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World peace is the apotheosis of the globalist fantasy. Fortunes were spent constructing globalist organizations like the United Nations and the League of Nations in the hope that they could replace world wars with world peace, but all they did was globalize local conflicts.
And start new wars.
The idea that we could build a rules-based international order is a failure. It’s time for us to learn from that failure. The Trump administration has done some admirable things in foreign policy, but it also has spent too much time stuck on globalist fallacies like international stability. We keep acting like it’s our job to head off wars that don’t involve us or prop up nation-states, even if like Syria they now consist of guys named Mohammed waving bloody swords, because there is an inherent virtue in maintaining higher levels of order from the local level to the global one.
On trade, Trump embraced the magic of chaos, rattling market economies, and forcing resets at dollarpoint, but he has spent too much time and prestige trying to settle conflicts like the war between Russia and Ukraine, intervening in India’s justified retaliation against Pakistan, and pursuing negotiations with Hamas in Gaza. Some want Trump to be in the peacemaking business, but peacemaking is a globalist fallacy. In reality, war, not peace, is inevitable.
And the United States does not need to be involved in trying to negotiate every conflict.
In his 1979 State of the Union address, President Jimmy Carter declared, “we have no desire to be the world’s policeman. But America does want to be the world’s peacemaker.”
Later that year, Shiite Jihadists seized control of Iran, a civil war began in El Salvador, China invaded Vietnam and the Russians invaded Afghanistan. Three out of four of those conflicts would have a significant impact (and still do) on the United States of America.
Peacemaking has rarely been a profitable proposition for presidents. Teddy Roosevelt won a Nobel Peace Prize for helping end a war between two major future enemies, Russia and Japan, when we might have been better off weakening them both. That kind of thinking has fallen out of fashion, but common sense ought to bring it back.
The lack of world peace isn’t because we haven’t put enough money into the UN or spent enough time building personal relationships with foreign leaders. It’s human nature.
At some point everyone (even in D.C.) ought to be able to figure out that other countries fight wars because they want to fight them. The Russians and the Ukrainians hated each other long before we got into the act. Islamic Jihadism goes back well over a thousand years. Various tribes in Africa have been fighting each other since before anyone except the Indians had heard of America. We can occasionally tamp down historically based conflicts, but unless an entire region turns into world government eunuchs after a truly devastating world war like, say, Europe, the wars will resume after a scheduled commercial break for a Nobel Peace prize.
And that’s fine. Or rather it’s terrible, but it’s also the inevitable state of human affairs.
It is not America’s role to be the world’s policeman or peacemaker, but to pursue our own interests and while local wars often cause havoc with international trade and that affects our economy, we will have better luck finding ways to adapt and profit from those wars than trying to convince peoples who have hated each other before Thomas Jefferson ever put quill to flax that they ought to stop trying to kill each other and run arm in arm through a minefield instead.
Rather than trying to convince the Ukrainians and Russians to stop fighting each other, we should approach the problem from the standpoint of our national interests within the realistic framework of how people actually behave in the real world rather than how people would behave in a Star Trek episode. And then decide if it’s even our problem in the first place.
Then we can think about how to turn it to our advantage the way Chinese regularly do.
When we leave behind the globalist fantasy of international stability and embrace the chaos, all sorts of opportunities open up that are not available when we’re running around playing hall monitor. We have spent generations upholding an international order that the Russians and Chinese run around sabotaging. What if we began doing some sabotaging of our own?
The Trump administration did that with international trade. On foreign policy, President Trump has been ignoring the experts and doing things that they said couldn’t be done. But we’re still tethered to the old Wilsonian notion that the world is our responsibility instead of our playground, that it’s our job to tell the other children to behave themselves, and leverage our economic and military power to make sure that they do. This is the dull mindset that stuck us with being a world power because we took all the stuff that even the Europeans didn’t seriously.
And our reward is more of the same.
Some not terribly bright ‘experts’ stuck President Trump with the false choice between peacemaking and endless wars. That’s a leftist proposition of the kind Jimmy Carter would have loved. Anyone in the least familiar with human history knows that wars are inherently tribal and therefore endless. Recognizing that reality doesn’t mean we have to fight endless wars.
Peacemaking, like dropping a tenner in the palm of a crackhead, may provide a momentary noble feeling, but the crackhead will soon want another one and wars will break out again.
Real realpolitik isn’t pretending that we can end wars, but turning those wars to our advantage. Wars are another form of competition and competition is healthy. If our enemies are at war, we should cheer both sides on, if an enemy is fighting an ally, we should support our ally, and if the combatants are neither allies nor enemies, we could explore how to benefit from it, instead of asking everyone to end the fighting in the name of the ghost of Jimmuh Carter.
Or we could choose not to be involved. That’s an option too. And one worth considering.
The alternative is wasting too much time trying to persuade the rest of the world to be good boys and girls from our lofty moral high ground of allowing Muslim terrorists at least three free suicide bombings before we bomb them and then spend the next ten years rebuilding them.
We don’t have to be stupid. Stupidity, like choosing to keep on paying Netflix $24.99 a month long after that last show you liked was cancelled four years ago, is a choice. Governments run on autopilot most of the time because it saves professional government types from having to think. Playing the world’s policeman or peacemaker is a legacy from over a century ago back when Woodrow Wilson’s wife was running the country while he lay in a White House coma.
America is out of both the Wilson and Biden comas. And it’s time to stop trying to run the world for the benefit of the world (which the world never appreciates) and rather than trying to control the chaos, we should embrace it, ride it and adapt to the possibilities that it brings. We should not give up our values, but neither should we pretend that the rest of the world shares them.
Globalists thought that the world could be ordered through common values. They were wrong. So badly wrong that they might have been trying to order linguini from a Chinese restaurant or spell ‘Adieu’ entirely out of consonants. The world is in a state of perpetual chaos. We can meet it where it’s at or keep trying to bring peace, democracy and free stuff to a thankless world.
There is a time for war and there is a time for peace.
Right now it’s time for war.
Islamic terrorists have been emboldened by the leftists weakness, and the invasion of Europe.
There can never be peace unless the islamists are shown their place.
Excellent analysis. In Ancient Rome there were wars all over the place, outside Rome’s borders. But Rome fell not because of those, but because of corruption and incompetence in the Roman government, and lack of good internal military policy and preparedness, etc.
Our second imperial war(Spain) begun by puritan holier than thou yankees. The Civil War was the first. Sending troops to Mindanao to quell the revolt of an “inferior” people was the continuation of our tyrannous ancestors. Woody Wilson continued the tradition and there has been no change of policy since.
Destruction of a civilization can occur from within or out. We lost ours to the communists in the ’60s. Our response was the same as 1902. Our simple government thrusters don’t change policies because it would require innovative and independent thought. There is no such animal as an innovative bureaucrat.
All that is left is the sorting out of the spoils.
My Dear Madame – It’s early morning – coffee has yet to kick in – I am guessing you are sowing seeds but I’m not sure what you are saying – nonetheless I am curious where you would take your comment
I have often wondered about this clock.
My point is that there has been no change in the messianic policies of our government for 160 years. The northern wealthy using their mystical cloak of self sacrifice has led us to move through a century of government failure. Inconvenient facts are ignored when there is a pile of cash involved. I cannot recall ONE policy/program that has actually worked for the citizens.
Woody Wilson was blackmailed into heavy socialism on top of his feelings of moral and intellectual superiority. There has been no basic change since we have ridden forth to “make the world safe for democracy” or to show the heathen Philippinos how civilization should work.
The lackeys in government have made no move towards changing demonstrably terrible policies because they fear for their pensions and are not able to organize coherent thoughts. This will not change with their unions blocking a business type weeding out.
That is why Trump must be removed in their eyes. I do not believe he will survive. Julian the Apostate comes to mind.
Good Day Sir!
Why 160 years ago? More specifically, why aren’t you including the Mexican-American War as the first war imperial war?
I posted online MANY years ago (before I was banned from Powerline) that the USA should have ONE Policy regarding the World “We are done”! We should advise the World that we will no longer be the World’s “Baby Daddy”! Their free ride on the backs of US TAXPAYERS is over. Furthermore, any attacks on our interests will result in attacks on the LEADERS who directed the attacks! We should make sure anyone who thinks they can attack the USA or our interests KNOW that we WILL respond – harshly! We shouldn’t worry about “boots on the ground”! We should strike the Leaders and infrastructures so those people will be busy REBUILDING rather than re-attacking! Our Responses should be so DISPROPORTIONAL that no one would even consider an attack.
We should also END any immigration of a certain “religion” and look to DEPORT as many adherents as possible! People should enjoy “Freedom of Religion”, but NOT a World Dominance Ideology within OUR UNITED STATES!!
No wonder you were banned – You want the truth – you can’t handle the truth – is the bane of social nitwit networks who want to stay in their jammies all day long and feel a sense of power censoring those who state the truth of the power spine of USA and which is why I have no social nitwit account and will not have one again unless I am marketing something then I will not get involved with comments except related to my marketing
Wars are started by men who don’t have to fight them. Since the 20th century and possibly WW2 and WW1 war profiteers have been involved going back to the Rothschilds betting on both sides to win to short the loser whoever that will be between Napoleon and England.
Except for helping Israel for their undying loyalty to USA and their ability to stand on their own and the victims never the perpetuator of the attacks on Israel since 1948.
It’s a good point to let nations know if they get into wars or conflicts they are on their own. Like boys fighting hoping their big brother will come and save them, this should end. Let them desire to be part of the Golden Age of USA happening now or just let them duke it out themselves. That’s a good strategy the USA has yet to try.
We have an ongoing seething to overt war with jihad fatwa fathead izzylym – that is the war western nations are in.
You cannot end the coma of altruism and self-sacrifice unless you discover and live by Ayn Rand’s moral code of rational selfishness.
“The story of the Soviet Union, and of the death and misery it brought for millions, is a perfect example of abstract ideas playing out in real life. It shows both the impotence of evil — a country continuously on the verge of collapse — and the tragic spectacle of such evil being assisted by the good under the auspices of an undisputed morality. We have, rightly, condemned the Soviet Union as a murderous abomination of a regime. When are we going to condemn the morality that paved the way for its murderous reign? When are we going to condemn altruism?” – “Soviet Terror: Sponsored by American Humanitarians” by Nikos Sotirakopoulos
What acts of altruism are you referring to?
Seems to me the political entity now known as the Ukraine did not even exist until sometime into the twentieth cenury. It was one more “project” of the dominating nations working hard to destabilise any remains of Europe as the first “world war” was setling down. I started in the Balkan Peninsula, and the process took its name from that region, being called “balkanisation”.
The rules of that game are simple. Take the map of whatever region is in view, draw new lines on it that divide things by two factors” start with the principle that no new nation can be comprised of fewer than three distinct people groups. Second, assure each people group is divided between at leas three of the new “nations” being formed. The result will absolutely guarantee a permanently destabilised situation.
Ukraine was “formed” later on, and includes Poles (west), Ukrainians (middle and northern), and Russians (east and south). . Our own part, staging the coup (Victoria Nuland) back in 2014 which removed a duly elected, well liked by all, (cant have that now, can we?) president played heavily into the general destabilising of the new nation Ukraine. The new entertainer “president” was eager to promote the acceptance of NATO Iikely a “quiet” condition of his new position, and almost certainly a precondition of “keeping his new job”
I am very glad Trump has taken his position on the whole Ukraine situation. Let THEM sort it out, we are eager to be involved in trade once the mess allows it.
Mao was bigger mass murderer then Hitler more Blood on his hands then Hitler and small minded Liberals swoon for Mao
Ron Paul sounded like a complete clown on foreign policy, and the US should never embrace his isolationist views.
We created a problem, and then made it worse. Mainly because of the globalist world peace fantasies that the pro-Putin/pro-CCP Dissident Right now support.
America First doesn’t mean “Yankee Stay Home.” That mentality got us into the horror stories that were both World Wars.