In his latest Wall Street Journal column Walter Russell Mead laments the end of the “liberal international order”:
The 20th anniversary of 9/11 finds American foreign policy in a peculiar place. The U.S. hasn’t stabilized the Middle East, permanently remade Afghan society or ended jihad. But no terrorist has managed to inflict another attack on the scale of Sept. 11 on the American homeland. As a result, the War on Terror has receded to the margins of U.S. politics as fears that the liberal world order is crumbling rise to the fore.
The central pillar of Washington’s post-Cold War grand strategy was a quest to build a liberal international order by promoting free trade and secular democratic governance under the aegis of American power around the world. The U.S. foreign policy establishment still believes not only that this strategy offers the best way to secure American interests, but that it represents humanity’s best hope to survive. In the era of nuclear weapons, the age-old cycle of great powers going to war with one another threatens the entire human race and must end, while global problems like climate change can only be addressed through the establishment of effective global institutions.
The more perceptive will reflect that the death knell for such an order if there ever was one started sounding long ago. NATO’s bombing of Serbia, led by the U. S., started more than 20 years ago. The invasion of Iraq was another nail in the coffin. The final nail was not abrogation of “global leadership” by the U. S. but the U. S.-led bombing of Libya in 2011. The hallmark of the “liberal international order” was adherence to international norms and “global institutions” which we had established for that purpose. None of those activities had UN Security Council approval. Such UNSEC approval as there was for the bombing of Libya in 2011 fell far short of what the U. S. actually did there.
This is the more interesting section of his column:
Two alternative visions of American grand strategy are gaining prominence in U.S. politics as globalism fades. Restrainers, who include both progressives and conservatives, want to reduce America’s footprint abroad. As the U.S. withdraws from its global commitments, restrainers believe a natural balance of power will emerge, with American allies from Europe to Asia taking responsibility for their own defense. On the other hand, global nationalists—mostly more hawkish Republicans and independents—have little regard for global multilateral institutions, free trade and visionary human rights goals, but believe that U.S. security requires an active American presence in key theaters around the world.
Meanwhile, the Biden administration occupies an unenviable spot. Its goals on issues like climate change, human rights and denuclearization would have been difficult, if not impossible, to achieve even at the height of U.S. geopolitical dominance a quarter-century ago. Today, the determined and focused hostility to American world leadership emanating from Beijing, Moscow and Tehran limits Washington’s ability to orchestrate a global diplomatic consensus around those ambitious goals.
I think that both of those alternatives rest on false premises. IMO such global leadership as the U. S. has possessed has been downstream of U. S. economic strength. That is the source of our military strength, our geo-political position, and, indeed, the only reason any other country pays any attention to us at all. What we urgently need to do is rebuild the U. S. economy. Simply stated we need to produce a lot more of what we consume. Consumption cannot be our comparative advantage.
Failing that we will continue to weaken and drift into insignificance.
As I have written before, Meade is a shill for the Deep State. (Alas, Hanson seems to have joined him.) However, at least he tells us what the Deep State wants.
As to the “liberal world order” or “rules-based world order,” those seem to be cover stories for what amounts to 19th Century imperialism. And that comes complete with chattel slavery, in as much as many or most of the immigrants crossing our border with Mexico appear to be victims of human trafficking. Certainly, any unaccompanied child is.
Now that the Deep State has been driven out of Afghanistan, it is looking for further adventures. There is a movement to upgrade our trade representative in Taiwan to full, or at least higher, diplomatic status. When Lithuania did this recently China broke off diplomatic relations. That would certainly be another step closer to a large-scale regional war.
Unfortunately, the Deep State might actually believe its propaganda about greatest military in history. Delusions of this kind lead to careless provocative actions and war. Field Marshall Conrad promised the Emperor a quick victory over Serbia.
The problem with a rules-based world order is that you’ve got to follow the rules.
“What we urgently need to do is rebuild the U. S. economy.”
The current Democrat Party, and what I will call the McConnel wing of the Republican Party are too busy redistributing money or facilitating crony capitalism to rebuild anything. And the voters seem fine with it.
When you do what I do you see people attempting to build companies all the time. They are out there. But consider:
Covid policy has been horrible for small business.
Amazon is a fulfillment company, not a manufacturer.
Facebook started out as a way to rate the looks of Harvard chicks, and now, well, you can’t be serious.
Apple has some wonderful devices, but uses China to make the guts.
Manufacturing is generally energy intensive. Yet we have a misguided energy policy directed at anti-capitalism/anti-US masquerading as prevention of environmental catastrophe.
We claim we need a modern and efficient infrastructure, yet we produce a list of political goodies.
We could play this game all day long. We simply aren’t serious anymore. Voters are AWOL or too busy with virtue signaling and entertainment; the government has become self perpetuating and a way to riches. The education system is filled with propagandists and nonsensical crusaders for third or fourth order issues. And the makers are now considered deplorables.
Not optimistic.
My own view is that onshoring manufacturing is an important move in the direction of reducing carbon emissions. There is no such thing as a non-emitting container ship. Furthermore, you can control emissions when the production is here. When it’s in China or Vietnam or Thailand it’s just out of sight and beyond your control. The anti-manufacturing wing is as much about NIMBY as about reducing emissions.
China produces incrementally more carbon emissions for each increased dollar of GDP.
I think the ideal is a lot more additive manufacturing, automation, and production on demand and locally not putting it decorously out of sight.
One more point. There was a theory that production could be done in China or some other country while design remained here. That was obviously wrong. There’s an intimate relationship between production engineering and design and production engineering must be where the production is.
I agree with everything you wrote in that last comment. And I lived the last paragraph.
However, as I said, we are simply not serious anymore. I don’t believe in presumed good intentions. It’s all about getting at the money the easy way – voting it to oneself. And if the politicians take a skim, so be it. We are soft. We are getting the government, and the results, we deserve. It’s not like its an unexpected result.