Americans Decide Leadership Ain’t Cost Free

On January 20, 1961, President John F. Kennedy used his inaugural address to announce that America “shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any enemy to assure the survival and success of liberty.” Sixty-three years later Americans are not so sure about that. That includes the two men seeking second terms as President.

Donald Trump is not one for nuance: “The world is taking advantage of us.” That belief will be reflected in  more than his grievance against Nato members who fail to reach  their two-per-cent-of-GDP targets. Joe Biden seems less dangerous to our allies, but his virulent protectionism matches Trumps’, and the tough talk in Thursday’s fiery State of the Union speech is belied by his acts. A Texan would say, “All hat but no cattle.” A student of Teddy Roosevelt might joke that Biden speaks loudly but carries a twig.

Today’s America Is Unlikely To Respond To JFK’s Call

The winner will have been elected by an America that doubts whether the burdens it undertook when it founded the United Nations and, later, Nato, remain worth bearing. After all Stalin is dead. Under pressure from Ronald Reagan, who devoted 6 per cent of US GDP to support its military, the Berlin Wall is down. And a once down-and-out Europe, with the help of the Marshall Plan, has fully recovered from the ravages of World War II, and no longer can justify a beggar-thy-ally defense policy.

Support For The UN Is A Hard Sell In America  

Then, too, the UN has not persuaded many countries to beat their swords into ploughshares, that, as Harold Macmillan argued, “Jaw, jaw is better than war, war.” America provides three times as much of its funding as second-place Germany and six times as much as third-place Japan according to Brett Schaefer, research fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom. Proving that money can’t buy influence, the State Department reports that over the past twenty years the General Assembly majority votes on contested issues have coincided with the U.S. position only 32 per cent of the time. Some 58 per cent of Americans believe the UN is doing a poor job in solving the problems it faces.

That makes the UN a target of opportunity for neoisolationist politicians. John Bolton, Trump’s national security adviser until he was fired (Trump) or quit (Bolton), took to The Wall Street Journal to advise his former boss to end his threats to Nato, and “usefully wreak havoc on the UN” by reducing financial support, again resigning  from the various UN agencies that Biden rejoined. That done, he advises President Trump to move on to a re-examination of membership in such bodies as the International Monetary Fund and “a wall of pretend international courts”. But there is no truth to the rumor that Bolton is advising Trump to convert the home of the UN’s international bureaucracy, a beautiful glass building with spectacular views of New York City’s East River, into a new TRUMP CONDOS.

A Peace Dividend and Putin’s Piece of Ukraine

Meanwhile, Nato’s members decided that with Stalin dead, the Berlin wall a rubble, and the Soviet Union dissolved, the time had come to party, to divert funds from their militaries to social programs, to enjoy a peace dividend. Stanford University’s Francis Fukuyama proclaimed “the end of history”, all ideological struggles ended, the world evolved into its final form, a liberal democracy. A brooding KGB agent in Dresden disagreed and ere long would have the power to prove Fukuyama wrong.

Americans are in a cranky mood. Over 70 per cent believe the country is headed in the wrong direction. Fifty-five per cent (71 per cent of Republicans) say “we should pay less attention to problems overseas and concentrate on problems here at home.” Many add that preparing for a confrontation with China should take precedence over aid to Ukraine now that America admits it can no longer fight a two-front war. Trump, a fickle ally at best, has threatened to unseat congressional Republicans who agree to further aid for Ukraine. He is silent on aid to Israel, once an ally he valued, now in the copious Trump doghouse because Prime Minister Netanyahu proved “disloyal” by congratulating Biden on his victory in 2020.

Trump And Biden Talk Different Talks But Walk Similar Walks

President Biden is not certain to prove a more reliable ally. In last week’s State of the Union Speech he called for billions in new social spending on a long laundry list of entitlements, but said nothing about our under-funded military. As vice president he advised President Obama against the assassination of bin Laden and later opposed Trump’s decision to take out Iran’s General Qasem Soleimani. As President he scampered out of Afghanistan without warning allies. He eased sanctions on Iran. He removed the Houthis from the terrorist list on which they were placed by Trump, and left them off for three years. He supplied Ukraine with weapons but limited their range so as not to antagonize Putin. He attacks Iran’s proxies but not the supplier of their weapons and cash.

He told Israel, “I have your back,” and then stabbed it by extending a sanctions waiver that that gave Iran access to $10 billion: The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies estimates that the Mullahs send $800 million per year to Hamas and Hezbollah. Counting on Biden to put American boots on the ground if a Nato ally is attacked, rather than to interpret America’s Nato obligation to avoid such a deployment, is not a sensible assumption around which to build Nato policy.

World Leadership Might Be Too Expensive For A Big-Time Debtor

All of this against a background of America’s fiscal condition. The deficit in fiscal year 2023 rose by $320 billion to $1.70 trillion. The cost of servicing the $34.5 trillion national debt already exceeds spending on health care for the poor (Medicaid) and will soon exceed what America spends on its military. Americans “don’t want to add on massive additional defense spending,” claims Elbridge Colby, Trump’s assistant secretary of defense. That’s one thing on which the Democratic left agrees with the Republican right.

In short, the post-World War II settlement has run its course, both in the Kremlin and in Washington. Putin is re-assembling “historic Russia”, while America is reverting to its traditional isolationism. Remember: it was not the plight of allies, but direct attacks on our ships and territory that led us to take up arms in two World Wars.

Churchill and Kennedy: Quaint Anachronisms

Winston Churchill observed, “There is only one thing worse than fighting with allies, and that is fighting without them.” In November we will elect a President who pays attention neither to the all-time Greatest Briton nor to the eloquent JFK’s view of America’s global responsibilities. An EU willing to commit what The Economist estimates to be only 0.08 per cent of its GDP to aid Ukraine should be worried, very worried.