Given the state of the economy and the parlous effects of the Deficit From Hell, any other voter focus would be tantamount to a total loss of reason on the part of We the People. While easy to understand--and to agree with--this narrow gauge view will bring very real difficulties in its wake, if, as many expect, or at least hope, the Republicans, including those bearing the Tea Party Seal of Conservative Approval, gain control of the House and pick up a half dozen or more seats in the Senate.
Absent a very real, very high profile threat to the American land and way of life, foreign relations and its cognates, diplomacy and national security, have never gained great traction for long with most of We the People. For much of our corporate existence we have been quite comfortable with the central point of Washington's Farewell Address, the one about "no entangling alliances."
Not until 1917 did we take a direct hand in the quarrels of Europe and then we did so only under the presidentially sponsored misapprehension that by spilling American blood in the mud of Europe's trenches could we "make the world safe for democracy." Our president also assured us that by fighting this war we would end the scourge forevermore.
Of course, these halcyon ends did not come to pass. One of our reactions, a reaction which held particular popularity with the Republican Party of those decades, was the withdrawal to our own hemisphere. Isolation felt good but it removed the potential of American influence having any effect upon the plans and policies of resurgent Germany or Imperial Japan.
Countries which held goals antithetical to the national and strategic interests of the US were exempted from considering the US as a factor as Nazis, Fascists and Japanese militarists wove their webs of expansion through war. The war we were powerless to stop in its infant stages was brought to an end only after the most massive armed conflict in human history.
The reality of World War II coupled with the perceived hostility and expansionist agenda of the Soviet Union dragged We the People from our long lasting relationship with the Farewell Address and into a new global order of alliances, permanent American garrisons in far away countries, and the necessity of using all the numerous instruments of national power in a consistent, coherent way to assemble, maintain, and lead a coalition of states in opposition to the Soviet Union, the Peoples Republic of China, and their clients.
This adventure in global leadership was long, bloody, expensive, distorting to domestic and economic affairs, and lasted a half century. At no time was American leadership of the Free World actually popular among We the People. It was seen as a necessary duty, or imposed by the reality of self-defense, or, by some few, as a noble service to humanity. But, it was never popular, never a burden cheerfully born, never a welcome exercise in global muscularity.
When the Soviet Union collapsed and the Great Wall of the Warsaw Pact tumbled, Americans were relieved. The talk of the day was of "a peace dividend" and the enjoyment of the new freedom from global responsibility given to us by the fall of the Red Menace. Academics and other unworldly types gushed paeans to the "end of history" as we sought to resign our status as the only Great Power standing.
Much ink was spilled on the "new world order," an order which would be designed and implemented by the US, the only "superpower" and an eleemosynary one at that. The ugly mug of reality again intruded--the world generally and some states (or non-state actors) would not allow the US either to abdicate as a Great Power or accept an unchallenged Pax Americana.
Perhaps there did exist a short window of opportunity for the US to construct a "new world order" but that chance, if it ever did exist outside of the wishing and imaginations of some American politicians, went by unused, or, perhaps, used unwisely. No stable "new world order" has emerged to replace the stable bi-or tri-polar one of the late Cold War.
As a result the world--which includes the US much as some Tea Party favorites such as Dr Rand Paul might desire--has stumbled into the most dangerous international dynamic since the one which existed a century ago on the verge of the First World War. Back then the global political order centered on and was maintained by a Pentarchy--Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary. Around the fringes of these Great or Near-Great Powers were a series of small, ambitious, and inherently destabilizing lesser states.
Today the world has a functional "Quadarchy" consisting of the US, the EU, Russia, and China. On the fringes there are a number of small, ambitious, and inherently destabilizing states as well as a new phenomenon, the non-state actor having access to sufficient funds, recruits, and advanced technology weaponry as to rival states in their ability to make mischief. The rivalries within the Quadarchy provide numerous opportunities for both lesser states and non-state actors to gain and retain support so as to render the collective Quadarchy impotent as a force for status quo stability.
The rivalries within the Pentarchy of a century ago provided the context in which ill-advised but national interest serving policies of one or more of the lesser states produced a war of devastating proportions. World War I was both massively destructive--it caused the demolition of no fewer than three empires--and so inconclusive that it assured a sequel thirty years later.
Today, the frittering away, the purposeless wastage of American resources and diplomatic influence served in an unintended way to lessen the capacity and the political will of the US to act in its own best interests. The reduction of the US economically, militarily, and in terms of political will has had the effect of enhancing the power of the other members of the Quadarchy. It has also had the consequence of providing both inducements and opportunities for the lesser states to act in ways which are both dangerously destabilizing and threatening of American national and strategic interests.
In terms of both the capacity and will to employ the instruments of national power in pursuit or protection of core national and strategic interests, the US is essentially at its eleventh hour. We no longer have sufficient resources, including time, to waste influence, to eschew effective leadership, to fail to prioritize the truly critical national and strategic interests from those activities which might be nice or feel good but are not central to our existence in a world agreeable to our values and imperatives.
Foreign policy is rather like the deficit. Foreign affairs as well as the deficit require living in the future. Both require looking ahead to see what the long term effects upon our corporate and individual existence will be. Both demand understanding where we are today, where we will be if nothing changes, and what must be altered now if tomorrow is to be to our liking.
As Harry Hopkins famously observed to his rival in the FDR administration, Harold Ickes, "Harold, people live in the short-term." How right he was. This is why the issues of jobs and the current economy top the list of concerns for We the People. That hazy, vague monster, the deficit, is barely comprehended as to its capacity to destroy our futures. Foreign affairs, foreign relations, diplomacy, even war or peace, are far more vaporous in the minds of most of us. They exist too far in the future and in too nebulous a way to engage our interest, let alone to galvanise our votes.
Pace Mr Rothkopf, the members of the Tea Party, or Republicans for that matter, are not more pointy headed, more concerned with the affairs of the trailer park than those of the world than are liberals from New York or Los Angeles. The Tea Party types, like the liberals they detest so much, are good examples of We the People, as Harry Hopkins observed: they live in the short-term not the long view required for effective practice of foreign relations.
The real bitch comes in that the long-term inevitably becomes the short-term. The distant, virtually unseeable future always morphs into tomorrow. But, in foreign affairs, by the time that happens, it is too late. Often too late for anything other than war.
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