Delusion in DC

Our foreign policy establishment is out of touch with reality.

The foreign policy “experts” in Washington DC don’t know it yet, but the liberal world order is already finished. 

In their minds, America still stands bestride the world like a colossus, dictating terms of peace and war to the lesser powers who lack our judgment and moral vision. Joe Biden is fond of quoting Madeline Albright’s assertion that America is the “indispensable nation” which must work across the globe to secure democracy and freedom from the threat of aggression. 

Albright herself argued that America “stands taller and sees farther” than other nations. We are the world’s policeman, standing by to protect the downtrodden from the ever-present threat of tyranny. 

The lesson of WWII, as understood by the victors, was that the US could no more retreat from her international obligations. Injustice anywhere was a threat to justice everywhere. To quote FDR’s Quarantine Speech of October 1937:

There can be no stability or peace either within nations or between nations except under laws and moral standards adhered to by all. International anarchy destroys every foundation for peace. It jeopardizes either the immediate or the future security of every nation, large or small. [emphasis my own] 

All peace-loving nations must band together to resist tyranny, using whatever means they have at their disposal to secure peace. In an August 21, 1941 speech FDR insisted that: 

Against naked force the only possible defense is naked force. The aggressor makes the rules for such a war; the defenders have no alternatives but matching destruction with more destruction, slaughter with greater slaughter.

 America, as WWII proved, must be willing to fight the forces of aggression and international anarchy from both the standpoint of morality and of self-interest. The foundations of peace could only be secured through global engagement. The United States, therefore, joined the United Nations and pledged itself to a policy of global intervention. 

The principles of the Kellogg-Briand Pact, which outlawed “war as an instrument of national policy,” understood as aggressive war, were seemingly vindicated. In the internationalist view, the peace-loving powers had been forced in self-defense to use brutal violence against the Axis powers and their supposed plans of world domination. This project had succeeded. A new unified world, shaped by the Allies and the plans for the Atlantic Charter awaited. As FDR had promised in 1942, the Allies stood on the brink of bringing freedom from “fear and want” to the globe. Here was a New Deal for the world! 

The Cold War threw cold water on these plans. For 4 and a half decades, the liberals and communists conducted a struggle for the world. In 1991, after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the “unipolar moment” it appeared that the liberal internationalists had won a decisive and permanent victory. The promise of the Atlantic Charter would be realized. America was transcendent and the promises of a better world could finally be fulfilled. 

Freedom had prevailed. History was over. The best form of government, democracy, had proven itself in its trials against both communism and fascism. The future was free trade, free markets, and the pax americana. 

That vision, 35 years later, is in complete freefall. The Pentagon and State Department can keep LARPing as masters of the universe all they want. The reality on the ground looks very different.

America’s embarrassing withdrawal from Afghanistan after 20 years of bloodletting and money spent was a shocking rebuke of the power of liberal dogmas. Afghanistan was supposed to become a peaceful, feminist, moderate state. Instead, the Taliban spent decades wearing down American forces until we no longer had any more willpower to stay. 

America did not transform Afghanistan. In reality, our “allies” in-country all ended up as refugees looking to live in the West. The reason for the disastrous airlift out of Kabul was the desire by American political leaders to extract these Afghans and bring them back to America. The Marines killed in the suicide attack at Abbey Gate died for American refugee policy. 

This blow was bad enough. Sheep herders in flip flops and “mandresses,” armed with AKs, had managed to send the world’s premier superpower packing. 

DC, however, felt no shame, no desire to look under the hood and reassess its existential aims. Within 6 months of leaving Afghanistan, the United States was embroiled in yet another grinding war—this time in Europe.

It is there, in the heart of the Asian steppe, that the liberal world order went to die. Ukraine will lose its war with Russia. At this point, there is no outcomes where the Ukrainian people retain their pre-war territorial boundaries and are able to maintain a functioning, healthy, happy, growing country. 

In 1991, Ukraine had a population of 52 million souls. Today, the Ukrainians report a population of 37 million, with 6 million citizens fleeing the country since the outbreak of war in 2022. The reality is almost certainly worse than is publicly known. Ukraine faces a bleak demographic future. 

Even if the Ukrainians “win” and are able to remove the Russians from their territory—and this will not happen—the refugees who fled to the West will not return. The economic devastation of the war, the decades of instability and poverty prior to its outbreak, and the bleak prospects for future growth mean that Ukraine will almost certainly continue its implosion. As it stands now, the Ukrainian fertility rate stands below 1.0, half of what is needed in order to simply maintain current population rates.

 Moreover, the hundreds of thousands of men killed and wounded in the war are not coming back either. Estimates of Ukrainian casualty rates vary wildly depending on the source, but it is safe to assume that some quarter of a million men there have been killed with an even greater number seriously wounded. 

Since Ukraine has decided to ingratiate itself with the West, the future of Ukraine will be the same future as that of all other Western countries—unlimited mass migration from the third world. Within a decade, we can expect to see scores of Arab and African migrants filling the streets of Kiev. 

The New Ukrainians will have no connection to the Old Ukrainians and their sacrifices. The presence of diversity will, of course, light the beacons of anti-racism to the world, but it is true, nonetheless, that Ukraine itself will be fundamentally transformed by the importation of these newcomers. The fate of Ukraine is no different than that of London, Berlin, and Springfield.

It is inevitable that the Russians will prevail in Ukraine. They have nearly unlimited natural resources, nuclear weapons, and an unshakeable resolve that this war is critical to their national security. There is nothing that the West or America can do to change this fact. 

Placing American boots on the ground is not feasible politically in America after the last several decades of war and failure in the Middle East. Placing western combat forces in Ukraine would risk nuclear war, as well. There may be a few harridans in the State Department willing to launch nukes to prevent the Russians from attaining their goals, but fear of public opinion and unstoppable counterstrikes surely stays the hand even of the most fearsome defenders of international morality.

It is common for supporters of Ukraine to insist that Putin is a second coming of Adolf Hitler. This is not true. Hitler wanted to overthrow the liberal world order brought on by the Kellogg-Briand Pact and the League of Nations covenant. Putin, by contrast, embraces the liberal world order’s founding principles. He justified his war in Ukraine by Article 51 of the UN Charter. He insists that he, like the Americans and Soviets in WWII, is fighting “aggression.”

Every side in the Russo-Ukraine War insists that it is fighting Nazis and the legacy of Nazism. Both sides claim to be working to stop unprovoked and illegitimate criminal war. In this, the Russians mimic the Imperial Japanese of the 1930s more than the German fascists. The Japanese, in the Mukden Incident of 1931 which lead to them taking all of Manchuria, claimed to be fighting for liberal principles. Japan, after all, was a member of the League of Nations while America and the Soviet Union were not. 

The difference between Imperial Japan and Putin’s Russia is economic. Japan was a poor country with few resources. It wished for a revision of the post-WWI order out of desperation and fear. Russia is in a wholly different position. They have unlimited critical resources in their vast continent-spanning empire. No, the Russians are fighting in the Ukraine not because they are a dependent power but because they are an economically independent power that wants to assert its sovereign rights over what it perceives to be its sphere of influence. 

As Putin put it in his declaration of war speech in 2022, the issues at stake in Ukraine were, in Russia’s eyes, existential:

For the United States and its allies, this is the so-called policy of containment of Russia, obvious geopolitical dividends. And for our country, this is ultimately a matter of life and death, a matter of our historical future as a people. And this is not an exaggeration: it is true. This is a real threat not just to our interests, but to the very existence of our state, its sovereignty. This is the very red line that has been talked about many times. They passed her.

 It does not matter whether American policymakers agree or disagree. Economic sanctions will not bring the Russians to heel. For one, the Chinese will not participate. For another, the Russians themselves are willing to bear the sacrifice of losing international trade (and this is not so great a sacrifice as DC imagines) for the sake of expressing their sovereignty. The possibility of nuclear retaliation makes any decisive action impossible. 

The Russians have bled and will bleed for their slice of Ukraine. When it is all said and done, the Russians will keep that territory. Putin’s government will not collapse. If it does, a more right-wing and aggressive regime will come to power. 

America will be forced to accept that our ability to manage the world has come to an end and that, contra all liberal expectations, it was always a chimera to begin with. A similar paradigm presents itself in China: Taiwan will fall.

It might not happen this year or this decade but, ultimately, China will take back what it views to be rightfully hers. The “century of humiliation” will end with Chinese pre-eminence and strategic independence. China, like Russia, has nuclear weapons and enough economic leverage over the rest of the world, America in particular, to insist on getting its way. A policy of strategic patience will reward the Chinese with the kind of regional hegemony they have yearned for since the collapse of the Qing dynasty.

In the Middle East, the days of throwing our weight around with the Iranians are also at a close. The flow of weapons and resources to Ukraine has stripped the rest of our planetary forces of needed equipment and weapons. The Houthi rebels out of Yemen, armed with Iranian missiles, have managed to halve trade through the Suez canal. 

The US Navy has thus far proved incapable of undoing this state of affairs over the last year. This is not merely a lack of aggressiveness by the Biden administration, either. America’s new woke DEI military simply is not up to the task of intervening all over the globe. Our rust-covered warships are a shocking symbol of national decline. 

The Fat Leonard scandal revealed that senior American naval officers were more interested in lining their pockets than defending the nation. The spiritual rot of the post-1991 attitude of widespread asset stripping has infected even our supposedly dedicated public servants. 

Harsh medicine is the way forward. American policymakers must adapt to the new circumstances. The multi-polar world is upon us whether we like it or not. America must retrench. We need to scale back our bloated global empire. The post-war occupations of Germany, Italy, and Japan must end. America no longer has any real interest in stationing troops in those places in a world of intercontinental ballistic missiles, nuclear submarines, drones, and cyberwarfare. The best way to counter Chinese influence, for instance, is by reshoring American manufacturing and massively reducing the number of Chinese students in American universities. Marines milling around on Okinawa are not helping with that project. 

It is stupid to have them there even as a “trip wire.” The metaphor addled brains of Pentagon planners need to catch up to reality. 

America must re-adopt a strategy of non-interference in world affairs. That strategy made us the envy of the world in the 19^th century. America should not have abandoned that wise strategy, handed down to us by our Founders. Involvement in WWI was a mistake. 

If we should have been involved in that conflict at all, it was to put down Lenin and his cronies in the Soviet Union. Communism, with its campaign for global revolution, was an explicit enemy of all civilized powers. 

Regardless, this kind of ideological enemy no longer exists in state form in the 21^st century. The Chinese are not hellbent on spreading Marxist-Leninism all over the world—they are devoted to becoming a regional great power and righting what they see as historical wrongs. 

An American strategy of non-intervention does not preclude useful trade with other powers. In fact, it encourages it. By removing humanitarian liberal concerns from our foreign policy—by treating the government de facto as the government for us—we no longer have need to deploy sanctions and troops for the sake of “human rights” and a program of gay rights, feminism, and liberalism on a global scale. 

Our nuclear weapons, the oceans, and a strong navy and missile force are more than enough to keep the other emerging regional powers out of our sphere of influence. The Fortress America strategy is a winner on every front: economic, military, and political. Concentrating on ourselves has enormous financial benefits. Our global network of useless bases is an enormous monetary drain. Had we pursued an America First foreign policy from 1991 onward, 9/11 would not have happened. 

Without America being involved in the first Gulf War, we would not have had any reason to station troops in Saudi Arabia, and thereby unknowingly provoking the wrath of Osama Bin Laden. Imagine the past 30 years without terrorism and the security surveillance state at home and painful war abroad. 

America has no meaningful national interests in the Middle East. American rights and liberties and our independence of action in foreign affairs do not depend on what is happening between the desert tribesmen squabbling over that region. We could have easily avoided all of this. Imagine if we had gotten a real peace dividend after the fall of the Soviet Union. Our lives, as ordinary Americans, would be much better. Saddam Hussein holding Kuwait instead of the corrupt Al Sabah family would have not made a dime’s worth of difference to Americans. We could have purchased oil either way! 

America would be better off without this destructive interference abroad. Our constant involvement in the Middle East is a giant albatross around our necks. It has yielded a powerful incentive to forces in the region to, in turn, interfere in our politics. Israeli, Chinese, Qatari, Saudi, and Emirati money flows throughout Washington DC as these powers jockey for influence and power in their own regional disputes. 

George Washington advised that Americans stay away from close relationships with other powers because such relationships would cloud Americans’ judgment:  

The nation which indulges toward another an habitual hatred or an habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest.”

America First means not being a slave to other countries’ interests! Imagine simply not caring and not getting involved. We should turn our hearts to concerns for our fellow Americans—not messing with random strangers in their own complex disputes on the other side of the world. We would be better off with that kind of self-discipline. 

As Washington wisely pointed out—America has interests which it does not share with others. We can substitute “Europe” in the quote below for any other region on the planet outside of North America: 

Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.

The foreign policy I advise runs counter to the elite Washington consensus. In fact, they would view the non-interventionist, self-interested strategy I recommend as immoral. America, in their view, must intervene everywhere in order to preserve peace and to secure her “interest”—which means spreading democracy and ensuring it survives among our allies.

The Founders, as Washington’s Farewell Address makes clear, had an entirely different moral framework. They held that America had no moral right to intervene in other countries’ affairs and that it was, in fact, immoral to spend American blood and treasure to protect the rights of non-Americans. 

President Trump instinctually hews to the Founders’ position. He grasps intuitively that liberal internationalism is a disaster for ordinary Americans. It is expensive and the benefits it supposedly accrues are non-existent or only available to a select elite class. America would have been better off had we never been involved in the wars in Iraq and if we had never sent a single dime to the Ukrainians.

Our involvement in these places has been disastrous for the local populations and expensive in lives and wealth for our people. Americans should be allowed to concentrate on themselves. We need to deport illegal immigrants, seriously curtail legal immigration, and focus on bringing back good jobs for blue collar workers. We would be better off in a socially cohesive, economically dynamic, and politically independent country that isn’t caught up in the ethnic squabbles of the Third World. 

 Trump knows this. In a recent interview he specified that America should not get totally involved with Iran because “we can’t even run ourselves.” This is the right sentiment and one that virtually no one in DC understands.

America should concern itself with American interests—preserving the right to life, liberty, and property of our citizens. What perhaps even Trump does not understand, however, is the crazed extent to which Leftists believe this America First policy as equivalent with fascism simply. If America were to declare itself neutral in the affairs of unrelated countries (such as Ukraine and the Middle East as a whole) this would be paramount, in the liberal mind, with aiding and abetting tyranny. 

America, in this view, has no other choice than to manage the world. It is a dangerous view. We risk nuclear conflict with Russia and China both and even more destabilizing wars in the Middle East.  

We should choose a different path. It will not be easy. The entire political establishment is opposed to such a maneuver. That is why Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, and Kamala Harris were all on the same side in this election. 

But Americans must break out of the chains imposed by the liberal world order. Our role as global “policeman” is not only bad for us, it no longer even makes sense. We lack the capacity to even plausibly maintain that position. 

 The path of global intervention is the path of poverty, decline, and subservience. At the beginning of the 20^th century, England dominated the world as both a financial and military power. Now they are a backwater. Things change and they change quickly. WWI ruined the British and made them financially dependent on America. Intervention on the continent cost them dearly.  

 Another major conflict could very easily do the same to us. We must avoid that fate. We should re-adopt the Founders’ foreign policy and focus, once more, on ourselves and our real interests. President Trump, when he wins in November, will have a golden opportunity to make this return to sanity a reality.