"Pax America Or Pax Naivete"

 I remember from the turn of the last century through the early 1960's having an American Citizenship and passport was a magical thing if you travelled.  people left you alone because if something happened, they knew that the U.S. government would interfere from sending people to investigate to sending in a detachment of marines to clean things up.  That is how the Americans rolled, that is having a reputation of speaking softly and carrying a huge stick.  A holdover of Teddy Roosevelt's foreign policy.  Don't screw with Americans.  But after the 1960 and later, it because a national pastime for all these groups to harass Americans and watch the "Paper Tiger"  do nothing.  This really became apparent during the 1970's after the debacle of Vietnam, and the ascency of the influence of the Soviet Union and its proxies.  I remember the various hijacking of planes, trains, bombings and they could be laid at the feet of the PLO who was supported by the Soviets, the Stasi, and when this pattern continued through the early 1980's with the seizing of our embassy in Iran by "students".   I want us to be respected again on the world stage, feared, I don't care if they don't like us, being liked has gotten us nowhere except taken advantage of.  I want the world to respect us again, with a touch of fear. like it used to be.   Am I silly? perhaps...but it has to be better than the Obama apology tour.

For half a century, the prevailing framework of world politics has rested on a set of polite fictions—mutually agreed-upon conventions and carefully maintained pretenses. America’s foreign policy establishment sustained these soothing myths through self-affirming narratives, willful blindness to uncomfortable realities, and a veneer of diplomatic nicety designed less to illuminate truth than to avoid honest debate. Over time, that posture coincided with a steady erosion of American influence. We adopted a strangely contradictory approach to the world: proclaiming strategic leadership while simultaneously shoveling taxpayer money to governments and causes across the globe with little expectation of loyalty, cooperation, or even alignment with American interests.

That contradiction lies at the heart of the frustration many people—me included—have long felt about institutions like USAID. Beyond the well-documented problems of waste, graft, and the steady flow of funds to ideologically aligned NGOs, the deeper issue was philosophical: an aid system built on the assumption that generosity alone would purchase goodwill. History suggests otherwise—and once you begin looking closely at the structure, the spending, and the incentives, there is plenty to hate.

When Trump and team looked at the overall situation, they saw that even with those “investments”, we still had to feed the leviathan that was created by the Global War on Terror to defend our citizens from terrorism—and even then, the value and protection of carrying a US passport continues to decline.

Being attuned to transactional dealmaking, I think Trump looked at the situation and said to himself, “Self, what the hell are we getting for our treasure and resources?” He looked at all the foreign aid going out the door, even the NATO and UN funding, and our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan and the answer he came up with was “little to nothing.” Yeah, we “got” Bin Laden, but years after his power had peaked—the 7th Century savages had already moved on to more savagery. Pax Americana was working but getting more expensive and singularly dependent on America every day and political forces inside the US were using America’s own efforts to deal with external and internal threats under some pretty adverse conditions as weapons against her.

I think Trump’s gambit comes down to one thing—and that is getting a reasonable rate of return on America’s investment in national defense, NATO, force projection (the cost of having military bases all over the world), domestic law enforcement (including immigration enforcement, which, for all the performative grousing by Democrats is about national security), and foreign aid.

So, what if Trump’s gambit succeeds?

On his broadcast of February 4, 2015, Rush Limbaugh said:

“Why in the world do we give money to people that end up ripping us and criticizing us? Why do we end up giving foreign aid to certain countries that actively work against us? I have always thought that foreign aid should be merit based. Okay, you want foreign aid from the United States, we’re gonna have to list, and we’re gonna have the good list and we’re gonna have the excrement list. And if you get on our excrement list, you’re on it for a while. It’s gonna take you years to get off of it.”

What if the Trump administration follows the Limbaugh Doctrine and creates a Global Excrement List? I can scarcely imagine anyone better than Secretary of State Marco Rubio managing it.

What if Venezuela and Iran—as well as other perpetual trouble spots—fall under US influence rather than working for Russia and China? What if the United States becomes a regional/global hegemon with client states in orbit?

Would that be so bad?

What if America power was magnified by that collection of global client states, all working toward the same goals for freer trade, security, and liberty for their people?

A good concise definition of a “client state” would be “a nominally independent nation that relies on a more powerful state for economic aid, military protection, or political support and therefore aligns its policies with the interests of that patron state.”

I’m not talking about a bunch of client states in the mode of the old Soviet Bloc with puppet dictators, but something akin to what happened under the Monroe Doctrine, which established an American sphere of influence in the Western Hemisphere, and over time U.S. interventions—especially under the Roosevelt Corollary—led several countries to function as de facto client states of the United States.

Would that be so bad?

Of course, some will say that America can’t be trusted with that kind of influence, but the fact is that power, like nature, abhors a vacuum. Empty space will be filled by something or someone and as America has weakened itself, China and Russia have been more than happy to do that job.

Winston Churchill is alleged to have said that America can be counted on to do the right thing after we have tried everything else. Now that we have tried everything else, maybe Pax Americana and Monroe Doctrine sort of hegemony is the right thing.