Michael
Hirsh writing in Politico
* * *
* THIS
IS A LONG ONE, FOLKS... SO GET A DRINK... MAYBE A SNACK... AND THEN TUCK IN!
(*WINK*)
For all
the lamentation about the level of rhetoric in this Trumped-up election year,
the race between Donald Trump and all-but-certain Democratic nominee Hillary
Clinton is already shaping up to be a debate over America’s global role of the
kind we haven’t had for decades, perhaps since the last “America First”
movement of the late ‘30s.
And it
is a debate that some foreign-policy experts suggest is long overdue, even if
it tends to distress U.S. allies around the world.
("The
unthinkable has come to pass," Germany’s Die Welt wrote after Trump became
the presumptive GOP nominee this week.)
* IN THE
IMMORTAL WORDS OF MY UNCLE ART - WHO DROVE HIS FRIGGIN' TANK ACROSS AFRICA AND
EUROPE DURING WW2 - "FUCK THE GERMANS!"
It is also a debate that, were they still around to
witness it, a majority of past U.S. presidents going back to George Washington
would probably welcome — and most of them, believe it or not, might well take
Trump’s side.
* DAMN RIGHT THEY WOULD! ANYONE WITH EVEN A PASSING
KNOWLEDGE OF U.S. HISTORY SHOULD BE WELL AWARE OF THIS!
In his big foreign-policy rollout speech last week...
* THIS ARTICLE IS DATED MAY 5TH.
...Trump declared it was time “to shake the rust off of
America’s foreign policy” and drop American pretensions about remaking the
world in our image any longer.
Or as he put it... in an obvious reference to the failed
invasion of Iraq and intervention in Libya... America should abandon the
“dangerous idea that we could make Western democracies out of countries that
had no experience or interest in becoming a Western democracy.”
Brazenly calling his agenda “America First” — never mind
that was the name of the notorious pre-World War II isolationist movement — he
also directly challenged the 70 years of bipartisan consensus...
* YA EVER NOTICE HOW "BIPARTISAN CONSENSUS" IS
JUST ANOTHER WAY OF THE ELITES ASKING "HOW CAN WE SCREW 'EM TODAY?"
(*SMIRK*)
...over the post-World War II global order that America
created.
Trump suggested that the world needs America far more
than the other way around...
* AND HE'S RIGHT!
...and he effectively warned U.S. allies...
(*SNORT*)
...that without a new global deal that demands a kind of
tribute paid to Washington for its defense umbrella (he wants them to “prove”
they are our friends) he’d walk away from the world’s trade table, so to speak.
* SOUNDS FRIGGIN' REASONABLE TO ME!
“We will no longer surrender this country or its people
to the false song of globalism,” Trump said. “The nation-state remains the true
foundation for happiness and harmony. I am skeptical of international unions
that tie us up and bring America down.”
(*STANDING OVATION*)
Predictably, Trump’s views have outraged commentators who
lament the allusions to the pre-war, anti-Semitism-laced isolationism of
Charles Lindbergh and other members of the America First movement.
* Er... NO; BULLSHIT; ABSOLUTE CRAP. AS THE AUTHOR NOTES
IN HIS OPENING, THE "ALLUSIONS" ARE ACTUALLY TO HISTORIC U.S. FOREIGN
POLICY AND OUR FOUNDERS' IDEALS!
His statements have also invited mockery from allies of
Clinton, who as a pro-interventionist former secretary of state sees Trump’s
turn away from the world as a naive and dangerous anachronism.
* FOLKS. YA GOTTA UNDERSTAND. THE AUTHOR IS A LIB. HE
CAN'T HELP BUT DISTORT THE HISTORY AS WELL AS TRUMP'S VIEWS. TRUMP ISN'T
CALLING FOR AMERICA TO "TURN AWAY FROM THE WORLD," TRUMP IS CALLING
FOR AMERICA TO LOOK OUT FOR AMERICA FIRST... FOR AMERICANS FIRST. IT'S
CLINTON AND THE OTHER NEOCONS WHO DESERVE MOCKERY... AND DISDAIN.
* AND CONTEMPT...
* AND SPEAKING OF CONTEMPTIBLE...
Madeleine Albright, a mentor to Hillary on foreign policy
and, as a refugee from Nazi Germany, a lifelong and passionate advocate of the
idea that America is the “indispensable nation” in overseeing global order,
accused Trump of historical illiteracy. “Maybe he never read history or he
doesn’t understand it,” former Secretary of State Albright told reporters in a
conference call organized by Clinton’s campaign.
* "...A MENTOR TO HILLARY ON FOREIGN POLICY..."
* FOLKS... DOESN'T THAT JUST TELL YOU EVERYTHING YOU NEED
TO KNOW?
(*SMIRK*)
Trump does appear to be giving short shrift to — and
perhaps does not fully comprehend — a lot of the history that underlies
America’s modern approach to the world.
* Er... FOLKS... I UNDERSTAND IT. I'VE GOT A FRIGGIN'
DIPLOMA ATTESTING TO THAT FACT. THE AUTHOR IS FULL OF SHIT.
He doesn’t always make sense when he talks about foreign
policy, calling at once for steadiness and unpredictability, a military buildup
and a major war on ISIS but also restraint in the use of U.S. force overseas.
* FUNNY... WHEN LIBS CONTRADICT THEMSELVES THEY CALL IT
"NUANCE."
(*SMIRK*)
* SERIOUSLY... FOLKS... TRUMP'S FOREIGN POLICY IDEAS MAKE
PERFECT SENSE. NOT THAT THEY'RE PERFECT! IT'S JUST THAT HIS VISION IS NOT ONLY
VALID, BUT AGAIN, TOTALLY IN KEEPING WITH AMERICAN HISTORICAL NORMS.
In March, he embraced NATO in one interview and then
declared it “obsolete” six days later.
* IT'S COMPLICATED.
(*SHRUG*)
* BEYOND THAT... AGAIN... THE AUTHOR QUOTES WHAT HE WANTS
TO QUOTE AND SOMETIMES - LIKE NOW - HE DOESN'T EVEN BOTHER WITH ACTUAL QUOTES
BUT INSTEAD JUST THROWS OUT A ONE-LINER MEANT TO DISPARAGE TRUMP.
Trump speaks of upgrading “NATO’s outdated mission and
structure — grown out of the Cold War — to confront our shared challenges,
including migration and Islamic terrorism,” without appearing to understand
that NATO has been engaged in that very enterprise for at least a decade,
especially in Afghanistan.
* NOT VERY SUCCESSFULLY AS IT'S TURNED OUT...
(*SMIRK*)
* BUT, HEY... THAT'S THE MAJOR PROBLEM IN DEALING WITH
FOLKS LIKE THE AUTHOR WHO DON'T ACTUALLY TAKE SUCCESS VS. FAILURE INTO ACCOUNT.
(*SNORT*)
Trump is cavalierly dismissive of the international
alliance and trading system that grew up in the ruins of World War II, and
which many experts would say helped to win the Cold War and preserve American
dominance.
* FIRST OF ALL... NO... TRUMP IS NOT "CAVALIERLY
DISMISSIVE." SECOND OF ALL... NOTE THAT TIRED OLD LINE "WHICH MANY
EXPERTS." WELL FOLKS... HOW HAVE THE "EXPERTS" BEEN DOING
LATELY?
(*SPITTING ON THE FLOOR*)
Trump has also said things so offensive — openly
embracing torture and other war crimes, such as killing the wives and children
of terrorists, promising to ban all Muslims from entering the U.S. and to round
up and deport every one of the 11 million illegals — that even many Republicans
are horrified, saying such policies would undercut whatever moral authority
America still has on the world stage.
* LET ME COUNT THE WAYS THE AUTHOR PAINTS A FALSE PICTURE...
(*ROLLING MY EYES*)
* NAH. ON SECOND THOUGHT... THIS ARTICLE IS TOO LONG
ALREADY. SUFFICE IT TO SAY... TRUMP CARES ABOUT WINNING. TRUMP CARES ABOUT AMERICA
WINNING. TRUMP CARES ABOUT KEEPING US SAFE.
Some of his proposals, like imposing 45% tariffs on
Chinese goods, could seriously disrupt or even destroy the world trading
system, causing a global depression.
* GOTTA LUV THE "COULD." LET ME REPLY BY SAYING
"WON'T."
(*SMILE*)
But Trump is also correct in suggesting that the current
global system is an aberration in American history, that it may not be
sustainable forever under current conditions, and that America should focus
more on fixing our own economic house for a long time to come (a view shared,
incidentally, by Barack Obama, who loves to say “it’s time to focus on
nation-building at home”).
The U.S. share of global defense spending has soared to
more than a third of the total, while the American economy has dropped in size
to one-quarter of global GDP; America spends more in total than the next seven
largest countries combined: China, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Britain, India, France
and Japan. And to what end exactly? No one can quite say.
“Since the end of the Cold War and the breakup of the
Soviet Union, we’ve lacked a coherent foreign policy,” Trump said in his
speech. This is also arguably true.
(*SMILE*)
From Bosnia to Kosovo to Iraq, America has bounced around
from idea to idea and intervention to intervention — from the idea of
“humanitarian war” to the idea of “preventive war.” There is nothing even close
to the ragged consensus that existed over Cold War containment.
So Trump may be an “id with hair,” as Hillary Clinton
calls him, but at least when it comes to his foreign policy views, he’s an
all-American id.
* AND I'LL TAKE THAT BACK-HANDED COMPLIMENT - BECAUSE
IT'S TRUE! TRUMP LOVES A*M*E*R*I*C*A!
His “America First” campaign theme has far deeper roots
in the history of this country than most pundits are acknowledging.
* MOST PUNDITS ARE MORONS.
Indeed, Trump shouldn’t be dismissed as a mere apostate
in his view of America’s role in the world; against the backdrop of all 239
years of America’s existence, he represents more a reversion to the American
norm.
* YEP...
Trump, in condemning one of the worst instances of
American overreach in U.S. history, the Iraq invasion, declared in his speech:
“The world must know we do not go abroad in search of enemies.” The line was an
allusion to the famous injunction of John Quincy Adams in 1821 that America
"does not go in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to
the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of
her own.”
(Adams went on to warn, somewhat presciently, America
should know that “once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they
even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself, beyond the
power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual
avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of
freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from
liberty to force.”)
Read today: Iraq. Trump is consciously invoking this
tradition — hence his line about the futility of trying to forcibly transform
nations, like Iraq — and the Adams allusion was quite intentional, a senior
Trump campaign official told me. “Several sections of the speech were intended
as a return to several foreign policy directives from our founding generation,”
he said. Among them were a “Hamiltonian emphasis on having financial
independence through manufacturing,” and “seeking to avoid complex foreign
entanglements.”
* GO, TRUMP, GO!
Most modern internationalists, both Democratic and
Republican, have long since relegated John Quincy’s injunction to history, that
of a 19th century America that was still a developing country and wanted only
to be left alone. The internationalists have been, until now, so dominant and
sure of themselves and the post-war system that in recent years no one has
questioned it (though the unilateralist George W. Bush administration did an
effective job of largely ignoring its institutions — especially NATO — in its first
term).
* MORE BULL...
Unwinding this system today is almost unthinkable:
American power overlays every region of the planet, and it supplies the control
rods that restrain belligerents and arms races from East Asia to Latin America
(if not always successfully, as we’ve seen in the Mideast and Afghanistan).
Nor does Trump appear to be going so far as to say he
wants to withdraw from the global system. “To all our friends and allies, I say
America is going to be strong again. America is going to be a reliable friend
and ally again,” he said in his speech — but he does seem willing to
renegotiate the terms and conditions for it, as well as America’s role in it.
* "WILLING?" TRY... DEMANDING!
When Adams gave his “monsters abroad” speech, he was only
channeling the fundamental beliefs of the Founders, starting with his father,
John Adams, and his mentor, Thomas Jefferson, who warned against “entangling
alliances” abroad.
And of course George Washington, who wrote in his
farewell address on Sept. 17, 1796 (though the actual words were probably drafted
by Alexander Hamilton and James Madison): “Our detached and distant situation
invites and enables us to pursue a different course. … Why quit our own to
stand upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any
part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European
ambition, rivalship, interest, humor or caprice? It is our true policy to steer
clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world ... ”
* GOD BLESS OL' GEORGE!
Think about that: the Father of Our Country — with the
imprimatur of Madison and Hamilton (he of the expansive view of federal power) —
declared America’s “true policy” to be avoiding “permanent alliances” abroad.
(*NOD*)
And yet that’s exactly what we’ve got 220 years after
Washington’s declaration, tons of them — not to mention permanent membership in
global organizations such as the United Nations and the World Trade
Organization that we Americans had the largest hand in creating.
Princeton scholar John Ikenberry, author of "Liberal
Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order,"
says that starting in 1946 the United States added a new ally — a nation with
which it had some kind of security relationship — every five years or so.
Today, it has a total of 62 permanent allies, including many from the former
Soviet bloc. (Washington also has a fairly recent strategic partnership with
India, another world power.)
* HOW MANY FOREIGN NATIONS ARE YOU FOLKS READING THIS
GONNA SEND YOUR KIDS... GRANDKIDS... NIECES AND NEPHEWS... GODCHILDREN... TO
"DEFEND?"
* HELL... HOW MANY OF YOU FOLKS WHO BELIEVE ISRAEL IS THE
51st STATE HAVE SPENT TIME DEFENDING ISRAEL AS A MEMBER OF THE IDF?
Most historians and experts see this Western alliance
system as a great triumph of American foreign policy (not least because it helped
bankrupt the Soviet Union as Moscow tried to keep up with the more open Western
economies), one that keeps delivering rewards.
* WOW. I GUARANTEE THAT THIS CLOWN DAMNED REAGAN'S
FOREIGN POLICY ALL DURING HIS TWO TERMS.
* IN ANY CASE... THE SOVIET UNION IS NO MORE.
Thanks in part to this system, a quarter century after
the Cold War, the U.S. still has no real challenger as the lone superpower on
earth...
* BULLSHIT. WISHFUL THINKING. HEAD IN THE SAND HAPPY TALK.
...and U.S.-created global institutions like the U.N.,
International Monetary Fund and WTO provide layers of multilateral cover that
serve to take the raw edge off American hegemony, making it acceptable to much
of the world.
* FOLKS. WE'RE BANKRUPTING OURSELVES. AND AS FOR
EUROPE... WELL... READ THE PAPERS, FOLKS.
(*SIGH*)
That is highly unusual in the history of great powers,
which in the past have always provoked new rivalries and alliance-building
against them. The overall prosperity created by this worldwide system, despite
the inequities of globalization, has provided a powerful and enduring
motivation for nations to remain part of it. In order to gain power and
influence, countries must prosper; in order to prosper, they must join the
international economy.
* TRUMP WANTS US TO BE PART OF THE INTERNATIONAL ECONOMY
- THE PROFITABLE PART! THE WINNING PART! HE WANTS AMERICANS TO WIN.
Everyone inside this international system gets richer and
stronger, while everyone outside it grows relatively weaker and poorer. Even
Russia and China appear to realize this, which is one reason why Vladimir
Putin’s fitful efforts to form a permanent “balancing” alliance with Beijing
never amount to much, another boon to Washington.
* THIS GUY IS LIVING IN A FANTASY WORLD. FOLKS... AGAIN...
WE'RE BANKRUPTING OURSELVES... DEINDUSTRIALIZING OURSELVES... FLOODING
OURSELVES WITH THIRD-WORLDERS... I DOUBT THE DOLLAR WILL BE THE RESERVE
CURRENCY IN FIVE YEARS - CERTAINLY NOT IN TEN.
(*SIGH*)
But it is fair to ask, as Trump is, why we are simply
continuing, through inertia and with little change, a system that was built up
to thwart a set of threats that no longer exist.
Maybe this vast, expensive global order was necessary
against Hitler, and later Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev — the very real
threats of tyranny, totalitarianism and international communism in the 1940s,
‘50s, ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s — but is Putin’s Russia, or Xi Jinping's China,
really enough of a threat to justify the same expense and effort?
* ACTUALLY, CHINA IS OUR MOST DANGEROUS ENEMY...
(*PAUSE*)
* OUTSIDE OF OURSELVES AND OUR OWN POLITICIANS THAT IS.
It’s also fair to ask — as Trump does, in his blunt way —
whether U.S. allies have grown a bit spoiled and barely notice any longer who’s
holding that defense umbrella over their heads, allowing them to continue
massive spending on their welfare states.
Even Obama calls them “free riders.”
According to a report by NATO last summer — mentioned by
Trump in his speech — only five of the 28 total NATO members are meeting the
alliance’s goal of spending 2% of their gross domestic product on defense: the
U.S. (at 3% of GDP), Great Britain, Poland, Greece and Estonia.
Trump is also questioning fundamental assumptions that no
major party nominee-in-waiting (I’m not counting Pat Buchanan, Trump’s most
recent ideological forebear) has seriously second-guessed for nearly 25 years:
free-trade norms that were deployed against communist economies that no longer
exist; the almost-religious assumption that globalization is always good, never
bad.
* HERE'S THE TRUTH, FOLKS:
The flat-out opening of capital and labor markets to
lower cost competitors abroad has plainly helped create an angry dispossessed
middle class that no longer feels connected to their own economy.
(*SILENCE*)
In his usual way this week, flirting with incoherence,
Trump again promised a simplistic but enticing cure, declaring at a rally: “We
will be the smart country from now on, not the dummies, OK? Not the dummies,
because this is a movement that's going on.”
Translated, what Trump is calling for is nothing less
than a return to an American normalcy that frankly has always been somewhat
isolationist — or at least extremely leery of over-involvement abroad.
* AMERICAN NORMALCY! SOUNDS GOOD!
“America First” is Trump’s way dismissing what many
Americans once viewed — and many still do — as a necessary evil: the entire
globalized system of which America is in effect a guarantor. Trump would prefer
to return home, unless we can make a profit by dunning our allies and trade
partners.
* AGAIN... SOUNDS GOOD!
In talking about a return to historical norms — “many
Americans must wonder why our politicians seem more interested in defending the
borders of foreign countries than their own,” Trump said in his speech — Trump
is tapping into a powerful national myth, the tradition known as American
Exceptionalism.
* NO "MYTH," FOLKS; IT WAS REAL. INDEED, I'D
SAY IT WAS REAL UP THROUGH THE 80's.
This is the idea that America was — and still is — a
glorious experiment in nation-building that must be kept apart from the
corrupting influences of the world, especially those bad old Europeans; that
America was conceived, uniquely in history, as an idea — an apotheosis of the
best ideas about the Rights of Man coming out of the Enlightenment — and that
God blessed the new nation with the luxury of conducting this grand experiment
on its own continent with two broad oceans to protect it.
* DAMN STRAIGHT, BABY!
As Thomas Paine wrote in “Common Sense” in 1776: “We have
it in our power to begin the world again.”
* AND DOESN'T "COMMON SENSE" SOUND LIKE THE WAY
TO GO FOLKS? (IT SURE DOES TO ME!)
Abraham Lincoln also harked back to this founding
mythology when he asked, in 1837: “From whence shall we expect the approach of
danger? Shall some transatlantic giant step the earth and crush us at a blow?
Never! All the armies of Europe and Asia could not by force take a drink from
the Ohio River or make a track on the Blue Ridge in the trial of a thousand
years. If destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher.”
* AND HONEST ABE WAS RIGHT!
Why are retreading all this old history and having this
debate now?
* BECAUSE THOSE WHO IGNORE HISTORY ARE DESTINED TO REPEAT
IT!
It’s not just the arrival of Trump on the scene; it’s
also the mood he has tapped into — the reason his candidacy took off. Trump is
exploiting much of the self-doubt already set into motion by the launching of a
completely unnecessary war in Iraq, which seriously damaged the postwar
alliance-and-trading system by grossly abusing America’s position within it.
The Iraq War was made possible only because American
governments after the Cold War had kept the mantle of “leader of the free
world,” and George W. Bush convinced himself that his war was part of that
tradition. It was not, and in the aftermath of that disaster a pendulum swing
back to John Quincy Adams’ restrained “well-wisher” tradition was probably
inevitable.
* NO MENTION OF HILLARY CLINTON... WHO VOTED FOR THE
WAR... OR BILL CLINTON... WHO SUPPORTED IT.
(*SMIRK*)
* AGAIN, FOLKS... WHEN READING STUFF LIKE THIS IT'S JUST
AS IMPORTANT TO NOTE WHAT THE AUTHORS DON'T MENTION AS IT IS TO READ WHAT THEY
ACTUALLY WRITE.
This could be a problem for Hillary Clinton — whom Trump
has begun hammering, as Obama did before him in 2008, for voting to authorize
the Iraq invasion — if it turns out that Trump has better captured the American
temper.
* THANKS YOU! (BUT NOTE HE MENTIONS IT AS AN
"OPTICS" PROBLEM FOR CLINTON; HE'S NOT DRAGGING HER OVER THE COALS FOR
HER ACTUAL VOTE.)
(*SPITTING ON THE GROUND*)
Clinton fully supports this global system and America’s
oversight of it; she flew around the world several times as secretary of state
to defend the just exercise of American power.
* "JUST" EXERCISE...???
According to Mark Landler’s new book, "Alter Egos:
Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and the Twilight Struggle over American Power,"
this isn’t just political expediency; she genuinely has the instincts of an
interventionist hawk. She will no doubt continue to defend the system heart and
soul, as will her husband, Bill Clinton, who was known in his time as the
"globalization president.”
(“There is no longer a clear division between what is
foreign and what is domestic," he said at his first inaugural in 1993, and
reiterated the point in his final foreign policy address in 2000; both
sentiments now appear to be out-dated in this time of Trump.)
Hillary Clinton will have a good case to make. If a
Trumpian America really did withdraw behind its oceans...
* AGAIN WITH THE NONSENSE...
(*SIGH*)
* THAT'S NOT WHAT TRUMP'S BEEN SAYING... (AND NO DOUBT
THE AUTHOR KNOWS IT.)
...what would we likely see unfolding overseas? Probably
a restoration of the old power jostle that has sent humankind back to war for
many millennia.
Suppose, with the end of the Soviet Union, America had
mysteriously disappeared as well, or more realistically had retreated to within
its borders, as it had wanted to do ever since the end of World War II. Japan
would likely have nuclearized and bid for regional hegemony with a nuclearized
China. Europe would have had no counter-balance to yet another descent into
intraregional competition, and lacking the annealing structure of the postwar
Atlantic alliance may never have achieved monetary union. Russia would have bid
for Eurasian dominance, as it has throughout its modern history and now appears
to be doing again.
* FOLKS. AS I TYPE... EUROPE IS BEING LITERALLY INVADED.
IN THE TIME IT'S TAKEN ME TO "BARKERIZE" THIS ARTICLE, I'M GUESSING
WE'VE ADDED BILLIONS OF DOLLARS TO THE NATIONAL DEBT.
Most important of all, the global trading system, which
the United States virtually reinvented after World War II, would almost
certainly have broken down, killing globalization in its infancy.
* AND...??? SO...???
Perhaps that might have been good for some Americans,
especially the manufacturing workers who have watched their jobs lost by the
thousands to cheap overseas competitors. But most data show that globalization
has created a far wealthier (if unequal) world overall.
* AMERICA FIRST! AMERICANS FIRST!
And the absence of a globalized, open economy in turn
would have accelerated almost all of the above developments. A major war of
some kind would be extremely likely. And given the evidence trail of the past
century, the U.S. would likely end up being pulled in again—this time, to a
conflict in a high-tech, nuclearized and very lethal age of warfare.
* THIS GUY IS WRITING A FAIRY TALE WITH THE NARRATIVE
PULLED FROM HIS ASS.
(*SHRUG*)
* IN ANY CASE, WE'RE NOT TALKING BUILDING A TIME MACHINE
AND UNDOING HISTORY; WE'RE TALKING ABOUT SAVING THIS FRIGGIN' COUNTRY!
Instead, today, the American-led international system has
managed to restrain the behavior of the next two great powers, China and
Russia, through such institutions as the WTO and, yes, even the despised U.N.
Security Council. China, for all of its aggressive behavior in its own backyard
in East Asia, especially the South China Sea, has been a fairly benign player
globally. It has cooperated in containing Iran’s nuclear program through the
U.N., contributed to peacekeeping in Africa, and it has been prevented from
declaring unity with Russia because of all its international trading interests,
especially in the United States.
* SUFFICE IT TO SAY I HAVE MY DISAGREEMENTS WITH THE
AUTHOR'S DECLARATIONS.
Russia under Putin has also restrained its roguish
behavior in spite of its move into Ukraine; it too signed on to the Iran deal
and is negotiating in Geneva over a truce in Syria.
* FOLKS... IF OBAMA AND CLINTON HADN'T SET THE MIDDLE
EAST ON FIRE THERE'D BE NO NEED FOR A TRUCE AND THE RUSSIANS WOULDN'T EVEN BE
INVOLVED!
Clinton will argue all this — playing up her part in it,
of course — and more. But if she’s perceived as too hawkish — and too much of a
pro-globalization one-worlder — it still could hurt her at the polls. A new Pew
Research Center poll finds that most Americans say it "would be better if
the U.S. just dealt with its own problems and let other countries deal with
their own problems as best they can," according to Pew. Surveys in recent
years have shown a decided shift among Americans, a majority of whom now view
globalization as a negative.
* AND... THEY'RE... RIGHT...!!!
Whose view will win?
* TRUMP'S, I HOPE! THE FOUNDERS', I HOPE!
There are limits to how much change a president can
really effect, and inevitably even a Trump administration would probably
maintain most of Washington’s now-entrenched role of global overseer. But it’s
worth asking how much he would be able to pare it back or disrupt it —and whether a badly divided America can, or
wants to, sustain this role forever. One thing is certain: Trump truly is
standing on the shoulders of giants in questioning it. And perhaps it is long
past time, given the warnings of our Founding Fathers (after all, they were
right about a lot of other stuff), to engage in a true debate about the
domestic costs of globalism.
* THERE'S MORE. THE AUTHOR GIVES A (DISTORTED) HISTORY LESSON.
I'VE PROVIDED THE PRIMARY LINK SO FEEL FREE TO CONTINUE READING ON YOUR OWN
WITH NO FURTHER "BARKERIZATION."
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