Pat Buchanan, former GOP presidential candidate and ongoing rhetorical right-wing sniper who still pines away for Ronald Reagan–and likely Richard Nixon–made a point recently that even those of us on the other side of the partisan chasm can agree on. We ain’t what we used to be.
But context, of course, is everything. He also misses Teddy Roosevelt’s “big stick.”
“We no longer speak to the world with the assured authority with which America did from Eisenhower to Reagan and Bush 1,” lamented Buchanan in the American Conservative. He waxed nostalgic for America, “the indispensible nation.” He also romanticized our “benevolent global hegemony.” Have to wonder what he thinks of Ken Burns’ “Vietnam” series.
But he’s right in that we need to recognize “the new realities we face” and the need for “a rhetoric that conforms to those realities. Since Y2K our world has changed.”
Has it ever. From geopolitics and economics to technology and the environment. From name-calling nuclear brinksmanship to climate-change politics.
While it’s easy to overlook with North Korea, Russia, Iran and ISIS dominating our national-security geopolitics, we can’t ignore two key pivot points in how we fast-forwarded to now.
Islam And Russia
After the Gulf War, the U.S. left a sizable residual force in Saudi Arabia. “Residual” was also seen as “occupying”–an Islamic outrage to some Muslims. Among the outraged: Osama bin Laden. In effect, you don’t “occupy” the land that is home to Mecca. “Infidel” branding, all too easy for those who cherrypick the Koran, became even easier. There is a 9/11 nexus.
After the Cold War’s end, opportunity beckoned–notably with the erstwhile Soviet Union. Under President George H.W. Bush, U.S.-led NATO promised not to take advantage of a humiliated, amputated Russia by pushing for NATO expansion. European allies and the next American administration reneged.
Russia, under the leadership of a former KGB colonel, has not forgotten nor forgiven as it has prioritized regaining international stature, especially in the Middle East. In retrospect, American-election hacking and dossier scenarios were as foreseeable as a Crimea annexation.
Starting with the outrageously ill-advised, WMD-rationalized invasion and regime change in Iraq, the U.S. has continued to conflate patriotism with chauvinism. Who’s a hero? Who’s a pawn? Who would dare distinguish? Who’s vulnerable to pandering and scapegoating? Imagine Sarah Palin on a presidential ticket? Obviously Donald Trump could.
What else is different? The short list: globalization, a revolution in information technology, chronic deficits and excessive energy consumption. The implications range from the economically competitive to the environmentally existential.
The paralysis of our bitterly divisive, zero-sum political system and the erosion of key American values, including how we treat each other, have made it beyond problematic to carry out policies the country needs.
Obama-Trump
Talk about change we can believe in.
We’ve been under-investing in our future–from education to infrastructure to climate–since the end of the Cold War, just as the world was reconfiguring. Timing is always critical. Now factor in Trump.
Here’s a President Barack Obama quote from 2010 that should have been a wake-up call to national pride and enlightened self-interest. “It makes no sense for China to have better rail systems than us, and Singapore having better airports than us,” said Obama. “And we just learned that China now has the fastest supercomputer on Earth. That used to be us.”
Instead, we hit the societal snooze alarm and witnessed what havoc Tea Partiers could wreak and what the implications ultimately would be for Obama backlash. Trump is still an embarrassing, dangerous anomaly, but, yeah, we should have seen it coming.