpha dog personality like the new president might find the visuals unnerving. I just hope that he remembers his own view that the alternative – allowing festering problems to become genuine calamities (including foreign military quagmires) – is likeliest to be far worse.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: The Russia – and Broader – Reset That’s Urgently Needed

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China, Cold War, Europe, interest-based thinking, national interests, NATO, NATO expansion, nuclear war, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Putin, Russia, Soviet Union, spheres of influence, third world, threat-based thinking, Vietnam

Even though American policy could take a significantly different turn after Donald Trump becomes president, it’s all too likely that U.S.-Russia relations will continue heating up to worrisome temperatures for the foreseeable future. And although much American rhetoric on the subject has veered into hysteria, there’s no shortage of real-world obstacles to any new White House hopes for a cool-off – mainly Moscow’s undeniable determination to expand its influence along in Europe, where it now directly borders the U.S.-led NATO alliance. There’s also abundant (though not yet conclusive) evidence that Russia’s government tried to interfere with the 2016 American presidential election.

Russian president Vladimir Putin is by no means solely to blame for rising bilateral tensions. As I’ve written previously, much and possibly most of the problem stems from the American decision – supported by presidents and Congresses of both parties – to expand NATO right up to Russia’s doorstep after the end of the Cold War. And facing up to this wholly unnecessary, gratuitous effort to capitalize on Russia’s post-1990 weakness looks to me like the key to a genuinely successful reset of bilateral ties.

But ultimately, just as important for the United States as dealing with this urgent short-term problem is learning a lesson about how to think about its national interests that sadly was missed after the decades-long superpower struggle ended. The lesson: The key to foreign policy success is basing actions on identifying overseas interests of intrinsic, material importance, rather than on assumptions about actual or potential adversaries.

During the Cold War, American foreign policymakers across the board used both sets of criteria as lodestars – and created big, unnecessary trouble for the nation as a result. Washington reasonably treated the security of, for example, Western Europe and Japan as vital interests of the United States – because these regions were reasonably judged to be centers of critical economic and therefore military capability and potential. Losing them to Soviet influence could indeed have tilted the balance of global power against the United States in genuinely damaging ways. Moreover, an equally reasonable determination was made that Western Europe and Japan could be defended at acceptable cost and risk to America.

Tragically, however, this form of “interest-based” thinking was not applied to much of the developing world. In these regions of Latin America, Asia, and Africa, major defense commitments were taken on even though the countries in question were typically of little or no intrinsic interest to the United States – in terms of their actual or (realistically potential) wealth or military power, their raw materials, or even their location.

Instead, Washington based policy on the type of threat it concluded was posed by these countries, by ascendant forces within them, or by Soviet or Chinese designs on them or activity within their borders. Therefore, as I’ve written, Americans consumed themselves with debates over subjects like:

>whether rival superpowers’ activity in these areas was fundamentally offensive in nature or defensive;

>whether the relationships between these rival superpowers and local forces were simply alliances of convenience that meant little in the long run and could be easily broken up with appropriate U.S. overtures, or whether they were strongly ideological ties with real staying power; and similarly

>whether the local forces themselves should be seen simply as Soviet of Chinese pawns (and therefore needed to be fought on some level), or whether they were fundamentally nationalistic and on “the right side of history” (and therefore needed to be accepted and cooperated with).

These are all fascinating questions, and the resulting debate made fascinating reading – at least from an academicky or purely rhetorical standpoint. But they were dangerously off-base as fundamental determinants of American policy. The main reason: They all presented supposed answers to questions that are virtually unknowable – unless we imagine that certain foreign policy-makers and analysts are mind-readers or have highly reliable crystal balls. Disaster in Vietnam – a war never consistently, or even often, justified for intrinsically important reasons – reveals the price America can pay for indulging in these fantasies.

Defining specific, concrete U.S. interests is no science, either. But answers here are relatively knowable. Sure, subjectivity can’t be avoided. But Americans depend on our government to make judgments like this all the time. If the nation has decided otherwise, then it’s hard to make the case for any government at all.

How should this argument affect how Americans think about the new Russia challenges in Europe? Principally, they should stop focusing on whether Putin is a new version of the Soviet leaders who many thought aimed at worldwide dominion, or simply a nationalist feeling besieged by the West and seeking greater security along Russia’s frontiers. And they should start focusing on the intrinsic importance of the countries that Putin seems to be threatening.

In other words, how has Washington viewed Ukraine or Georgia or Moldova? What about new NATO members such as Poland or Hungary or the Baltic countries? Have they ever been placed in the category of vital interests, either from a national security or economic standpoint? Have U.S. leaders ever been willing to risk war on their behalf, even when the United States enjoyed a nuclear monopoly or overwhelming superiority? If the answers here are “No” (Spoiler alert: It is.), then has anything about these countries and their concrete and even perceived value changed since the end of the Cold War? In fact, has anything about them economically or strategically changed other than new NATO membership in some cases?

In my view, history makes obvious that the answer to those latter questions is “No” as well. Further, nothing has happened either in these parts of Europe, or in the American or Russian militaries, that has made them more easily defended by the West with conventional weapons alone than during the Cold War.

So it’s easy to see how more threat-based thinking can too easily lead Washington into a corner in which its only choice to defend all of its new treaty allies from some new form of Russian hegemony is to threaten nuclear war more loudly; and how interest-based thinking can lead to the alternative of offering to recognize how geography inevitably (however sadly) relegates these countries to a Russian sphere of influence, and seeking the best possible arrangement for them. And it’s even easier to see which alternative, however imperfect, is vastly superior.

Im-Politic: Why Trump-ism Could Have Staying Power

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2016 election, America First, Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, foreign policy, George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton, Im-Politic, internationalism, Jimmy Carter, John Kerry, national interests, national security, Obama, Peggy Noonan, Richard Nixon, rule of law, The Wall Street Journal, Trade

Welcome to the Age of Trump!

Since ages these days come and go a lot faster than previously in history, this one could well end in November, if he loses the presidency. Who, though, can doubt that, until then, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee will dominate the news cycle with his outsiders’ instincts and his matchless flair for publicity, and keep his presumptive rival, Democrat Hillary Clinton, the quintessential insider, continually on the defensive?

At the same time, the reasons for supposing that what might be called “Trump-ism” in American policy (and yes, I’m aware of all the contradictory views he still needs to resolve) is no flash in the pan are much stronger than widely realized.

Even given the implacable hostility he’s generated throughout the Mainstream Media, because of all the of digital ink spilled already on Trump’s remarkable rise, it’s hard to imagine anyone recently coming up with something fundamentally new – including me. But the Wall Street Journal‘s Peggy Noonan (who gained fame as a star speechwriter for Ronald Reagan) achieved just that objective in her April 28 column, when she wrote that the key to Trump’s appeal has been his supporters’ conviction that “he is on America’s side.”

Moreover, before you say, “Duh,” Noonan’s basic analysis ultimately also explains why Trump is so detested by the nation’s policy establishment across the political spectrum, along with the establishment journalists that flack for them – and why his approach to America’s challenges and opportunities holds much more promise than the reigning framework, especially in world affairs.

As you’ll see if you read the article, Noonan’s definition of “pro-American” entails much more than an avowed determination to defend and advance the nation’s interests. Of course, all public officials will call that their goal, and nearly all will sincerely mean it. What Noonan emphasizes, however, is the tendency of mainstream liberal, conservative, and centrist politicians alike to dilute that goal with numerous other considerations. These often are compatible with what’s best for America, or could be. But they’re not necessarily or intrinsically “pro-American” and can easily – and often have – compromised U.S. security or prosperity.

Noonan’s writes that Trump’s literal America First outlook “comes as a great relief to [his backers] because they believe that for 16 years Presidents Bush and Obama were largely about ideologies. They seemed not so much on America’s side as on the side of abstract notions about justice and the needs of the world. Mr. Obama’s ideological notions are leftist, and indeed he is a hero of the international left. He is about international climate-change agreements, and leftist views of gender, race and income equality. Mr. Bush’s White House was driven by a different ideology—neoconservatism, democratizing, nation building, defeating evil in the world, privatizing Social Security.

“But it was all ideology.

“Then Mr. Trump comes and in his statements radiate the idea that he’s not at all interested in ideology, only in making America great again—through border security and tough trade policy, etc. He’s saying he’s on America’s side, period.

I’d elaborate with two points. First, there’s a fundamental, bipartisan worldview and approach to world affairs underlying all these disparate positions. As I’ve explained, it’s called internationalism, and its bedrock tenet holds that America’s best bet for security and prosperity is pursuing what political scientists call milieu goals – literally trying to shape the world to make it safe for America.

As a result, especially since Pearl Harbor, this strategy has led the nation’s leaders on what I’ve called (especially in writing about national security and international economic policy) a search for abstract (a word Noonan uses in passing) standards to guide policy rather than simply asking what makes America and its people safer or wealthier. In fairness to the policy gurus and their acolytes, they insist that they’re simply taking a broader, more complex (sophisticated, etc.) and indeed more realistic view of U.S. interests. In particular, they claim to understand that the long run is more important than instant gratification.

That’s why even long before President Obama entered the White House, American leaders have been talking about strengthening peaceful global norms of behavior and the international institutions that should be administering them; about preserving relationships; about submitting to a “global test” before going to war (Secretary of State John Kerry’s words as the 2004 Democratic presidential candidate); about creating New World Orders and balances of power and “global structures of peace” (a Richard Nixon favorite); about freeing global trade and commerce to the greatest possible extent; about winning foreign “hearts and minds” (a Vietnam War campaign); about figuring out who’s on the “right side of history” (a big bone of contention during Jimmy Carter’s presidency); about eradicating global poverty; about controlling arms; about demonstrating credibility; about exercising or maintaining “global leadership.”

Of course, America and the world as a whole would indeed likely be much better off if much of this substantive progress (i.e., disarmament, trade liberalization) came to pass. But the main question facing policy-makers is rarely, “What would be advantageous” but “What is achievable at acceptable cost and risk?” Just as important is the question, “Compared to what?” For countries without alternatives, questing for a more congenial world environment is arguably the policy to follow – even though, paradoxically, however, their very lack of alternatives logically reflects a weakness that places this goal far out of reach.

As I’ve argued, however, the United States is in a different, and much more favorable, situation entirely, thanks to its geographically isolated location, its still dynamic social system, its sheer size, and its consequent economic power and potential for self-sufficiency. And logically, a policy of relying on variables that are relatively easy to control (i.e., a country’s own capabilities and actions) makes much more sense than a policy relying on variables that are relatively difficult to control (i.e., the capabilities and actions of others).

The arguments for pursuing the procedural aims of internationalism (those institutional goals) are even weaker for the United States. Given its military and economic superpower status and potential, yoking America to internationally agreed on standards of behavior seems likeliest to crimp valuable freedom of action, and hand influence over America’s fate over to powers that are either indifferent or hostile, without contributing on net to national security or well-being.

Also worth fretting about are time-frames (which are closely related to cost and risk issues). Let’s assume that even all of the above goals would benefit America sufficiently to warrant their pursuit. That still leaves the matter of how long the nation is supposed to wait for the benefits to start flowing. And nowhere is this question more important than in the international trade field, where Americans have repeatedly been told either (a) that their jobs and incomes should be sacrificed for the greater good by decisions to win and keep allies by handing them chunks of U.S. markets; and (b) that whatever economic pain liberalized trade is inflicting will eventually be more than offset by greater efficiencies or wider consumer choices or even more employment opportunities and higher wages (when foreign countries finally decide to open their markets).

It’s important to note that a “Trump-ian” crockery-breaking pursuit of greater and quicker policy benefits has no place in domestic politics. At home, Americans have developed a strong consensus on acceptable standards of behavior that justifies the supremacy of rule of law and its consequent proceduralism.  Nothing close to such a consensus is visible internationally.

But here’s something that’s at least as important to note: Even though it’s by no means certain that internationalism’s assumptions have been discredited, or that its promises have been broken, what is certain from the success this year of Trump as well as Democrat Bernie Sanders – another staunch critic of U.S. trade policy – is that Americans increasingly are out of patience. They’re demanding policies that safeguard their livelihoods and raise their wages now. And they’re in no mood to be told that such measures might violate World Trade Organization rules or antagonize allies whose own free trade bona fides are dubious at best – or offend populations in a dysfunctional Middle East that hasn’t exactly been showering Americans with affection lately.

Finally, the politics of the divide between Trump supporters and policy elites has been positively inflamed by the latter’s ability to avoid most of the costs and risks of glittering, quasi-utopian visions still all too far from panning out. Precisely because these electoral considerations dovetail so neatly with a policy shift strongly grounded in geopolitical and economic realities, unless U.S. security and international economic policies start delivering concretely for many more Americans very soon, the Age of Trump could have real legs.

Im-Politic: American Elites’ America Last Leanings

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E.J. Dionne, elites, Establishment Media, globalization, Im-Politic, incomes, middle class, national interests, offshoring, Steven Weisman, The Washington Post, Trade, trade agreements, working class

Although I don’t know E.J. Dionne well, the Washington Post columnist has always been one of my favorite journalists. It’s not his politics – they’re too orthodox lefty for me. It’s been his personality – always respectful and open-minded in our limited dealings, and equally gracious, tolerant, and genuinely curious in print, despite being highly opinionated.

That’s why it pains me to write that his newest offering widely missed the mark on the first-order issue of identifying the U.S. government’s top economic priorities. It’s only saving grace is underscoring how wide the philosophical and worldview gaps have grown between the the Establishment Media (at least much of it) and the general public (at least much of it).

Summarizing a new book on the new world economy, Dionne commends the author for “painstakingly avoiding dogmatism” and taking care “in laying out the often-agonizing choices” created by globalization. For example, he continues, the rapid growth of international trade and investment,

“has ‘elevated the living standards of hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people worldwide’ but also ‘has helped suppress the incomes of low-skilled middle-class workers in rich countries.’ Where do our loyalties lie? How do we balance obligations to our fellow citizens in the communities and countries in which we live against the interests of those far away?”

Excuse me, but “Time out”! “Where do our loyalties lie”? Not only should the answer be screamingly obvious to any American citizen, but just when did this become a legitimate question? It certainly would never be asked with any sincerity anywhere else in the world, except perhaps in affluent Scandinavia and elsewhere in guilt-ridden northern Europe. That undeniable reality alone should warn Americans against such cosmopolitanism. A U.S. leadership unsure whether its first obligations are to its own citizens is a poor bet to protect their interests adequately in a world where other major-power leaders aren’t nearly so confused.

Then there’s the democracy angle (which Dionne ironically deals with – from a different angle – in his following sentence). How many American voters do you know have elected public officials to pursue foreign interests – however morally compelling – over their own? Just as important, how many of those public officials themselves put America Last? At the least, aren’t they obliged to identify themselves clearly, so their constituents can know who they’re supporting? Private citizens of course have every right to set their own international priorities (provided, of course, that they don’t clash with or undermine official American diplomacy). But elected or appointed members of the U.S. government can’t legitimately enjoy this option – unless they’ve advertised their views before entering public life.

To be clear, I’m not arguing that the United States should never subordinate its needs and wants to those of others. Often in world politics, and politics in general, long-term gain can justify short-term pain. But if the pain is likely to last longer, and keep intensifying, the American people have a right to know about such consequences before the key decisions are made. Nor do I have any intrinsic problems with using U.S. assets to create overseas benefits for their own sakes (as opposed to self-interested goals like buying and keeping allies). But again, these choices need to be approved in advance by the voters. Otherwise, politicians would have free rein to be charitable and compassionate with Other People’s Money.

And in a sense, this is what Dionne and the author he lauds (former journalist-turned Washington think-tanker Steven Weisman) arguably, if unwittingly, are engaged in. For it’s much easier to call for more altruism in American policy when high incomes make such measures affordable. Unfortunately, the kinds of Americans who Dionne and Weisman at least recognize will bear the brunt of the price aren’t in this position.

There are also major policy reasons to doubt the wisdom of globalization policies that elevate raising foreign incomes over maintaining American incomes. As I’ve written repeatedly, offshoring-friendly U.S. trade policies that have had these effects bear much responsibility for the last financial crisis, which harmed the populations of first and third world countries alike. But that’s an argument that’s reasonably debatable on the merits. Acting as if foreign populations’ interests should outweigh Americans should be completely out of bounds – again, unless the public actively approves. And the fact that thoughtful commentators like Dionne even view this option as deserving consideration, whether as an “agonizing choice” or not, tells you most of what you need to know about why so many working- and middle-class voters nowadays are so furious at their nation’s elites.

Im-Politic: Is Jeb Bush Now Singing His Swan Song?

Tags

2016 elections, Animal House, Christians, Donald Trump, foreign policy, Im-Politic, Israel, Jeb Bush, John F. Kennedy, Middle East, national interests, national security

If you (rightly) think that Donald Trump has made some bizarro remarks during this bizarro – and still young – presidential campaign – get a load of what his Republican rival Jeb Bush has just said:

“If this election is about how we’re going to fight to get nothing done, then … I don’t want any part of it. I don’t want to be elected president to sit around and see gridlock just become so dominant that people literally are in decline in their lives. That is not my motivation….I’ve got a lot of really cool things I could do other than sit around, being miserable, listening to people demonize me and me feeling compelled to demonize them. That is a joke. Elect Trump if you want that.”

Talk about pissy! This kind of “I’m taking my ball and going home” bellyaching sounds an awful lot like a prelude to a withdrawal – not that you’ll see Big Media journalists trying to suggest Bush’s imminent demise the way they’ve continued to talk up this scenario for (the front-running) Trump. (Check out the panel discussion on yesterday’s edition of Meet the Press for the latest instance.)

Yet even the former Florida governor has acknowledged his fall from inevitability status, and the need to raise his game dramatically to avoid a truly historic implosion. Hence his decision to scrap the national juggernaut model – in favor of a leaner, more focused (and, necessarily, more affordable) campaign apparatus. And of course, this course change has attracted the expected coverage. What’s been neglected, however, is how the message transformation Bush is also counting on seems spectacularly tone – & substance – deaf.

As the Washington Post has reported, “Bush plans to subtly adjust his message by presenting himself as someone who can ‘fix’ a broken Washington and by focusing on national security….” Americans definitely want to see the nation’s dysfunctional governing system repaired.

But a foreign policy-focused presidential run? Please. And not just because, as the conventional wisdom holds, “zeroing in on national security, however, Bush invites a discussion about the Iraq legacy of his brother, former president George W. Bush.” Instead, the main obstacle faced by Jeb! is that his evident international strategy has much less to do with preserving national strategy than with pursuing elitist visions of an American national mission – whose relation to the safety and well-being of the nation’s citizenry is far from obvious.  Here’s a new Bush TV ad on the subject: 

“America has led the world, and it is a more peaceful world when we’re engaged the right way. We do not have to be the world’s policeman. We have to be the world’s leader. We have to stand for the values of freedom. Who’s going to take care of the Christians that are being eliminated in the Middle East? But for the United States, who? Who’s going to stand up for the dissidents inside of Iran that are brutalized each and every day? But for the United States, who? Who’s gonna take care of Israel, and support them, our greatest ally in the Middle East? But for the United States, no one. No one is capable of doing this. The United States has the capability of doing this, and it’s in our economic and national security interest that we do it. I will be that kind of president and I hope you want that kind of president for our country going forward.”

No one listening to this clarion call can reasonably doubt Bush’s sincerity – even if the “world leader/world policeman” reference suggests some punch-pulling. It’s also hard to deny its emotional appeal, invoking nothing so much as former President John F. Kennedy’s declaration that Americans should and would “pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”

But that’s what Bush doesn’t seem to get. This isn’t 1961. The folly of that hubris has now been tragically exposed. Although they clearly don’t like regular reminders on the nightly news of vast regions of the planet disintegrating into chaos or exploding into anti-Americanism – or both – they’re also now sophisticated enough to understand that overseas disorder isn’t necessarily a harbinger of disaster for this fortunately insulated country. At a minimum, they’re no longer willing simply to trust leaders who describe various interventions, humanitarian and otherwise, as serving the nation’s interests. They’ve learned to say, “Show me.”

Perhaps more important, I’m skeptical that Bush’s big donors regard this pitch as a winning message. If they have the slightest feel for public opinion, they may well conclude instead that it’s what Otter in Animal House memorably called “a really futile and stupid gesture.” And although Jeb Bush may indeed be “just the guy to do it,” that doesn’t sound like an investment they’ll want to keep funding.