Posted on 07/14/2018 11:25:39 PM PDT by CondoleezzaProtege
Charles Kupchan – professor at Georgetown University- argues that Trump’s “America First” is essentially the original pre-World War II/Pearl Harbor version of “American exceptionalism.”
Kupchan discussed the metamorphosis of American exceptionalism from one of spreading democracy by example, to one of spreading democracy by intrusion and invasion. He argued that prior to World War II, American exceptionalism meant insulating the American experiment from foreign threats and international entanglement, spreading democracy by example, embracing protectionism and fair trade...
Kupchan believes that the US should shift its role as the world’s policeman to one of an arbiter of great power peace, emphasizing diplomatic rather than military engagement outside core areas.
Similar to Kupchan, Flockhart argues that at a time when the West is losing its material primacy and ideological dominance, with devolution of power from Western hegemony to increasing regionalism, identity (Muslim, Western, Asian, Latin American, African) is likely to be the major defining feature of new orders.
While there has been much literature on a coming multi-polar world with the decline of the West and “Rise of the Rest,” and seeing different powers or poles still within the US-led liberal order, Flockhart’s argument differs in that she sees there will be various orders, with the Western liberal order being one order in a pool of different orders. This is akin to the Cold War international system when different economic orders co-existed – one was the US-led Western liberal order undergirded by US military power, another one was the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, and a third economic order with the Non-Aligned Movement.
In the face of political cleavage at home and a transatlantic rift, it is all the more important for Trump’s America to come to some consensus and cooperation with others in this decentered global system...
(Excerpt) Read more at atimes.com ...
Interesting, Given our State Department essentially aserts a pivot in modern diplomacy began in 1947 with a cable from a rising star in the foreign service. Th IG s assumes a post WWII world where economic diplomacy lost sight of factual economic factors and thus focused entirely upon a military standoff against armed factions like armies rather than Spam. Our diplomats in the forties may have suffered from a black eye syndrome given they were not instrumental in preventing WWII. Had the Marshall Plan been focused on capitalism rather than allowing socialism to become the untouchable reality in Europe, we today might be 50 years ahead technically.
Pure unadulterated liberal bullshit served on an academic poo-poo platter of unrealistic dreams and disproven ideals.
The US was an isolationist nation after WW1, which is one reason why Fascism arose in Germany and perhaps Italy without any Western opposition.
Wilson pulled US troops out of Russia/Siberia just as the White Russians were winning there, thus given Lenin and Trotsky a respite and eventual victory over the only real organized and armed opposition to the communists. The rest is history and a hundred million unmarked graves.
We underestimated Hitler and the Japanese, though a few US Navy intelligence people knew that Japan was up to no good, but nobody would listen.
Europe was a basket-case after WW1 so if we had a decent, realistic presidential leader back then, we might have started an early “Marshall Plan” to bring Europe back together again and help jumpstart the constituent nations economies, thus denying the communists and fascists a “foothold issue” on which to embed themselves into those nation’s politics, and eventual take power in Italy, Germany, Austria, Croatia, parts of France, China, and Indochina.
Kupchan and Flockhart, as well as Bacevich (who has become more unhinged over the past 10-15 years or so), are proponents of a “touchy feelly world” that would spell the end of America, democracy, and western civilization. The Red Chinese view western civilization as a lesser one; the Russians want the old Czarist Empire rebuilt with a red flag flying over it; and the Moslem Extremists dream and plot for world domination and dhimmitude.
These three professors are some of the reasons why our children are so undereducated, brainwashed from the Left and pseudo-Pacifist liberal cowards of academia, and so unaware of what is going on in the real world, aided and abetted by a knowledge deficient, leftist biased mainstream media, and cowardly religious leaders who think that accommodation with our enemies is the equivalent of a “real peace and freedom”.
This article should have been entitled “The Three Mouseketeers of Appeasement and World Blindness”.
I would offer this analysis:
1. President Trump is reshuffling military ‘bluffs’ and necessity to have troops on foreign soil. If this ‘Kim-deal’ were to work out and the 37k US Army troops were removed (say in five to seven) years....a footprint is removed from Asia.
In NATO, if the President establishes a different relationship with Russia (having them as a competitor instead of an enemy)...why have the US military footprint in Europe?
You could end up in 2024....for the first time since 1942, where we aren’t in some faraway land, fighting someone else’s little war.
2. On the trade front, all of this tariff talk will eventually lead to a free-tariff understanding. He’s not banning anyone...he’s just saying we want real competition, and not this fake stuff of the past fifty years. He’ll achieve it in the end.
3. Finally, he’s bypassing the news media (not just the US), and with the Twitter feed....he’s taking the message beyond the US. Go look at emphasiasm in the UK this week over his commentary. European journalists are waiting on every single word and writing long pieces on him. Even if they go negative....because of the amount of disbelief on news....they immediately distrust the news media’s message.
I wouldn’t even call this a new world order. It’s just a reshuffling of the cards, and the bluff is being called out by the public on the anti-Trump talk.
If we left half the countries we’re unnecessarily in and re-assessed what we’re doing in the other half we could rebuild our infrastructure, do much more research & development, improve education, help the homeless and veterans and reduce the drug epidemic.
How would it have been a good idea to waste American treasure on a continent that, at the time, still hadn't gotten out of part of the human condition that is conquest, to help them rebuild?
Trump's demands for Nato and Germany to shape up can be taken as the diplomatic equivalent of a landlord's notice to cure defaults or be declared in breach of contract. As Trump pointed out, the problem is not just that Nato members are not spending enough on defense, but also that the Russian-German Nordstream II natural gas pipeline will boost Russian finances and economic and political power at the expense of other Nato members and of the alliance as a whole.
Most likely, within a decade, Nato and the EU will fragment into factions aligned with the US, Britain, and France, or with Russia and Germany. Based on energy policy, Germany is becoming an ally of Russia, not the United States, and Germany's political and security alignments will of necessity follow its energy policy.
The EU is/was a mini of that goal.
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Bull$hit. USA first.
If the US left they’d scream as well. You just can’t win with these Libshyts.
We should have reverted to this position in 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet Union. We have no need to go around the world looking for dragons to slay. That is especially true now with our growing energy independence thanks to frakking. Its simply not our problem if some warlord in the back of beyond decides to slaughter his people or his neighbors. Nor is it our problem if the Yurps wail and moan that we’re no longer providing their defense for them. We can still protect our vital national interests and key REAL allies, but we need not clean up everybody else’s messes for them anymore. The national socialists and the state socialists have been defeated.
Exactly correct. They would wail and moan if the US withdrew...probably even more than they’ve wailed and moaned about the US being involved. Too bad. I would give the Yurps exactly what they’ve long claimed they wanted - and they would hate it. Too bad. We’ve wasted enough of our people’s blood and treasure pulling them out of the ditch time and time again.
When the President said NATO members aren’t pulling their weight, he is 100% correct as well - I can tell you right now Canada does sod all and yet relies heavily on US protection, it’s a source of national embarrassment for many of us up here and anyone who says otherwise is totally full of it.
The ONLY reason the rest of the NATO countries enjoy any freedom is because of US might and those are the facts whether lefty libshyts like it or not.
Gee. He left out blocking any muzzies or Hispanics from entering via legal or illegal immigration. The two worst influences on America who have an entirely different agenda in mind for its future.
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