At Defense One Eliot Cohen, reporting on the Munich security conference, remarks:
What has happened here is the same phenomenon that explains so many of the ills of the last couple of decades: the algae-like bloom of elites and their simultaneous loss of substance. A younger John McCain would not have been unique for his qualities of wisdom and character at the earlier iterations of this conference. He would have been met by acute thinkers like Thérèse Delpech of France, staunch public servants like Manfred Wörner, a German defense minister and secretary general of NATO in the 1980s, or politicians like Dennis Healey of Britain. Their successors are cautious functionaries, pallid experts, and colorless politicians who think carefully about domestic audiences before speaking up abroad.
This political entropy seems to be a near-universal phenomenon in the Western world; why this is so is unclear, and probably has many explanations. But the nicely tailored generation represented in Munich this year seemed baffled by the re-entry into history of today’s authoritarians and fanatics. One wonders whether the attendees possess the steel of the earlier generation that took part in World War II, and in the subsequent struggle with Communism. Attempted Russian subversion of democratic elections in the United States and Europe elicited concern from some at the conference, but few were willing to call for a punitive response sufficient to inflict real pain on Moscow. Meanwhile, Russian oligarchs happily hobnobbed with Europeans looking to do business on the side.
I’m tempted to observe, paraphrasing the late Mayor Daley, that global elites aren’t there to prevent turmoil; they’re there to preserve turmoil. Every single global problem today has been created and abetted by the policies put into place by that elite.
Credentials are not character and wisdom, a virtue, is promoted by practicing wisdom. It’s not something that can be read in a book or something that is conferred on you by being appointed to head a ministry. Or a government. Rejoicing at the overthrow of institutions while bemoaning the consequences of their loss is sophistry.
America’s military umbrella is a consequence of America’s economic strength as well as promoting it. That economic strength grew from America’s people; it was not handed down to them by elites like the tablets of the law.
