What Just Happened? Oval Office Throwdown (part three)

In part one we discussed why the argument in the Oval Office was less important than some made it out. In part two we covered the far more important change in international security that that argument unveiled. In part three, let’s finish off those “pretences” that Kissinger referenced.

“America is abandoning world leadership.” Even Trump would argue he is doing nothing of the sort. America no longer has world leadership. It is one thing to abandon something, another thing to recognize it’s gone. While America is certainly first among equals in power, influence, money, etc., it no longer has the sway it did at the end of WWII or the end of the Cold War. That’s a simple fact backed by massive data. Any American leader faces the same choice: try to pretend we lead the world, at an exorbitant cost, postponing an inevitable decline, or fix what ails America now.

I would note too that using Ukraine as the totem for America’s global influence is, at best, a partisan gambit. Where were these same people when the Biden administration withdrew from Afghanistan (especially the part where we didn’t coordinate with our European allies)? How about the Obama administration’s acquiescence to the “little green men” who occupied Crimea? One can go back through Cold War history and find example after example of America deciding to ignore allies, cut losses, or even abandon friends. It happens, even to the “leader of the free world.”

“Russia has broken every agreement.” Thanks to fervent reader Volodmyr Z. from Ukraine for this comment! He’s right. Putin said over a decade ago he wanted to regain all the lost territories, and he has consistently been on a path to do so ever since, including invading Ukraine thrice. Which is why the President of Ukraine cannot negotiate with Russia, because Russia doesn’t see him as an equal partner, nor as one who has anything other than surrender to offer Russia. Know with whom Russia does keep agreements? The United States. I worked Strategic Arms Control with the Soviets, and they were scrupulous about the agreements. Not because they were nice guys, or even decent human beings. “Trust but verify.” They knew we would catch them cheating, they feared we would cheat, and they thought the agreements were good for Russia. That’s how it works, and that’s why the US must be the principal negotiator for peace. Not because we’re the leader of the free world, but because Russia sees us as a power and wants something from us. The Republic of Vietnam may have signed the 1973 Paris Peace Accords, but nobody doubted who negotiated it, or whose signature was most important.

“How can we repudiate the shared values of our closest Western allies?” These shared values are an interesting case. What do they mean? If you mean a commitment to free trade, they’ve always been less shared than it seemed, as the US consented to all kinds of special protections. Try selling American milk tariff-free in Canada, American cars in Germany, or American beef in Japan. Maybe it was human rights? Don’t pray silently in public in the UK, don’t wear a burka in public in France, and don’t insult someone in public in Germany (not kidding; they’re all criminal violations). Most of Europe’s abortion laws were MORE restrictive than the US under Roe; now they’re somewhere in the middle of our Red and Blue state laws. Certainly it would include respect for non-intervention, unless of course you’re speaking of the French in Africa, or the British in the Suez. Anti-Racism! Yes, that’s it, we all share an antipathy to racism. I used to endure lectures on racism from a German friend. I don’t need to tell my educated friends today that it’s easy to not be racist when there is only one race around. Europe has embarked upon a program of migration that welcomed large-scale racial mixing, and if you follow the news there, it’s not going well. Guess I won’t be getting the lecture again soon.

None of which is to say the nations of “the West” don’t have many things in common; they do. But the greatest single shared value was this: The US didn’t want to run the world, and didn’t want anyone else to either. That was something with which all could agree. We’re making that agreement more explicit today, for our own purposes, and many don’t like it.

“The US is abandoning the globe at the moment of greatest peril.” You often see this contention with respect to further Russian aggression in Europe. Russia has learned it can’t even “take” Ukraine. I admit, Russia might think differently about Latvia (solely as an example), and that’s a reason for NATO’s European members to get serious about defense. But the Red Army is not on the brink of overrunning Paris, nor will it be in the next fifty years. Russia is demographically headed for oblivion, and all we need to do is provide hospice care. Even China is only looking to accomplish what the US did in the Cold War: establish an international system friendly to Chinese interests; they’ll not be landing on the beaches of Honshu, either. Oh, and they’ve gotten “old” before they got “rich,” so time is against them, too.

There is an international competition going on, but it revolves around technology (specifically artificial intelligence) and domestic stability. Which is why those are areas on which the United States should be focused.

“Ukraine must have a security guarantee as part of peace negotiations.” What does this mean? Let’s drop the euphemisms here. Any security guarantee is only as good as the willingness of the guarantor to fight a war on behalf of the guarantee. Otherwise-thoughtful people are saying that adding Ukraine to NATO, or giving them a US-backed security guarantee, will prevent Putin from attacking again. That is only true if we are willing to fight a nuclear-armed Russia in a war over Ukraine. So if you are willing to send your husband or wife, brother or sister, daughter or son to die defending Ukraine, then YES, argue for such a security guarantee. If not, stop.

President Clinton signed the Budapest Memorandum, in which the UK, the US, and Russia (!) all pledged to respect the territorial integrity of Ukraine. How did that work out? President Obama did not give Ukraine a security guarantee after the Russians took Crimea. Did he miss an opportunity? There is no evidence in our foreign policy actions by both parties, or in any polling done over the last two decades, that the people of the United States agree that defending Ukraine is a vital national interest. A security guarantee is not a bluff; it is a real commitment, which is why it works. We have one with NATO; we don’t with Ukraine.

“Trump has undermined the very basis of NATO, the most successful security alliance in history.” This goes directly to Kissinger’s point: Trump didn’t undermine NATO, Trump demonstrated NATO’s current situation accurately, and it’s not good (he would say, “the worst . . . EVER! Terrible!”). NATO will go down in history as unique and uniquely successful. Back even in the Cold War, it was the only one of the multilateral pacts which survived at all (Google CENTO and SEATO and see how they did). NATO worked because it had a simple premise, which Lord Hastings Lionel Ismay, the British first Secretary General of NATO, allegedly characterized as “to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.” He was absolutely correct. Today, from a security perspective, the Russians can’t get in, the Americans want out, and the Germans have fallen and can’t get up.

How bad is it? In the stark reality of Russia occupying a sovereign nation and breaking continental norms in place for eighty years, the European states have . . . almost succeeded in pledging to eventually spend 2.5% of GDP on defense. France has demanded that Europe coordinate their defense industries and military capabilities . . . to no response. Three years after Germany announced a Zeitenwende (foundational change in how it sees security), they may soon pass a law . . . forcing eighteen year-olds to fill out a digital survey on their interest in joining the army. And the UK just committed to sending peacekeeping troops to Ukraine to be deployed . . . wherever there is no fighting. Pardon me if I’m not sanguine about Europe’s willingness to bear any share of the burden, let alone its share. NATO may indeed survive this challenge; it’s been remarkably resilient. If it does, it will survive because European states take on most of the burden for their own defense.

Finally, “There is no change in the global system; Trump’s behavior as a mafia don is the cause of all this.” President Trump is far more publicly transactional than any modern US President, and more theatrically vulgar (in the original Latin meaning), too. If you wish to characterize that as “Tony Soprano-like,” go ahead. But suggesting that’s the reason things are the way they are gets cause-and-effect backward. As Kissinger suggested, as the voters too felt, things changed. Trump, with all his manifold faults, represents both a factor illuminating that change and a response to it.

In the Godfather movies, there is a scene where young Vito Corleone meets with and confronts the local crime boss, Don Fanucci. This is not the wild west; it’s New York City in 1920. In a nation of laws, with functioning police and courts, it’s still a violent time. Corleone doesn’t go to the press, or the police, or the courts. He stalks the Don and kills him, setting himself on the path to becoming Don Corelone, head of a crime syndicate. As immoral as his choice is, he accurately understood the environment in which he lived. Vito Corleone didn’t make the times; the times made him into Don Corleone.