Foreign Policy, Tariffs, Ukraine, Money and Chaos
With all the areas of conflict, breaking news and click bait, it’s been difficult to think very deeply as to how we got into this mess and more importantly how we are going to get out of it. I apologize to my regular readers for the recent lack of content as I too have been prone to distraction from the latest disasters as they appear on a regular basis.
This column addresses some of those issues particularly, foreign aid, tariffs, fiscal policy and Ukraine and while they seem unrelated, I am going to suggest a theme that may bring them together somewhat and clarify the decisions we should make as a country on our way forward.
With the election of Donald Trump and the Make America Great Again and America First movements, many of our policies and institutions that we have taken for granted are under attack. We are questioning the validity of higher education, the balance of power among the Executive, Legislative and Judiciary branches, and the role of power among federal, state and local governments. We are fighting about issues of race, gender and sexuality including the discussion of how many sexes exist. However, for this column, I would limit the analysis of the current chaos to the position of the United States in the world in relation to our friends and foes. This change has been percolating for some time but with the Trump administration and the America First philosophy, we may see a concrete change which we need to think about, and which could result in a different foreign policy direction than we have had for the last 80 years.
But first a little background. Many times, before we can examine where we are going, it’s important to remember where we have been. History…you know.
The Cold War
At the end of WWII, there were people who viewed our ally, the Soviet Union, as a threat to the United States and the West. General George Patton advocated keeping the army intact and proceeding to go to war against the Soviets. The Soviets, rather than allowing its occupied territories in the East to vote for self-determination as it had agreed at the Yalta conference, swept them up into its sphere of influence putting down an “iron curtain” as Winston Churchill called it in his March 1946 speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri.
Communists were on the move with popular support in France, Italy, Belgium and even Great Britain. Germany was split between communist and capitalist occupiers. In Greece, the Communists refused to participate in post WWII elections beginning a civil war. The Soviets were pressuring Turkey to open the Dardanelle Straits to Russian shipping. In late 1946, Britain informed the United States that because of its declining economy, it could no longer send military or financial aid to Greece or Turkey.
As a result, in 1947, in a speech to Congress seeking aid for Greece and Turkey, Truman articulated a doctrine, which later bore his name, that the United States should give support to countries or peoples threatened by Soviet forces or Communist insurrections. This doctrine, the Truman Doctrine, was seen by the Communists as an open declaration of the Cold War.
The implementation of the Truman Doctrine led to the containment theory, articulated first by diplomat, George F. Keenan, that the United States would oppose expansion of communism whether sponsored by state actors or movements of national liberation. This led to the formation of NATO in 1949 and the guarantee of western European territorial sovereignty by America. (See, my degree in International Affairs is finally coming to some good use.)
We must remember that this conflict originated as a philosophical dispute, not one for the expansion of territory. The East, led by the Soviets, believed that its mission was to spread communism world-wide to accomplish a utopian workers’ paradise which would culminate in a one-world communist state. Faced with the practical effects of authoritarian communist rule and what the West viewed as the enslavement of the peoples of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, the United States led the opposition to this proposition of world-wide Communism as the champion of capitalism, freedom, and democracy. This cold war conflict and containment strategy led to numerous “hot” wars throughout the world in China, Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, Nicaragua, Grenada., Afghanistan and many more.
However, the battle of Capitalism vs. Communism, Freedom vs. Authoritarianism did not just happen in a military vacuum. Coming out of WWII, the economies of Great Britain, France, Germany, Japan and many more were on the rocks. War weary people were in need of basic necessities. Millions were in refugee camps and in danger of starving.
America responded by creating the Marshall Plan in Europe in 1948. It was originally offered to all the countries in Europe but those under Soviet domination were ordered not to participate. America provided similar programs for Japan and others throughout the world although not strictly under the terms of the Marshall Plan. America used its military and economic dominance to provide defense for our allies and foreign aid to provide humanitarian support for allies and those in the developing world. However, our foreign aid turned out not to be for humanitarian or charitable reasons alone. We used and continued to use our protection and money to buy loyalty and policy influence throughout the globe.
And why not? After World War II, America had the money. Our allies did not. We went into the war with all of the advantages that America currently has. We had a temperate climate which grew massive amounts of food. We had timber, coal, oil, and iron ore to support our industries. We had infrastructure, railroads, highways and ports to transport our largesse throughout the world. We had a large literate workforce to manufacture goods for us and the entire world, and our lands and infrastructure had not been damaged by the ravages of war. We were “uncle sugar”, and the western world was our sphere of influence.
Contrary to Trump’s assertion that other countries have been ripping us off for years, we were willing partners in the redistribution of our country’s wealth through direct foreign aid as well as favorable tariff terms to support the redevelopment of our allies’ economies. Like Dad picking up the check at the family dinner, we became the largest contributor to multi-national institutions like the United Nations. Since the United States was providing for defense, as the rest of the world recovered economically, these countries were able to create and expand their welfare states providing funds to their people for education, universal health care and retirement that even citizens of the United States did not enjoy.
America wins
In the mid-80s, the Soviet Union began to buckle under economic pressure and glasnost, as its citizens became aware that they did not live in the workers’ paradise which had been promised to them by Communism, The iron curtain which had been used as a barrier to prevent Eastern Europeans from escaping to the West began to crumble as the Hungarians dismantled the border between it and Austria providing a way out to the West. The Berlin Wall came down in 1989 and finally in 1991, the Soviet Union, became just Russia once again, officially dissolved and freeing the Socialist Republics and Warsaw Pact countries from Soviet control.
America had won the battle with the Soviet Union, preventing a one world communist state. The United States celebrated the end of the Cold War as there was talk of a “peace dividend” as we could divert defense spending for domestic needs. The United States was the sole great power, and all the world appeared to bend to our desires. We were the only sheriff in town, the world’s policeman. However, despite the fact that the cold war was over, and we faced no credible threat from the Soviet Union or the Warsaw Pact on Europe’s borders, NATO did not go away. Our hatred for all things Russian did not abate. Old rivalries die hard. Our programs for foreign aid and tariff inequality designed to strengthen our allies to recover from World War II and buy loyalty and influence did not ease.
The rise of Islam
The “peace” did not last long. In 1993, the World Trade Center was bombed by Islamic extremists killing 6 and injuring thousands. Al-Qaeda surged in Afghanistan after the Communist government fell in 1992.
The Russians were having problems of their own but not with western nations attempting to impose capitalism and democracy. Chechen separatists, some of whom were linked to the Islamist mujahideen from Afghanistan, bombed Russian apartment buildings killing over 300. The Russians sought to put down this rebellion in 1999 (the second Chechen War) and shortly after this, Vladimir Putin became the Russian President.
On our side of the world, Islamist terrorists flew into the World Trade Center towers on September 11, 2001, and America invaded Afghanistan this time fighting the Taliban, our former allies against the communist Soviet Union. The Iraq war came next.
All the while, our policies against the Russians, the subsidizing of European and Asian defense, foreign aid and non-reciprocal tariffs continued apace, the United States continued to make oversized contributions to the United Nations and its agencies, the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund and wherever globalism found itself.
During the Iraq War, establishment Republicans and Republican conservatives began to split concerning our role in the world. I don’t know what the Democrats were thinking. When military progress went well, Democrats were for intervention. When they turned bad, they weren’t. The neo-cons represented by establishment Republicans represented classic Truman doctrine theory. They typically promoted nation building, democracy, and intervention with a philosophy of peace through strength advocating opposition to communism.
Conservatives, many from the TEA Party movement, began to question how the strategy of military incursion to promote democracy throughout the world directly related to American interests, and challenged why we were sending troops and foreign aid to other countries when we couldn’t balance our own budget. The rise of the TEA Party formed the basis for an opposition to globalists and the Republican establishment urging that America ought to take care of its own first before we meddle in the world’s business.
Trump enters the fray
So, in 2015 Donald Trump came down the escalator like God returning to earth, and he ran on a platform to put Americans first before others coining the phrase, Make America Great Again. He was and is a deal driven individual who views success and progress in financial terms, we win, they lose. To make America great again for him means to increase our country’s financial wealth and wellbeing. I do not believe that he is driven or is even considering the philosophical fight against worldwide communism that had driven our defense and foreign policy of the last 80 years.
And he may be right. Neither Putin nor Xi Jinping are ideological communists in the traditional sense of Lenin/Stalin or Mao/Zhou Enlai. Putin and Xi are empire builders; Putin to reestablish the Russian empire of the czars and the former Soviet Union and China to expand its influence over Asia to control its natural resources for the benefit of China. Their plans are a lot like Trump’s to but make “Russian/China Great Again”. Frankly, we are more at risk of a communist takeover from Columbia University or the Democrat Socialists in the Colorado legislature than emanating from Russia or China.
Moving to today’s clit bait issues of defense spending on allies, tariffs and Ukraine, if you concur that Trump looks at the world as a big financial transaction, his comments that NATO (and particularly Canada) should be paying 5% of their GDP for defense and by not doing so, they are ripping us off, make sense. It also leads to the bizarre threat, for some, that if NATO countries do not pay their fair share, maybe the United States would not come to their aid as contrary with our 1947 defender of the world against Communism policy.
The same analysis can be made for the trade and tariff debate. Trump views the world as ripping us off with unfavorable balance of payment trade deals again forgetting that rich America has been voluntarily subsidizing the world through trade and foreign aid for the last 80 years. This has also led to the removal of support for international organizations changing the post WWII culture where the United States picked up the tab for everyone.
So why all of a sudden do we care about money now?
After all, “a country as rich as ours” has been the motto for spending for our entire lifetime. We are starting to realize that budget hawks may have been right that although we may be doing better than the rest of the world, we are not as rich as we think we are with the federal government spending $1.5 trillion dollars a year more than it brings in each year. Our charity and compassion are not a result of our superior economy, work habits, or productivity, but as a matter of us borrowing money that we do not have.
In a mere 10 years, the federal debt has ballooned 100% from $18 trillion to $36 trillion. In a warning, for the first time interest on the national debt for which we get no benefit exceeded spending on defense, and more are starting to realize that the borrowing can’t go on forever.
For example, for Social Security, while we currently have a positive balance based on the social security “trust fund” that has accumulated in the past, the law says that we can only pay Social Security benefits out of Social Security payroll taxes collected plus anything that is accounted for in the social security trust fund. As we continue to pay out more than is collected, it is estimated that the balance of the trust fund will be depleted by 2033. If we have to rely on only Social Security payroll taxes for payment of benefits, it will result in an immediate 23% reduction of benefits for the 70 million retirees. Both parties for their own current political benefit have kicked the can down the road refusing to address the Social Security shortfall and the road is getting a lot shorter.
With this background, we can see the basis clawing money back however we can by reducing foreign aid, the cancelling of USAID, DOGE’s effort to cut the federal workforce, and to stop the funding of the Ukraine War and to rake back some of the money spent by requiring Ukraine to enter into an agreement to split future rare earth mineral revenues with the United States.
We need to pay attention
It would be good if we could have a rational debate as to what type of power we wish to have in the world vs the costs of gaining and holding on to said power. It would be good if we had a healthy debate over who our enemies are and why as opposed to just continuing on as a matter of habit. It would be good if we had a debate over the limits of our humanitarian abilities to solve the world’s problems, It would be good if we had a debate about the pros and cons of our continued deficit spending and what we are going to do when the Social Security Trust fund runs out of money in 2033, but I suspect that other than in this column and a few others, we will not..
If we do not decide how to move forward under today’s reality like Truman did in 1947 under the circumstances of his day, we will suffer the consequences. Leave aside whether the neo-cons led by George Bush or the America First movement, led by Trump, is the correct one, I sadly suspect that the resolution of major issues of our day, as outlined above, will not occur as we limp from election to election, work on what to call the Gulf of Mexico, continue to be distracted by breaking news, and focus on whether we are winning bigly.
I think that we must come to grips with the question, "Is empathy a useful foundation for either domestic or international policies?" President Obama, while crusading for the Affordable Care Act, said, "If we can save just one life…" That reflects a decision on his part that empathy is his foundation for domestic policy, but it tacitly assumes that one life, any life, is worth whatever it costs to save or extend it. While I painfully suspect that, even with all my brilliance, I am not worth a trillion or two dollars, I am damned sure that Barak Obama is not. Almost a quarter of a millennium ago, a group of young and incredibly wise men sat down in a stuffy room in Philadelphia (First prize in a contest is a week in Philadelphia, second prize is two weeks…) and hammered out an incredible document, inventing an entirely new form of government -- one in which We the People would choose from among our peers representatives who would govern the nation. On top of that, they layered on a Senate whose members would be chosen by the several states making up the union and who would make sure that the the rights, privileges and prerogatives of the states were not abuse by the central/federal government. Then, in a final fit of inspiration, they created an executive who was responsible for enforcing the laws passed by those representatives and Senators and who would worry about the union/nation as a whole. In doing so, they clearly and unambiguously said that this new form of government was created to "…form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity…".
That statement includes an incredibly important, overarching goal, securing the blessings of liberty, and excludes something else, taking care of every individual citizen or resident of the nation. Practicality constrains the goals, but empathy underpins the latter, excluded idea.
President Theodore Roosevelt, came to office with the belief that he should be able to act to improve the lot of We the People. He used muck-raking journalists like Ida Tarbell the way that President Trump uses social media. He actively attacked what he thought were monopolies, setting the precedent for an activist presidency. President Woodrow Wilson, conceiving of himself the smartest guy in the room believed that only smart guys should govern and that the United States should be governed by a bureaucracy of smart guys - experts like Dr Fauci. As if that wasn't enough, President Franklin Roosevelt conceived of a government that would insert itself into every nook and cranny of the nation to eliminate the problems of a wild and unconstrained natural world. He wanted a government that would provide, "…freedom of speech and expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear." Those freedoms from cover a multitude of sins.
So, now we have a government that is empowered by empathy to solve every problem, correct every wrong, stop every activity that might discomfort another. And that government is committed to doing that for every human being on the planet. Wow. Even Jesus Christ never tried to do that. Of course, being God, He realized that such activism is impossible without invoking a tyranny greater than any ever seen on the planet.
So, to answer Counselor Kerber's unasked question, It makes no difference if the US is being taken advantage of with or without our complicity. It has to stop because the task is impossible. The Rest Of The World needs to start acting as rational adults. I don't know if President Trump's policies will get us there, but continuing to do what has not gotten us there for eighty years is certainly not.