“The men of Normandy had faith that what they were doing was right, faith that they fought for all humanity, faith that a just God would grant them mercy on this beachhead or on the next. It was the deep knowledge — and pray God we have not lost it — that there is a profound, moral difference between the use of force for liberation and the use of force for conquest … The strength of America’s allies is vital to the United States, and the American security guarantee is essential to the continued freedom of Europe’s democracies. We were with you then; we are with you now. Your hopes are our hopes, and your destiny is our destiny,” - Ronald Reagan at Pointe du Hoc, France on June 6, 1984.
It is a fascinating moment, isn’t it, when Reagan’s vision of the West is finally swept into the dustbin of history by a Republican president.
And that is the only solid conclusion one can make after this week of astonishing incompetence and madness. We only saw Donald Trump’s foreign policy darkly in his first term — constrained, as he was, by a handful of white-knuckled Republicans in the executive branch. Now we see it face to face. It’s a vision where international law disappears, great powers divide up the planet into spheres of influence, and the strong always control the weak. It’s Trump’s vision of domestic politics as well. And of life.
And to give the madman his due, something had to happen. Neoconservatism is long since dead — by suicide, of course, in Iraq and Afghanistan. And the global position of the US after 1945, and then after 1989, is over and never coming back. There is simply no threat in the world that is equivalent to the totalitarian regimes of Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and Maoist China. Islamism was never going to replace them.
And so a retrenchment of the US position was inevitable at some point: a more judicious approach to interventionism, a greater balance with the allies, a pivot toward Asia and away from Europe and the Middle East: responsible, realist re-positioning. In fact, failure to do so when our debt payments now exceed our military budget would be asking for trouble.
(Continue)
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