American foreign policy

There is an endless stream of commentary on what a Biden administration will do in foreign and domestic policy. Some writers seem prescient, others seem like gossip and speculation. However, you need not be a Beltway policy wonk to understand the moral, spiritual and ethical outlook of the Establishment elites who will be on Biden’s staff — and therefore to know what their policy prescriptions will entail.Classical political philosophy understood that all political problems are downstream from moral and spiritual problems. And, in the 18th century, Jean-Jacques Rousseau destroyed the West’s understanding of morality and spirituality, setting the stage for our current confusions.

It’s of course premature to even speculate as to how the new administration will fashion a foreign policy. But enough declarations have been made to give an outline, so let us imagine the policies that might emerge.The Founders never really envisioned foreign relations being a major preoccupation of America when they drew up the US Constitution. ‘Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none,’ Thomas Jefferson famously admonished. In a document that brilliantly balances the government’s power and reach between executive, legislative and judicial branches, the executive is left with virtual control over making foreign policy, for little of that was expected.

Americans have never been sure of their standing in the world, and the world has never been sure of Americans’ standing. In their first century as a nation, Americans believed that their principles made their civilization not just different but also better than Europe’s. Meanwhile, the intellectual and political leaders of Europe were unconvinced that America was a civilization at all. In their second century as a nation, other, older civilizations were obliged to admit that Americans were not just different: they were better at modern life. The Americans achieved this recognition first by the force of their industrial and military power, and then by the flattery that other civilizations could become equally forceful and seductive by adopting the American way of life.

America’s longest war has just entered its 20th year. The US invaded Afghanistan in October 2001 to overthrow the Taliban and destroy al-Qaeda. Now, nearly a decade after the death of Osama bin Laden, the Afghan war continues. And everyone expects that if the Americans ever leave, the Taliban will return to power. Yet the Taliban who take charge will not be the same as those who harbored bin Laden. The median age in Afghanistan is around 19 years old: half the country’s population was born after the war began. The US is not fighting a limited reservoir of Taliban militants; it is fighting a cultural force that has renewed itself over a generation.

In just over a week, the Empire hopes to strike back. Joe Biden personifies the foreign policy of endless war that Democrats and neoconservatives pursued for 25 years, from the end of the Cold War until the election of Donald Trump in 2016. Biden voted for the biggest and most foolish intervention of that era, the Iraq War of 2003. He has not so much repudiated this act as tried to exculpate himself for it, claiming that in voting to authorize military force he didn’t think military force would be used. This is not credible on its face, and not the way anyone understood the vote at the time. It was as clear a vote for war as any vote has been since World War Two.

Dear America,Two-hundred-and-forty-four years ago, the resolve, courage, and wisdom of your Founding Fathers forever changed the course of history. For the first time, with the ratification of your Declaration of Independence, mankind was offered an unmatched societal ideal. Human beings were recognized for what we truly are by nature: all created free and equal, endowed with unalienable rights derive from our Creator. With your Constitution, your Founders sealed these God given rights, and protected them by instituting a limited form of self-government along with a robust justice system.This, America, is what makes your nation exceptional. It is why you have stood as a beacon of democracy and hope for all subjugated peoples over the past two centuries.

Why should the United States prop up the defense of Germany, the richest country in Europe — and against Russia, Germany’s closest energy partner?Two reasons. One is what the sociologists call ‘path dependency’. The US has had troops in Germany since the winter of 1944, and the Cold War and Nato turned military occupation into strategic alliance. Since 1990, a vast machinery of budgets and employments, civilian and military, has perpetuated a strategy for a conflict that no longer exists. As British soldiers used to sing, ‘We’re here because we’re here because we’re here.’ This is not a good reason for risking American lives.The other reason that American forces are there is because they have to be somewhere near there.

This article is in The Spectator’s March 2020 US edition. Subscribe here. What would a Michael Bloomberg foreign policy look like? A total smoking ban across the Middle East seems imminent, even if it does risk spawning a new generation of pro-hookah jihadists. Fresh sanctions would likely be imposed on enemies of the West, including Iran and salt. Air superiority would be prioritized, especially as it pertains to illegally landing one’s personal helicopter in midtown Manhattan. Beyond that, it’s anyone’s guess. Bloomberg has spent most of his career codifying class snobbery through petty regulations, and, while that’s a potent recipe for being annoying at home, it doesn’t really lend itself to a coherent agenda abroad.

Tulsi Gabbard, Democratic congresswoman of Hawaii and lefty presidential candidate, appeared on Tucker Carlson Tonight on Monday. 'Here’s the bottom line: it’s really about the unchecked power these big tech monopolies have over our public discourse,' she said. 'We’re talking about Google, Facebook, Twitter, these are big tech monopolies that have this unchecked power.' With that, Gabbard, a pro-choice, slightly Hindu, fiercely anti-war Democrat earned yet more credibility among Fox News viewers. For the left and right, increasingly, Big Tech is the bête noir.  Sneering centrists might put Gabbard’s appeal on the Right down to a very simple fact: she’s a looker. That’s not lost on anyone.

‘Eight years ago, I argued that Russia was our number one geopolitical adversary,’ Mitt Romney said this week in his maiden Senate speech. And who could forget Barack Obama’s burn in the televised presidential debate of 2011? ‘The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back,’ Obama said. Four years later, with the US and Russia at loggerheads and Russian ‘collusion’ a theme of the 2016 election, Romney was vindicated. But it was Obama who was the outgoing president.

Donald Trump secured his third choice for his third Chief of Staff on Friday. Though the budget pointman, Mick Mulvaney, has only been tapped for the top job in an ‘acting’ capacity – implying a probationary period – there’s every reason to think Mulvaney could prove a success. Mulvaney, a former Congressman from South Carolina, has proved indispensable for Trump in his early years in office, taking jobs that the president has struggled to fill. While the latest is chief of staff, Mulvaney also temporarily headed the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau from late last year into 2018. But some hope Mulvaney secures his latest job for the long haul. Spurned by Nick Ayers and Chris Christie, Trump has an incentive to show stability.