Grand Strategy for a Divided America

[Haletown]

Couldn't  resist.

 

[Edward Campbell]

I suppose that you're right, to the extent that people actually do make the effort to read or listen to an opposing viewpoint. But how often does that happen? I once had a US Army Col tell me that "No US Army officer would ever be caught dead listening to National Public Radio". By the same token, some people on the Left would ditch anybody who watches FoxMedia. Today, I think, it has become very easy to surround ourselves with  a media blanket that says only what we want to hear, and either never presents opposing viewpoints at all, or mocks and distorts them beyond recognition.

It's always easier to hear agreeable news and views ~ but we don't really learn much that way.

But where this has a deleterious impact is, I think, on the politically committed bases. I am a member of the Conservative Party of Canada base, both a party member and a financial donor, and I am sad to say that many, many Conservatives are completely closed minded, as, I think, are equal numbers in the Liberal and NDP bases, too. My suspicion, from the time I spend in Texas each year, is that our Democratic and Republican confrères - the rock solid members of those party bases - are even more closed minded. What is not a matter of suspicion is that TV, especially, panders to these bases. None of the major networks, other than PBS, perhaps, even tries to present reasoned, unbiased analysis of policy issues. It is not, I think, because reasonable, unbiased analysts are in short supply, rather it is because reasoned, unbiased analysis (and those who offer it) is boring; the "shouting heads," partisans from each political extreme, make "better," more exciting TV - which sells airtime to sponsors which is, after all, why commercial broadcasting exists.


Edit: spelling  :-[  Damned auto-spell-check!

 

[The Bread Guy]

But where this has a deleterious impact is, I think, on the politically committed bases. I am a member of the Conservative Party of Canada base, both a party member and a financial donor, and I am sad to say that many, many Conservatives are completely closed minded, as, I think, are equal numbers in the Liberal and NDP bases, too. My suspicion, from the time I spend in Texas each year, is that our Democratic and Republican confrères - the rock solid members of those parts bases - are even more closed minded. What is not a matter of suspicion is that TV, especially, panders to these bases. None of the major networks, other than PBS, perhaps, even tries to present reasoned, unbiased analysis of policy issues. It is not, I think, because reasonable, unbiased analysts are in short supply, rather it is because reasoned, unbiased analysis (and those who offer it) is boring; the "shouting heads," partisans from each political extreme, make "better," more exciting TV - which sells airtime to sponsors which is, after all, why commercial broadcasting exists.

QFT!!!!!!!

 

[pbi]

It is not, I think, because reasonable, unbiased analysts are in short supply, rather it is because reasoned, unbiased analysis (and those who offer it) is boring; the "shouting heads," partisans from each political extreme, make "better," more exciting TV - which sells airtime to sponsors which is, after all, why commercial broadcasting exists.
Edit: spelling  :-[  Damned auto-spell-check!

Just like courtroom dramas mislead people to think that "real" court is full of exciting yelling and shouting and posturing, when in fact you know (if you spend any time in courts) that it is usually a bit more exciting than watching paint dry.
"Real" politics in a civil society, by which I mean the methods that actually get things done, might consist of a bit of yelling and shouting, but IMHO consists of a lot more talking, horsetrading and deal-cutting. If not, we get an impasse., and then the trench-digging starts.

 

[Edward Campbell]

In a column, which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the National Post, Andrew Coyne provides a clear, accurate assessment of where the leader of the free world stands:

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/09/16/andrew-coyne-america-ask-not-what-your-country-can-do-for-you-or-anyone-really/

America, ask not what your country can do for you, or anyone, really

Andrew Coyne

16/09/13

It’s been a couple of days since Barack Obama’s latest diplomatic triumph in the Middle East, and already the reviews are in. From the Syrian “minister of national reconciliation,” Ali Haidar: “A victory for Syria, achieved thanks to our Russian friends.” From Georgy Mirsky, of the Institute for World Economy and International Relations in Moscow: “Russia has won. America didn’t so much lose as it was humiliated.” From Qassim Saadeddine, a rebel commander in northern Syria: “Let the Kerry-Lavrov plan go to hell. We reject it and we will not protect the inspectors.”

It’s possible to imagine how this could have been handled worse: with the involvement of the North Koreans, perhaps, or via a plan to place the Suez under the protection of Iranian peacekeepers. Otherwise the disaster looks absolute.

A quick review of how we got here: the failure to support the Syrian opposition in the immediate aftermath of the uprising of April of 2011, when it briefly seemed Bashar al-Assad might join his fellow dictators in the tumbrels of the Arab Spring; the two years of dithering that followed, while Assad slowly regained the upper hand and the opposition fell into division and radicalization; the drawing of a “red line” at chemical warfare, with the promise of “enormous consequences” if it were crossed; the instant vacating of that promise when the red line was crossed, repeatedly, without consequence of any kind; the sudden vow of action, when the line was crossed in a way too overt to be ignored, i.e. after the posting of multiple YouTube videos of convulsing or prettily dead children; the equally sudden deferral of action, pending a vote of Congress, as it emerged that military intervention was proving unpopular with the public.

All culminating in the utter debacle of the past week: the Kerry blunder, the Russian offer, that weird, pointless Obama speech pleading with Congress not to vote on the measure he had asked them to vote on the previous week, the condescending Putin op-ed piece in The New York Times, and the final indignity, the sight of the Obama administration clinging to the Russian lifeline as it lifted them clear of the Congress.

Well, no, that’s not the final indignity, is it? Because now the administration will have to spend the next year, probably more, explaining away Assad’s refusal to live up to this weekend’s agreement, and the refusal of his Russian patrons to hold him to it, while the slaughter in Syria continues unabated. Indeed, that was the Assad regime’s first response to the agreement, even before the minister of national reconciliation’s ululation: to resume the bombing campaign it had temporarily suspended when it looked like Obama might be prepared to do something about it.

Not that the agreement would amount to much even if it were honoured. From Obama’s original reluctant, vacillating threat to do not very much to punish Assad — an “unbelievable small” retaliatory strike, his Secretary of State promised, believably — we are now reduced to a promise from the murderer to throw away the murder weapon. Even if the agreement were implemented to the letter, a year from now Assad would still be in power, still under Russian tutelage, still launching missiles into the suburbs of his own capital. He just would have to refrain from arming them with sarin gas.

But how likely is even that? Suppose Assad lives up to the agreement’s first article, and produces a “comprehensive listing” of his estimated thousand-ton arsenal of chemical weapons, which he has reportedly spent the last several days secreting about the country, within the week. Are we to believe United Nations inspectors will be able to locate and identify all of these, as per the agreement, by November — a process that has taken years elsewhere — in the middle of a civil war? And, further, that these will all be destroyed by the middle of next year?

And if they are not? Ah, says the administration: in that case, “the threat of force remains.” Well, yes: the threat. Just not the reality. As envisaged in the agreement, it would require a resolution of the Security Council, meaning the Russians — they who still deny that Assad was responsible for the chemical attacks — would have to vote for it. Or perhaps, following precedent, Obama could ask Congress for authority to go it alone. In an election year. Without fresh YouTube videos to remind people of what all the fuss was about.

And so, Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, or anyone, really — because you might not like the answer. After this, there isn’t any reason for anyone to take the threat of American force seriously. The public hasn’t the stomach for it, and the president hasn’t the authority. You think the Iranian regime, for example, is not watching all this with a cool and appraising eye?

This is perhaps the bitterest part of the farce. As if an emboldened Assad, an ascendant Putin, the emasculation of the West and the evaporation of the taboo on chemical weapons were not enough, Obama is now talking about engaging Iran in talks — on Syria, that is, talks on Iran’s own relentless pursuit of weapons of mass destruction having gotten conspicuously nowhere. But not to worry. As Obama told an interviewer Friday, “they shouldn’t draw a lesson that [because] we haven’t struck [in Syria] we won’t strike Iran.” No of course not. Why would they?

For their part, the Iranians seem open to the invitation, and I can’t say I blame them.

Postmedia News

To be clear, I think President Obama backed into (or stumbled into or was pushed into) most of the right answer: do nothing to or for either side. He would be wholly right if he was selling, not giving, arms to either or both sides.

But the phrase "the emasculation of the West" is apt; it isn't just America that has been tarnished; for better or worse Barack Obama IS the leader of the West and his successes raise us all and his failures diminish us all.

The next "leader of the free world" will be chosen in America, by Americans in 2016. Leading candidates include: Gov Jeb Bush, Gov Chris Christie, Sen Hillary Clinton, Sen Rand Paul, Prof Condoleeza Rice, Sen Marco Rubio  and Rep Paul Ryan. None of them strikes me as being a Roosevelt, a Truman or an Eisenhower ...

 

[pbi]

The next "leader of the free world" will be chosen in America, by Americans in 2016. Leading candidates include: Gov Jeb Bush, Gov Chris Christie, Sen Hillary Clinton, Sen Rand Paul, Prof Condoleeza Rice, Sen Marco Rubio  and Rep Paul Ryan. None of them strikes me as being a Roosevelt, a Truman or an Eisenhower ...

I predict it will be a Republican, who (along with a largely Republican Congress elected out of frustration with the Democrats) will ride to power by rattling on about "making America great again" or "making the bad guys fear us", etc, thus appealing to America's sense of frustration and wounded pride, just as Putin has successfully appealed over the last few years to Russia's frustration at being relegated to a second tier.

Unfortunately, this new Republican leader will then want to win his spurs as quickly as possible, by rushing off to the nearest fire, probably in the usual ill-considered way. This will feel great, and will provoke all sorts of punditry about "America's Renaissance" etc. And then, like so often before, it will go very badly wrong. But this time, it will be going wrong in a world in which there may be much less manoeuvre room for the US, and much less left in the "credibility account".

Just my  :2c:

 

[a_majoor]

I expect most of what you say will come true, with the main countervailing argument being there will have to be a huge amount of political capital and time expended on reviving the American economy. This will leave most people inclined to let "them fuuiners" go off and kill each other in peace, without the US getting involved.

 

[pbi]

I expect most of what you say will come true, with the main countervailing argument being there will have to be a huge amount of political capital and time expended on reviving the American economy. This will leave most people inclined to let "them fuuiners" go off and kill each other in peace, without the US getting involved.

There is probably some truth to this: another very plausible option.

If you look at US public opinion about foreign military involvement, starting with the First World War, there has been a pretty clear cycle of "involvement-disillusionment/isolationism-new threat to national interests-involvement".  Despite the US realization of its new world role following WWII, the Korean War had a very mixed reception from the US public.

And, I suppose that it's worth remembering that simply because the ruling party wants to get entangled in something, it doesn't mean the US public does. The US entry into WWII under Roosevelt is a pretty good example of that.

 

[GAP]

What FDR knew about diplomacy, force, tyrants -- and Obama does not
By Fay Vincent September 18, 2013 FoxNews.com
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/09/18/what-fdr-knew-about-diplomacy-force-tyrants-and-obama-does-not/#ixzz2fdYqFRUu


Against the stunning backdrop of the current diplomatic efforts to avoid our use of military force in Syria, I have been reading a superb new book, "Rendezvous with Destiny: How Franklin D. Roosevelt and Five Extraordinary Men Took America into the War and into the World" by Michael Fullilove.

There seems no limit to the interest in World War II, and this book examines the efforts of five envoys President Franklin D. Roosevelt used between late 1939 when Hitler invaded Poland and December,1941 when we were attacked at Pearl Harbor, to represent him as he tried to deal the emerging crisis.

Those envoys, close associates of his, were Sumner Welles, Bill Donovan, Harry Hopkins, Averell Harriman and Wendell Willkie.

The first trip by Welles took place in March,1940, when FDR dispatched him to the capitals of Europe to take the measure of the leaders in those countries during the lull in the so-called phony war when there seemed to be time to avoid a full blown disaster. It was the last sad gasps of diplomacy and it seems all too familiar today.

What is so striking about this new book is how much the circumstances facing FDR resemble those now confronting President Obama. And while history may not repeat itself, I found it impossible not to relate the frenetic efforts by leaders in Britain and France to try to assess Hitler with the present attempts to figure out what Messrs Putin and Assad are thinking.

There is the inevitable tendency of diplomacy to focus on what is said during negotiations, and to hear what one hopes to hear. The wiser course is what history teaches-- to spend more time considering who is doing the speaking.

In 1940 as war in Europe became a reality, polls showed 96% of Americans wanted the U.S. to keep out of it.
more on link

 

[Kirkhill]

I think that one of the reasons that America has a history of "isolationism" is because it is bred in the bone.  The dominant story of America is of strong aggressors bent on conquering the New World.  There is a contrary view that America is a land of weak refugees who sought asylum, a place of shelter from the interminable struggles of Europe.

In the thread Why Europe Keeps Failing the moving maps, in my opinion, demonstrate the fallacy behind Yeats's plaintive "the centre cannot hold": there is no centre and never was.  There are multiple centres.  There were multiple centres in Europe and there are multiple centres in America.

Microbiology for a moment.  It is the only practical method I know of for testing cultures.

In microbiology, when you have an amorphous stew of bugs, technically known as a broth, competing with each other, the first thing you do is fix them in time and place by locking them into a petrie dish filled with agar.  The bugs cannot move and their individual characters become apparent.  Their colour, shape and form become apparent.  Some prosper and submerge their neighbours.  Some are overwhelmed.  Some create toxic no-bugs' lands that prevent other bugs overwhelming them but equally prevent them growing themselves. 

At this point the microbiologist intervenes and picks, using sterile tools, pure examples of the bugs of interest and transplants them to sterile environments - meaning free of competitors.  The microbiologist transplants colonies.  The bugs are then allowed to grow to their full potential to identify their special characteristics and traits.

David Hackett Fischer's "Albion's Seed" does a marvelous job of describing that process as it applies to the transplant of British cultures to America. But he doesn't go far enough.  He doesn't allow for New Amsterdam, New Sweden, New Brunswick (Both of them), New Scotland, New Rochelle, New France and New Spain.

I believe that in early America European colonies were sufficiently dispersed as to allow them to develop their own characteristics and cultures.  It also presented enough space that even when those colonies sprang from cultures that traditionally competed for resources that competition was not necessary.  Indeed it could be seen as counter productive when there were more resource-efficient methods of acquiring the daily bread.

The Americas, despite their involvements in European wars, and perhaps because of their involvement, have become a place where space and isolation were traded for conflict.  If you couldn't get along with your neighbours then move to the Peace district.

Having found a method where even the weakest individual could survive and prosper in isolation, and give the lie to John Donne's "no man is an island",  these surviving colonists have been very reluctant to enter back into the European stew.  And lose their identities.

But even America is not a big enough petrie dish to permit isolation forever.  Eventually the pure colonies expand everywhere and start running into each other with no more room to run.  They are forced to compete with each other.

The phenomenon is particularly apparent in the cities.  Cities are not, and never have been, uniform cultures.  They are amalgams of isolated, competing cultures trapped in a stew.  One man's neighbourhood is another man's ghetto. 

Some years back I met a fellow Scot and one of the parlour games we like to play is identifying where the other fellow comes from by his accent.  I commented that this chap was from Glasgow and then I tried to pin down the district.  I mentioned that he sounded a lot like Billy Connolly. They had grown up two streets apart and were mates.  Three streets over there was a competing tribe with a very different accent.  And they are just two of a number in that one city.  Discrete, identifiable cultures in close proximity vs discrete, identifiable cultures separated by space. 

In Glasgow you end up with the Old Firm.  In Canada you end up with Gravelbourg and Orangeville.

In America population growth in the coastal areas is making America's coasts look more like the European stew.  Meanwhile the centre of America and Canada is still lightly populated enough that Joel Garreau, in his "Nine Nations of North America" can describe it as "The Empty Quarter".

It is a curiosity that in the modern world the most ardent American isolationists seem to come from the stews on the coasts while the people most likely to join the forces and support intervention are from "The Empty Quarter".

I think the situation is much the same in Canada although not as well developed because of the lesser population pressures.

My point.

There has never been a mono-culture with a centre.  In North America, for a couple of centuries, people have had the illusion that such as state was possible but, I believe it was only an illusion and ultimately John Donne is proven correct.

 

[pbi]

It is a curiosity that in the modern world the most ardent American isolationists seem to come from the stews on the coasts while the people most likely to join the forces and support intervention are from "The Empty Quarter".

It wasn't always like this. From what I have read, what Roosevelt and the Democrats found as they wrestled with bringing the US into WWII was exactly the opposite distribution of opinion. The support for intervention was strongest amongst Democrats from the Northeastern states, especially New England. The greatest Democrat resistance to involvement came from the South and the Midwest (particularly Chicago with its strong German population). No small part of this was the feeling (sometimes not very well hidden...) that the "New York Jews" were exerting influence on America to drag it into a war that was none of its business.

The Republicans were, at least initially, very strongly against any military involvement in Europe, including Lend-Lease and other measures "short of war". From what I can make out, there were a host of reasons for the Republican position, but these included:

-tacit (and sometimes open...) approval of Fascism as a way to control Communists, labour movements and Jews;

-"nativist" suspicion of anything to do with foreigners, especially England. Republicans frequently derided pro-intervention Democrats as "Anglophiles";

-fear (actually justified, as it turned out...) that war would further extend the powers of Govt machinery and "statism" which the Republicans believed they were fighting by opposing the New Deal policies;

-a sense that America needed to devote 100% of its resources to defending itself alone; and

-concern over the distorting effect that a major war would have on a US economy that was still not fully back on its feet.

A very interesting exception to the Republican position was the Presidential candidate Wendell Wilkie, who ran against Roosevelt in the 1940 election. He became extremely unpopular in the Republican party because he supported US involvement. In the end, after his defeat and once war was inevitable, Wilkie took a position with the Roosevelt administration. (Wonder if that could still happen today?)

 

[tomahawk6]

A very interesting exception to the Republican position was the Presidential candidate Wendell Wilkie, who ran against Roosevelt in the 1940 election. He became extremely unpopular in the Republican party because he supported US involvement. In the end, after his defeat and once war was inevitable, Wilkie took a position with the Roosevelt administration. (Wonder if that could still happen today?)

If the candidate were McCain.Most Republican candidates will be conservative's of different stripes,while the democrats are more like socialists every election cycle.Or the successful democrat will try to appear moderate but would govern as socialists.Its a very different Democrat Party from even the 40's - 50's.Since Vietnam the Party has been co-opted by the left.

 

[Edward Campbell]

With regard to which party is more or less isolationist or interventionist, I would hark back to my opening comments, in the first post of this thread, in which I referred readers to Walter Russell Mead's Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World for a look at the four main thrusts of American foreign policy. Americans marshal themselves behind all four, all the time, but, at any given time, one dominates the political and policy processes. Great migrations in the USA, especially in thew 1930s and again in the 1950s and 60s, have radically changed demographics and voting patterns (the latter aided by horrifying and fundamentally anti-democratic gerrymandering) but I agree with Mead that the four main thrusts are the same and some of those thrusts are as old as America itself.

 

[pbi]

If the candidate were McCain.Most Republican candidates will be conservative's of different stripes,while the democrats are more like socialists every election cycle.Or the successful democrat will try to appear moderate but would govern as socialists.Its a very different Democrat Party from even the 40's - 50's.Since Vietnam the Party has been co-opted by the left.

As the Republicans of today certainly seem to be different from the isolationist Republicans of the late 1930's.

What I don't understand is this: if America is in its heart basically a country of conservative  values (ie: more "Right" than "Left"), how has it happened that Americans since Vietnam have ever elected any Democrat Presidents or Congresses, if these politicians don't appeal to what most Americans want?

Or is the US electoral system, (when it puts Democrats in the driver's seat of America),  not representative of what "the people" truly want? This is a criticism which is brought against our system here in Canada quite frequently.

 

[Edward Campbell]

In my opinion America is not conservative, nor is it liberal; it is, as the title of the thread and the lead article suggest, deeply (and the numbers in recent presidential elections suggest) almost equally divided.

My impression is that a distressingly large number of Americans, especially educated, employed Americans are saying, "a plague on both your houses," and not bothering to vote at all. Voter turnout in the USA seems to be mired in the mid 50% range, (lower in mid term elections) compared to the 60% range in Canada and turnouts in the 70 and 80% and even higher ranges in many European countries.

 

[tomahawk6]

Somehow the current occupant of the White House got elected twice to the highest office in the land.He definitely is the most left of center President in our history.After 8 years of Obama,the smart money is on Hillary or Biden.The Republican lineup is equally unappealing.

 

[Brad Sallows]

I don't see any mystery at all in people wanting privileges without paying for them, and very little mystery in how people can be convinced that someone else is going to pay.

The mystery isn't that the US elects Democratic politicians; the mystery is the resilience of classical liberalism in the US.

 

[pbi]

Somehow the current occupant of the White House got elected twice to the highest office in the land.He definitely is the most left of center President in our history.After 8 years of Obama,the smart money is on Hillary or Biden.The Republican lineup is equally unappealing.

Tomahawk: I'd be curious to know your thoughts on my earlier question, and also on ERC's post that America is neither mainly "liberal" nor mainly "conservative" but just very badly divided and entrenched.

ER: I share your concern over low voter turnout (and let's NOT get smug and point any fingers at the US...). When the "average person" doesn't turn out to vote, the extremists and their supporters always will. In this way, a democratic process can be hijacked by the Left or by the Right, with IMHO equally nasty results. The morning after, everyone wakes up and says: "How did THAT happen?"

 

[Edward Campbell]

Tomahawk: I'd be curious to know your thoughts on my earlier question, and also on ERC's post that America is neither mainly "liberal" nor mainly "conservative" but just very badly divided and entrenched.

ER: I share your concern over low voter turnout (and let's NOT get smug and point any fingers at the US...). When the "average person" doesn't turn out to vote, the extremists and their supporters always will. In this way, a democratic process can be hijacked by the Left or by the Right, with IMHO equally nasty results. The morning after, everyone wakes up and says: "How did THAT happen?"

Last year, while "wintering" in the USA, I was chatting with some friends about politics ~ most had degrees above a BSc/BA, PhDs were pretty common, what wasn't common was any interest, at all, in politics. Amongst the American citizens, native born and naturalized, none had voted in the last federal election, the one which had just elected president Obama, some had voted in local elections because there are critical issues there: schools, roads and so on. These people, all employed, all well educated, saw little choice in national level politics: nothing differentiated the Democrats and Republicans on the issues that matter. The economy, they believe, is in the hands of a few appointed officials and they suggest that elected politicians are both ignorant and apathetic on important issues. "What about Obamacare?" I asked. All agreed that healthcare is critical and that they, themselves, looked closely at a company's health insurance plan before they considered a new job offer, but they felt that their health care was their, individual, responsibility and that government was, mostly, in the pockets of health insurance companies and/or unions.

 

[Kirkhill]

ERC:

That seems to me to suggest that your median group is closer in outlook to Thucydides and Reaganesque in the sense that government is generally seen as a problem and not a solution.  Is that an overstatement?

It also suggests to me that when the inevitable happens, as Maggie predicted, the supply of other peoples' money dries up, that there is a strong cadre that might find Detroit to be an attractive outcome.  That is to say it puts the community back in the hand of its citizens because it is no longer attractive to those that would purport to supply services to the citizens for attractive stipends.

These would seem to be a less extreme version of the survivalist phenomenon that actually looked toward "the end of civilization".  They have in common a dislike of the status quo and an acceptance of their personal inability to modify it.  They differ in the extent to which they remove themselves from society and the size of the community they consider optimal.