Following Up: A Lippmann Gap Still Could be a Big Threat to Biden’s Foreign Policy

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allies, America First, Biden, China, defense budget, Donald Trump, Following Up, Lippmann Gap, Russia, Theodore Roosevelt

Late last month, I worried here that President Biden could open up a dangerous “Lippmann Gap” in U.S. foreign and national security policy by proposing a defense budget incapable of supporting his expansive ambitions. Yesterday, the administration came out with its first official budget request, and although it lacks the detail to justify firm conclusions, I’m still worried.

The nub of the problem is this: The President has repeatedly announced his intention to reverse course from his predecessor’s America First strategy and return U.S. foreign policy to its decades-long pre-Trump sweeping global activism and engagement. And since Mr. Biden’s “America is back” declarations clearly entail at the least a determination to fill an allegedly vital gap left by Donald Trump, and probably to pursue an even more expansive agenda, logic and common sense alone dictate that he request much more defense spending than at present.

It’s true that Pentagon budget and the military forces it supports are by no means the only tools available to the nation to carry out its international aims. It’s also true that defense spending can be made more effective without boosting overall spending levels by spending existing funds more efficiently and wisely. The latter’s potential won’t start to be revealed until the more detailed budget request is made later this year.

But for now, what is known is that Mr. Biden will ask for some 1.6 percent more for the Defense Department proper for the coming budget year (fiscal 2022) than the resources allotted to the Pentagon during the Trump administration’s final year (fiscal 2021). When adding in national security funds not provided to the Department itself (mainly for maintaining the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile – which is handled by the Energy Department), the Biden increase is also about two percent over the funding appropriated during the final Trump year.  (This figure is calculated from here and here.)

Knowledgeable observers of defense spending may note that these Biden fiscal 2022 requests are considerably bigger than the Trump fiscal 2021 requests. These sought just 0.1 percent more for the Pentagon itself than was spent in 2020, and 0.34 percent more for that larger national security budget including the non-Pentagon money. (These figures are found here and calculated from here and here.) 

But Mr. Biden charged that the Trump national security agenda was sorely inadequate. So it’s natural that he’d want more military spending than his predecessor. What’s noteworthy, however, is that the Biden request isn’t that much more. In fact, if inflation takes its expected course this year, this latest military spending proposal will leave the Defense Department and the other agencies responsible for national security with less money when adjusting for rising prices than they spent last year.

Moreover, even in terms of “top-line” spending figures, this Biden request is hardly the last word. The Democratic Congress is practically certain to make further cuts.

Again, wiser spending could fill some of this gap. But what the Biden administration has said about its priorities isn’t all that encouraging, either. Just one example (but a big one): The administration stated yesterday that its military spending request “prioritizes the need to counter the threat from China as the [Defense] Department’s top challenge. The Department would also seek to deter destabilizing behavior by Russia.”

It’s still possible, as suggested above, that moving funds into U.S. China- and Russia-related accounts from lower priority accounts could accomplish these aims even though overall outlays decline in real terms. But in the very next sentence, we learn that the administration isn’t confident that these moves would be the answer (assuming they’re even being contemplated). For it claims that

“Leveraging the Pacific Deterrence Initiative and working together with allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific region and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, DOD [the Defense Department] would ensure that the United States builds the concepts, capabilities, and posture necessary to meet these challenges.”

That is, help from allied countries supposedly will be crucial to countering the Chinese and Russian threats. But not only have these countries skimped on their own defense for decades. For the time being, the President has decided not to press them overly hard to share more of the defense burden (as documented in my original “Lippmann Gap” post).

To repeat: I’m not calling for more U.S. military spending. In fact, I’d like to see Pentagon budgets shrink. But this position reflects my judgment that the nation can be adequately safe and sound by doing less in the international sphere. As long as President Biden wants to do more – not only than me, but also than Donald Trump – the only responsible policy would be to boost military spending. Anything else amounts to inverting former President Theodore Roosevelt’s approach of speaking softly and carrying a big stick – which history teaches never, ever ends well.

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Following Up: A Pathway Out of the History Wars

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African Americans, American Museum of Natural History, Andrew Jackson, Christopher Columbus, Confederate monuments, Following Up, imperialism, Lafayette Park, Matthias Baldwin, Native-Americans, racism, slavery, The New York Times, Theodore Roosevelt

I wasn’t originally planning on returning to the Confederate monuments/history wars issue so soon, but it’s the gift that keeps on giving for a blogger, and the last day or so has been filled with new developments.

Oddly, I’m going to tack positive today – despite the continuation of attempts at vandalism and mob violence (as took place in Lafayette Park, right across from the White House, last night); despite the recent example of both vandalism and rank stupidity in Philadelphia; despite the ongoing pigheadedness and possibly worse of the stand-patters, who seem to believe that removing memorials on public grounds even to the vilest racists always amounts to an “erasure of history”; and despite the virtual certainty of more of all of the above to come.

I’m feeling optimistic today because my beloved native New York City, and an institution that gave me some of my most terrific childhood memories, has just pointed the way toward a genuinely adult way to handle these contoversies.

As you might have read, the City’s American Museum of Natural History has just decided to take down the statue of Theodore Roosevelt that’s stood in front of its Fifth Avenue entrance since 1940. The rationale – flanking the mounted T.R. are statues of a native American and an African warrior whose depiction on foot supposedly symbolizes white supremacy and imperialism.

During all my years living in and around Manhattan, I never regarded the statue as a symbol of anything except the 26^th President’s well known egotism and conspicuous lionization of “the strenuous life,” as well as of the central role played by his family in establishing the museum and turning it into a world-class institution to begin with. And I certainly never looked at the native American and African warrior figures as T.R.’s inferiors. In fact, they each struck me as being handsome and dignified.

At the same time, the more I’ve thought about it, the more dubious and specifically paternalistic the whole tableau has appeared (and I am a huge Theodore Roosevelt fan). So I can understand how others, especially non-whites, could be deeply dissatisfied and downright offended.

So I’m far from condemning the museum’s decision as yet another monument to stupidity or political correctness run riot, or what have you. But the more I read about these moves, the more encouraged I was. First, the museum (which is privately run, but receives some funding from the City and New York State, and therefore is partly accountable to the public), didn’t simply resolve to haul the statue away. In order to honor Roosevelt’s justified reputation as a conservationist by adding an entire exhibit hall to the parts of the museum already named for the former President In other words, the museum recognized that T.R., like many of the relatively easy History War cases I’ve written about, was more than an imperious explorer and white hunter.

An even more promising strategy for honoring such figures has been suggested by Roosevelt’s descendants. As reported in The New York Times story linked above, one of his great-grandsons, a museum trustee, issued this statement on behalf of the entire family:

“The world does not need statues, relics of another age, that reflect neither the values of the person they intend to honor nor the values of equality and justice. The composition of the Equestrian Statue does not reflect Theodore Roosevelt’s legacy. It is time to move the statue and move forward.”

Other than striking an unusually wise and magnanimous tone, the statement suggests the following exciting possibility (and one I also hinted at in my discussion of the Pierre Beauregard statue in New Orleans): Why not replace the current statue with one that’s not a “relic of another age” and “move forward: with one that reflects the dimensions of Roosevelt’s legacy (in this case, his devotion to naturalism) that no patriotic American could possibly question?

Moreover, why not use the same approach to the Abraham Lincoln statues in Boston and in Washington, D.C., which have been criticized because they include a kneeling newly emancipated slave? Wouldn’t such monuments better honor Lincoln if they portrayed the freeman figure standing up and, perhaps, shaking the former President’s hand?  

As for statues of more legitimately controversial figures, they should be seen as candidates for more somber modifications that would nonetheless both accomplish needed educational aims without overlooking the case for singling them out for public display.

For example, it’s true that Christopher Columbus literally expanded humanity’s horizons and helped set in motion the long sequence of events that led to the United States’ founding. But he and his brother also mistreated the peoples they found in the Caribbean brutally, and (inadvertantly to be sure) opened the door to centuries of mass death, oppression, enslavement, and other forms of misery for the Western Hemisphere’s entire indigenous population. Maybe representations of these crimes and tragedies, which sadly are baked into U.S. history as well, could be erected besides Columbus statues? 

And why shouldn’t the various monuments to Andrew Jackson (like the statue that attracted the Lafayette Square vandals’ ire) similarly be replaced with a representation acknowledging that he was not only a national military hero and savior of the union (during the 1832 nullification crisis), with some legitimate claim as an advocate of working class Americans, but also, as critics charge, a slave-owner and active supporter of such servitude – not to mention an almost inhuman scourge of native Americans. 

When it comes to public art, for the sake of the nation’s spirit and self-respect, there’s nothing wrong with and indeed considerable value in a little romanticizing or glorification of individuals meriting much credit for creating an American national story that’s unmistakably a success story from every possible standpoint. But where the legacies are less overwhelmingly positive, it would be equally worthwhile to develop ways of displaying major virtues alongside important warts in statues, monuments, and plaques.

The challenges to be met are preserving the symbolic power of displays commemorating figures as genuinely heroic as inherently flawed human beings can possibly be, courageously facing facts about more ambiguous legacies, and calling and weeding out genuine villains such as traitors.

That is, all involved in creating America’s public art – which should be all Americans and their elected representatives – should avoid the temptation to champion the kinds of caricature bound to fuel considerable disillusionment and even contempt. And by meeting this challenge, today’s Americans would leave an invaluable legacy of their own for future generations.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Obama’s Dangerously Mixed Message on Afghanistan

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Afghanistan, chemical weapons, credibility, Middle East, Obama, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, red line, Syria, Taliban, Theodore Roosevelt

Theodore Roosevelt, one of my favorite presidents (though not beyond criticism), made one of his lodestars, “Speak softly and carry a big stick.” President Obama really needs to take heed, even though his presidency ends in less than a year-and-a-half. For he repeatedly follows exactly the opposite course, and in the process raised big questions about his own credibility in international affairs and his country’s.

You’d think the president would have learned this lesson following his humiliating decision to declare Syria’s use of chemical weapons in suppressing its ongoing, metastasizing rebellion to be a “red line” that would trigger American military retaliation – and his failure to pull the trigger. Yet you’d be wrong, at least judging from his announcement that he’s scrapped his plans to cut the U.S. troop deployment in Afghanistan roughly in half by late 2016, and will keep the deployment at just under 10,000.

Instances of the president “speaking loudly”? In his remarks, Mr. Obama insisted that he would “not allow Afghanistan to be used as safe haven for terrorists to attack our nation again” as was the case leading up to the September 11 strikes. He added that “Afghanistan is a key piece of the network of counterterrorism partnerships that we need, from South Asia to Africa, to deal more broadly with terrorist threats quickly and prevent attacks against our homeland.” In other words, the stakes of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan couldn’t be higher – they involve directly protecting the security of the American homeland.

And then came the small stick – or at least that’s the impression the president unavoidably conveyed to domestic and foreign audiences, allies and enemies alike – especially elsewhere in the Middle East. For Mr. Obama several times emphasized that American soldiers were engaged only in two “narrow” missions – training Afghan forces and “counterterrorism” efforts against Al Qaeda “remnants.”

Moreover, in a completely befuddling statement, the president reminded assembled reporters, “As you are well aware, I do not support the idea of endless war, and I have repeatedly argued against marching into open-ended military conflicts that do not serve our core security interests.” But if protecting America itself against large-scale terrorist attacks isn’t a “core security interest,” what is?

And if despite the Mr. Obama’s hint, keeping terrorists in Afghanistan at least incapable of launching such attacks is part of American security’s core, why raise the specter of open-ended conflicts in the first place? If anything, defending a vital interest would logically lead a president to prepare the nation for even more protracted involvement – especially given his acknowledgment that “in key areas of the country, the security situation is still very fragile, and in some places there is risk of deterioration.”

Near the end of his statement, President Obama made clear that he hopes to square this circle by fostering a political settlement to the Afghanistan war that would stem from talks between the current government in Kabul and “the Taliban and all who oppose Afghanistan’s progress….” But even here, the incentive he dangled most prominently before these extremists was “the full drawdown of U.S. and foreign troops from Afghanistan.”

What Mr. Obama apparently hasn’t asked himself is why they would seek to achieve that goal through a give-and-take process of negotiation when he’s all but told them they can eliminate this obstacle to their victory simply by waiting him out?

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Know-Nothing-ism on Trade from The Wall Street Journal

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Abraham Lincoln, American history, Asia, free trade, George Washington, import substitution, investment, Mark Twain, Obama, protectionism, The Race to the Bottom, Theodore Roosevelt, Trade, Wall Street Journal, {What's Left of) Our Economy

It’s clearly time for Wall Street Journal editorial writers to start reading more Abraham Lincoln and Mark Twain – specifically the adage (attributed to both) that it’s “Better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.” Because the paper’s broadside on trade today makes clear its management doesn’t understand the first thing about American economic or political history, and perhaps even less about Asia.

According to the Journal, opponents of President Obama’s trade liberalization agenda “are invoking the fantasy that buying foreign goods means fewer American jobs. This has become union orthodoxy in the U.S., as it used to be in India and other places that stagnated under ‘import substitution.’ This was the dominant theory of development in the 1950s and 1960s that rejected imports in favor of domestic-made products. East Asia rejected this policy in the 1970s, and India began to do so in the 1990s, with spectacular increases in living standards.”

Even more emphatically, Journal editors conclude that “Candidates who oppose free trade don’t belong in the Oval Office.”

Here’s what these pundits don’t seem to know. First, among the “other places” that have “rejected imports in favor of domestic-made products” was the United States during the 19^th century. Yes, the same 19^th century during which the nation became the greatest industrial, technological and agricultural powerhouse in human history. And living standards became the envy of the world – attracting hitherto unheard of tides of immigrants.

Consequently, the Journal’s criteria for the U.S. presidency would have excluded George Washington, Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt, among others.

And has East Asia really rejected protectionism? Not even close. The region’s opening to trade and investment has been highly selective at best – and targeted. The region’s most successful governments have encouraged imports that build up their countries’ productive capacities (like capital goods), and discouraged purchases of foreign consumer goods. As for investment, Asian countries from China to Malaysia have attached conditions on incoming capital ranging from technology transfer to domestic content standards to requirements that certain shares of the resulting output be exported. My book The Race to the Bottom documented these policies exhaustively.

Obviously, this isn’t the 19^th century, and the United States isn’t East Asia. But for interlocking reasons including the energy revolution, the immense size of its domestic market, its own recent economic out-performance, and the heavy net export dependence of most of the world’s leading trading powers, the case for a more discriminating U.S. approach to foreign trade and a greater emphasis on economic self-sufficiency remains compelling today.

Many arguments for further trade liberalization are still compelling, too. But its advocates are better advised to describe domestic and international economic history correctly, rather than traffick in myth and advertise their ignorance.