Mister, We Could Use a Man Like Herbert Hoover Again

In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal former British Prime Minister Liz Truss calls for American leadership:

For as long as most of us can recall, the U.S. has led the free world. During the Cold War, for example, it was American power that successfully held off the communist threat from the Soviet Union. Working in tandem with British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, President Ronald Reagan was unflinching, calling the Soviet Union an “evil empire.”

The world would benefit from more of that kind of American leadership today. I hope that a Republican will be returned to the White House in 2024. There must be conservative leadership in the U.S. that is once again bold enough to call out hostile regimes as evil and a threat.

Too many of us in the Western world became complacent about the defeat of our communist enemies and believed that victory was everlasting for freedom and democracy. In reality no such victories are permanent.

The West allowed China to join the World Trade Organization as a developing nation—on beneficial terms it enjoys to this day—as President Xi Jinping proceeded to make himself president for life, clamped down on democracy and freedom of speech in Hong Kong and presided over human-rights abuses in Xinjiang province.

Meantime Iran is backing terrorists such as Hamas and developing its own nuclear capability—all while the U.S. waits in vain for Tehran to sign the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action nuclear deal. And Vladimir Putin’s territorial ambitions are ever more hostile.

Is it any wonder these regimes have proceeded with impunity when their actions haven’t properly been called out by others? The failure to enforce, for example, the red line in Syria, and America’s withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, emboldened these regimes further.

IMO PM Truss is painfully confused. In many of the examples she cites American leadership was indispensable in making the mistakes she criticizes. The United States promoted the idea of WTO membership for China under the misapprehension that economic liberalization would naturally be followed by political liberalization. That has rather apparently proved incorrect. It was an American president who refused to cross the red line he had set in Syria.

In other cases American leadership was not followed by our alleged allies. Iran developed its nuclear program with the enthusiastic support of German companies, delighted to sell them dual-use materials they were unable to produce internally. That was important in China’s astonishing economic growth as well. Germany maintained a trade surplus with China long after many other countries were running deficits by selling China factories and modern industrial equipment.

And the Republican frontrunner at present is not a conservative. I’m not sure what Donald Trump’s political philosophy is if anything. I think he’s an egoist.

I think that Ms. Truss’s piece is a nostalgic plaint for American hegemony. I repeat what I have said before: American military might is downstream from American economic might. At this point China’s industrial economy is significantly larger than ours. What does she have in mind? Airlifting American MBAs to China to screw things up there?