It is truly ironic to hear a stalwart Republican like David Brooks complaining about the low political intelligence of voters...who have effectively been a bountiful resource for the GOP, a party promoting a string of presidential nominees beginning, with Gerald Ford who were in no way presidential (e.g. Reagan, George W. Bush, and Trump), and equally ironic those GOP nominees who lost their elections were the only ones really qualified for the office (e.g. George HW Bush, Dole, and McCain). Amending Brooks' title: "GOP Your Nominees Stink..."
24
What the heck is a New Dove…?
Never heard the term-did Mr. Brooks just make this up today?
12
Iran is not the only country destabilizing the middle east- what about Saudi Arabia and Isreal? Saudi Arbia is drectly involved by spreading fundametalist Islam via its Madrasas and Isreal by promulgating theology instead of democracy for its non-Jewish citizens.
18
Since WWII, the US has invaded 37 sovereign nations which has resulted in the death of over 20 million people. The US has only not been at war (either directly or via proxy) for three and a half years of its entire existence as a nation!!!
Mr Brooks' fairytale story of peace since 1945 is the biggest piece of whitewash of history I have seen in a long time. The US dropped over 20,000 bombs last year alone. Tell the survivors of Raqqa that the US is a peaceful nation wanting to spread democracy. They will either laugh in your face, throw insults at the level of your ignorance, or try and open your eyes to the devastation that is called "The US Foreign Policy."
32
“People under 30 years old were the most likely to want the United States to abstain from intervening in human rights abuses.”
I can tell you where that comes from, the "progressive" narrative that America is the source of all evil in the world. The result is understandably a generation of people who don't want America to engage in the world because hey China is doing such a bang-up job of safeguarding Muslims' rights by herding them into concentration camps and Russian is sure concerned with gay rights and Venezuela isn't being run into the ground by a gang of irresponsible kleptocratic idiots. Nope, as long as America isn't involved, the word is just hunky-dory.
8
This is a very flattering view of the US role in the world. Please. Just take one very big example, Latin America in the 20th century. The US did its best to support dictators and cutthroats, finance death squads and train torturers, work against democracy, freedom and the welfare of the people in the region. All for the profit for American fruit companies, mining companies and others. And the dictators who did much of the America's killing.
Now we are seeing the old tired con job being shoved on our faces once again. The Big Oil, the military industrial complex and Republicans (and many Democrats) are once again ready to kill hundreds of thousands of innocents in a foreign, faraway country (Iran) for profits.
I'm not saying the many Americans aren't sincerely well-meaning and idealistic. But America's only religion, value and policy has always been corporate profit. Good Americans have been fed religion and patriotism to make them bypass their brains and hearts.
Still, I believe that America that at least gives lip service to high principles is much better than one that is just blatantly and proudly fascist and Trumpian.
27
Tell this to all your Republican friends in the Senate. You sow what you reap, Mr Brooks.
11
Trump is international hooligan WRECKING the globe and America.
5
According to David, Iran is destabilizing the Middle East. He may we’ll be correct, I do not know. Let’s assume they are. From our perspective, why should it matter much? As a country, due to the fracking revolution, we are awash in oil. The Middle East is not a big market. Whatever dictator who is in charge is going to sell their country’s oil. They need the money. It is true that a destabilized Middle East could put immigration pressure on Europe. If we butt out, we will not get sucked into another mess in this area. We have proved over and over that we do not know what we are doing in this part of the world. Call me a whatever who has lost faith, but, our leaders have not figured out the way. If they cannot lead, it is hard to follow.
4
“The nation never got to enjoy the self-righteous sense of innocence that the powerless and reclusive enjoy.”
I disagree. There was a brief period after WW II when the nation felt enormously powerful and most people still had a sense of innocence and thought we were supposed to be the good guys. I can look at the MetLife (PanAm) building in NYC and still see it, listen to the title theme from the film How The West Was Won and still hear it.
The nation was preparing itself to finally address civil rights. You can see in things like a handful of Andy Griffith and Dick Van Dyke television show episodes that the nation was preparing itself for changing gender roles.
Then Vietnam, Watergate, the Southern Strategy, and resistance to school busing happened.
I think a large part of nostalgia for an idealized past is an unconscious yearning for that brief time when the nation felt both powerful and that it was part of our job to be the good guys.
7
Please remember President Trump is not the problem, he is the symptom. What a terrible though!
2
"Iran is destabilizing the Middle East." ?
2
Okay, but...
The foundation of the liberal world order was in no small part a need by us to contain the Soviet Union and survive the mutual assured destruction that developed alongside it. Noblesse oblige was a tool.
Once the Cold War ended we all failed to create a framework for the new world. One in which everything was not seen thru the prism of MAD.
So here we are unbound and chaotic
3
Well, lets wait a minute, take a deep breath, before having another go at China, et al. Most people in China, and the placeswhere China is building infrastructure, are quite ok about the Chinese form of government. You should not get too caught up with so called democracy, because there are places where it just doesnt work! Ans its doesnt seem to be working well in Britain, or the US. Maybe we should fix our own back yard first, before we criticize different systems.
4
Americans proved to be completely naive and totally unaware of PROPAGANDA that destroys their country. Meanwhile millions in offshore money laundered funds supported Donald Trump since the 1980s. Russia are you listening?
4
Someone sold isolationism to the voting public. Dang, I can’t figure out who exactly did that.
4
I'm afraid I must disagree with the main points of this article.
1. Neither NATO, UN nor the World Bank are democratic institutions in any robust sense of the word.
2. I don't understand where the author get his numbers as far as supposedly low battlefield numbers are concerned and which time spans he is comparing. If you look at the last 40 years e.g. and count in not only the Iraq and Afghanistan war, but also the Iraq-Iran War and many other low intensity conflicts around the world (e.g. Congo), it is highly counterintuitive and I would reckon false that there was no other 40 year time span between 1500 and 1945 - hardly all of human history by the way - that did not have lower casualty numbers.
3. Most importantly, I believe it to be a gross euphemism that the US has largely been promoting democracy since 1945. The only place where that is probably true is maybe Eastern Europe, where as a SIDE EFFECT (!) of winning the cold war, many countries returned to democratic institutions. In Latin America, Middle East & Africa - pretty much the rest of the world - US involvement was abysmal in terms of democracy promotion.
Some NYT commentators seem to want to reinvent some Golden Age of the US as a beacon of hope in the center of the liberal international order that existed before the current administration came into power. In my view, Trumpian foreign policy is a new low, but that's no reason to write sugarcoated eulogies for pre-2017 US internationalism.
10
These are indeed dispiriting times for so many of us, whether we are young or old. It feels like we as a country are all in a car about to careen over a cliff, the driver is drunk, and no one can figure out how to stop it.
Whether you want to call it the old world order, or a new world order of some sort, we need to stanch the bleeding and bring our country back to life. We need the stability, steadiness and dependability of a society of the rule of law, independence of its citizens, and one that values people over prosperity. And one that has leaders with integrity and honor who are able navigate the turbulent waters and keep us on course.
With the liberal world order that has dominated since World War 2, we have had some thing fairly akin to that. But unfortunately, in recent years, with the rise of Reagan, FOX news, social media, and the rabid right - things have gone off the rails it seems.
An upgraded and modernized liberal world order is what we need for this new century. But I will admit that in listening to a number of our current Democratic presidential contenders, I hear glimmers of hope and promising ideas for the changes we can and need to make.
IF the Democrats could once again take over the reins of all three branches of government, I have not doubt that we could once again see a return to decency, honesty and a more egalitarian society where everyone prospers. It can be done but there is a lot of work ahead of us. The ideas and leaders are in the wings!
8
David, in your straining for both-sides-ism, you miss the point.
I am not a New Dove, and not a New Anything, at my age. I am not against military action where and when it's truly needed BUT how do we judge that? Vietnam and Iraq were nothing but awful messes, so it seems we need to stop and consider before rushing into wars everywhere we turn.
When our people don't have basic health care or living wages, when we have to go bankrupt for medical emergencies and spend our entire nest eggs so that we have no retirement, we DO need to put more money into our own country.
The appalling thing is that Republicans don't think their own compatriots are worth medical care, a living wage, and a proper safety net—but I have NEVER heard one question whether we can "afford" a war.
Wars have become knee-jerk reactions with us. Domestic problems, however urgent, are "too expensive."
Maybe it would help if Congress again actually had to deliberate and declare war as it's meant to do.
In the meantime, stop distorting our positions. We're not against an international-facing stance. We just want to right an enormous imbalance.
11
Mr. Brooks is right on target with this essay. It may not be surprising that after almost 2 decades of endless war - Iraq-Afghanistan-Iraq (again)-Syria - during which Americans were the lead force on the ground and the receiver of criticism from many of our "allies" that younger Americans feel fatigued and at the best ambivalent about our role as the world's policeman. We must not withdraw from the world, but we must be better at forming consensus and forming coalitions to combat aggression and oppression around the world. American isolationism contributed to both World Wars while our active involvement contributed to victory for liberal democracy. There is a lesson there that has not been taught to our younger generations. While an "America First" program as supported by Trump sounds appealing, America no matter how strong we may be can not go it alone and must remain engaged in the rest of the world. This requires understanding of the issues outside of our boarders that affect us and our allies. This requires that we be good, reliable and trusted allies to other like-minded countries. This requires investment in the international order with support and material and financial resources. Money invested overseas comes back the the US in the form of stability and common goals with others. If we are perceived as unreliable, self-centered and bullies, we will be less secure and poorer as a nation for it. Trump in his greed and ignorance does not understand this.
3
I lived in a city and country divided and surrounded by a Wall and Soviet troops, which is why I have no delusions about Russia or the need for America to live up to its promise of being and remaining a free and democratic society.
That's also why I look at what's going on with this country under Donald Trump with a growing concern because he wraps himself up in the American flag claiming to be patriotic while trampling over the Constitution and civil rights with wild abandon.
Starting with his "America First" policy, which is nothing more than a paean to himself and his desire to further isolate this country from the rest of the world so that he can rule in perpetuity.
Make no mistake about it.
With a Republican Senate, Attorney General and a stacked Supreme Court in his pocket, he has no intention of ever relinquishing his grip; which means ultimately America will come to resemble all those countries with dictators and strongmen who imprison, kill, exile and torture those who deign to disagree with them.
I've lived through this and seen it before.
But I never thought I'd see it again. Here.
8
Over the years I have read (NYT) and listen to (PBS) Mr. Brooks. At times, he was a defender of hawkish and capitalistic policies (win-lose): much more often in his earlier years. At other times, more often lately, he seems to have had an inner awakening, seeing not only the beauty in humanity, but in Life itself.
In this opinion piece, David return to the dogma that has but one intent, to judge and divide.
Addressing one of his many "slight of pen," Iraq intervention had nothing to do with US ideals. Blacklisting Cuba ever since their revolution had nothing to do with US ideals. Attitudes and policies towards Iran, whether before or after the overthrow of the Peacock regime, had/has nothing to due with US ideas. No, US relationships towards these and many others (supposed adversaries,) were but a need to hold grudges against any population that dares reject US colonialism.
In this piece, you act like Trump when you dare place any suggestion of concern for Life, Liberty, or Democratic Ideals anywhere on the same article as US involvement in Iraq. That is Fake News.
With the end of the Cold War, US policy goals ran unchecked - started to be revealed. US foreign policy has had basically one purpose, maintaining the supply chain of goods and services, at prices we wished to pay. Like US training death squads in the 1980's, weapon sales prop up a Saudi regime. Do you believe MBS cares about US ideals?
Sorry trealize, Brook's Second Mountain is to return to ignorance.
2
Please read or at least skim through the survey this article cites. It clearly shows that younger generations are more committed to the liberal order and improving the world than older Americans are.
According to the survey cited in the article, 31% of the youngest Americans believe that "Fighting global poverty and promoting human rights" should be a top foreign policy priority, compared to only 11% of the oldest generation. The top four foreign policy priorities for the youngest voters are climate change, protecting American jobs, improving relationships with allies, and poverty/human rights. Three of those top four priorities are directly about "building a civilized global community," and only one is about America's self-interest.
This article is pushing a dishonestly pessimistic narrative that is contradicted by its own source material. Far from being concerned, I expect our foreign policy to become more humane and less nationalist in the future.
3
I'm on two sides of this argument.
I grew up cheering for the creation of global organizations designed to promote economics over war. The Right doesn't understand that the U.N., WTO, and other global institutions were created by the USA to benefit the USA. Not only did we get the benefit of a world where trade was made far less risky, but we got to be gatekeepers at those institutions, giving us power around the world. The Party of Trump is actively destroying levers on the world economy created by previous U.S. governments to enhance our economic and military position around the world. Don't tell the rest of the world but the U.N., etc. wete designed to "Put America First."
On the other side of the story is that the abuses of this system can't be brushed off.
From United Fruit and the banana republics to Haliburton and a privatizing military to global surveillance by global corporations manipulating us with algorithms, the system has been corrupted.
The American Consensus has been used to open up economies to exploitation by global shareholders against their will.
Countries that resist "help" from the system are attacked with sanctions, election interference, coups, and often mass violence.
Countries that join have their resources extracted with the proceeds going to foreigners and the corrupt. Then they have a debt crisis.
Workers and Earth are considered expendable.
The corruption of the system by those that run it have discredited a system that should be good.
3
Right on David! Best column you've written in a long time--precise, global, historical, uplifting, challenging. I shall print it out and tape it to my front door as I am one of those who have lost faith in human nature. "Might makes right" and selfishness appear to rule the day, everywhere.
Thank you!
1
No David. We are not the indispensable nation. We never were except in the myth of our own making, pushed by politicians without coherent strategy, bouncing from so called crisis to crisis, often as a mere political ploy.
David.....the myth is dead. The world knows it. We know it.
1
David Brooks is generally thoughtful in his opinion pieces. However, I was amused by his remark about Iran destabilizing the Middle East. When will US media be honest about the corrosive role of the regimes in Saudi Arabia and UAE on the region. These two governments are directly responsible (with US support) for the worst man made humanitarian disaster in the world in decades that is Yemen. What have we come to if medieval autocratic regimes such as these two can buy our silence and support by giving the US billions in orders for military equipment. (remember the picture of the Oval office meeting between Trump and MBS with Trump holding a poster claiming billions in Saudi arms purchases from the US)! The media needs to be more vigilant so that this administration does not drag us into a war with Iran. We we are still paying the price for the one with Iraq!
3
Hmmmm...what else happened in 1945 that may have had an impact on the number of global conflicts we've seen since? Why haven't the superpowers fought one another the way they did before that fateful year?
Sure, it could be because of the US's commitment to democracy. It could also be because of the threat of nuclear war. Given that the US's commitment to democracy has been somewhat spotty and self-serving at best (see: many of our interventions in the Western Hemisphere), I'm leaning toward the latter.
5
I think some of the assumptions here are wrong. It’s not that we (I’m on the New Dove side, I guess) don’t want to promote democracy and support human rights in the liberal world order. It’s that we don’t trust American military might to do so as the military has gone from (arguably) protecting democratic values in the past to now promoting capitalist interests and regime change to the benefit of the wealthy and expense of human rights abroad. We should still continue to be world leaders but that is quickly becoming impossible in our current form of aggressive and violent military and economic foreign policy.
1
Let's face it, since the beginning of militarization, a nation's armed forces and the wars they get themselves into are all about supporting the moneyed business interests of any nation - it's not about protecting the citizens, democracy or any ideology other than the almighty dollar. Never was this more true than today.
8
many Americans have serious worries and insecurities here at home and focus inward, rather than outward. this, after decades of deploying a worldwide military presence bigger and vastly more costly than anything the world has ever seen... while experiencing increasing privation at home where Republicans can longer justify spending money on America and Americans and are always looking fir ways to do less with less. Americans are largely too personally insecure (eg, impoverished) to see the appeal of spending all our wealth being the world's nanny. then, add xenophobia and racism and it's a hard sell.
David Brooks is absolutely on target. How Americans view their role as a world leader has evolved since WW2. The entire developed world struggles with these questions. Liberals and conservatives alike defend their national concerns such as healthcare and border security.
This is an important discussion for all citizens and elected officials who represent them. I agree with Mr Brooks that Americans take their safety and privilege for granted. Americans make their fortunes from developing countries' resources. As a wealthy neighbor, Americans cannot turn a blind eye to humanitarian crises next door. It is a necessary balancing act to fullfill responsibilities to our country and as a world leader.
All said and done, a global community is the future and political movements to the contrary are in denial and slowing progress. Our most critical concern is addressing the survival of our planet and second is healthcare. Doesn't matter what we "decide," this is happening regardless.
2
Mr. Brooks seems to think that he is right and the American people are wrong; that regardless of the views of the rest of us, an the elite by some vague analogue of "manifest destiny" are vested with the authority to impose and maintain a liberal hegemony throughout the world.
World War I, and World War II, show what happens when one group tries to centralize and impose its values on others.
The failure of NATO, The United Nations, The World Court and world Bank suggest that governments would do well to listen to the people, follow Dr. Pangloss's advice to cultivate their own gardens and, when necessary help protect the right of others to do the same.
@Sam
How in the world can you make the statement: "The failure of NATO, The United Nations, The World Court and world Bank suggest that governments would do well to listen to the people . . . ?" The peace and prosperity throughout this period, more than 60 years, have been the greatest in recorded history. Yes, we do have wars (most over bounty, oil e.g.). Anyhow, countries all going their own way spells more and more trouble.
2
@Dan G I disagree. The turmoil, upheaval, famines, wars, genocides, aggression suggest that they have but little effect.
The history of the Holy Roman Empire and Catholic Church is a prime example of what happens when when a group or combination try to impose its/their will on the rest of the world from the top down.
I suggest that the the reason that the US has survived and thrived for so long is because, elitist conceits aside, the Constitutional system was designed to be ultimately subject to the will of the people, via frequent elections.
Madison's Essays 10 and 51 of "The Federalist" are fascinating reads that elucidate the principles in brilliant detail.
1
If we are going to confront climate change and save our good earth, it must be done on an international basis. Without this cooperation between all nations, we are all doomed to suffer the consequences. Migration is increasing due to climate change as Central America is an example. Instead of providing assistance to those countries to deal with drought, Trump has stopped it only adding to the influx of immigrants. Building walls between ourselves and others is not the answer. John Donne's words are especially relevant now: "No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main."
4
didn't that Dunne guy play for the Phillies in the 80s?
Prospects for democracy and freedom in the world and the best U.S. Foreign Policy to preserve democracy and freedom?
I would say the best course to ensure democracy and freedom is precisely what the U.S. seems not to want to elevate above all else: Cultural influence, methodologies of thought and action which perpetually destabilize, undermine, any and all totalitarian structures whether religious or secular.
In ancient times Sparta beat Athens, but Athens has beaten Sparta to a pulp down through the ages because Athens was the best system in antiquity, had the best culture, to defeat closed systems of thought and action; in other words, provided a society's culture is powerfully open, creative, it can defeat in the long run a society more militarily powerful but closed, just like we remember the flower the bully crushed in his hand than the bully himself.
The world today is so dangerous, so likely to close down politically and economically here and there, lose freedom and democracy despite our optimists who believe the world is getting better, that it would be best once and for all to develop an actually worthwhile doomsday device, some method which pries open closed societies wherever they be, some raw and powerful and enlightening cultural charge which automatically comes to the fore when systems close down.
The medical profession is seeking means to boost human brain health, improve learning and memory, so we should develop such medicine to apply to sick societies.
Brooks's invocation of benign human nature as the antidote to what ails us is just bizarre given our present presidential and world reality.
The Liberal world order was aimed at financially benefitting the wealthy first and foremost. Others only if it happened to work out that way. And there has clearly been a neocolonialist bent to that Pax which harmed both foreign and American serfs.That is why there is tepid support for the Pax Americana.
It is not the American People's bad nature that is the problem, Mr. Brooks. It is a fundamental flaw in the liberal world order that has lead to unfavorable views of it. So you understand, the flaw is that the liberal world order favors wealth first and people somewhat further down the list of priorities.
There is a possible liberal world order that America could become the leader of. One that puts the wellbeing of citizens first. One that recognizes the value of all work and a vastly expanded recognition of earth's resources and human made infrastructure as the commons. That involves electing political leaders who do not support the current world order and have a plan to move to a morally tenable and people centered world order. There are just a very few options to vote for but they do exist. Brooks should support Warren and Sanders. It's so curious that he seems like he could go that way but always ends up back in the camp that causes the problems he bemoans.
1
I think the biggest roadblock to recognizing that American needs to play a bigger role in the world today is the we can't seem to even govern ourselves.
We've become so used to every initiative from both sides being blocked, no compromises being possible, & every effort at change being tied up indefinitely in the court system, that people have lost confidence that we can fix any of our own problems, let alone the larger problems the world.
I think people all over the political map believe we are in an irreversible decline as a nation, & while certain ideas and actions may have helped to hasten that decline (& we could argue all day long about whose ideas & actions are more responsible), there seems to be nothing anyone can do to stop it.
People compare the current situation w/the 1930s, & I agree. Today, no one can come right out and say "get rid of democracy" & expect anyone to take them seriously, of course, but, like so many places in the world during the 1930s, we today in American are dismantling our democracy.
Money controlling politics, partisan gridlock, court orders instead of legislation, & presidents governing w/out Congress. All of this has served to dismantle democracy, slowly but surely.
Dwight D. Eisenhower said: "Whatever America hopes to bring to pass in the world must first come to pass in the heart of America."
We can't abandon the world to fix our problems, but if our democracy is at risk, protecting and restoring it has to be our first priority.
4
I am at heart an internationalist, however, that cannot be sustained in face of stupid costly wars like Vietnam and Iraq, domestic job losses, tax cuts for rich, hollowed out industry, out of control college costs, and congressional grid lock, in short, a refusal to deal with domestic problems.
Internationalism, rests on a firm foundation of domestic health. A sick nation is not in a position to help the world to any significant degree without increasing domestic distress.
2
The choice you offer is too rigid in that engagement seems only to mean military action. Soft power and diplomacy are also tools to address abuses and to preserve the liberal world order. I’m on the dove end of the spectrum because when take military action, we often become part of the abuse of human rights.
"Between 1500 and 1945, scarcely a year went by without some great power fighting another great power. Then, in 1945 that stopped."
Mr. Brooks seems to have forgotten the Korean war
Superb; but I can't forget your support for overthrowing the democratically elected government of Egypt. I think you owe a great big mia culpa on that one for sure.
2
The president has cashed in on the lack of credibilty Americans have in our leaders. Vietnam decimated credibility in miliatry matters and Bill Clinton left us with the "everybody does it" glide path allowing Trump to get away with Stormy Daniels behaivor. Everybody knows he's lying but nobody cares.
Our young people have even more reason to be distrusting. They see climate change coming and our "leaders" behave like old men who won't be around to face the consequences. Same for military intervention. Who's gonna go fight? John Bolton?
It’s the hypocrisy!
If my teachers had taught me that the United States of America was an oligarchy—and that our government was run by the rich for the rich with liberty and justice for sale, then I wouldn’t have been so disillusioned.
Many Americans really believed in American ideals—that individual human beings could have their voices heard, that liberty and justice were for all, and that our nation was determined to lead the world by democratic example.
Instead, we were betrayed again and again by petty leaders who used none of what our greatest thinkers taught about win-win negotiation, diplomacy, liberty, and justice.
We could have led from our strengths. Our finances and technical skills give us the power to offer carrots—of international connection, trade, and cooperation. Instead, we’ve run around beating up on weak nation after weak nation after weak nation because that was the quickest way to make money.
And, now, our leaders don’t have the intelligence to make our country lead the way in clean, sustainable technology.
Can you blame us for wanting to put our own house in order?
131
@Heather Thanks ! -->>
Needed to be said !! well expressed !
9
@Heather
Exactly. We could have used our post WWII leverage to bring up treatment of workers, consumers, and the environment around the world. Instead we created a global race to the bottom, where every government (governments which are supposed to be representing citizens not corporations) is supposed to compete to cut taxes, regulations, and any investment in local citizens like schools, healthcare, retirements...
And now they are trying to turn the USA into a banana republic just like the capitalist success stories in Central America that are sending us caravans full of asylum seekers.
The corporate establishment "center" has so corrupted the system that people are losing faith in both the Constitution and the institutions of the international order, which is exactly what those that undermining the Constitution want.
And Trump is taking the anger at all of this corruption on the right and using it against minorities and political opponents, diverting it from the global billionaires who stole their productivity.
Those that are still compromising with the corrupt "center" and its ally the far right are discrediting systems that should be making the world better, and disenfranchising workers and the left who are trying to invest resources in a better world instead of billionaire ego gratification (and I'm not just talking about Trump.)
9
The US government is not in the business of making global forays beyond its own short-term strategic interests and likely never has been. The country didn't exactly jump into WWII as soon as it came to light that genocide was underway in Europe, and we've been happy to install or prop up dictators and overlook massacres. It's not democracy we're trying to protect; it's capitalism.
1
I have rarely met a European returning from a visit to the US who has not had great praise for your country. I have rarely met an American who has not had praise for their European host country.
I believe that much would be gained by encouraging transatlantic travel. Older generations might lose prejudices while younger generations might simply gain broader horizons. In all cases, it would help us appreciate the values that we share and should defend TOGETHER.
125
Unfortunately, Americans seem to have forgotten that the Marshall Plan, followed by a half-century of dreaded "globalism" produced the greatest improvement of the world's standard of living (with the US at the top) the world has ever seen (yes, it was unsustainably built on carbon waste). It also produced an extended period of relative peace (except for bouts of American adventurism spawned by the military-industrial complex). Reverting to nationalism across the globe will not end well. As a baby-boomer, I will probably miss the conflagration caused by American know-nothings who support Trump's version of Republicanism, but my grandchildren will not. Don't let America fail the future.
139
Brooks doesn't have a single word about climate change as a goal for US foreign policy. The fact that climate change is a top priority for younger voters gets a brief mention toward the end of the Center for American Progress's report on their survey that is the basis of Brooks' column. Most of CAP's report is about party differences over spending on the military and worries about terrorism.
If we fail to solve global warming that is all future generations will remember about us. Trump, terrorism, trade, even democracy and human rights will seem like sideshows compared to our failure to preserve a planet that can sustain human civilization.
167
@Richard Lachmann
Yes. You make a point: Brooks is looking too much to old-fashioned foreign policy as tough talk and war, but in these global times, climate change is going to matter a whole H of a lot; it's going to drive a lot of pressure in a lot of places.
9
"Iran is destabilizing the Middle East." Really? Invasion of Iraq, MBS, US enabling Israel, post-Arab spring repression, the ruthless war in yemen, Trump scrapping the Iran nuke agreement... I'd say Iran is just part of the crowd
107
right on
8
With liberals and libertarians distrusting all government, and with conservatives insisting on small government, we will commit fewer transgressions, but will we fail more at "making the world a better place". I fear Mr. Brooks is correct; only the powerless and reclusive can self righteously claim to be innocent of terrible mistakes.
Our focus needs to be, not on "small government" but on "good government".
1
The "liberal world order" has been hijacked by the 1% who spend the blood, sweat and tears of the working class to line their pockets. Rising income inequality, wage stagnation, crumbling infrastructure, corporate malfeasance, political corruption can all be laid at the feet of the 1% who have no loyalty to anything beyond profits.
Look at most of our interventions since the end of WWII that were not fighting against communism. They were either political theater or aimed at securing access to resources. There were the odd humanitarian interventions and vengeful overthrows, but a brutally honest look at our foreign policy shows that it has always stunk.
4
The US military is close to the last organization that I would trust to make the world a safer, better place
2
It’s one thing to say, ‘America is withdrawing from the world.’ It’s quite another thing to say America has given up on America. Perhaps the truth lies somewhere between the two. It’s also one thing to say, ‘Americans take a dark view of human nature’ and quite another thing to say, Americans take a dark view of America. Once again, the truth probably lies between the two.
I believe that Americans now think it’s more important to create a workable domestic policy than it is a workable foreign policy. Yet both are doable simultaneously.
Vote.
1
America's role as "defender of the free world" and the creation of globalisation wasn't benign. Countries that were part of the western coalition were obliged to "buy American" from guns and planes to pills and cars, resulting in the eventual destruction of local industries and the creation of mega rich and powerful US monopolies, bad for you and us. Consequently the USA became a bully - in Asia, Europe, South America and the Pacific - rather than a partner or ally. Here in NZ our decision not to be subjected to visits from nuclear powered and armed warships resulted in exclusion from intelligence and interference in our Politics. Greed and USA dominance in the West has created world wide misery and poverty. For many Trump is the physical embodiment of the misuse of US power since 1945, he's just less subtle about it than those who preceded him.
4
That Iraq was a failure is blatant; what is less so is the ideology used to prop it up. Iraq was a capitalist's dream, and it exposes the so-called "liberal" values that America attempts to "spread" over the world. It's not that the U.S. hasn't engaged in actual humanitarian rights projects over its tenure--it has. The problem is that profit incentives take precedence. When every move has a dollar sign attached to it, American leaders--and its foreign policy generally--can pretend all they want that they're attempting to "do the right thing" abroad, but the young folks in this nation know better: Capitalism is self-serving and focused on the short-term, and only when there is money to be made will the U.S. intervene in global affairs. Those of us who appreciate liberal values and spreading human rights wish the U.S. could accomplish goals founded in those ideals; unfortunately, we now know better--and Iraq was just one of the warning signs.
2
It's interesting that David Brooks can admit now that Iraq was a "failure" when he was the biggest supporter of intervention there despite widespread reporting of harm it would do to America in loss of life and billions spent without improving the lives of any person here at home. Why would we trust his judgement on this topic?
6
Once again Brooks criticizes the fallout of the pointless Iraq War debacle while disregarding his own role as one of the biggest Iraq War cheerleaders.
Complaining about this is pointless, Mr. Brooks, until you're willing to look at the root causes of the issues that are troubling you. You'll find a number of those causes in the mirror.
4
Missing the forest for the trees as usual. Ugh.
2
No, Mr. Brooks, the American people know more about foreign policy than you do. We know that we have been at war “making the world safe for Democracy” for the past 30 years. We experience the deprivations due to our having spent $14 trillion on foreign wars after the collapse of the Soviet Union: We know that our bridges, roads, railroads, and airports are old and crumbling. We know that many young students carry heavy college loans. We know young people who avoided college because of the cost. We know people who live without health care. We know our nursing homes are miserable and expensive. We know day care for children is hard to find and expensive. And those of us who teach STEM subjects in universities know that the real reason China is moving past us is not that they are cheating; it is that Congress has cut federal funding for R&D in half over the past 50 years. We should have listened to Eisenhower.
11
Of course, Brooks fails to reinforce the way Trump's dark view of foreign alliances has influenced the opinion of many Americans. In this area, two people can look at the same set of very complicated facts and one can see it's half full and one see it as half empty. Trump is the first President in history possibly who sees all foreign alliances as half empty, zero sum, America is the victim. And one of our two major parties, his Republican Party, has silently enabled this view. The Democratic Party is smart enough to view alliances as half full and necessary for strenghthening democratic and economic stability.
1
No. Maybe young people want America to stop being the global police, but not for these self-centered, close-minded reasons. As a "new dove" I can definitely say it’s not that we don’t care about protecting human rights. It’s the fact that we understand America only gets involved for selfish interests.
The US doesn't really care about human rights. We care about regime building, expanding our hegemony, and maintaining the military industrial complex. We do harm rather than good. Boots on the ground, drone strikes, and backing of crappy leaders means our presence literally breeds terrorism. Who wouldn’t hate a foreign, patronizing nation inflicting their values and taking your resources? Once upon a time, America sure did.
Our foreign policy post-WWII was never driven by altruism. And young people know it. We won't fall for the propaganda that the US’s involvement in foreign affairs stems from a desire to promote human rights and democracy. The US doesn’t get involved in true humanitarian crises (see the genocide of the Rohingya people or the refugee crisis in Syria). And in the Yemeni war which has murdered thousands of innocent civilians, the US still decides to side with Saudi Arabia, the side targeting school buses and funerals. The truth of the matter is the US is a culturally insensitive wrecking ball entering conflicts for all the wrong reasons. Don’t blame young people for understanding that and wanting no part of it.
4
Every American needs to get a passport and go see the world. The world is full of good people, seeking a good life for themselves and their children. Yes, there are crazies, but the US is full of crazies. You're actually safer overseas than here in the US by orders of magnitude.
The US is among the most dangerous countries on Earth.
I suspect if you correlated experiences with foreigners with openness to the world, you'd find them positively correlated.
David Brooks, your world view is blind to reality.
The purpose of the liberal world order has nothing to do with democracy, but everything to do with capitalism and protecting the national interests its global elite and corporations.
What Brooks values has created colossal income/wealth inequality, especially in the US and Britain, but most of Europe and the rest of the world.
The liberal world order was meant to kill communism and socialism, allowing capitalism to triumph.
It figures that Brooks admires Madeleine Albright, renown for saying that the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children were worth what the US accomplished in Iraq.
The US foundation was the genocide of the Native Americans and slavery. There has been some idealism, and the grit of the fortune seekers who populated the US was a marvel.
The Establishment/Global elite see the world in terms of threats to the US national interest and may destroy the livability of the world in order to maintain the US as top dog.
Interesting that a study he cites estimates that only 9.5 percent are traditional internationalists. That is about the same percent considered the new American aristocracy in an article I recommend, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/06/the-birth-of-a-new-american-aristocracy/559130/ also recommended https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/07/education-isnt-enough/590611/
4
It is the 1960s, Lynching is widespread in the southern United States. Say, South Africa is a superpower and it looks at what's happening in the American south and decides to invade America to protect human rights. Will we like it? And leave the 1960's alone. Please let us get off the high ledge and focus on human rights in our country.
2
Since the late 19th century the "west" has been trying to fix the middle east. First the British and the French trying to solve "the sick man of europe,the Ottoman Empire, and then the US joined Europe after WWI to tackle the problem. We have drawn maps, propped up regimes of varying qualities, battled with the Soviet Union in proxy wars, spent treasure and lives in trying to solve the problem.All this effort, all this fortune spent, And the results- failure. The people of the middle east are just as deserving of a decent life, reasonable governance, and the freedoms we have. It has not worked out well for us or the region.. Maybe we should stop trying to fix things ourselves. Not because we are indifferent to the obvious suffering, but because a century of failure might show us that we don't know what we are doing.
4
" . . . leaders from Truman to Obama felt they had no choice but to widen America’s circle of concern across the whole world."
I would cross out "circle of concern," and write "sphere of influence" instead. U.S. foreign policy after WWII has been driven by national interests, not idealism. To pretend otherwise is childish
4
I often don't agree with Mr. Brooks, but he is a thoughtful person that cares about community and others which I admire. He uses his pulpit to promote kindness and sympathy for others which can be in short supply these days.
But today, for the very first time, a column of his had me nodding along the whole time. I completely understand the Dove's position and the wariness of intervention (he didn't even mention Afghanistan where the Taliban are likely to be a signification force in that country for an indeterminate amount of time who are mortal enemies of US. To me this is a major failing). We need to be smart and strategic, but we must continue to protect democracy and human rights. There are many instances in our world (and our own country) of backsliding on liberal democracy. Letting Russian, China and Iran fill the void as we retreat into ourselves is not only disrespects some our of closely held values and accomplishments we rightly should be proud of, but it is not in American self interest in the long run. The aforementioned countries have terrible records on treating there citizens with basic human rights and the all are itching to expand their influence. With a dark American may come a very dark world led by authoritarian strong men in a handful of countries. We must be more alarmed than we are currently. From all points on the American political spectrum.
The best thing we can do for the liberal order is to not use it as a fig leaf for American world domination.
In a true liberal world order, markets would be free and consumers would be allowed to choose what products they want to buy, even if those products come from companies based in countries we don’t like.
In a true liberal world order, nations would be sovereign within their own borders and be allowed to adopt the political systems and culture that they prefer even if we don’t like them.
In a true liberal world order, there would be some semblance of equality between nations. The fact that Americans who are 5% of the world’s population control 40% of the wealth and our government controls practically the world’s entire financial and technological infrastructure shows that the liberal world order is in fact just an American Empire, perhaps less malevolent than most other empires in history but a long way from a fair and disinterested liberal world order.
2
Brooke’s seems to be screaming out for a debate about what motivations for the US’s military actions are and yet there’s scarcely a mention of it in the comments. He’s arguing it is the expansion of liberalism...the export of democracy if you like, for the greater global good. Surely, surely the most compelling alternate view is that it is for the profits of corporations within the US military industrial complex. No need to even argue Iraq’s invasion was for oil, no, any war on any pretence is a good war for the military industrial complex. The creation of the red scare, the yellow scare, and most every post WW2 military adventure is thus explained.
3
Brooks has neglected the one, basic reason why all-out warfare ceased after 1945: atomic weapons. MAD makes a WWII-style conflict not only unthinkable but unwinnable. Thus we have big powers nibbling the edges of the warfare cracker and the usual cut-outs and clients (Israel, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, etc) doing the actual fighting. Of course, there's always a possibility that something accidental will happen, a la WWI...but those kind of lurches are unlikely.
The American public actually knows this--thus their focus on closer-to-home issues. They make sense, even if our leadership doesn't.
Sub-title correction:
"Rogue nations thrive when the good lose all conviction."
should read
"Rogue nations thrive when the good run out of money to police them."
1
June 14, 2019
What is foreign is not necessarily a product of American design by past or new leaders that seek to impose or command an approval with authority for cookie cutter deign for governing nations. Surely the smart electorate chooses to define the world of others but its lens of itself and then misunderstanding and rejections dictates American interest for withdrawal - yet with offering for out best universities and think tanks towards analysis of everyone and everywhere should that be the choice - on the road to what Mr Brooks seeks in myopic diplomacy the seal of approval by such as Hillary Clinton attempted in the post soviet states of Georgia and Ukraine and was ignored and flat out condemned for a globalization of the USA exceptionalism with variations in tolerances as needed. The best view of a common market of foreign policy is the very best of classical literature contemporaneous or that has guided the planning choices in terms of heroic and anti-heroic with and without gun and terror. Dare one settle on an Islamic unity with over a billion people and many big and small nations and mainly failing in what - oh modernity towards non rogue status - one would are think this in entire - no.
1
The reason we have lost faith in American power and will for good is because demagogues of both parties--led by Barack Obama and Donald Trump--have campaigned against the projection of American power. Iraq was not a disaster until Obama prematurely withdrew all our troops from Iraq, leading to the rise of the Islamic State, an Islamofascist movement that would go on to control huge swaths of the Fertile Crescent. Obama admitted in his debate with Romney that he never wanted to keep any troops in Iraq. His own cabinet members have written how he refused to negotiate with the Iraqi government in good faith and how he admitted that his criticism of the overwhelmingly successful surge under General Petraeus was merely campaign rhetoric--campaign rhetoric that has cost tens of thousands of lives in the Middle East. The world, the United States, and Iraq are all better off with Saddam Hussein gone. Having reasserted ourselves into the area, Iraq, while far from perfect, is even now functioning as a democratic republic where human rights are more secure. The costs of the Iraq war in both blood and treasure were a tiny fraction of what we paid to liberate France or Germany or Japan or South Korea. There is an implicit bigotry in the criticisms of the Iraq War suggesting that Arabs are not worth the sacrifice we have made for others. George W. Bush was right, and Donald Trump and Barack Obama are demagogues.
1
Beyond the fact that Brooks misses a lot of our failures and is still basically right, I’d add that anybody who thinks they’re gonna huddle here at home behind any kind of Wall and do fine is kidding themselves.
The isolationists have no intention—none, zero, nada—of spending at home. Their plan is to isolate themselves here, too, to seal themselves away from the proles.
I don’t care if you think you’re leftish or rightist: this country was built and made great (for all its foulups) on openness, on immigration, on trade, on being involved in the world.
You take those away, we sink.
1
Mr Brooks,
I seem to recall that you and most writers employed by The New York Times were supportive of the Iraq war and the reason was WMD's in the hands of Saddam Hussein. George Bush and his mushroom cloud analogy was everywhere. Now we have the Trump administration slathering it on about the need for a southern boarder wall. This debate illustrates the dilemma of US foreign policy very clearly. Why not spend all of that money helping the countries in Central America to build a more secure future for themselves and their children? Why not invest in our neighbors and help them with better farming technology, and equipment? It seem idiotic to cut off funds for Central America just now, so that the immigrants coming north can be housed in for profit jails, that make a few North Americans ever richer. The foreign policy of this president is hopeless and backward looking. The standing of the United States is at such a low place, it may be hard to recover. More compassion extended to our brethren in Central America, could help them and US get back on the right road. No wonder the younger generation is cynical, just looking at the problems in the world, and ask , " Which Americans are capable of addressing these problems"? Especially with Mitch McConnell and Trump in the positions of power they have. It's scandalous !
3
Most U.S. citiznes sensibly reject the globalist view that the U.S. should be "policeman of the world." True, we are something of an empire already, but intervention in other nations' affairs should be done only in direct self-denfese--not meddlesome nation-building.
2
What is not mentioned in this article is the impact of 9-11. The aggressive Islamic assault on the US bringing war by foreign powers to US soil for the first time in 200 years has had a profound psychological effect on the US psyche. And by failing to acknowledge and being honest in the public about the source of this attack has engendered a subconscious fear that has enfused so much of our history since the attack. Just the acceptance of the repression going through lines to public events and airports "for our own safety" is so radically different. America has become closed, afraid, suspecting and it is not good.
1
"We need a leader who can grapple with failures like Iraq, build a younger, credible leadership class and embody an optimism that pulls us out of the dark spiral."
Well, that leaves out ANY republican but especially trump.
Are you tired enough of the repub party to finally disown them, Mr. Brooks?
1
I think it is ridiculous to think that now the World is much worst than before in term of war. China cracked down on democracy? But when China had the democracy? In 50s with its cultural revolution? Russian cyberattack? It is a sign of time and progress rather than increasing aggression. If anything signified the oppression, it is Iraq war. The truth is the liberal order built by the American elite reminds more and more as the World domination by the US, when the US decides who should follow what rules and at what time. That provokes the resentments that many Americans feel as aggression. That is it.
1
I recall early trade with China. Reagan administration would dangle off of "most favored nation" trading rights in return for Chinese commitments to honor human rights of it's own citizens. Every year this routine was repeated.
1
Mr. Brooks world view is pollyanish. Though the US was more of a force for stability than pure good. It's also true that much of the US enforcement of world order was for our own good. As was the case during the Great Depression, 11 years after the Great Recession, it's time for the US to turn more of our resources to retraining our people, as well as rebuilding hospitals, roads, and cites here rather than abroad. If the world indeed wants stability, which is debatable with population growth unchecked at 1B more people every 8 years, it will need to come from all world leaders, especially those in wealthy countries who for decades have been willing to let the US pay the way both in lives and riches. Everyone admires the UN's aide outreach programs, but few are willing to live under it's rule by the sword or the pen.
1
My dark view of human nature doesn't drive withdraw, but rather calls for more intervention. The best way to drive out the darkness of human nature is with light, and there's no better light in the world than America, regardless of what flag-in-the-breeze pundits and politicians will have you think.
America is the best of what people can be. It'll always have warts, because people do too.
1
Facts:
1. Western Europe outweighs Russia in military-aged manpower and industrial capacity. Two of those countries are nuclear powers.
2. South Korea outweighs North Korea in military aged population and industrial capacity. They have the means to more than match North Korea in every type of weaponry.
3. The Middle East is a cauldron of ethnic and religious hatred, which is the source of their problem, and which we cannot change.
What great need exactly is it that we are supposed to be abandoning by backing off from this thankless, outdated world policeman role?
4
I think the post-war world was relative (and it was relative, because there wars just not on the grand scale) peaceful, because of atomic bomb. The WWII took a terrible toll on many countries, but it would be probably nothing compare to the World War with nuclear weapon. Everybody understood that and, therefore, were not so eager to start the new war. Actually, even now the World largely peaceful.
Much of my response to this relates to thoughts I had during the 75th D-Day Anniversary. We are losing the generations that know what it is like to live in a world run by authoritarians and riven by conflict. It is an amazing thing, as Brooks notes in the beginning, that the post-WWII consensus enabled large social changes and "moderate" conflict relative to the past. But part of what drove that was American Exceptionalism on one hand and first-hand experience on the other. The Cold War drew on the lessons of appeasement of the 1930's and easily understood the implications of US isolationism. But that generation is past--on a global scale--and even those from the Korean, Vietnam and Iraq eras would have much more jaundiced views. Moreover, those from the 40's lived through the Depression (globally) and that also informed much of their later decisions. Today's world is one of speed, variety and a distrust of centralized definitions.
On another point--and I know Mr. Brooks is limited by time and space--this country has done many devious and clandestine things around this world that has caused a lot of people to view our nation as one of greed, self-righteousness and duplicity. I love my country but I know our warts--that is a conversation, however, that we have never had as a nation. At least the British claimed to have an empire. We --with our isolationist heritage--must still come to grips with who we really are.
2
@James Howson
Relative to the appeasement of the thirties, many simply found Hitler less a threat than the idea of communism, and hoped that Hitler could be used to defeat Russia and the communist threat.
Much of the Marshall Plan was not used to rebuild Europe, but to viciously wipe out any taint of communism or socialism.
And from then on the US would back the most evil of dictators as opposed to accepting a country's elected leader who might show concern for the well being of its people, indicating a socialist inclination.
The US fear of socialism has been bad for the world, but great for capitalism.
Capitalism has won. The US leads the world in income/wealth inequality and the percentage of its population in jail.
And David Brooks, he doesn't have a clue.
1
It was early in the 18th century that Jonathan Swift wrote A Modest Proposal For preventing the Children of Poor People From being a Burthen to their Parents or Country and For making them Beneficial to the Publick.
Swift wrote his essay over 50 years before the creation of the ISA and 250 years before the GOP adopted Swift's proposal as its core philosophy.
Swift was an Episcopal Cleric and the best debater in the English speaking world but his essay brought to the fore the hypocrisy of neoliberal economics and the teaching of the Christ.
Let us not forget that without the Gospel according to Buckley, Goldwater, Nixon and Reagan and America's Evangelicals the Swift essay would be nothing but over the top satire. Today's GOP anti human ethos is a repudiation of religions that evolved over the last 2000 years.
Revolution is indiscriminate in rejecting both good and bad and sometimes the baby does get thrown out with the bath water.
The 19th century backlash against science and truth understood that we are not at our best when we abandon our humanity at the altar of pure reason and we are are now watching our planet being destroyed by theologies that reject facts and science on the altar of perverted theology.
We are a world out of balance and our most wealthy and powerful nation is debating the advantages of dogma and empiricism.
This is not a debate, there will not be winners and losers. If we cannot find a balance we will be destroyed.
2
“The things Americans care least about are the core activities of building a civilized global community.”
This is like trying to have a “no smoking” section in a large open restaurant. If you don’t seek to improve the overall condition of your environment, you will eventually be overwhelmed. This is most effectively done by coalitions, not lone wolf threat. China should have been approached by a coalition, and now we wait to see what happens. Even if “resolved”, the trade war will likely set a hard shift in world economic/geopolitical directions. Business likes and needs stability and they will look toward relationships most likely to be future stable. However, that means, in many cases, disruptive change in supply, cost, process, or location. I’d really hate to be a soybean farmer right now...or many other things.
1
Thank you Mr. Brooks for an interesting opinion piece that clearly inspired a lot of responses, most of which are hostile to the points made by you.
My thought about your column is that the quote below, questionably attributed to Albert Einstein, is relevant to your column today.
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."
I believe that the author of that quote would say you went well beyond the limit of the "not simpler" admonition.
The reasons that the United States is declining in influence and power would require several books exploring each of the points you made. If the main goal was to simply generate partisan emotional responses to your column, you succeeded. I do not think you made much progress in clarifying or explaining why the USA is declining in influence or power or how the current national challenges can be overcome.
Dumbing down our complex problems or how to fix those problems is likely one of the reasons we are now subjected to daily twitter wars and sound bite fixes from every politician and news outlet about complex issues.
1
"These are young people who express high interest in human rights, but having grown up in the Iraq era, they don’t want the U.S. to get involved in protecting them." ??
I would rather draw the conclusion that they don't want the U.S. to get involved in wars that don't protect them.
6
We should be exercising our power to promote liberal, democratic values abroad. But, war WILL NOT do that. We've completely abandoned soft power influence and our traditional allies, invaded countries which have not attacked us, and lied to the American people while doing it. No wonder so many are skeptical of American intervention abroad (I am certainly skeptical of the narrative put out by this administration about the attacks on tankers in the gulf today).
If we are to have any credibility as a moral force in the world order, we have to WORK WITH nations, form alliances, start delegating military/security responsibilities with our allies and aggressively cut back on military budget (esp. nukes, and conventional "last war" equipment).
Finally, and MOST IMPORTANTLY, we have to demonstrate that we actually believe in the values of a liberal democracy here at home: address voter suppression, human rights violations (migrants, e.g.) and economic inequality, too name just a few.
4
Being a good global citizen is great but what has the regular joe gotten from all this amazing peace and goodwill after WWII? How does it play out in individual households? For me this is really the crux of the voters sensibilities. How can voters be helpful to the world when there are so many people right here that cant even afford to sit and think about the world because of all of the concerns they have day to day. They are not sure of anything. In this sense I can understand looking inward and I believe that some pulling back is needed to get our house in order. The problem is the United States is getting worse not better and we have an administration that does not look inward in a constructive way. It spews fear and idiocy and there is a large group of voters that accept it because it answers to their own rage. For many that is enough for now.
1
As with vaccines, too many people are utterly clueless about what it was like for most people living in this country before 1941.
" Wolves like Putin, Trump, and Xi fill the void and make bad things happen, confirming the dark view and causing even more withdrawal."
There, I fixed it for you.
3
I blame Trump and the soulless Republicans. Thank you.
4
The liberal international order is partly a military alliance and partly an economic alliance based on shared democratic values. Some have argued that the U.S. made a mistake by inviting China into our economic alliance even though China does not share our values, as the recent crackdown on Hong Kong makes abundantly clear. Trump has been sour on both our military and economic alliances, to the detriment of the U.S. I like Bernie Sanders but he was wrong to say that the Trans-Pacific Partnership was bad for the U.S. It is agreements of this kind that give the U.S. more leverage to use against bad actors like Russia and China. Putin wants to tear down NATO and the EU because they threaten Russia's hegemony, and Xi was no doubt pleased by Trump's withdrawal from the TPP for the same reason. Trump's foreign policy is schizoid, withdrawing from the world on the one hand while saber-rattling on the other. There are a few sane voices in the Republican Party that speak up for peaceful engagement, but Trump's obsession with undoing everything Obama did--from TPP to Paris Accords to the Iran Agreement--drowns out every other voice.
2
It’s so upsetting how each time a foreign policy topic is brought up, Americans only seem to care about whether US troops will be involved (which is very important but obviously far from our only concern) and then close their ears and minds to any other part of the issue. For foreign policy issues that absolutely will not involve the US military (Sudan crisis, rise of political extremism in countries such as Italy and Brazil, etc), we pay zero attention. Welcome to modern, bipartisan isolationism.
2
The liberal international order is partly a military alliance and partly an economic alliance based on shared democratic values. Some have argued that the U.S. made a mistake by inviting China into our economic alliance even though China does not share our values, as the recent crackdown on Hong Kong makes abundantly clear. Trump has been sour on both our military and economic alliances, to the detriment of the U.S. I like Bernie Sanders but he was wrong to say that the Trans-Pacific Partnership was bad for the U.S. It is agreements of this kind that give the U.S. more leverage to use against bad actors like Russia and China. Putin wants to tear down NATO and the EU because they threaten Russia's hegemony, and Xi was no doubt pleased by Trump's withdrawal from the TPP for the same reason. Trump's foreign policy is schizoid, withdrawing from the world on the one hand while saber-rattling on the other. There are a few sane voices in the Republican Party that speak up for peaceful engagement, but Trump's obsession with undoing everything Obama did--from TPP to Paris Accords to the Iran Agreement--drowns out every other voice.
2
I think this article maybe mis-characterizes americas foreign policy history.
I think americas foreign policy history is one of colonialism. Empire. The biggest enemy of our colonial empire was communism. Only the ultra wealthy benefitted from this foreign policy. Just follow the money.
This policy continues to be supported by wars and our enormous military budget which is more than the next 10 largest budgets combined. Wars are bad and americas war history is particularly bad - vietnam, iraq, afghanistan.
I like social justice, helping our fellow human beings and preserving the earth. But fighting and supplying weapons for foreign wars and supporting dictators and evil regimes, in the name of democracy, is not how to make this a better world.
2
Vietnam and Iraq are the tip of the iceberg! What about the role we have played in Cuba, Nicaragua, Indonesia, the DRC, Guatemala... the list goes on. The years between Truman and Obama saw us intervene to protect global capitalism, not democracy.
5
Precisely. And I agree with a comment about what our attitude towards violence in our country speaks about our trustworthiness.
Our country has treated its territorial possessions(puerto Rico, American Samoa, and in the past the Philippines ) with maybe a modicum more regard then a typical empire. And we mostly have tried to control the outcomes of “democratic “ processes of other countries that were not powerful enough to resist: such as post war Greece , Italy , later Iran, Chile ... etc . And then work to overrun outcomes the elite policy consensus did not like.
So Mr. Brooks, if only the US would work for true democracy, that would be a good start.
Did David Brooks just admit that Iraq was a debacle? I invite his readers to seek out his columns in The Weekly Standard about people pointing out that the war is, or will be, a debacle.
2
"Rogue nations thrive when the good lose all conviction."
Gresham's Law (in Economics): Bad money drives good money out of circulation.
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” ― Edmund Burke.
As so many have pointed out in these comments, Mr. Brooks dances around the periphery, but can't get himself to roundly criticize the idiot president, who has hijacked the Republican party and transformed it into a cabal of obsequious sycophants.
Forgive Mr. Brooks, he is only following the Eleventh Commandment of the party, as promulgated by another great republican president.
"But a big part of the shift is caused by the fact that many Americans have lost faith in human nature and human possibility."
Any society that tolerates tens of thousands gun related deaths and doesn't bat an eye cannot reasonably be expected to be concerned about the rest of world. Many may feel helpless in trying to solve these senseless deaths in their country and perhaps most have given up trying. Witness the election results that continue the status quo politically. Or they simply see that attempting to exert influence in the rest of the world while tolerating this inhamunity in the own country is being a little hypocritical.
We have to call out the R's and Brooks, as far as I know, has not repudiated the R's and withdrawn from the party to be at least non party affiliated.
However he has mental reservations ie lies. He refuses to acknowledge. Big Business and its influence on national policy. Religion and it toxic messages of hate and condemnation by supporting the death penalty, the state taking of life, despite known defects that show we most likely have executed innocents. And what more innocent than mentally deficient condemned to death who have know idea of what happened, what is going to happen (death) and could not help in their own defense. Yet the freedom of a woman to abort a pregnancy she knows will ruin her life is attacked as barbarian and should be safe and as infrequent as possible (Clintonese). Then do not want birth control either. They want a normally formed family unit where teenagers engage in sex, say its not so Joe, and they marry. That has been the bedrock of "family formation" .
Lets get on the liberal democratic government Brooks.
1
Perhaps most Americans have come to grasp the profound wisdom of the verse in Matthew 7:5---
"You hypocrite! First, remove the beam out of your own eye, and then you can see clearly to remove the speck out of your brother's eye."
1
Mr. Brooks, some editorial suggestions. For a headline: Republicans, Your Foreign Policy Views Stink! Subheading: Rogue nations thrive in the absence of ethical leadership. The good haven't lost their convictions; they are being led now by those who have none. And I certainly wouldn't extrapolate the results of a poll of 2,000 registered voters to encompass the views of 200,000,000 registered American voters.
3
Is it so clear that the Iraq invasion was a disaster? Yes, a lot of people died on both sides, and yes, the motivation was wrong. But on the other hand, a violent dictatorship, where a lot of people were dying, has been replaced with a reasonably functional and improving democratic nation. It's maybe too early to say, but possibly we will eventually count this as a success.
I think there was a problem with the poll - the word "liberal."
Maybe the word "democratic" should have been used. Liberal has been made into such a negative word for a huge percentage of people, my guess is that many did not know what they were voting for. The historic meaning of the word has been lost.
The greatest generation after a hard won peace took a "can do" optimistic approach to the world (not all of these outcomes were good). However the idea that a "rising tide floats all boats" resulted in investments in education for the betterment of others.
Now we seem to be in a new age of selfish, me (we, or my group) first in all aspects of our lives, including international relations.
We can either engage people overseas and work with them or attempt to build walls and fight them. The later approach will lead to a dark future (as reflected in our current fiction).
I think we need a dose of optimism, to quote Nietzsche, (our visions) of "the future influences the present as much as the past".
Mr. Brooks you are confusing the issue. America and Europe have been successful in avoiding conflicts between the major powers which is admirable. The problem has been when the US or other western countries (including the USSR) have decided to interfere in developing countries. They have either used developing countries as proxies for their own battles (see Vietnam and the Soviet war in Afghanistan), or they have found reasons beyond the scope of reason to make war on a weaker opponent (Example: Iraq, a war that, may I remind you, you wholeheartedly supported at the time). So, I think you are confusing what Americans are talking about. They still want a strong America that continues to stand for human rights, peace in Europe, but they would like us to stop the military misadventures that have very little to do with American security.
2
Why wasn't climate change the number one issue all nations need to address? Without this as a possible answer, the others are superfluous.
I believe human rights violations need to be addressed, as well. But, invading a country and killing thousands of citizens is the wrong approach. We have much to be sorry for in invading both Vietnam and Iraq and contributing to the suffering in Yemen. The US's jobs program involving the military industrial complex will not change unless we elect representatives that view alternate solutions to conflicts around the world. We need to create jobs that help the planet stabilize instead of bombing the planet into submission.
3
To be sure, the period from 1815 to 1914 was much more peaceful than 1945-the present. It had the Crimean War as its sole conflict involving more than one great power. Mr. Brooks' post-'45 'Pax Americana' has featured endless proxy wars between the U.S. and U.S.S.R.
It's hard to say definitively that the 'liberal world order', as opposed to this bi-polar rivalry, along with its key feature of nuclear proliferation, prevented a general and total war. Regardless, these post-'45 proxy wars spilled blood from the Korean to the Vietnamese Peninsulas, not least in the Middle East. And then we have the various ethnic cleansing conflicts worldwide cropping up in the post-'45 world.
The point is, this 'liberal world order' has not been all peaches and cream, and one should not be browbeaten for questioning its defensibility. And, if one feels so compelled to defend it, one ought to get their historical facts straight.
1
Most Americans get their foreign policy perspective from sources like Fox News. In fact there are actually many intelligent and informative sources which provide a fact based perspective on foreign policy. The May/June issue of "Foreign Affairs" with the theme "Searching for a Strategy" is worth hours of focused reading...rather than pathetic sound bites from Fox News.
3
WWII was the last time America had the moral high ground. Since then we have been at the center of one debacle after another.
We are in a dark spiral both abroad and at home. Wolves like Putin, Xi, and Trump are responsible for making bad things happen.
Even worse, we are so full of contempt for each other, we can't manage ourselves, let alone the rest of the world.
5
Part of the problem THIS "New Dove" has is that we can't be trusted to do the right thing just about anywhere in the world. You equate "the right thing" simply and solely with what you perceive to be in the best interest of this country. And, what you believe to be in the best interest is actually a dark an austere worldview chock full of cynicism. I don't want any part of what you are peddling, Mr. Brooks.
3
Here's a novel idea Mr. Brooks. Why not call for teaching Americans more about world history? Why not call for teaching Americans critical thinking? Then we might have elected better representatives and that, in turn, might have led to us having a better administration. Our politicians might even know how to debate each other without saying completely idiotic things.
I realize that spending money on a decent education for all Americans is a radical idea. So is teaching all Americans critical thinking. It might lead to a less pliable citizenry and more pointed questions on policies. But it might save us from some of the more egregious pieces of stupidity that have been enacted in the last few decades: welfare reform that doesn't work, the Patriot Act, the removal of Glass Steagall, and a few other interesting performances/regulations.
The reason our views stink is because we are not taught to think of America as part of the world community. We're not told that other countries have good ideas too. This is a simplification but not by much. If this country valued diversity, intelligence, and courage the way it claims to we wouldn't be putting incompetents like Trump in office. We wouldn't have a fearful fraud like McConnell in the Senate. And we'd be impeaching Trump rather than letting him waltz around like he owns the place.
5
Mr. Brooks seems like a very nice man, a thoughtful, kind neighbor. But his world view - or more precisely, his post WWII image of the United States in global context is beyond rose colored. From the division and occupation of Korea to Mossadegh, to the Gulf of Tonkin, to the billions to the Salvadoran oligarchy and Iran/Contra, to consent to the Gwangju massacre, to the invasion of Iraq and beyond - how do these ventures - only a partial litany of US efforts to bring American enlightenment to the world, comport with Mr. Brooks' rendition of Pax Americana. No doubt he genuinely wishes to be a citizen of a truly generous and enlightened nation, but when desire distorts reality, it must be called out.
6
David fiddles while Washington burns.
3
Us 'young' don't trust the 'old', because they have failed us every step of the way.
2
I used to be somewhat isolationist.
Then I grew up.
1
Re: " The lowest priorities were promoting democracy, taking on Chinese aggression, promoting trade, fighting global poverty and defending human rights."
Mr. Brooks is rich enough to be able to care
The average annual income after tax income, in Indiana
to take a typical US State
• Avg. income after taxes: $36,927 (pre-tax: $46,646)
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/06/01/how-much-the-average-income-nets-you-after-taxes-in-every-state/39530627/
When you live at that income, and never know when your job will disappear, your priorities shift
5
All one has to do is read the comments to understand that Brooks is clueless as to the effect that our current system has had on our very public nature, domestic and foreign. Reader after reader have made it clear that they understand that our current issues are the result of how we as a society have been played sucker to meet the economic, political and power desires of the few. The cost of such corporate greed is the ability to direct our resources and energy toward the common good. From endless wars, the quest for oil at the planet’s expense, the horribly inequitable distribution of wealth and more mentioned by almoSt every comment; of course we as a people have turned inward. It’s predictable and sadly exactly as the corporate oligarchs desire to preserve their gold on political/economic power. The system is a mad dog consuming its own tail. Reap as ye sow, Mr. Brooks.
7
Mr. Brooks, the nation most destabilizing the Middle East at the moment is our own. Your continued lack of understanding about the region is stunning, especially in light of your self-confident tone of voice. You might consider either adopting a bit more humility or doing a bit more reporting before opining.
4
I think Vietnam was the turning point, for "Altruistic America."
--
Before Vietnam, most Americans:
1. Trusted their Government.
2. Maintained an optimistic outlook, regarding "America's unlimited potential everywhere!" [my caption]
3. Earned a living wage.
--
During and after Vietnam, more and more of us:
1. Became either cynical or disillusioned, with respect America's involvement in the World.
2. Began looking inward rather than outward, for rewards and fulfillment.
3. Began, “falling behind,” in terms of income growth and satisfaction.
—
And it’s gotten worse, ever since.
***
Engaging with the rest of the World is a very costly endeavor. Most Americans are no longer willing to pay for that kind of involvement.
—
In fact today, with shrinking incomes and fewer individual prospects, the average citizen among us is just looking to get by and to stay healthy, without going into bankruptcy.
—
Given this mindset, there is little or no room left for altruism and "sacrifice," other than for one's self and one's family.
***
Today, America is rich and powerful in name only.
We can’t afford to take care of the rest of the World.
In fact, we can no longer afford to take care of our own people.
—
“Global High Mindedness,” anymore in America, is a parlor-game only fools can afford to play.
5
An uneducated voter is the worst citizen.
People have little firsthand experience of the world,
the picture they get is a complete fake rather than full of facts, and the ideology they get fed is fraudulent.
When you're paranoid, it's a self fulfilling prophcey
3
Today the voters are thinking as naïve winners or fatalist losers.
3
"We need a leader who can grapple with failures like Iraq, build a younger, credible leadership class and embody an optimism that pulls us out of the dark spiral." That's a big order. But while thinking big, we need a leader who can also stop the growing cancer on the Right which eats away at values promoting light and hope, the values contained in our Constitution.
1
Actually I believe the good will and good works that we fostered abroad were not done alone through the military or done in the spotlight. It was achieved by the tireless work of well trained diplomats and first rate diplomacy. The present administration doesn’t believe in diplomacy and has left so many posts vacant. There’s no getting around people talking to people to come to common understanding and the will to resolve thorny issues. Hence it’s complimentary to describe someone as diplomatic. The goal is to avoid provocation - unlike this administration which revels in being provocative at every turn!
1
I question the assertion - "in 1945 that stopped. The number of battlefield deaths has plummeted to the lowest levels in history."
Conventional battlefields, perhaps... but since 1945 there have been unending great power proxy wars and millions of civilian deaths in Africa and Asia. Then there is the partition of India/Pakistan, there is Korea, Vietnam / Laos / Cambodia, and non-stop arms trafficking by the major weapons producing countries. WW I=II are not necessarily higher in total casualties. And major power strategic foreign policy conflicts have driven quite a lot of the carnage...
3
@David Greenlee
Despite all that, casualties of all kinds of conflict have steadily fallen, and are at their lowest levels ever in the recorded history of the world. The world is also richer and less hungry than ever before. Pax Americana has often been wrong in detail, but overall it has been tremendously successful at bringing peace and prosperity to the world.
@Tom Meadowcroft Yes, well I've read that there is a long term downward trend in violence and mayhem, for example it's believed that the murder rate globally has trended down over the last 1000 years or so. A number of things like for example antibiotics and medivac techniques have decreased battlefield casualty rates - WWII casualty rates were lower than American Civil War for example. What all that has to do with the 'Pax Americana' I'm not sure.
Education. Basically, on the whole, we as Americans are not a well educated electorate. We don’t know or care about history, we do not know geography, we are not interested in news events from around the world unless they are weather disasters. We do not understand how political movements around the world affect us. Ask most Americans about our migrant problems at the border, and most will think they’re Mexicans, when in fact they are Central Americans. Almost half of the electorate in 2016 voted for a man who does not understand the word tariff and is as uncurious as they are. What Mr. Brooks is describing is a problem brewing for the past forty years. Who do we see yawning in the mirror? Us.
3
I totally agree. I am a highschool teacher. Kids are not only addicted to their phones but cheating and learning whatever shortcuts will make grades. But not mastering critical thinking about the world. I am not blaming this generation for it though. With the advent of the internet, national celebrity obsessions result in "it's all about ME". The most common answer when asked 'what would you like to achieve in life?'....is "to be famous". And you're talking about an educated electorate for the future?
2
America today is clearly more willing to turn inward, not outward, than it has been in Brooks' and my lifetimes. This is the era of looking out for #1. Maybe your immediate family - not sure about them, but...
What happened? After 75 years of taking it on faith that things could improve for ourselves individually and collectively by making a better world for everyone, experience has taught us that:
-The world, including our allies to some extent, is perfectly willing to take our largess, and use our "fair play" commitment to line their own pockets - "Dad will buy dinner."
-The only time our ruling class is willing to defend these values is when a corporate interest, especially Big Oil, is threatened.
-When corporate interests are at stake, no price, including young American lives (but not THEIR kids,) is too dear to pay.
-Inside the USA, the first duty of our highest leaders is to line their own pockets.
-The best way to do that is to serve the interests of the top 10% of the pyramid. Even if the rest of us go under the bus.
-The fair play principle, and the rule of law itself are meaningless when defense of that 10% is at stake - see vote suppression.
Overwhelmingly, Republican conservatives led us into this morass.
Brooks' commitment to small, local reform, but not (gasp) national, plays right into this. You have taught us well. Self-interest rules.
Looking out for #1 - because we can't trust you.
7
The only such leader I see on the horizon is Senator Bernie Sanders. I guess - to use Mr. Brooks' term - he could be considered a "dove", someone who saw the folly and tragedy of the Vietnam War, someone who has voted against our many "endless wars" and incursions into poor, foreign nations for dubious reasons. I believe he also sees the connection between our outlandish Military budget and total lack of a social safety net at home. Yes, we need a credible leadership class and he is about my only hope.
3
This commentary gets to the heart of the issue; we've lost an appreciation for the large benefits that can be gained by working together with respect as a community of human beings. Instead, the powers that be would rather sow division as a way to retain control and we buy into this false zero sum game narrative.
4
When as a country we embrace multiculturalism as an article of faith we lose confidence in, and even respect for our values as a nation. When we become invested in our rights but not our responsibilities, we lose our sense of obligation to others. Add to that the failure of our naive, disappointing and costly efforts to export freedom and democracy to other parts of the world and the backlash it produced. Is it any wonder that we have lost the appetite for intervention to maintain the liberal international order?
2
We are again getting ready for war, this time Iran.
When John Bolton was chosen by Trump I knew he would promote war with Iran, he has tried it for decades and finally he will get his wish, Trump, MBS and Netanyahu are all on board, and they will manufacture "evidence" just like they did in Iraq. Why are so few people paying attention to this catastrophic threat to the world.
Iran is much more dangerous than Iraq when attacked.
More refugees into Europe will destroy the fragile democracies
that are still standing.
2
@marjo tesselaar
Indeed, Marjo. Mr.Brooks states that Iran is destabilizing the Middle East. No mention of the Israel/KSA/Egypt/USA relationship. I almost choked on that one!
3
It is not Iran destabilizing the Middle East. It is the United Emirates and the Saudis that are doing that. Trump added to that by withdrawing from the Nuclear Agreement.
Most Americans are not enamored by what is going on in the world because it is not as important to them than stabilizing our own country first.
Most young and old want us to take care of our problems first. They also wish we would stop negating the agreements that we once honored with our Allies. They want to honor the Treaties that all signed in good faith, including us.
Instead Trump and the rest of the Administration is quickly turning this country in to an Isolationist country. In turn, lying to the Republican base, convincing them that the boogey man is immigrants. Trump telling the lies that their jobs are coming back, when in fact it was the greed of American companies that took those jobs from them. Telling the lie that the Tax Reform bill would make things better for them. That the ACA is bad for them.
With all the lies being told, no wonder people are losing faith in our Government. How can you expect people to be Internationalists when our Country is falling apart. At every turn lied to about what really is going on behind closed doors at our Agencies, in White House, in the Republican Senate?
The latest fiasco, accusing Iran without concrete proof, of attacking foreign commercial vessels is the latest lie.
Without trust these are dark times indeed, thanks to Trump and his enablers.
3
"Building any community requires exercising power. America’s leaders made some terrible mistakes (Vietnam, Iraq)."
It is interesting how conservatives, such as Mr. Brooks, are starting to prepare the US public for another war. Is it accidental that in the above statement Mr. Brooks does not include the US role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government in 1950's? I don't think so. Is it also accidental that he has suddenly become supportive of the US acting as the global policeman? I don't think that either!
4
David, I appreciate your perspective on this crisis. As one who falls somewhere between America Firsters and the New Doves, I hope your next column will talk about how we change and become a world leader and guider, but heaven forbid, savior. And I hope you can find a headline that invites us to engage in the conversation. I may be wrong about a lot of things, but I don’t think my ideas stink. Thank you.
I don’t mean to be “uncivil,” but if somebody could please help me understand what exactly he is trying to say, I would be grateful. He makes one interesting claim, in the beginning of the piece, about the reduction of war in modern times—but from then on, I am wading through abstractions.
3
Our withdrawal from the world scene and its consequences are an inevitable result of the hyper-individualism of the American right and the GOP. This attitude was best expressed in another country that is now also falling to pieces, Britain, when Margaret Thatcher said “there is no such thing as society.“ their presumption is that if matters deteriorate beyond repair, they can take refuge in their gated communities, not unlike the elite of Latin America. They may find, however, that the gates are not strong enough.
4
Leading experts on the economics of taxation favor substantial increases in tax rates on high incomes and wealth. Top economists studying social spending argue that there are huge benefits to higher spending on early child care.
2
Voters have more wisdom on foreign policy than the Washington crowd. It is the foreign policy of those who impose military solutions that stink to high heaven from the stench of death and destruction that they have left behind for decades before Trump took office. Voters have a calling to ensure peace and prosperity around the world. No voter wants rogue leaders to thrive but nations that are led by rogue leaders have to struggle to find benevolent leaders by themselves. It is not American blood and resources anymore. The era of disgusting failed foreign policy that encapsulated America in costly wars in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya, Syria etc is over. Voters have a new foreign policy view. End all violent wars and armed conflicts. It is now 100 years since the end of world war I, suggested as the war to end all wars.
The good have not lost all conviction. They hold on to one important one. Peace at all cost and only non violent resolution of conflicts.
2
“peace at all costs”
Has history taught you nothing?
David,
I hope you'll be putting your money (your vote and more importantly, your column) on one of the Democratic candidates for President and that you'll support Democratic Senatorial candidates. As you can see, the Republican party has created and fostered this dark view during a long Republican cycle of rule. The ultimate outcome of the Reagan "revolution" is indeed this Dystopian reality that we are confronting. Time to really take stock and admit that your party went off the rails a long time ago.
2
Exhausted by the "global leadership role." I almost fell off my chair reading that. Unless leadership is a new to spell "imperialism." Is Mr. Brooks still for real, or is he trying to save his neocon friends who invaded Iraq for oil?
3
I’m sick of Brooks using Democratic “examples” - when you talk about exhaustion with Iraqi War, look to the two Bushes, not Obama. We know you’re a Republican, but if you’re going to be honest, then reflect history honestly.
4
"The number of battlefield deaths has plummeted to the lowest levels in history."
Isn't it great when one has the editorial freedom to make deaths by atrocity shrink, simply by not being called on your phony definitions of atrocity?
How shall we record the deaths by climate change, by environmental degradation, by starvation?
I have never read a more character-revealing or appalling phrase than "the self-righteous sense of innocence that the powerless and reclusive enjoy."
4
If engaging with the world implies multilateral negotiations, working with other nations to fight climate change and improving trade relations so that they are fair that's fine.
If it involves getting involved in more middle eastern quagmires count us out. Saudi Arabia can prop up it's own oil prices without our help. We should use our own resources and go more green. The Sunnis and Shia's can kill each other. Israel has plenty of resources to take care of itself. "Promoting democracy" around the world has failed time and time again. It has only propped up autocrats.
2
Trump is withdrawing America from the world, his actions can hardly be said to represent 'America'. Many people would have preferred explicit support for Hong Kong for example. Among his supporters, withdrawal is relative. If, say, we get into an actual conflict with Iran then many many of his die-hard supporters would probably cheer him on with praise for showing toughness that Obama lacked. On top of that is the dubious Trumpian concept of undercutting diplomacy despite the blatantly obvious lesson of the last 20 years, that military power has its limitations.
As for cyberattacks, it's as if we leave the gates to Ft. Knox open and then debate over whether we should double or triple shame the theives who come and steal the gold. Cyberattacks are a very specialized case, and unprecedented.
I thought the post-WWII American efforts were directed at avoiding Russian/Chinese godless communism, not in simply establishing a liberal world order in the rest of the world.
With those two places having adopted Christianity and capitalism, respectively, we now are suffering from an auto-immune disease of having no clearly defined countries to hate.
2
We should be reestablishing the liberal world order in the United States. How can we defeat authoritarianism worldwide when Trump has professed his admiration for Putin, Duarte, and Kim Jong-un?
1
This is a good summary of history following WWII, but we can disagree about motives. After WWII, we had a new enemy in what we thought was monolithic, aggressive, communism, and the liberal democratic order we promoted was designed to contain it. Our troubles with Iran go back to this period, and reinstalling the Shah was neither liberal nor democratic. You can appreciate how the people who fought WWII and in Korea could have been wrong about Vietnam, but it appears every president after Eisenhower knew it was a mistake and did not have the political courage to say so. Nixon waited til he was reelected to end it. Our invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq were stupid and inexcusable. The American people have lost their faith in international intervention to maintain democracy, not because we have changed our view of human nature, but because we have been burned. Sadly, we have a political party and president all too ready to exploit our frustration.
3
Calling Iraq war a "mistake" and not a war-crime is preposterous.
4
Welcome Mr. Brooks to the brave new world of fox and friends (brietbart?). I'm old enough to remember the red scare used by reactionaries on the right (Repubs) to win and keep power in the 50-80s. The world liberal order? Isn't that fox's great Satan? It's got Reagan's bugaboo word "liberal " in it. Oh what a tangled web we weave huh? Putin, the old KGB hit man now our best friend? My head is spinning. Shows what a little money from an immigrant (Murdoch)no less, can do to our society when it takes over much of our news space. All may be lost in a generation. Remember Germany in the 30s? Strange to agree with a "conservative" writer like you.
3
Brooks: "Rogue nations thrive when the good lose all conviction."
WRONG.
Rogue nations thrive when the convictionless lose all restraint.
The Trump family and Russia.
The McConnell family and China.
The Adelson family and Israel.
5
I’m so tired of NYT columnists constantly promoting the wishes of the ruling class.
Can we please, please get more progressive voices among your columnists to speak up for average people like me? Who want to end once and for all the endless wars based on lies, audit the Pentagon, end the stranglehold of our political system by corporate weapons dealers, cease drone bombings of multiple countries, halt the JSOC’s skullduggery all across the planet, end the red-baiting of anti-establishment voices, shut down the phony “Russiagate” obsessions of the media (and redirect their investigative talents to Trump’s litany of real and provable crimes) and give our veterans the care they desperately need and deserve.
No more jingoistic chicken hawks like Brooks and his deeply ignorant views of American “benevolence.” Does he truly believe what he’s shoveling? My God.
6
If you think the attitudes of voters in this country stink...just take a look at Yemen. They can’t seem to understand that the greatest humanitarian crisis on the planet is just the good ol’ USA trying to help Saudi Arabia to “spread democracy and freedom”. Oh well...as Jared and MBS would say...gotta break some eggs to make an omelette.
4
I hope you read these comments David. Your readers see a central flaw in your writings, a blind spot, I hope you can acknowledge and address it.
My two cents: income inequality. Its hard to be generous when you can't come up with $400 to fix your car or take care of a sick child.
5
Please notice how David Brooks fails to remind his readers that he was ALL FOR the Cheney/Bush War on Iraq. Here he elides full responsibility for himself and his Republican Party by opaquely writing: "America’s leaders made some terrible mistakes (Vietnam, Iraq)."
Typical dodge & weave.
7
The most important foreign policy move the US can make is for American voters to rise up in great numbers and purge the incompetent, ignorant Trump from the White House along with the anti-democracy completely corrupt Republicans who disgraced our nation by putting him there.
6
The phrase “foreign policy elites” strikes me as kind of odd, especially coming from an elite newspaper columnist. As opposed to “foreign policy elites,” we now have “foreign policy idiots” Donald Trump and John Bolton. If Mr Brooks needed a vital medical procedure, would he prefer to have an elite surgeon or a medical mediocrity?
5
We used to try to lead by example, that's impossible now. Wonder why you didn't mention that?
2
You're still a Republican, Brooks. You're still filthy.
4
Not another word, Mr. Brooks, until you come clean and admit that you voted for Trump.
Not. Another. Word.
4
@jrinsc
I totally agree with you. Since the 1980s republicans approach to governance has been to starve the beast and not do anything to address problems in the public square. All the gop does is support the fat cats, their wealthy donors. They don't want to pay taxes to educate other peoples children, or assist with costly health care, training or higher education. Support for infrastructure only if it is privatized and profitized. The pervasive propaganda maintaining the republican lies makes it impossible to have a rational discussion on foreign policy much less anything else.
Republican created scarcity prevailes. When people feel good about their communities, and their opportunities they will support a generous and humane foreign policy. Just as republicans have ruined the country we have an administration who has ruined foreign policy.
History will show that leaving the Paris Accord, the JOCPIA, and the TPP will be colossal blunders. And not leading the world in supporting human rights will leave everyone less safe and less well off. We all do well when we all do well. The republican ideology is the epitome of selfishness.
4
The MAGA agenda of “Putting America First” is motivated by a need for protection from hostile outsiders, and paints nearly all previous efforts at international cooperation, the kinds of initiatives that have, reduced poverty worldwide, promoted human rights, advanced democracies and produced, since 1945, a more peaceful world, as either failures or indications of weakness.
In reality, the US has never failed to put itself first. It has never NOT aspired to greatness. At issue is how to achieve these goals. This is a case where the “means” are at least as important as the intended “end,” which is American greatness.
About the “how” we might ponder the following question. What makes for a more enjoyable neighborhood, fences, or mutually valued relationships built around common interests? Is an agenda based on threats, trade wars and saber rattling really the right “how”?
1
Sounds like Mr. Brooks needs a hug. I am much more optimistic of the world than Mr. Brooks points to. We have a collective world economy. Every country is involved (despite sanctions). Technology has integrated more of the world together than I ever thought possible (check out an online game to see the diversity of players from around the world). Much more, the international business of goods and services we find in our own markets.
We see what everyone around the world is doing via social media and the web. We see instantly the joys and pains people experience. Maybe that is unsettling. Whereas in the past we didn't know we didn't know. No, I see we are on a path of integration instead of isolation. I am very optimistic of the future.
2
Having visited NYC several times lately, I can report on outward friendliness and caring from people I meet and observe. David Brooks is right that it takes a village to make a global community, but we have to look for the good in others and work for success. Combating global warming will take a team effort. Yes we can.
1
The Pax Americana we long to return to was enabled because we were the biggest and strongest cop on the block (as were The Romans and The British in their time). Now that other countries are no longer afraid of us, they can/will/must assert their interests and subvert our best efforts. This will be true regardless of who sits in the White House.
3
THE NEW LEADERS ARE THE TECH GIANTS Who are oblivious to the civil rights and human rights of everyone but those of the 1% who can produce the intellectual property and technology that gives them such huge profits. Some examples come to mind: Bill Gates of Microsoft, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Jeff Bezos of Amazon and Larry Page and Sirgey Brin. They are most concerned with their quarterly stock reports. None has a vested interest in seeing the Pax Americana continue. Not that the big oil, steel, coal and railroad magnates were much better. But where is the philanthropic spirit? Once past leaders acquired extraordinary wealth, they pursued philanthropic goals. But not this crew! Stock numbers are ageless. Even in retirement, the attachment to stock profits is more compelling than maintaining human existence. It's come to that with global climate change. Just hope onto the Internet folks. The weather's FINE!
@John Jones I respectfully disagree lumping Bill Gates with the other folks you mention. He and his wife, Melinda, are incredibly philanthropic, investing millions in heathcare and anti-poverty programs all over the world. Look up the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and you may revise your axis of evil.
2
The "liberal international order" was primarily established to oppose the threat of Soviet Communism. At first, it was feared that Europe would be the target of the Red Army and/or Communist insurgency. Concern swiftly shifted to the colonized or formerly colonized world, where our concern for "human rights" was expressed by supporting colonial regimes and, filing that, reliably anti-commmunist authoritarian leaders. Any government that showed the slightest left-wing tendency, such as wishing to reclaim control of its natural resources, was subject to be overthrown with our help or blessing. We cheerfully supported all sorts of governments with utterly vile human rights records in places like Cuba, Haiti and Iran (the list is very long).
But let a newly-installed left-wing or militantly nationalist government do some bad things, they were strongly condemned - if not attacked & overthrown. Vietnam was not a "mistake", it was the continuation of a French colonial war by other means, and part of the same policy that we had been following up until then.
A true "liberal international order" is possible only if we acknowledge our past misdeeds, and refocus our aim on the well-being of the entire human race. President Obama was beginning that process, and was criticized for apologizing.
7
There was plenty of optimism with Obama, but the Republicans, in their dark, negative den did everything they could to stop it. If there were no Electoral College, we would have had no Iraq and we wouldn't still be in Afghanistan. And, of course, we wouldn't have the worst President in American history. No, the people voted for the best candidates but were betrayed by a flaw in the 230-year-old founding document.
7
I couldn't help but notice that Mr. Brooks didn't confess to his own major mistake of heavily promoting the invasion of Iraq in 2002 and 2003 as vital to American security. Thousands of deaths, permanent injuries, and three trillion dollars later that war is arguably the biggest reason for the sentiment many Americans have for foreign engagements.
It should have been obvious to anyone paying attention to recent history and the sectarian conflicts in that region of the world that the Iraq war would be a mess. And the premise that Saddam Hussein, even if he had WMD which he did not, was going to hand them over to Islamic terrorists which would use them on the US was always absurd. Saddam was the exact kind of secular leader the terrorists hated. Saddam's primary goal was remaining in power - and alive.
5
Post WW II support for a liberal world order emanated from the sunny disposition of Franklin Roosevelt. To him all things were possible. It began to falter with the tragedy of Vietnam and finally crumbled with the Iraq war and the financial disaster of 2008.
What is needed is a Democratic nominee for president who is both a savvy politician and a person of sunny disposition and an all things are possible world view. I think the American people will find those qualities contagious.
3
You know, Mr Brooks, the rest of the world knows perfectly well that the "global leadership role" Americans purport to fill is just fancy way to say "my way or the highway".
How ironic that it's usually the USA itself that ends up getting on the roof for a helicopter ride out.
Why does America insist on creating wars it can't win? Because a whole lot of people make money hand over fist in the process. That's all there is to it, and the rest of the world knows it. It's high time young Americans noticed too.
(Oh, and it's not Iran that's destabilizing the Middle East, it's the US and its allies that are goading Iran. Russia's cyberattacks, meanwhile, are getting thumbs up from the Oval Office.)
14
More evidence of our Age of Cynicism. It’s shocking that young people, that cohort that often leads in outrage against injustice while older people watch, can’t be roused to the moral responsibility that Americans have traditionally felt in global affairs. I believe it’s because more than older folks, they’ve been numbed and jaded by Internet sensationalism, manipulation and duplicity.
Why do anything, why risk anything, when you can’t believe anything?
It’s a terrible problem.
1
@Third Clarinet, Rather than the generation being lazy, it's a lazy accusation of a fake problem at least since the times of Cicero :
“Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book.”
2
Yes, most Americans are nationalists, not imperialists.
They support “internationalism”, not “globalism”. The former is focused on relations between sovereign nation states, the latter is focused on creating one or several large political entities that subsume and supplant current nation states.
Most Americans do prioritize American interests first and don’t support interventionist foreign policies. Fiscal non-interventionist oppose interventionism because it costs too much and generates a negative return for American taxpayers. Moral non-interventionists oppose it because they don’t believe that the U.S. has the moral right to intervene.
The people who support globalist policies are those who benefit most from them. They get the benefits, while sacrificing neither blood nor treasure.
So here is a solution for those who support American-led globalism, but are frustrated by those deplorable, uninformed voters.
Let’s institute a massive “Pax Americans tax” on the top 5% of society (i.e. incomes over $200K or so) and designate all the proceeds to expanding the defense budget, foreign aid, and services for U.S. workers/communities negatively impacted by globalism. And make military service mandatory for the all of the top 5% children.
Do you support this, Mr. Brooks?
3
David defines a problem and suggests a solution, yet will never admit that the problem was created by the Republicans, and that the solution is a perfect match for liberal progressive worldview and policies.
4
Sadly, David's article reads more like my 1960's American History classes than an intellectual, well thought out analysis of our actual foreign policy failures and successes since Truman.
3
How ironic that so many young people, who think nothing about their privacy online and put so much "trust" in their handy technology and social media, are otherwise so distrustful.
2
@Maj. Upset
Lazy accusation of a fake problem at least since the times of Cicero :
“Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book.”
What we need are more George Bailey's and that good old Savings and Loan, least the world turn into a Putin and Xi version of Pottersville.
Ahem.
Republican voters, your foreign policy views stink!
4
Don't you mean "REPUBLICAN Voters Your Views Stink?" because that is where the disconnect lies. It lies at your feet and at the feet of every "intellectual" conservative apologist since Reagan. And it lies. It is what Republicans always do.
3
David, this reminds me to inform you that your columns stink of irrelevance and faux equivalence. You're welcome.
5
Republicans, Your Votes Stink!
4
Mr. Brooks, your foreign policy views stink. I could easily innumerate them for you, but I have to work for a living and there are only so many hours in the day.
6
"We need a leader who can grapple with failures like Iraq, build a younger, credible leadership class and embody an optimism that pulls us out of the dark spiral."
No, Mr. Brooks. We need the few remaining Republicans with awareness of the horror of this era and a conscience to, en masse, formally denounce what their party has become and deprive it of votes until it loses its relevance and a new party can be born from the ashes. It all starts with the rot that is at the center of America's conservative movement. The failures of diplomacy, the greed, the destruction of the global order, the careless approach to the alliances that maintain the peace, the abandonment of soft power, the loss of the shining city on the hill. They all can be traced to the moral bankruptcy, gross incompetence and overconfident bellicosity of America's GOP. Stop trying to shape it, explain it, use it, guide it, excuse it and all of the other protection mechanisms that non "deplorable" Republicans use to pretend that they can still pull the "R" lever on election day and pretend that they are not still responsible for this. They are. You are. It will not change until the modern Republican party dies, exorcises its demons and starts anew with a resultant shift of the political center away from the extremist right.
4
Decades of Republican foreign policy, supported by David Brooks, have made the nation immoral and amoral in foreign policy.
5
Sure, Europe has done well post WWII, but Brooks displays no knowledge of the bloody history of US interference Latin America, the Middle East, or Asia.
6
Food for thought. Perhaps we are not well educated in the knowledge that, being social animals, we depend on each other, and that trust is essential to become solidarian and protect human rights no matter where or when. Thinking that 'we' (whoever we are) can throw stones to other's behavior because 'we' are clean of fault and bad intentions, let's think again. And again. You mentioned the good things this country has done, especially a just war by defeating Hitler. But otherwise we have been warmongers not too dissimilar from the one's we incriminate as savages or brutish despots throughout the world. You mentioned our stupid interventions in Vietnam and Irak, but there are multiple others, especially when interfering in the internal affairs of other nations because of our economic and military might (remember Iran's 1953 toppling, via the C.I.A., of it's legitimate government; and Chile's Allende's toppling by corporate America, and Central American interventions galore?). Having lived in Bolivia, the U.S showed free rein in 'choosing' who was acceptable, or not, as it's senate was paid for by the U.S. ...as long as certain rules of obeisance were followed. Not to make a fuss about imperial designs, but we all have much to atone to, and some humility, if not repentance, for our peace of mind. You said we need a leader that understands all our frailties and needs, and do what's right. But don't you think we need an enlightened electorate able to choose a worthier leader?
3
Espousing 'universal values' while applying them selectively has been the underpinning of our foreign policy.
This has gotten us into disasters like Vietnam where we we went in to save the world from 'Red China' and wound up secretly talking alignment against the Soviet Union.
We supported apartheid in South Africa because they were 'anti -communist' even as we talked up human and civil rights.
We supported 57 dictators (A-Z) for the same reason.
This 'realpolitik' got us into Afghanistan, Iraq (2nd Gulf war was for oil) and now a confused muddle in Syria.
We supported the Shah of Iran until we didn't. Ditto for Saddam Hussein who was ID'd by the CIA in 1968 as an up an comer and installed as Dictator of Iraq in 1978.
Now we are converting China into an enemy.
There 190 countries in the UN and we have sanctioned 144 of them. We have a military presence in 140 countries.
It's not turning our back on the world—it is zero trust in the 'Foreign Policy Elite' in DC and their playbook which calls for sacrifice of blood and treasure by us proles.
Like John Kerry said in 2004: "study hard and get a good job or you'll wind up in Iraq"
The old "We are Americans, and we are here to help you" evokes mirthless laughter abroad and now at home.
2
David, I think you could go farther and say simply - voters, your judgment stinks! You have elected someone who would rather work with the spy agencies of Russia and North Korea than of the United States. And to all the angst-filled 'new doves' who voted for a third party - you are part of the problem, not part of the solution. Good luck on fixing this, until people start to reflect on the last 70 years of history and decide they don't really want to throw that all down the toilet.
2
Rogue nations... you mean the United States?
3
The essence of this missive is the current standard issue right wing chant “Be a man, invade Iran!”
1
Like Catholic priests and Southern Baptist ministers who blindly ignore the corruption in their institutions, Brooks continues to preach the conservative gospel - optimism, community, patriotism, and “liberal” (wink wink conservative) world order - while all around him the Church of Conservatism decays and destroys those very characteristics and takes America down with it.
3
"Why did this happen?"
Nuclear weapons
1
Send in the clowns beginning with Trump offspring and supporters. Oh and count me out.
"Americans take a dark view of human nature and withdraw from the world." More of Brooks's incessant glittering generalities, but without the glitter.
1
"After Iraq and other debacles, many Americans are exhausted by the global leadership role. Many have lost faith in the nation’s leadership class. "
Duh.....Brooks was one of the major cheerleaders for the Iraq War. He's never apologized for that, or admitted error. As one of the most outspoken neocons, he has no credibility on foreign policy whatsoever.
It will be interesting to see how he lines up with his old buddies when it comes to war with Iran, which his pals on the right and in the Jerusalem government are cooking up now.
Brooks should stick to his old-lady 'moral' scold role. At least he can generate a few laughs amongst us occasional readers with that shtick.
3
Though it is a worthy nominee, the most transformational response to the end of World War II was not NATO and the other international "democratic institutions; rather, it was the Marshall Plan - the stunning rejection of millennia of exacting revenge by humiliation and plunder.
Democratic elections produced Lincoln and Churchill, but they also produced Mussolini, Hitler, and the current crop of European and North American Jingoists, racists, and xenophobes, as exemplified by the current occupant of the White House.
But even the most brilliant, democracy-hating propagandists and other fundamentalists have been able to put a chink in the profound, beautiful and transformational Marshall Plan.
George Marshall's prescription for the restoration of Europe was pure genius: At once deeply magnanimous and immensely practical.
When I said my private prayers of thanks for all our veterans on the 75th anniversary of D-day, I added a special prayer of thanks for this wonderful patriot.
4
Actually, it’s the USA, in conjunction with Saudi Arabia and Israel, who is destabilizing the Middle East.
2
Nobody loves a progressive pacifist quite like a dictator.
Mr. Brooks reminds me of Huckleberry Finn’s old- maid Aunt Polly futile attempts to ─civilize him. Trying to tame his wild and wonderfully American spirit. This piece demonstrates alienation of the American elite. The media-types, the Wall Street bankers, government bureaucrats, Democratic politicians, UN officials, Hollywood stars, globalist postmodern academics and the like. They want to cramp down what they think of as “good” ─down your throats of “we the people.” They know what’s good for America and everyone else in the world. You just shut up and pay the taxes and vote for us… In that sense this piece suggest a serious erosion of faith in American people, pays homage to liberal-alienated, elitist politics of John Kerry and Barack Obama. America has moved on to a new age of political thinking. Just like when it was first foundered. America is re-inventing herself. Just as it was done during the American Revolution. But the author misses this point. And condemns the American people for thinking and deciding for themselves. Like England’s King George the 111 thought the same of Americans as Mr. Brooks does. Americans are good for nothing. They are “wild, unwashed, barbaric, smelly, dirty, uneducated simpletons…”
... and that's why this country, without a truly informed historical viewpoint of world affairs, as is still being (somewhat) maintained in Europe, got what it deserved - Donald Trump, the most vile under-educated president to ever hold the office. Congrats!
3
Republicans crack me up. They play so fast and loose with language that the adjective “liberal” can mean both a person focused on his own advancement (as in neo-liberal) and a person who believes in a socialistic agenda (as in liberal democrat.). Half the time they use lingo that is void of meaning altogether and they rarely bother to define the terms they use, never bothering to tie them to specific actions or things in the real world. David Brooks and Ross Douthat are the two opinion writers I find most consistently guilty of this fault. People get to the end of their columns and it is clear from the comments they elicit that these gentlemen are simply blowing hot air much of the time. Can we get something concrete and enlightening in a column? These two guys are just bunkum at least 90percent of the time.
1
Short explanation: most Americans are woefully ignorant about history.
3
Trump and his Republicans followers are dark side riders. They want us to fail and collapse into pre WWII America. They want to cleanse America of everything good. The war is now. There is nothing civil about this war. You have no idea how much this bronze star veteran hates Trump!!
1
@concord63 Thank you for your service unlike Trump who pretended his feet hurt and had daddy get him a note saying it would be ok.
2
America's leaders (R) made some terrible mistakes -
Vietnam (R), Iraq (R).
2
The enemy of our country is clear and unfortunately it’s many us.
“American intelligence” ...... the new oxymoron in the time of conman Trump.
Vote my friends
2
Mr. Brooks was all for "liberal interventionism" when he joined the Saddam has WMDs nuts in launching the "global war on terror".
He is still all for "liberal interventionism".
And readers wonder why the USA is "fascist"?
Perhaps, Mr. Brooks you have the answer?
Like 2016, the 2000 election and flirtations with purity cost democrats and the world. Bush sent the USA into an ill advised and poorly thought out war and nation build. That has drained America’s tangible and intangible assets. 50 years of inaction on education policy and innovation has rendered a sizable percentage of Americans with economically unviable skill sets. The USA Squandered a 50 year technology lead due short term profit mindset and an exhaustive and on-going culture war.
For what it’s worth, Mankind has lived in tyranny for most of its existence. I expect that to continue whether America was involved or isolationist. It’s human nature for the strong to dominate the weak. Ask Africa. They’ve been under foreign domination for 250 years and counting.
China, Russia, Saudi, North Korea rwill assert their influence and new found strength. This will only mean more immigrants to the USA. Expect more from Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea and Eastern Europe. Africa and Latin America will continue to be huge exporters of human capital. Especially as climate change and Brazil’s assault on the Amazon continues.
Mankind is still in the dark ages. It’s so easy to divide people. Greed, racial supremacy, religion, gender inequity, etc.. We are several hundred years off from peace, respect and goodwill. In fact, it’s questionable whether mankind is capable of such goals.
All presidents make foreign policy mistakes. The trick is finding ways to overcome them and then to forge peace and prosperity in the world. Brooks' last para points to a new start. America simply must not abandon its world leadership role on any issue. If we do, then the next mistake or conflict will be at our doorstep.
"On the left there are the New Doves. These are young people who express high interest in human rights, but having grown up in the Iraq era, they don’t want the U.S. to get involved in protecting them."
Involved in protecting them? This is what we do overseas? Give me an example! We're helping our big ally in the middle east, Saudi Arabia, whose wartime strategies against the rebels in Yemen include deliberately starving millions of children to death, which is going on right now.
So, yeah, I'm a new dove. I don't mind the epithet. When I see human rights abuses, more often than not, the US is DIRECTLY SUPPORTING THEM.
Even if we were to intervene in, say, Sudan, to stop atrocities, would this make up for SUPPORTING ATROCITIES elsewhere? Shouldn't we stop committing and supporting atrocities before we go looking to intervene in a positive fashion?
Our interest in Iran is clearly economic, strategic. It has nothing to do with the Iranian people, who will suffer--as they did suffer when we supported Saddam Hussein's war with Iran in the 80's--if we go to this war, which nobody wants but a few psychotic hawks in our administration, and of course Iran's rivals--our allies--in the middle east.
David Brooks lives in a world where none of this is true, where none of the facts matter, a world that is pure fiction and war propaganda. This article itself is a human rights abuse.
6
Yet another column from Brooks that tries to be "fair and balanced" but is riddled with false equivalencies and is no more "fair and balanced" than Faux News!
If by now Brooks is unwilling to name the perpetrators of America's descent into a kleptocracy that has resulted in "electing" a dishonest thug for a leader, he never can or will; he will continue to live in a fantasy world of make believe.
5
Home Run!
1
Thanks for a brazenly, ignorantly Eurocentric version of history, David. You have no idea what you're talking about.
(Oh, and by the way.....America is the most rogue nation on Earth. Who else has invaded more countries in the past 50 years?)
1
So, Brooks, did you just make up the phrase “new doves”? It certainly doesn’t pop up in Google searches
“Instead of widening the circle of concern, most Americans want the U.S. to simply look after itself”
You imply things have changed in the America. That’s rubbish. Anyone ever heard of Pearl Harbour? That only happened because Americans did not want to get involved at all in foreign wars “over there”. The First World War stated in 1914. The Americans got into it in 1917 only because the Germans sunk the Lusitania. In the years leading up to the Second World War, America refused to its everlasting shame, to accept Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazis. Even turning away ships of Jews. Millions died in the concentration camps as a result. Then when England was on the brink of being invaded in 1941 by 100,000 Nazi troops 50 miles across the English Channel, and 10,000 Londoners were dying in the blitz, America refused, REFUSED to join the war. Churchill begged Roosevelt and Congress to help but they wouldn’t even send the destroyers Churchill was asking for. Instead they sent WW1 vintage ships and still only on credit. The only way Roosevelt could get America to agree was by designing it as “lend lease”. A loan, which in fact the UK only finished paying back relatively recently. It was only because of Pearl Harbour that America joined the way and within days declared war on both Japan and Germany. No, America has always been shamefully isolationist. Trump is just pandering to these base instincts. Just recognize that’s what America is all about.
2
United States military forces have killed 20 million people since WWII. This columns self-righteous, we-are-the-chosen-people thinking helps explain both why that has happened and why it’s so little known.
3
Enjoy your weekend.
This proves the point that most Americans themselves are functional illiterates with little knowledge of American history, and even less of world history. For being "smart" in book learning, we remain a stupid country.
1
David Brooks,
So do yours!
3
You are right because the best way to isolate ourself is helping the rest of the world keep their messes on/or in their own country. I think the young adults have grown up with the story of the $1000 hammer and have either over experienced violence or gun violence in their lives and have become abhorrent to the hint of gun smoke. That said it feels like we are getting sucked back to WW11 times, Saudi is setting itself up as an enforcer for Eastern and norther Africa, China will be an enforcer for Asian countries, Russia gets Europe and we will work alongside with Mexico and be the enforcer for South and Central America. NATO is what our young adults will prop up, to be the powerhouse with latest laser technology and all the gear to go with it. You are now entering the Twilight Zone
1
Just when you think you like Brooks for his willingness to emerge from the so-called "conservative" mindset (no such thing, actually a rolling and ongoing effort to reverse whatever fitful progress society manages to make) he steps into another prairie pie.
He acknowledges Vietnam and Iraq as "terrible mistakes" (itself a misnomer, as "mistake" implies well-intentioned carelessness or misunderstanding, hardly applicable to the audacious manufactured lies about the Gulf of Tonkin incident or WMD, each used as a casus belli) but oddly omits an even earlier "mistake", the CIA-engineered overthrow of Mosaddegh in Iran in 1953. Why does this matter? Because connecting the dots from then to now would be an inconvenient distraction from the Bolton/Pompeo cabal's determination to engineer regime change in Iran today.
The overthrow of the democratically elected Mosaddegh (since acknowledged by Madeleine Albright and the CIA itself) for the crime of nationalizing Iran's oil industry to stop the nation's wealth being sucked out by British and American oil companies led to the restoration of the Shah, which led to the Islamic Revolution in 1979, which brings us to today.
Brooks covers all this with a single mention: "Iran is destabilizing the Middle East." It is much easier to attribute today's events to nefarious behavior by ayatollahs and mullahs than to acknowledge that it was the US itself who triggered that instability 66 years ago.
Preserving "the liberal world order" indeed!
5
Seems Brooks spent too much time in his post-Modern Maoist reeducation camp: "Between 1500 and 1945, scarcely a year went by without some great power fighting another great power. Then, in 1945 that stopped."
So, Korean War wasn't between great powers; so, Vietnam wasn't between great powers; so, Iraq wasn't a great power stomping war? And Iran-Iraq war that took at least a million casualties didn't count?
Stop with NYT Opinion Kingdom delusion and propaganda; Brussels gulags are not the answer for maintaining a stable Europe.
Perhaps no nukes lit off yet, but North Korea and Iran offer the world best chance for that to happen sooner than later.
Point of fact: No need to be a "great power" to cause the world serious damage. Pakistan-Israel--QED
2
“America’s leaders made some terrible mistakes (Vietnam, Iraq)”
Um, America’s columnists made some pretty bad ones too:
https://www.weeklystandard.com/david-brooks/the-collapse-of-the-dream-palaces
1
Well we know where Joe Biden stands with respect to the Communist Chinese "They're not bad folks"
1
Global leadership, yes. Global dictatorship, no. WWII, a fine example of a horrible but required action by America that included co-operation with our allies. Vietnam, Iraq, examples of a poorly planned, "only America can fix this" hubris that were massive failures that we are still paying the butchers bill for. We also must realize that those who wish to solve the never ending issue of rougue regimes that we do have limited economic resources. North Korea is a perfect example. It is without a doubt one of the most brutal regimes of our time. I doubt I will see it in my lifetime but when that regime falls the horror stories that will emerge will shame the entire world for allowing it to go on for so long. But the reality is that if we use war as the answer the human costs would be catastrophic. Seoul would be turned into an ash heap. We would probably win a war eventually but the country would be in ruins. And do we have the money to rebuild it. Because of the constant state of war we have been in over the last 30 years our economic resources are at a breaking point. Easy bromides like, hey your views suck" are not the answer and Mr. Brook's game plan are thick with fine moral finger wagging but very short on realistic explanations on how this would all work.
1
When are you staging the public burning of your Reoublican Party member card then? It is your party, Mr. Brooks, the party that you still support, the party you still call your own, that has send us down the never ending war path. You sir, have no moral authority to tell us what kind of leader our the country "needs" as long as you still call yourself a Republican, the party that gave us Bush, the war monger and Trump, an amoral, incompetent, dishonest "man" who is itching for a war.
1
The one good thing about our invasion of Iraq was that it proved that military action in the modern world is ineffective.There are no "spoils of victory".New democracies are not easily created.This is what the young among us understand.
Warfare today is economic(China) and guerrilla(Russia).It is not about military dominance.Nuclear weapons did away with this model.Wars are no longer what they were between 1500 and 1945.The sooner we realize this, the better off we'll be.While it's true that the military/industrial complex stands in the way, it could be convinced to spend those enormous sums differently.
In the late 50's when Russia launched Sputnik,the first manned outer space venture,the US fostered a huge effort to advance science and innovation in order to compete with them.That effort succeeded and led to many of the technical advances which have given us a temporary economic advantage(internet,cell phones.home computers etc.) today.If we're going to win this new kind of war,we need to do it again.Tariffs are certainly not the answer....they only tell the rest of the world that we've lost our competitive edge.Some of us want to go back to making doormats for Walmart and mining coal.Is this really our future?I certainly hope not and I think younger Americans are up to the challenge the new world presents.
3
This column and so many of the resulting comments evoke a lot of sadness. Like Mr. Brooks, I bemoan the U.S. retreat from world-stage leadership. That said, I sympathize with those looking for retreat. Many years ago - as the Berlin Wall fell - I heard Henry Kissinger speak. He admonished his audience not to bubble over with joy. He argued that a world with one superpower was at high risk of breeding a bully. What Mr. Brooks refers to as our foreign policy mistakes are really misuses of power by a bully. I fear that we have become a bully. I suspect that what we have lost is trust in ourselves or our elected leaders to exercise world leadership via our better angels.
3
That leader would be Elizabeth Warren.
2
Republicans are hidden inside your generalized assertions about cynicism and selfishness in the American population.
Who among us supports concentration camps and threats against people who simply are fleeing unlivable conditions in their own poor countries.
We are not all self-absorbed, anti-government, anti-immigrant, anti Muslim, anti-free trading, weapons selling, climate crisis deniers.
Some of us are citizens of the entire planet.
The problem remains: REPUBLICANS.
3
David Brooks, your world view is clueless and blind to reality. The purpose of the liberal world order has nothing to do with democracy, but everything to do with capitalism and protecting the national interests its global elite and corporations.
What Brooks values has created colossal income/wealth inequality, especially in the US and Britain, but most of Europe and the rest of the world. The liberal world order was meant to kill communism and socialism, allowing capitalism to triumph. It figures that Brooks admires Madeleine Albright, renown for saying that the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children were worth what the US accomplished in Iraq.
The US foundation was the genocide of the Native Americans and slavery. There has been some idealism, and the grit of the fortune seekers who populated the US was a marvel.
The Establishment/Global elite see the world in terms of threats to the US national interest and may destroy the livability of the world in order to maintain the US as top dog.
Interesting that a study he cites estimates that only 9.5 percent are traditional internationalists. That is about the same percent considered the new American aristocracy in an article I recommend, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/06/the-birth-of-a-new-american-aristocracy/559130/ also recommended https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/07/education-isnt-enough/590611/
4
With a president who's for sale to the highest bidder and a political party that blindly supports him no matter how corruptly he acts, it seems almost irrelevant to talk about the shining model we hold out to the world.
Whatever Brooks thinks is wrong with Americans' attitudes to foreign policy, be assured that it will only get worse the longer Trump is in office.
5
David Brooks has blinders on again. He says again, “especially the young”. And yet, who is kidnapping children, making nice with dictators, closing America down? I mean, really, have we ever had a more nationalistic viewpoint, and this from a guy in his 70s.
This obsession that Brooks has with categorizing by age prevents him from looking holistically or broadly. ( He talks about the Iraq debacle. I think this all started with the Vietnam debacle.)
4
No other country has wasted as much life and treasure as the United States has in fruitless wars.
4
Yet another article by Mr.Brooks that can’t withstand the slightest bit of scrutiny. “Very few nations in history have ever felt any responsibility for anything but themselves.” Same goes with America. Can the author point to any case where the US government respected the sovereignty of other governments that threatened its vital geopolitical interests? Iran, Vietnam, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Romania, Argentina...the omnibenevolent US seems to have few qualms about supporting fascist crackpots who’d work to advance the interests of global capital. And “Iran is destabilizing the Middle East”? So I guess American wars of aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan, aiding the Saudi genocide in Yemen, and allowing Israel to act with no repercussions towards Palestinians are examples of “stabilization”. I’d strongly recommend Mr.Brooks to read Manufacturing Consent and 1984. Something tells me he won’t though.
2
There I was, agreeing with Brooks. But of course his corruption raised its head, as he mentions Iran as an evildoer and says no word about evil nations which receive our support, Saudi Israel. That is how the propagandist does his unclean
work.
2
Korean War, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, the continuous colonization of Palestine with the help of US, interference in overthrowing Democratic governments in Iran and Chile - What are you talking about?
3
I respect David Brooks because as a conservative, he has remained moderate, sensible, and critical of the right and the nationalist Trumpian base. And he has a point about some of the results of the super power-led global politics post WWII. We do live in a world that has seen reductions of war casualties and world poverty. Those results have come at great expense, such as the mutual stand-off of nuclear weapons as well as continued super-power domination and modern-day imperialism, which is not as brutal and inhumane as in the past but oppressive still. I agree with Brooks that to remain isolationist as a foreign policy is a mistake, but our leadership in the world needs to evolve. When military might keeps the peace we can assume that sanctioned terrorism (drone warfare killing citizens) and genocide numbers (Iraq wars) will continue. The leading powers such as the US can continue to lead the world toward democracy and equality but it must demilitarize the methods it uses. Military might must evolve towards global service might. Militaries will be necessary, but for a more peaceful world where humanity moves toward truer peace with itself and with the Earth, then what we put toward military efforts would better serve the world if it were put toward service efforts, sharing efforts, expanding rights efforts. Get involved, yes; lead, yes. But pummel and bomb and invade and threaten, no.
1
UnProofed:
Who are those like David Brooks when they write via media like the New York Times with established histories and roots as professional voices?
Do they represent the NY Times, overt or covert factions within the NY Times, or echo what is often said by the US Government?
With the advent of social media citizen journalism has expanded where the government and corporation blacken the skies with the black ink of their official opinions, court decisions, columns, academic articles etc both when they are on duty and of duty the police officer and soldier doubles as does the soda jerk in pale shades of Jerry Lewis if there are any soda jerks left.
Where the question is not the expression of opinion but the overt and covert abuse of public forums by government, industry, finance, commerce, professionals, media, all representing a ruling elite where the Koch Brothers George Soros exercise unfounded powers and influence by hiring financing hundreds of writers as their Autocratic predecessors did before them hired guns to fight duels of honour if any dared challenge them:
For wealth and power prejudices their inclinations to act dishonourably as the standards applied to them are subject to change.
So Mr David Brooks hiding behind the NY Times after decades they both influenced foreign policy creating what they now protest:
Sorry but Ne Think the Gray Old Lady Protesth too much though he and they may be correct as that is their prerogative of privilege wealth and power.
"Wolves like Putin and Xi fill the void and make bad things happen, confirming the dark view and causing even more withdrawal."
And sociopaths like Trump prove that a dark view of our leaders is apt.
But hey, Brooks managed to fit another of his "There are two kinds of..." in this column, so his record is intact.
And a final fantasy paragraph.
1
What is the cost of the 2 Republican war catastrophes? Neither has ended, and Afghanistan may go for all eternity. When Joseph Stiglitz guestimated the Iraq war at 2 trillion, the right wing pundits howled. One of those would be you, David. He was, of course, probably incorrect: the cost will be higher.
Your column about current beliefs of citizens of the US towards the liberal world order omits any mention of the dollars and cents of Bush's immense and fatal stupidity.
Did it slip your mind that you were a rah-rah, go get 'em voice from the sidelines 18 years ago? If this country distrusts elites, the vast war mongering chorus behind Bush is to blame.
And they called Hans Blix "feckless".
5
If you want it to get better Mr. Brooks, you need to look in the mirror and examine the failures of the liberal American political elite since the end of the cold war and address those instead of blaming others.
For example I still haven't heard this liberal 'elite' admit that you cannot force nations to be democratic since democracies inherently give their constituents the RIGHT TO CHOOSE their own form of government. If the Iraqi's don't want democracy, they are never going have it!!!!!! When your policies are predicated on violating laws of Nature described by Montesquieu in the foundational text of this nation, then you really need to take a step back and understand that you are not as competent or capable as you imagines, and the American public is correct to be skeptical.
When the US projects its power through NATO or the UN I think it is a tiny bit more credible. When it projects its power unilaterally, and always into countries where there is oil or another strategic commodity at stake, it looks a lot less like preserving a liberal international order and more like a Mafia shakedown. It would also help if USA/West didn't prop up dictators routinely (Pinochet, Noriega, Marcos, Qadaffi...Saudi Arabia...hey we sell them a lot of weapons...as does my home and native Canada to my disgust)
"a 2013 Gallup poll of 65 countries found that non-Americans actually perceive the United States as the greatest threat to world peace."
https://www.ibtimes.com/gallup-poll-biggest-threat-world-peace-america-1525008
2
Cheer up, David - with the White House gunning for war with Iran, we'll soon be in yet another quagmire like the ones you and your erstwhile colleagues at the Weekly Standard helped make the case for!
2
I think it would help if more positive news was delivered. Most of us are in this world doing good, but all we read/hear about are the cheats....bc news sells and it means money....so accept your part in this problem. PS I wonder who you surveyed I fall into the second category of promoting human rights.
I fail to see how the world is better after WWII. I look at the Middle East, large parts of Africa, central America, Indonesia, parts of the world where people are starving and subject to torture and murder at the hands of cruel dictators. Much of this caused by American foreign policy, supporting any dictator, no matter how bad, to keep out Marxist leaning or independent thinkers. Not only political support, but $, arms, and murder.
How can we say with a straight face that we have been stewards of a better world??
I wonder what the millions in South America who lost family or were tortured by US-backed dictators since 1945 would make of this piece?
6
Iran is not destabilizing the Middle East, we are with our support of a murderous, corrupt country that is privately held by one family; Saudi Arabia along with Israel. Mr. Brooks perpetuates trump’s and Bolton’s lies, Iran is trying to maintain the agreement they signed.
David, you continue to attempt to sound reasonable while toting the republican talking points. Still no offers from Fox “news”? It’s breaking your heart, isn’t it.
3
What else do you expect when our national creed is"America First"
Americans were isolationists in the early years of World War II. We didn't get involved until Japan attacked us at Pearl Harbor. Over 400,000 Americans (and millions of others) died before that war was over. The death toll would likely have been lower if we had helped to stop the Nazis and Japanese earlier.
Few sane Americans want to be the world's policemen, but sometimes the costs of an America First policy are much higher. World events can force our hand at a time not of our choosing.
2
Great column, Mr. Brooks. Thank you.
Brooks was one of the biggest cheerleaders of the Iraq invasion and subsequent fiasco.
His views on foreign policy are irrelevant.
7
Why the surprise at Americans' desire not to get embroiled in foreign conflicts? There has long been a disconnect between our embrace of democracy at home, and our embrace of dictators abroad. In Central and South America, Southeast Asia, and the Mideast we have been willing to sacrifice lives, treasury, and principle to suppress democracy when that served our strategic and commercial interests. When intervention would have served humanitarian goals, we hesitate or turn a blind eye, as in Rwanda, Bosnia, and Syria. For my generation Viet Nam destroyed the illusion that our military intervention abroad was about upholding American values. For my kids out was Iraq. This doesn't mean that we should withdraw from the world, but we are right to be skeptical of morally questionable military adventurism.
2
I think that everyone who wants wars should pick up the gun and volunteer. It is easy to send others to fight so you can feel good. However, it must be accepted that the US retreating from the position of being world's policeman will potentially lead to a lot terrible things. Just accept this and move on. A lot of people do not want to be a part of the liberal order.
1
Pulling up the ladder is not going to help us. We're heading into an era of displaced populations due to climate change. We are not coping well with hundreds of thousands of refugees. When that trickle turns into a flood of hundreds of millions isolationism is not going to work. If we don't engage with the whole world, no wall will be high enough to protect us.
3
Roosevelt/Marshall did not lie to the American people about war and the aftermath. Our foreign policy have been completely based on lies and has been an abject failure. From the overthrow in Iran’s government in the 1950s, to Vietnam, to Iraq/Afghanistan, to the Arab spring. We know these wars are fought to enrich corporations, particularly the oil companies and financial elites. Lies, lies,lies it’s all based in lies to enrich the oligarchs who who don’t care a flip about expanding goodwill throughout the world.
US foreign policy is, was, and probably always will be predicated on what is best for Corporate America, not what is best for the citizens of other nations. This is not to say US leadership is never a positive force in the world, but the US has been directly involved, covertly or overtly, in more than 30 regime changes since 1945 and in not one of them (you could argue the jury is still out on Iraq) was the result democracy, as we understand it, for the people of those countries. In fact, the US has supported some of the most corrupt, murderous regimes on the planet. We pay lip service to human rights when we don't like the economic policies of particular governments, as with Venezuela right now.
1
thank you Koch brothers, Mitch Mcconnell, dick Cheney, George Bush and the entire Republican party for instilling fear and spending trillions on wars and enriching your pockets. If the America i saw a glimpse of growing up from east coast to left coast let me know or hopefully I can look around and notice.
1
It would be folly to trust the leadership of a US president and administration that are continually lying. I have no love for Iranian dictators, but I really don’t have any more faith in Pompeo’s allegations about Iran’s involvement the tanker attacks than I do in Iran’s denials. How sad is that? It’s what America has become.
6
" The America Firsters and the New Doves may think of themselves as opposites, but they wind up in the same place "
But:
1) They get there through different roads: Firsters because of racism, New Doves because the system is not working for them as modified in the last forty years.
2) BOTH roads are the result of Republican policies and decisions.
So yes, wee need new, young, PROGRESSIVE leaders (and no, I'm not young. I'm WAY past young!)
2
This is an insightful piece and does a good job of summarizing how we got to the present moment. What strikes me is the way in which we allow the opponents of American global leadership to frame the issue. Semantics matter, particularly to those who live in a soundbite, slogan/jingoistic driven world. "Liberal World Order" as a moniker for the policies adopted in post WW2 times to make sure that WW1 & WW2 never happened again has been co-opted by the Fox machine and seized upon by all of those kool-aid drinkers as the worst imaginable slur. There's no question we in this country are weary of being the world's policemen, of trying to plant the seeds of democracy in infertile soil, in actually trying to live up to the ideals that are fundamental to this nation's founding, and its success. But joining the dark side in favor of America First isn't the answer. It only hastens the descent into the new age of barbarism and bloodshed brought on by weapons so powerful and so widely distributed across a planet led by arguably the very worst leaders to emerge in many generations that the Somme, Verdun, Dresden, Hiroshima,Stalingrad, the London Blitz etc., etc., etc. will look like child's play in comparison.
1
"having grown up in the Iraq era, they don't want the U.S. to get involved in protecting them."
From what was I being protected when the U.S. attacked a country that had nothing to do with 9/11, dismantled its forces of order, unleashed region-wide chaos, and caused the deaths of thousands of civilians?
3
Russian jet fighters buzz us in the North Atlantic and Baltic Sea. China builds islands foe military use and confront us in areas we previously had free transit. Oil tankers are getting hit by stealthy, well-armed militias in the Persian Gulf, sending a message that they know how to put the economic squeeze on the West.Two can play that game. The NSA gets hacked by foreign nationals and steal top- of- the- line, encryption-breaking software. They then use the software to shut down Baltimore and San Antonio. Thousands of Central Americans are pounding on our door looking for a safe harbor away from the systemic violence at home.
I got a message for all the people who think disengagement is an option. Isolationism is a grand illusion that'll lead to even greater trouble ahead for every country. We are and should be engaged on a global scale if we know what's good for us. Power abhors a vacuum. We are creating a vacuum with our feckless dithering and a growing cynicism that everybody does it. Everybody is corrupt. Everybody is in it for themselves. Our President is the embodiment of of these negative values and the rest of the world has taken notice. Trump couldn't care less about human rights, about the murder of journalists, about joining with the world to save ourselves from global warming. Why do we follow such fools?
5
"We’re in a dark spiral. Americans take a dark view of human nature and withdraw from the world."
The US is in a dark spiral caused by Republican policies such as trying to do away with Obamacare or any health care for Americans, cuts to Medicaid, a minimum wage that hasn't been raised in years, deplorable tax cuts for the 1%, corporate welfare for select groups like farmers, gerrymandering elections, refusing to deal with immigration, and running a complete corrupt government in plain sight. We see what they are doing.
2
Yes, we need great leadership - please discuss "our leader," rather that general platitudes in a fireside chat.
Our main threat is climate change, which will bring wars over water, arable land and immigration.
That is our main threat, not whether women can or cannot decide to get abortions.
3
When you consider the state of the United States it's hard to think that we are the ones who can provide the guiding light to the rest of the world, or that we are in any position to judge the behavior of other countries. If we could put our house in order and live up to the principles and the phony rhetoric we hear from our leaders we might be justified in seeing ourselves as the leaders of the world. If we were a shadow of what we like to think we are, the rest of the world would look to us for guidance and emulate our every move. If we were what we think we are our example would almost be enough and endless war would be unnecessary. As it is people around the world view America with disdain, they view it's citizens as ignorant, vulgar and consumed by their profligate materialism. And now they look at us with justified incredulity wondering how we could elect this ignorant conman to be our president. America is in no position to view itself as the leader of the world. It has lost that privilege and we have a long road back to the place where we can reclaim it.
4
You are absolutely right! We started the ME movement and it has not weakened except in a few corners of the world. There is not a chance now with the America First attitude. It is selfish and detrimental to the world order. Make America Great is just a bully position to attract more of the macho generation. We do not have leadership that is able to pull us out of most of our failures.
1
Your ideas about how to 'preserve the liberal order' in the Middle East are unlikely to be the same as mine. Even old people like me who absolutely understand the 'world order' thing are disgusted with the direction our military and hawkish politicians have taken us. Why? Because it's only about money and political personal interests--primarily of the war-mongering Republican Party. It's never about your so-called human rights.
We struck a hard-negotiated nuclear deal with Iran; Trump pulls out because Saudi Arabia doesn't like the deal, and the Trump Organization has a presence there so he'd like to make a few bucks from that in the long run. Trump's son-in-law takes over negotiating 'peace in the Middle East' between Israel and Palestine--but only if Netanyahu is the big winner because the Kushners are Jewish. The rights of Palestinians? What rights would those be?
Going back a bit, there were no WMDs. The Cheney/Rumsfeld team, disgusted that George Sr. didn't crush Iraq, made sure feckless George Jr. went back in to finish the job. In the end, we end up with 9/11 and the rise of ISIS.
Finally, Big Oil interests in the Middle East defines most of our policy. Rex Tillerson was the first honest guy to tell us plainly that it's all about business, not human rights, in the Middle East. I await the day the rest of the world stops buying their oil--let them all sit in their increasingly hot desert sand and bake to death.
You're a Republican--blame yourself.
4
We have a long and unbroken history of supporting dictators all around the world in the quest for unchallenged global power.
Now spreading our values is supporting tyrannical monarchies of the Middle East and an ethnocentric theocracy like Israel.
We cooked up a war in Iraq with blatant lies killing 650,000 Iraqis and committing war crimes to a cost of 2.4trillion dollars.
Now Brooks wants to go to another war with Iran.
No wonder the younger generation is wary of our foreign policy.
2
Perhaps one reason people are not supporting foreign intervention is that the war in Iraq seemed to be about US companies having access to oil in the middle east, not about helping the people of Iraq. In fact, our meddling in Iraq showed ignorance of the culture there. Muslims of different persuasions lived next to each other before the war but now there is hatred and distrust between them.
Perhaps it is foolish to think that all cultures can make a successful transition to democracy. Westerners think they have figured out the best way to live but when democracy is imposed on a people from the outside, ancient belief systems and religions are not taken into account and there can be unexpected outcomes.
Yes, it was correct to stop Hitler and other evil dictators but foreign intervention is sometimes done with self-interest in mind. Each situation is unique.
2
I am one of the "After-the-war"-generation who still can remember some of the economic effects of the US-aid to Europe, the important and generous pacage we called "Marshall-hjelpa", The Marshal Aid after your postwar foreign minister George C. Marshall. This aid did very much to restart both housing and workplaces after the war, and my own grandfather was among the happy receivers of new fishing nets and other equipment for fishing in 1948. This was part of our governments use of your support.
To observe the destructiveness of today's US foreign policies, with military interventions that mostly seem like bullying, and economic warfare against near and far nations alike, cannot possibly be seen in the same light as american poltitics during the 50-ies and 60-ies.
But your choice of president seems to underscore the total disruption of the American relations to the world. You should know, that we are not mere vassalls to the mighty Dollar.
We would like to be neighbors and friends. You do not make that easy, nowadays.
5
@Bjarte Rundereim
You should reach out to the White House. Trump loves Norway!
The only way out of this is education. Start teaching history and civics in elementary school. I work with adolescents, and I am appalled at the ignorance of most high school seniors. The push for STEM education has produced an electorate that can do varying degrees of math but has no clue how we became the world we are today. Dumb doesn't work well with democracy. I agree that this is a crisis.
6
Trump is just like Putin and Xi and all the other despots who want to rule the world for their own greedy lives. The US was suffering from isolationism during the lead up to WWII and that war ended the lives of 60-80 million people. Trump is leading us down that road again and WWIII will wipe out most of the human race centuries.
Too much either/or thinking, sponsored by the vacuums of social media and segregation.
1
The last time our leaders (Bush, Clinton, Biden) appealed to Americans to "spread democracy in the Mideast," we attacked Iraq. A country that had not attacked us, and had nothing to do with 9/11. We spent trillions, spawned ISIS, killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people, and alienated allies in the liberal world order such as France and Germany.
We know that the military-industrial complex and the oil industry were major supporters and profited from the Iraq
War.
Once bitten, twice shy.
2
Me Tarzan,(USA), You Jane,(the rest of the world), world view is a big part of the problem. Americans, so absolutely sure of their God given place at the top of the food chain, like to WIN everything, “USA USA USA” Even though our leaders from the golden age, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, talked a good game, the underlying thrust was business, money, power, many times to the detriment of the virtues we were extolling. A new world will have to emerge that does not measure winning in dollars or luxury cars or pure accumulation of power. I don’t see that anywhere on the horizon any time soon.
As long as Republican leaders are not imprisoned, this country is threatened.
1
Why aren’t any Dem candidates talking about foreign policy? They seem concerned only with giving out as much free stuff as possible.
"People have lost faith in the leadership class". Indeed!
The extent of the tragedy of the 2016 election when the Electoral College gave us Trump is having far reaching dangerous effects, not only here at home, but throughout the world.
Bush, Jr. dragging us into the Iraq fiasco continued our downward spiral after Vietnam.
It doesn't appear that Republicans are capable of foreign policy achievements and progress.
The Trump-led lying throughout this administration results in tremendous loss of confidence in our "leaders". When Pompeo announced that Iran was responsible for the oil tanker fiasco in the Gulf, my first thought was, "I wonder if he's telling the truth."
I hope everyone will watch/listen to Pete Buttigieg's foreign policy address recently at the University of Indiana. I like what I heard.
1
"The things Americans care least about are the core activities of building a civilized global community." Yes and trump is a result of that thinking as he has turned the US into a rogue nation.
As we continue to watch the turmoil and human abuses in the Middle East, the relentless aggression of the Chinese and the Russians, the defiance and human abuses of the North Koreans we will one day in the future lift the curtain and ask "What happened". I hope we can live with ourselves.
1
Mr. Brooks makes a valid point about Americans losing faith in our global role. I believe that this is primarily caused by the totally outdated way we have taught "timeline" social studies and history in most public schools. The Liberal World Order or whatever version of the name you want to give US efforts to make the world a more just and democratic place is an abstraction. Timeline history classes are going to give a concept like this short shrift. And most students will never take the upper level classes that would focus on this central organizing principal to our foreign policy of the last 60 years.
I like Mr. Brooks and respect his commentary and insight. But I continue to marvel at how he can diagnose our modern ills while overlooking the glaring causes, and that he continually engages in false equivalencies in an attempt to seem fair-minded.
Mr. Brooks asserts that "a big part of the shift [of Americans losing faith in our global role] is caused by the fact that many Americans have lost faith in human nature and human possibility . . . We’re in a dark spiral. Americans take a dark view of human nature and withdraw from the world."
Assuming that's true, what has caused it? How about issues like wage inequality, a government that's devolved into an kleptocracy and a Congress bought and paid for by dark money, a justice system that favors the wealthy and powerful, a weakened educational system, a broken healthcare system, and more. And who has caused these things or at least continues to protect the status quo? In a word, Republicans.
Mr. Brooks decries that Americans care less about a global liberal order, and instead embrace "protecting against terrorist threats, protecting jobs for American workers and reducing illegal immigration." In that, he need look no further than forty years of Republican talking points and scapegoats.
Mr. Brooks can diagnose the disease. He just can't seem to face what's causing the illness.
965
@jrinsc
Mr. Brooks usually does some variation of what you criticize him for. Economic factors that reflect badly on large corporations are ignored, and other causes and solutions are promoted. I can respect only his canniness in making his tone and ideas attractive to people who should disagree with him.
41
@jrinsc
716 billion.
That is $716,000,000,000 a year to the military industrial complex. And it is almost never on the table come budget time -- Democrats Clinton and Obama managed to shave a few percentage points off.
How many paved highways is that? Newer schools and higher teacher pay? More hospitals? PELL grants that are actually worth something. How much more support for the arts?
We have been robbed. (Almost) all of us.
188
The disease: inequality.
When the efforts of the Republicans to restore greed and strip away the rights to unionize while lowering taxes, and sow distrust in democratic government succeeded in the 1980s the mystery is solved. Why do Americans reject international involvement and further democracy? Because Republicans have succeeded in establishing widespread distrust in government. Government of, by, and for the people cannot be trusted is a plank in the Republican platform. Workers cannot trust unions. Advocates of public education, clean air and water, Social Security, Medicare, the VA advocates of human rights above profit and corporate rights cannot be trusted by Republican measure. Then who can be trusted, David Brooks? Can readers trust you? Can readers trust Republicans? Can readers trust corporations and the very wealthy?
85
"We need a leader who can grapple with failures like Iraq, build a younger, credible leadership class and embody an optimism that pulls us out of the dark spiral."
Complete the sentence Mr. Brooks. The USA needs at least half a generation of a Democrat led Congress and POTUS to get the ship-of-state turned around .
Will you Mr. Brooks formally announce that you will be voting for the Democrat candidate ? IE. Anyone but Trump and his criminal family and abettors.
5
Yes, there are benefits to the unipolar Pax Americana system, but also costs.
The system that arose after the Cold War (not WWII) was built on the foundation of overwhelming U.S. military power. Unfortunately, the U.S. share of the global economy is shrinking and with it comes a decline in our relative military advantages over competitors, especially Russia and China.
We have a $700 billion military budget, funded by deficit spending, and we still cannot maintain our lead. The solution is for our like-minded allies to sufficiently raise their military spending. This would actually be very healthy for our international relations, changing our current alliances from dependencies to true partnerships.
Unfortunately, countries like Germany, Canada, and most other NATO allies refuse to even meet the spending targets to which they willingly committed.
So how much more should the U.S. spend on its military? It will take more than $1 trillion per year to maintain a sufficient military advantage. Who’s ready to spend that?
Mr. Brooks lives in theoretical world without limits. If he would honestly discuss the actual price tag for maintaining Pax Americana, he would have much more credibility on the matter.
2
“The lowest priorities were promoting democracy, taking on Chinese aggression, promoting trade, fighting global poverty and defending human rights. The things Americans care least about are the core activities of building a civilized global community.”
Given our history over the past 60 years your references to “promoting democracy”, defending “human rights,” and “promoting trade,” does not bear any true resemblance to our foreign policy goals since the days of Truman.
It was certainly not our goal to promote democracy or trade in Chile, Venezuela, Panama, and Nicaragua, or any number of Latin American countries. Our goal was to allow our oil corporations unfettered access to oil reserves and other commodities, which was best achieved through defending and propping up corrupt autocratic despots. The same can be said for the Middle East where we basically installed the Shah’s puppet government, and to a lesser extent, our aid to Hussein during the Iran/Iraq war.
As to defending human rights, after Nixon’s visit to China, Senator “Scoop” Jackson introduced legislation stating America should engage in trade agreements with countries that engage in human rights abuses, which would have resulted in protecting American labor from China’s use of labor exploitation.
The same human rights protections were part of the Carter Administration’s trade policy proposals. Ironically, the Jackson Amendment was still American “Law” until its repeal under the Obama Administration.
2
Mr. Brooks, all of the wars/interventions dome by the US in last sixty years were done in the name of “global leadership” & promotion of democracy.
None were successful. Worse, they were destructive and destabilized the lives of millions. In all respects, they were utter failures. Most amazing of all, is that we have repeated the same mistakes over and over again.
Our foreign policy was conducted by gun toting oafs. There is no reason to believe that this has changed or will change.
You need to rethink you advocacy for more “global leadership”.
2
Could it be a reaction to the perception that many of the initiatives of American interventions around the world are/were based on economic opportunism and flat out greed? There are numerous counter-examples, likely a great majority; but it doesn't take many questionable actions to poison the well; and in the new world of internet disinformation, clarity/discernment is hard to achieve. Who to trust? It seems to me that our institutions have completely lost control of the narrative.
As a very current example there is the question of who exactly placed the limpet mines on the tankers in the Persian Gulf? Who would benefit most from an increase in oil prices? What is the fulcrum, who has the lever and what are they attempting to move? While it appears logical that Iran is in the most desperate situation and is the most likely to have taken these actions; how did they get backed into such a corner?
3
In column after column Brooks bemoans the demise of America and its values. Yet, as others have pointed out, he never talks about the causes of that demise. To do so he would have to incriminate himself and the policies he has supported for years that have brought us to our present crisis.
Brooks talks about “liberal order” as if it is a seamless, transcendent energy, when in fact it is comprised of two disparate camps of conservatives and progressives. And the reason for the present deep division is that over the last fifty years conservatives – Republicans – have decided that their vision of liberal democracy is the only valid one, that liberal order is conservative order, and that they will stop at nothing to enforce it.
Conservative “liberal order” blindly embraces the hubris that the world (and time) will always stand still with the U.S. at the pinnacle of that order. Other countries may progress, but they must never lose sight of America as global patriarch who will never relinquish influence over, or right to exploit for self-interest, the global family. This arrogant foreign policy benightedness (along with conservative domestic policy) is what has triggered us into our “dark spiral.” Brooks refusal to forcefully condemn conservative intractability makes him complicit with their damage.
But Brooks wants us to wrap ourselves in the American flag, reclaim optimism, and lead the world into a bright “liberal” future – just as long as it’s the conservative version.
4
Would the liberal world order include the IMF which is currently encourage drastic cuts in health and education spending by a military junta in Honduras? The EU that oversaw the gutting og Greece to secure payments for German creditors?
Or is it the folks who intervened in Syria and Libya and sent floods of refugees to Europe?
The liberal world order is all business all the time. Why should we defend it?
1
...Because this is not a zero-sum game.
The broad US populous benefits (win-win) from balance in international relations and markets, increasing global democratization and an expanding global middle class, all of which require a foundation of expanding global human rights.
Planetary resource constraints, e.g. fresh water, and surging climate change together create a further imperative for international cooperation to avoid the lose-lose of regional military conflagrations.
Thank you, Mr. Brooks, for the breadth and perspective of your writings today. May they serve as a seed crystal around which many more embrace the fact of our only having one planet currently comprised of conflicting nations and other self-serving powers.
3
What does Brooks actually know. Imperialism is good is quite the take. Vietnam and Iraq weren't our only failings. You just need to look to south america and our support of guerrilla groups there. How about Puerto Rico and what a great job we did with that? I can see how Brooks thinks this is good. It's pretty nice when you're in America benefiting from it. However, the people of these countries would have a different opinion
3
Reduction in wars is mostly due to end of Western colonialism and ascendency of comparatively more peaceful China and India. Even after 1945 most war related casualties are due to American wars! Yes, China will dominate Asia but there will be far less wars.
3
From all sides, there is a soul-sickness that could be blamed on failed purpose. From the right, the failure is from such restraint as we have ever been able to muster, to consolidate our power commensurate with our contributions. We feel taken advantage of and disrespected. From the left, it's the shame of hypocrisy over the exploitation we have indulged and the righteousness we've proclaimed because our power and influence in the world has been driven by capitalist motivation.
I suggest what's called for -- here in the US, and everywhere power has shaped and enforced the "liberal order" -- is a serious effort toward self-criticism, openness to admitting failure and willingness to apologize for real wrongs, and a sincere respect for good intentions, wherever we find them. A new "new world order" is necessary to address climate change, which because it threatens all, could motivate all to renew the unity project of nations, begun at Paris. Otherwise, the hubris that is our species' fatal flaw, dooms us.
3
@Laurie Raymond
I especially appreciate the notion of a "sincere respect for good intentions" becoming a foundational dynamic for all & sundry human relationships - be they family, friend, or foe and whether local, national, or global. (And also perhaps include a great deal of our daily interactions with the natural world.) I suppose some might call such an attitude 'Faith' but a "sincere respect for good intentions" is a much better way to approach the question of how we face every day.
An attitude of patient gratitude can also be an antidote to our hubris and privilege, if we can only make it enough of a daily habit for its healing properties to take effect.
The single largest global concern and one requiring international cooperation to prevent mass destruction is climate change. Brooks doesn't even mention it.
4
I usually agree with David Brooks, but in this case I do not. The reason there are New Doves and part of the reason that their are Trumpian isolationists, is that the "protecting freedom and human rights" actions of the past have been mostly hypocritical attempts to protect American interests. Vietnam, Chile, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Iraq, Afghanistan and now threats against Venezuela and Iran are not attempts to protect human rights, but are efforts to either fight what is still seen, evidently even by David Brooks, as a global Communist menace or protection of our economic interests. We have intervened to protect oil or business and governments that have trampled on human rights. We have used underhanded tactics, such as in Chile and Nicaragua, or misguided ones, such as in Iraq, and we are seen by much of the world, not as its protector of freedom, but as its greatest threat. After Iraq, Americans, including myself, are suspicious of any "evidence" unearthed by our government demonstrating that enemy nations are acting against us. We knowingly prop up repressive governments such as in Saudi Arabia and one of our major foreign pollicy activities appears to be to supply arms to others. We may have once labored to protect freedom, as in establishing NATO to keep Western Europe safe from an expansive Soviet Union, but starting in the 1960's, most of our foreign interventions, either open ones or secret ones, have been for selfish reasons, not to preserve a liberal order.
6
The first step in dealing with rogue nations is to stop being a rogue nation.
The majority of voters understand this, which is why the Republican Party is so desperate to stop them from voting.
I have a plan, though. Let’s start by getting the people in Flint, Michigan some clean water to drink, so they can focus their minds on the criminal behavior taking place on other parts of the Earth’s surface.
4
I emphatically don't agree with the authors final plea at the end of this piece: please find us a leader who will go back to trying unilaterally to change the world.
It is NOT our country's responsibility to wackamole other countries or to fight all wars like a superhero comic strip. We have huge problems here not getting along with our fellow Americans. It feels like the Civil War revisited online. Time to clean up our own house.
2
If our political apathy, or even cynicism, results from a decline in social trust, then what degrades trust?
Some research links otherwise desirable factors like diversity, change, and even growth of large population centers to declines in social trust. Self-serving politicians and media divide people and inspire group antagonism, directly reducing trust. And our own human nature can readily flip from trust to suspicion when we feel challenged.
So, with a decline in overall social trust, should we expect trust in leaders, when many of them claim to represent a select group or opinion, and also to oppose and defeat "the others"?
1
David, I agree with your entire article on the US being the leader in maintaining the world Liberal Order. The key to why so many people on the right are against it is because of he word Liberal. In any present day GOP forum the word Liberal is met with boos and downright hatred. I am sure that with the massive build up of our military strength, fueled largely by the GOP, if the word Liberal were dropped by say "American like" (not that this is correct) then many on the right would immediately support it.
The easy availability of social media worldwide, is bringing upon us a massive amount of change. The poorest people in the world are able to see the prosperity in the west and want some of the action (I don't blame them). This is turn is causing those who have, to circle their wagons and try to fight off the "intruders". This will work for some time but will eventually fail. Prosperous nations should help and create some prosperity or hope in the whole world, especially for those who are the most venerable. Otherwise we will always have those, who only want to survive, try and enter our "tent" by whatever means possible.
The survey asked: “... what the phrase ‘maintaining the liberal international order’ indicated to them...”
The survey question was flawed, so it is no surprise that it produced unreliable results.
Almost all voters are for or against liberals, as defined by the current American political discussion.The "liberal world order" is distinctly different from the liberal side of American politics, but it is unrealistic to ask a person to make that distinction while answering a survey question.
Take the survey again, only leave out the word "liberal". You will get entirely different results.
Also, has our internationalism worked recently? Has we intervened and actually made a country noticeably better in the last 40 years? If so, I don't know about it and neither do the survey takers. If the internationalists can find a good example, perhaps they could give it some press. You know, marketing.
The liberal world order has improved some places, but usually not through American intervention. Maybe the presence of the possibility of American intervention keeps some countries honest; we did run Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait, but then we broke Iraq, which might be a win for erstwhile Kurdistan.
2
The labels of liberals and conservative parties as fixed entities at war with each other have damaged this country. The constant twitter insults by the president have lowered the bar and stopped communication. The current trade wars, immigration issues with our neighbor Mexico, and partisan broadcasts by Fox News or MSNBC are just smoke and mirrors. We have no coherent foreign policy. Russia and North Korea are treated with more respect than our European allies, NATO, and our closest neighbors, Canada and Mexico. It is confusing and lacks a clear message to our citizens and the rest of the world. The Senate and House of Representatives show no leadership and are locked in a death spiral of escaping responsibility . No wonder the reaction of voters is either apathy or disgust. Trust is gone. Trump states daily dot not trust the FBI,CIA, or Justice Department. Anything Trump dislikes personally is criticized and belittled.Where is the high road of diplomacy and forging honorable bonds among the nations of the world? The United States is on the verge of nationalism that leads to isolation from the rest of the world. We abdicate leadership and may soon go from hegemony to irrelevance in the world.
1
"We need a leader who can grapple with failures like Iraq, build a younger, credible leadership class and embody an optimism that pulls us out of the dark spiral."
When our "leaders" engage in horrendous foreign policy blunders like the invasion of Iraq (and engage in the accompanying mendacity that led up to this blunder), it's hard to experience optimism. And if I recall correctly, Mr. Brooks was a naive "co-conspirator" in the Iraq debacle.
2
Mr. Brooks,
You are absolutely right in what we should be doing but I think the lack of interest in events of the past and the majority view that the individual is more important than the whole must change first. We will repeat the 1920's and 30's but this time we will be caught between China and Russia without any allies.
2
We need a leader who can grapple with failures like Iraq, build a younger, credible leadership class and embody an optimism that pulls us out of the dark spiral.
Given your definition of "leader" is Democratic and progressive, who among the candidates do you think would implement these plans through specific policy proposals. Of course, being a wonk
I'm leaning toward Elizabeth Warren or Andrew Yang.
Your thoughts on this besides the moral specifics?
@Brad Page
The "dark spiral" is caused the colossal income/wealth inequality coupled with the capitalist obsession with money.
US democracy is mostly government bought by the highest bidder.
"Liberal" California with a totally democratic legislature can't even get a label on sugar filled drinks to warn people of the link to obesity and diabetes, because those upstanding Democratic legislators are bought by the swarming lobbyists.
You did not ask for my recommendation for a candidate to support for president... but I suggest Senator Bernie Sanders.
US citizens have been thoroughly taught to hate and fear socialism, but Sanders idea of democratic socialism is right for this time when the US desperately needs to deal with the huge income/wealth inequality with healthcare, quality affordable childcare and education, preschool through trade schools/university for all.
With a healthier, better educated citizenry the US would thrive!
The point of capitalism is profit... give democratic socialism a chance if you want a thriving society.
In 1975 approximately one-third of the world were recognizably democratic. That number has grown to two-thirds since. Our particular foreign policy views drift with the wind - but the basic core ideas of a liberal world order of which America is its leading proponent still hold vast appeal for the vast majority of the world at large.
I personally feel the turn-off of the term liberal world order for us is the word "liberal" - which here means "rule of law" and "equality of justice" – but is interpreted by too many as something akin to, say, The New Green Deal.
Mr. Brooks conveniently confines his argument to wars between the great powers - conveniently leaving out wars in recent history involving great powers: Among which are:
Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Haiti, Grenada, the Falklands, Peru, Panama, Israel, Columbia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Lebanon, Kuwait, Uganda, Congo, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Algeria, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, India/Pakistan, Kashmir, Spain, Romania, Ukraine, Georgia, Chechnya, Kosovo, Ireland, Romania, East Timor, Congo, Mozambique, Angola, Palestine, Sumatra, Irian, Cambodia, Israel, Libya, Eritrea, Chad, Mauritania - others.
If America is "confused" about foreign policy - read over that list again - its easy to understand why.
1
@Wilson1ny No, the decline in battlefield deaths worldwide is not just a decline in deaths in super-power wars.
1
@mgf –
I didn't say anything about battlefield deaths. The overall number of battles between the great powers pales in comparison with the number of battles the great powers are INVOLVED in.
All well and good to "Maintain the liberal order" however an honest study of history will reveal that more often than ever publicly acknowledged the military forays were motivated by the effort to make conditions safe for enterprise. Most Americans intrinsically understand this, hence the mistrust and reluctance to commit sons and daughters to potentially die in such efforts. All NYTs subscribers should read "War is a Racket" by Smedley Darlington Butler.
2
@William Stuber Totally agree. Capitalism promoted in the name of Democracy
ANY foreign policy initiatives (anywhere in the world) begin and end with the buying power and direction of the American people. Full stop.
If Americans decide that collectively they are all going to start supporting their OWN manufacturing, business and jobs, then China collapses.
If Americans decide collectively that they are all going to conserve, and turn to green energies (using dramatically less oil), then the agitators in the Middle East have their economies collapse.
If America decides to truly build a global coalition of allies to do the same of the above, then immediately all parties get to the table to avert such economic calamity.
It would cost an enormous amount, and there would have to be huge political will, but it could be done. It would not even have to be anywhere near the scale of world war 2, but it could be done.
Alas, the money swirls around and buys off (or away) such conviction, and we are left with the military industrial complex that makes their bones on these wars.
The cycle needs to end.
4
I'm 76, and not a New Dove. I'm an Old Dove who is sick and tired of losing our sons and daughters fighting wars like Vietnam and Iraq. Never again will I support any Administration in its endeavor to make war on others lands unless, we are attacked.
Our leadership has failed us in the past and will do so again, it's inevitable. It's just a matter of time. And hostilities may be just around the corner again with Iran.
329
@cherrylog754
I share your skepticism about politicians’ responsibility with the wellbeing of our armed forces. So easy to be nonchalant about lost lives when it won’t affect them.
I also share your concerns about our future with Iran. Trump has said that he doesn’t want war with that country. But yet he pulled out of the nuclear deal, he conspicuously supports antigovernment activists there and nowhere else, he tries to make them a pariah nation, he is a puppet of Iran hawk Netanyahu, and he is in the company of Bolton and Pompeo, who have long been itching for outright warfare with Iran. Today’s baseless blaming of Iran for the sea attack has echoes of the Bush team and Iraq. Trump is playing with fire, and other people will get burned.
Thanks for what you wrote. Best regards.
40
I’m 66 and feel the same.
David comes across as arrogant and myopic in this piece. In my youth I started in the same political space as David, as a member of the conservative Young Americans for Freedom. Since then, my read of American foreign policy has evolved: it is a self-serving locus belli, whether commercial or military, that favors elite interests. The same is true in the domestic realm. BOTH political parties are to blame, as a close look at the record demonstrates.
24
@Joseph Dibello But what's your explanation of the facts with which Brooks begins? I.e., in the last 5-6 decades "The number of battlefield deaths has plummeted to the lowest levels in history. The world has experienced the greatest reduction in poverty in history, as well as the greatest spread of democracy and freedom.
9
The sad thing, Mr. Brooks, is that we had a leader who grappled with failures, inspired the young, and was optimistic about the world and our role as global leader. Republicans, and those who just hated having a black president named Obama, fought him at every turn, spread vicious lies about him, and pretended it was normal politics.
The door was opened for Donald Trump. Now we are “led” by a would be dictator who repudiates in the most vile and mendacious ways all that we used to promote and stand for. Trump’s “Make America Great Again” was the most oxymoronic slogan in history.
826
@AA: Absolutely right, and it goes back further than Obama and the hatred directed at him. The Republican policy of obstruction and pumped-up hatred goes back to the days of Jimmy Carter -- it seems that what they took away from the Nixon debacle was a deep regret that they had caved in to the forces of honesty and decency. Never again! But, don't let's get overwrought...
97
@AA
"The sad thing, Mr. Brooks, is that we had a leader who grappled with failures, inspired the young, and was optimistic about the world and our role as global leader. Republicans, and those who just hated having a black president named Obama, fought him at every turn, spread vicious lies about him, and pretended it was normal politics.
You are soooo right about this! What a squandered opportunity....
51
@AA Mr. Brooks, much like George Will, is living in a different world than reality. They have clung steadfastly to an old model that doesn’t exist any longer. Thanks so much to Newt Gingrich and Mitch McConnell, the most mean spirited, humanity hating people I can think of. Obama tried, but the hate outweighed the love.
90
We need to stop spending 4%+ on national defense. We need to reign in the military industrial complex. We need to act like part of the world, not king of the world. We need to use our diplomacy more and our military less.
The problem is not young people, it's older folks like the author. They have lost faith in diplomacy. The only reaction they have to some injustice somewhere in the world is to bomb it out of existence. Bombing has consequences.
2
Mr. Brooks forgot to mention another aspect of this neo-isolationism: climate change. The attitude and resulting behavior (read: giant SUVs e.g.) of most Americans seems to be that climate change might be happening in other countries, but it isn't happening here so we don't need to concern ourselves with it. It's their problem, not ours.
2
The mantra of spreading democracy is mostly used a way of motivating citizenry to go to war for a good cause. Historically, the rest of the time we are content to keep dictators in power as long as they are friendly to the United States. In the middle east, this policy on once had a name – “containment”. It meant look the other way when the countries friendly to us murder and torture their own people. It meant, keep a lid on the middle east and keep that oil flowing. It meant we maybe say we care about human rights but not if it means we have to pay a few more cents per gallon of gas, because that might eat into our profits.
If our leaders really cared about spreading our way of life around the globe because we cared about people, then we would see a pattern of intervention in countries that (at least sometimes) posed no threat to us. If we had a consistent foreign policy that promoted human rights and valued ALL life as equally as an American life…and if that policy occasionally meant we had to put our people in harm’s way because that’s just the reality of the world we live in, I would be all for it. But I am damn sick and tired of hearing us tout the spread of democracy as a rationale for getting our kids legs blown off in these endless wars that achieve nothing.
3
Brooks’ unstated premise, which I believe is correct, is that “power abhors a vacuum”. On the other hand, it is a constant challenge to balance hard and soft power for positive ends.
On a more personal note, I have spent my entire life with the presumption that each individual I encounter is basically good. I am not naive. I simply would prefer to be occasionally disappointed, rather than perpetually jaded. I must admit that, since 2016, this presumption has been sorely tested, if not defeated. It is, as Brooks states, a dark time.
1
For all the horrible things that the Iraq war led to, it had a silver lining: it proved that American military adventurism in the name of "democracy" was either a farce, or a well-intended but ultimately naive and counter-productive strategy. It will define how my generation looks at the prospect of war.
The US spent the entire Cold War undermining governments that threatened its position, even if that meant propping up right-wing despots who terrorized their own people. Today, we can clearly see the aftermath. Military intervention, even when well-intentioned, has shown to create more problems than it solves. America needs to learn to accept the autonomy of other countries.
4
In fairness, let’s not lose sight of the fact that our last massive intervention in foreign affairs and “ the protection of human rights”, the second Iraq war, was seen after the fact by most Americans and most of the world as short sided, politically and (for its architect Cheney) economically motivated, and just plain stupid. This is in contrast to the first Iraq war under the senior Bush, who indeed was acting with allies to protect the world order. Intervention and internationalism have been given a bad name. Our goals have to be stated well and most importantly adhered to, in a reserved and non arrogant way, for internationalism to again achieve any buy-in from the voters.
3
Very simple: Americans are tired of being hijacked by foreign interest groups in Washington in waging wars based on lies.
The war in Iraq cost us over $4 trillion. It was based on lies orchestrated by foreign interest groups who want to exploit all our resources for the benefit of their country. These are not Americans. They might have a US passport but they see America as nothing but a resource to be exploited.
2
Not sure how can Mr Brooks assert that the US has been a force for good and peace since WWII when so many wars, invasions, military coups were started by the US directly or by proxy???
2
@MR No one can doubt that the US has made foreign policy mistakes. However, as stated by Brooks, context is critical here. Compared to any other time in human history, the period since WWII has been the most stable with the lowest loss of life due to human conflicts. Most of this is due to the presence of a robust US military along with international institutions initiated by the US; and, most importantly, due to the soft power (influence) of democracy.
David Brooks, as always, makes us think. Forget that he is a conservative. However, I suspect he is about to transcend the teachings of William Buckley and Milton Friedman. Buckley and Friedman abhorred ignorance and so did Adam Smith and currently Thomas Sowell. I honestly believe Brooks is evolving. Why? Brooks is starting to internalize, I think, as long as political leaders and multinational corporate elites continue to exploit ignorance by way of identity politics associated with fear, only the liberal order of domestic and foreign policy elites can correct this current populist aberration. President Roosevelt recognized the dangers of an economic depression and gave us the New Deal. President Eisenhower recognized the danger of the military industrial influence and we ignored him. Senator McCarthy gave us the Communist fear and was rebuked by the intellectual elites. President Johnson gave us The War on Poverty and President Reagan gave us the entire South becoming Republican. The former Democrat Dixiecrats are now full blown Trumpsters. We may be in a state of amorphous limbo politically but that will change. But, it will change because in most historical events, the elites, that is, people who are educated with human capital are the only ones capable of making adjustments. The antithesis of ignorance is enlightenment. Stated another way, it may feel good to accept and enjoy your stupidity, but it in the long run, stupidity will do you in. Please say that David.
6
"Why did this happen? Mostly it was because the United States decided to lead a community of nations to create a democratic world order." This doesn't tell us why war with the Soviets did not happen. It is much more believable that WWII was so horrific (including The Bomb) that the great powers realized how stupid it was to keep engaging in such conflicts. Of the major military powers, only the United States suffered tolerable losses during WWII, fewer in fact than in our civil war. This is what allowed the US to be so willing to go to war so easily in Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq. The (relative) current incredible prosperity of human kind now is what will keep large scale wars at bay. Climate change or American indifference to humanitarian crises are the main obstacles to a peaceful future. Promoting American values is not central to this; as long as people have their needs met, they probably will not clamor for war (see Weimar hyper-inflation and the global great depression)
2
Can we agree to drop the word "elite" from all commentaries? It has become an all-purpose derogatory term, as a noun or adjective. Of course the leaders of any group are "the elite!" Trump is as much a part of the elite as George Marshall or Madeline Albright.
Mr. Brooks writes that people in the US have lost faith in the leadership class, they have lost trust. Not true! A large minority of Americans decided to put their faith and trust in a complete charlatan who promised that the US could win, win, win all of its foreign and domestic policy goals through his America First philosophy. A consistent majority disapprove of Trump and his policies.
2
In this column, David Brooks is trying to sell the liberal international order to the American middle and working class as a moral good. Maybe it is. So what? For those Americans, the LIO is a cost, not a benefit. In it's foundation in the early Cold War, it was a benefit -- an alliance was bribed up with liberal trade to counter the Soviet threat of nuclear annihilation. Average Americans accepted the costs of the LIO -- job outsourcing, dead soldiers, their own neighborhoods becoming alien to them, ever worsening economic inequality -- and, in exchange, they didn't get nuked. Not getting nuked is a tangible benefit. The other benefits of the LIO went to the globalized elite -- media celebrities, fortune 100 CEOs, foreign policy pros, etc. The Cold War ended a generation ago. If you want to sell the LIO to the average American today, make a tangible offer.
1
I don't think your appraisal of "New Doves" is accurate. They don't reject US involvement in protecting human rights, but they do reject the failures of the past - the Vietnam war, the bucaneering and folly of the Bush administration that has trapped us for 18 years in Afghanistan, and the disaster of the Trump administration. Who would they trust to lead them in protecting human rights?
3
Ahem. You forgot to mention the immensely significant creation of the EU. A brilliant experiment that has kept the peace and created prosperity in Europe for 75 years. The real hope for decency and humanity lies in the rest of the world stepping around the malevolent and increasingly shoddy and rancid practices of America and learning to get along without it.
2
In 1971, U.S. nuclear warheads in Europe peaked at approximately 7,300. Since then, more than 7,000 warheads have been removed.
The USA was prepared to incinerate Soviet armor
and the Soviets knew it.
The prescense of the these tactical nuclear was the reason Western Europe was never invaded
@ned terry
You conveniently forget 2 European military powers have land, sea and air based nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them. One of them kicked the US out nearly 60 years ago. But keep telling yourself the US is indispensible, I'm sure your defence industry appreciates your support.
This is nonsense. There was never a time, except during wars that actually threatened the United States, that Americans gave a penny for foreign policy issues, except for the 'negative' desire to be left alone. We have a representative form of govt because policy issues are too complex, remote, and boring for anyone but professors and political representatives to waste their time on. So David's formulation here, based on polling, makes no sense--nonsense.
1
"Instead of widening the circle of concern, most Americans want the U.S. to simply look after itself."
What Americans have lost faith in starts at home. They have lost the more even playing field won by unions, seen their pensions disappear, watched neighbors and themselves go bankrupt from medical costs, all while witnessing the greatest money grab by a small minority, enabled by Republicans (whom you support) and the greatest income inequality since the Gilded Age.
Who is surprised that Americans no longer wish to look outside when they have trouble taking care of their own. Shame on you for pretending it otherwise.
2
The good have not lost conviction. The Conservatives have. The Liberals still have conviction, but no power. But, let us blame both sides. Better for the life long Conservatives to bathe in their "both sides" fantasy.
1
Excellent article, Mr. Brooks. You've hit the nail on its head. Our uneducated masses in this country do not realize where we come from or how we got here. Those two unknowns will be our (and the worlds) undoing. Oh, and I definitely include mr trump in the class of uneducated. He is a product and symptom of the uninformed ignorant american.
1
Correlation is not causation. We have had a post WWII peace on account of winning decisively and through total destruction combat and warfare. Be it firebombing of cities or using nuclear weapons. We allowed communists to enslave big part of Europe to buy peace with Stalin and the force of MAD ( Mutually Assured Destruction) took traditional conflict off the table.
In the immediate post war years we were also exercising winner’s power. Imposing our will on defeated nations and hanging and shooting the losers is a bit different from fashioning UN communiques. That culture has evolved to settling for a draw in Korea to accepting defeat in Vietnam to police actions concepts to fighting wars where every artillery round gets approved by a far away lawyer. We do not fight to kill or to win. These are no no subjects. About the surveys of the <30 year old: People who are thought that their society is bad to the core, build on oppression and exploitation and supremacy and racism are not going to volunteer exporting it, not to mention paying for it with blood and treasure.
We're $22 Trillion in debt. Iraq and Afghanistan were $1 Trillion each. Both were a waste of blood and treasure. Of course, there was Viet Nam. Can you blame us for not wanting any more costly debacles? Every one likes to bash Trump, but he has stood up of the US and demanded that our allies kick in a little bit more for their protection. We were wealthy after WWII and could afford to police the globe. Not so much now. We need to take care of ourselves first. That's a simple fact.
First Vietnam, then Iraq. You can't blame people for wanting to stay out of foreign entanglements and losing trust in their leaders.
Maybe the real problem is 15 years of war in the Middle East. Bush's stated goal was to bring democracy to the region. Trump is even more convinced that America can bomb or bully other nations into better behavior. Is it any wonder, when ideals like making the world safe for democracy are used as an excuse to start stupid wars that the young turn their backs?
2
The "liberal international order" is a myth. The USA is Rouge Nation #1, thanks to the foreign policies advocated by such as David Brooks. Voters therefore are merely reacting rationally.
Sadly, most voters watch sports and could care less about the future of this country or the future of their families.
1
The problem is that since the United States has stepped into its hegemonic role it has often used the principles of “spreading democracy”, and “protecting human rights” as a rosy filter for more nefarious practices. Yes, there was Vietnam and Iraq, two devastating wars that killed many Americans and many innocents of the countries we “liberated”. But there was also Chile, Nicaragua, Colombia, Cuba, Laos, Cambodia, Afghanistan, Iran and a seemingly endless stream of countries where we either propped up dictators who killed their own people or lied to the American people to advance the narrow interests of a powerful few while neglecting and dehumanizing entire groups of people on the homeland. The problem with this “smart”, self-righteous foreign policy, so convinced of its own clairvoyance is that it often focuses on the large abstract concepts of power-politics - like playing chess with countries as pieces - instead of thinking of the human cost of our actions as a nation. It’s not that people are tired of standing up for human rights and democracy, it’s that, so often, what started as humble principles quickly turns into jingoism and hypocrisy. People can only stomach so much.
1
We're in a dark spiral, no question. We need a leader, no doubt. We need a "Free Press," and a legitimate electoral process. Where is a leader that believes in the Constitution of the USA, the rule of law, and the core of our democracy? Why won't elected leaders who take an Oath to defend the Constitution of the United States stay true to that Oath? We need leaders who are unafraid to protect our Constitution despite the political fall out. We need a POTUS who is above recrimination. When the majority of votes went to another candidate when we all sit back at let Russian Roulette rule our elections, we have lost the battle. When the 116th Congress abdicates their duties to defend the Constitution in favor of political tides, we have lost the war. It isn't our foreign policy that stinks; it is far-reaching apathy for standing united in the face of everything that threatens our democracy that stinks.
3
Mr. Brooks has prided himself on advocating for "morality" in domestic and international affairs. Yet he publicly condoned his son's participation in one of Israel's most deadly assaults on the Gaza Strip, turning a blind eye to the causes of Palestinian resistance, whether it be violent or nonviolent. He claims to support democracy, but says nothing against Israel's self-declared apartheid policies as reflected in its Nation State law, which says that only Jews in Israel have the right to self-determination. He advocates for upholding international law, but ignores Israel's serial violations of international law and our country's enablement of these violations.
We do not have a foreign policy. We have government by decree or edict or tweet, unrestrained by a Congress that nods at Trump inviting foreign adversaries to destroy democracy. Republicans “rationalize” Trump by pointing to parts of their agenda that he has satisfied, but blatantly give him permission to lie, to violate the laws, and use his office to profit his businesses. We have global trade wars, ongoing efforts to destroy our alliances, and endorsement of dictators, while we are led to believe that war with North Korea, China, and Iran are all possible because our president is an ignorant egomaniac. Lamentations and misdirection and false equivalence are all Brooks has to offer. He laments the “foreign policy’ of voters to shift blame to voters. 3 million more voters chose Clinton than chose Trump. Russia did everything it could to defeat Clinton and elect Trump. Brooks ignores, or overlooks, or distracts us from that. Any sane voter knows that Trump is unfit, that he stole the election with Russia’s help, that he is rewarding Putin and following a script that benefits Russia, Saudi Arabia, and the hydrocarbon industry. Trump’s and the Republican agenda is based entirely on lies for profit. all Republicans are guilty of supporting a misfit and making it possible for foreign adversaries to direct our foreign policy, which they hope to profit from.
2
Brooks writes "Iran is destabilizing the Middle East. " I and an increasing percentage of the world's population think that Israel is also destabilizing the Middle East. Unfortunately Israeli influence has deviously lead the US Government away from our civilized rapprochement with Iran that Obama had facilitated. So much of irrational Israeli behavior (smoke and mirrors) is designed to take our attention away from the relentless brutalization, occupation and proposed annexation of Palestine, which is apparently their major national goal. The public behavior of Netanyahu and the illegal settlers has made all of this abundantly clear.
"We need a leader who can grapple with failures like Iraq, build a younger, credible leadership class and embody an optimism that pulls us out of the dark spiral."
Mayor Pete.
Years of brainwashing by Fox News and Republican politicians has brought us to this point. And most of all their influence in our educational systems has removed any sense of civic duty or sacrifice for the greater good. Who instituted a national service program and who has opposed it? Brooks knows the answer, but his ideology will never let him accept it. So it's all about self centered greed and maximizing one's short term pleasures at the cost of our future. Global warming is ignored because it might require some financial sacrifice. Refugees are turned away because we don't want them to take away our jobs or use up our resources. Walls to keep them out are built instead. Foreign assistance is cut because there is no immediate payoff for Americans. We elect a leader who refuses to invest in the technologies of the future, but instead trolls for votes by pushing polluting industries of the past like coal.
In the end it made perfect sense that America would elect someone like Trump, an amoral con artist who promised to make America greater for now regardless of its long term costs. Trump is the epitome of America shutting out the rest of the world and turning inward. It is hard to imagine today's young agreeing to go to war to liberate Europe, fight fascism and the extermination of the Jews. Perhaps we have had it too good for too long in this country. People don't know real suffering, so they refuse to sacrifice at all. It's how all great empires have fallen.
1
"These are young people who express high interest in human rights, but having grown up in the Iraq era, they don’t want the U.S. to get involved in protecting them."
This is delusional. And an unwitting example of precisely why public opinion on foreign policy differs so much from that of elites. The US protects human rights? Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya - none of our 21st century war are about protecting human rights. The only people who espouse that are the warmongers in government to give cover to their military adventures, and MSM pundits who childishly cling to the idea of America as "the good guys" of the world (it's rather sad that a significant part of the US press prefers to deal in myths than in reality).
Plus what moral authority do we have to pursue the protection of human rights abroad? We commit egregious human rights violations at home, for crying out loud! We're running child prisons in the desert, where we house children we literally removed from their families. Our police forces routinely kill and brutalize ethnic minorities - and they get away with it! We run the largest prison system in the world. If this were happening in another country, our press would rightly decry their abysmal record on human rights, but because it's at home, it's swept under the rug. We couldn't possibly be the baddies, could we?
What an astoundingly delusional column. Wow.
1
Unfortunately, in the absence of better knowledge and deeper understandings of mental health issues in oneself, and thereby in our population, we will continue to suffer from the kinds of emotionally damaged individuals that now populate the White House.
Emotionally healthier people whose judgement is less compromised by distortions of reality will “opt out” of cultures characterized by the ideologically obsessive constructions of reality one sees among conspiracy theorists; public servants who don’t take seriously their oaths of office and those who simply “game the system” for personal benefit.
Life is short! Democracy demands informed, reasonably patriotic, responsibly connected citizens with the capacity to listen to others and have respect for what they hear. All of the above requires an emotional maturity that is greater than the arrested development a healthy individual now sees in most of the Republican Party and too many democrats!
I think Americans don’t want to enter wars where the cause was based on a lie. That is one of the many costs of lying to America while sending their children off to die.
But Americans would fight am existential threat — unless of course it’s too abstract for them — like global climate instability.
The one point I disagree with is that Iraq was about defending human Rights.
It wasn't.
It was about Dick Cheney trying to take over the middle East. We invaded Iraq for oil and to look powerful after 9/11 sucker punched us.
Americans are right to question military involvement. We haven't exactly been judicious or successful with it over the last 75 years
2
Withdrawal from the world and community is what you get when you have the Me Generation of baby boomers, followed by the independence and self-sufficiency favoring Generation X, followed by Generation Y, a/k/a Generation Me.
Thanks GWBush. This is what where we are now thanks to the most stupid foreign policy invasion in our country. it was supposed to be soooo easy according to those in power, it will be a cake walk and greetings with open arms, well we have seen how that worked out. With that one decision to go to war with Iraq based on lies and distortion we are headed into that again, based on lies and distortion, with Iran. Wonder why smart people are not on board, maybe because our country is in a downward spiral, our crumbling infrastructure, student loan debt, poor paying jobs, poor healthcare and the feeling that after the last election everything went off rails. We have lied to ourselves and to future generations and can’t fix anything. There is no common good for people in this country because republicans are incapable of progress, fixing things, thinking out for years to come. It’s always just one more tax cut and it will be all unicorns and lollipops. We demand democrats fix everything with their hands tied behind their backs by republicans because they are the only adults in the room anymore. I weep for the world we are leaving for our children and grandchildren, it didn’t need to be this way but our own selfish interest has made it this way.
3
David, Your world view is constraining your thinking. You are picking up on things to self-enforce that existing view. By example when you say:
“The C.A.P. researchers asked 2,000 registered voters what America’s foreign policy priorities should be. The top priorities were protecting against terrorist threats, protecting jobs for American workers and reducing illegal immigration. These are all negative aspirations: preventing bad things from hostile outsiders.”
I would say that if you dug into those voters thoughts that what they really think is that want a true “Rule of Law”.
Jobs are going away in the USA due to many reasons. But one of them is the fact that one cannot compete with countries that dump their pollution in the river, have no worker compensation and have no way to sue over anything.
Most of those voters do not care about legal immigration but they hate the hypocrisy of people coming here to a country that works due to a real Rule of Law and do so by making a mockery of that Rule of Law.
Folks on both the right and the left all cherry pick to support their world view, you should be smarter than that, but in the last few years based on your writing I wonder.
Survey’s are generally worthless as the questions tend to be self serving.
People want a strong Rule of Law or more simply that everyone plays by the rules. The problem is the rule breakers own the system now and that is the core of the domestic and international problems.
“We need a leader who can grapple with failures like Iraq, build a younger, credible leadership class and embody an optimism that pulls us out of the dark spiral.”
The only person who comes to mind is Pete Buttigieg.
My Junior year in high school meant taking American History before taking Problems in Democracy in our Senior year. I remember reading George F. Kennan. He outlined the need for and the policy of containment of the Soviet Union. What did the younger generations read and study in high school that today " maintaining liberal international order" became meaningless and nonsense?
1
Mr.Brooks, there were so many wars since 1945. How you can forget Vietnam war, Korean war, Iraq war ( still going on) and Afghanistan war going on for 18 years. Then we invaded Granada and Panama. We attacked Lybia. Our soldiers are fighting in Somalia, Chad, Yemen and Pakistan. The biggest problem is that America could not win any war decisively after WWII. We lost a big number of soldiers in Beirut during Reagan administration. Our CIA attacked Iran and removed the elected Prime Minister, attacked Chili and removed the elected president Allende , removed Sukarno in Indonesia, Noriega from Panama. Now we are trying to destabilize Venezuela. Wars are going on covertly or overtly.
2
The world view. expressed from a comfortable armchair, that gave us Vietnam and Iraq and Afghanistan, those lovely expressions of human possibility.
3
American foreign policy is almost entirely focused on protecting our access to middle east oil. Everything else is just noise. What is our foreign policy in Africa, South America? Europe, the polar regions.
1
Well Mr Brooks? Now that unreported "foreign dirt" on presidential candidates TRUMPS our Constitutionally-protected electorate, voters don't count anymore. Least of all their views on foreign policy.
1
First of all lets get Davids false equivalency off the table. The New Doves of the left are not a mirror of the Trumpian Right. But claiming that gives him cover from his teammates at the GOP.
Since the end of WW2 America's wars have been at great cost to life and were based on false premises The young mostly working & middle class males (as usual) were the ones who made the sacrifice. The current generation now have access to information that previous generations did not have and have learned from history. They do not want to die for nothing . Who would?
So lets call these young left leaning people New Doves?
We already have a Little Marco, a Rocket Man, a Pocahontas. It fits the New GOP strategy to characterize their opponents oh wait enemies.
2
And you think it's realistic for the leadership you envision to emerge from the Republican Party? I agree with your assessment the current situation is dire, but the Republicans are a lost cause, at least for the next generation, perhaps forever. You need to shift your allegiance from them now.
2
There's a big difference between the liberal world order of stabilizing institutions and treaties and the quixotic effort to be the world's policeman (and an unchecked one, at that). Not only does bad policy and practice cause blowback, it is extremely difficult to reverse. The Iraq invasion may be the poster child, but NATO expansion and Middle East policy generally stand as examples of diplomatic equivalents of trying to "put the toothpaste back in the tube". And layered upon bad policy is the evolution of an imperial presidency (with presidents who have no foreign policy credentials), an All Volunteer Force that is an instrument of these neophytes and you have a witches brew. The result: What was a very defensible "world order" becomes confused with indefensible policy decisions.
Man’s ability to rise to the ultimate good is limited. The upheavals of the past, the major wars of the 20th century—the Russian Revolution, First and Second World Wars, Korea, Vietnam—followed by the Iraq War all had the hallmarks of achieving the ultimate good while the human miseries they produced were regarded as mere cannon fodder toward progress.
And here we are, from all those conflicts, retracing our steps. China and Russia are waging war on intellectuals and human rights, Britain apparently wants to revert to some sort of pastoral island, the rest of Europe is losing its self-confidence and we have our very own American Henry VIII.
Yes, our dark human nature is a problem. What we need is a leader who will spark not only a Green New Deal or a new Marshall Plan for you-name-the-region, but a new optimism, a "Great Enthusiasm," if you will, that looks again to that ultimate good while employing what we’ve learned to mitigate its inherent suffering—human and environmental—in the name of progress.
Until that person arrives in our country and on the global scene our sinister influences are about Nature itself, dark or otherwise, and its course is long and repetitive.
3
Brooks gets it wrong, as usual.
Which use of American military power since World War II has been in the service of peace and democracy and human rights?
The New Doves, if that’s what they are, simply recognize that soft power and alliances are more effective.
10
I believe the US should work to spread democracy around the world. But let’s stop undermining it here first. Brooks had some good points but as always he is unwilling to look at the role of the conservative movement in causing the problems he bemoans.
9
The decline of battlefield deaths is probably due to the fear of nuclear weapons. Also, civilians are the great majority of casualties in any modern war. The cost of the American empire is approximately $1 trillion per year. The empire does not protect the American people from the export of American jobs to other countries. It does not protect them from opioid epidemics, uncontrolled immigration, lack of health insurance, student debts and, in general, a slow decline and immiseration of the middle class. Selfishly, according to Mr. Brooks, the American people wonder what the empire business does for them. If our rulers were honest, they would tell them that the empire gives us a higher standard of living than we would have if we had to pay our own way out of what we actually produce.
Well gee, which political party decided it was in the interests of the super rich to destroy the American people’s belief that government institutions could be a force for good for the majority? Let me think...
14
We ought to remain in the world, but be much more cautious about intervening militarily. The reason voters aren't eager to see us to so to prevent atrocities is because we haven't done so consistently. We're just as often on the side of those who commit atrocities as we are on the side of those defending against them.
We ought to focus much more on diplomacy, on building international consensus, and on setting an example of how to develop a multiethnic society that is underpinned by shared values. When we fail to take that task seriously, and instead focus on demons around the world, we undermine our own credibility and moral force.
Developing nations see a rising China which has been wildly successful at poverty elimination. When they glance westward, they see the United States construct a grossly unequal society that is downright horrible for so many of its children who grow up in rampant poverty and an environment of drug use. Why is it surprising that they would be attracted to the Chinese model?
We cannot promote liberal democracy abroad when we are engaged in trying to destroy it at home.
9
"But social trust has collapsed over the decades"
And which party supported to the hilt by Brooks is responsible for that? The party of the rapacious rich. Always taking, never giving, always wanting more of everyone's money and freedom, always wanting more war, more weapons, more military bases around the world.
15
The "New Doves" aren't new at all. They're the same people who opposed the Vietnam War. They want diplomatic intervention, but not military intervention. Unfortunately the U.S. doesn't produce diplomats, just warmongers.
3
The generation facing the real challenge posed in David's article will be the millennial generation because what is happening in this country and others strikes at the very heart and destiny of that generation because it is the millennial generation that has assumed the mantle of the humanitarian generation.
At least 87% of millennials in the U.S have indicated they would go overseas to help humanitarian causes and in humanitarian ways. How will that square with a country
withdrawing from global interaction?
Of course, the magic bullet, for the millennial generation is that they can easily turn the country around and return it to some former normalcy by simply voting in the same percentage (87%) in the 2020 election - that they say they are prepared to do humanitarian deeds.
3
I'm just not sure there's been any meaningful change in American attitudes about trust and alterity, or otherness. What I'm interested in here is a convo about political literacy, which is not a value we prioritize in any kind of way (beyond rhetorically anyways).
It is true enough though that most US citizens conflate discrete political concepts and terms, but I think this really falls on the voting blocks which turn out to make these fallacies actionable--older folks, like Mr. Brooks. But I think he's wrong be wholesale suggesting that our Bernie Bro comrades are not liberal internationalists. Or want to be withdrawn from the int'l community.
At the end of the day, please recognize younger generations want tangible and cooperative engagement with a world that is no longer to be feared in an abstract, incomprehensible way. Why can't we have the protection of human rights at home and abroad without the de facto expansion of corporate interests that supersede local communities? Remember this is the critique (and it hasn't changed, has it?)- that liberal institutions have masked the expansion of US and Western strategic interests while prioritizing marketization, commodification, and exploration of those we've 'othered'. Its capital, bro. Can we have some real talk about that, because economic behavior seems to suggest that there's nothing 'wrong' with self preservation, its inherent, a raison d'etre, and that logic needs a sustained challenge.
4
As a volunteer firefighter over the span of more than three decades it has been my experience that my fellow citizens have, by and large, wimped out on just about everything, not just foreign policy. The few who do the heavy lifting are fewer all the time.
9
@John Walker it’s not wimping out. America has to stop acting like we have the hammer of God these days, making every nation gay.
Maybe we just look with envy on lands where the concerns of a citizen’s’ life: things like healthcare, safety, living wage jobs, time off for vacation and having a child- seem to be the main job of their functioning government. Being in charge of the world is a nice idea but this way has somehow brought us to reduced life span, increased suicides, absurd work/life balance, fear of medical bankruptcy, dilapidated and outdated infrastructure. If only the costs of Iraq war were spent on our mass transit systems we could have a more livable country, less working class poverty, less destruction of the earth. If only...
20
David Brooks's rosy view of the "liberal world order" after WWII omits one crucial fact: that order was built on the containment of Communism.
Immediately after the end of the war US foreign policy turned toward the need to stop Soviet expansionism. Our promotion of a "liberal world order" was built on supporting anyone and everyone who was anti-communist. Thus Pinochet, Marcos, the Shah, election interference by the CIA in Italy and elsewhere, the Greek junta, the American School where we trained torturers -- the list is long and shameful.
In building its empire in the later nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the French proclaimed their "civilizing mission" -- bringing all the benefits of western civilization to the benighted folks of Africa and Asia. The underlying reality was stripped bare for all to see in the Algerian War, when torture was deployed to sustain that "mission."
Unless Brooks and his ilk are willing to face historical realities -- his oblique reference to the failure in Iraq, which he enthusiastically championed, is chilling -- they will lead us down the same path of righteous rhetoric in support of policies with which no moral person would want to be associated.
21
"Most of human history has been marked by war" ? Modern European history, Metternich's peace after the Napoleonic Wars at the Congress of Vienna in 1815 lasted most of a century until the 1914 and the beginning of WWI, with the exception of Civil War in the U.S. and the Franco-Prussian War of 1870.
War between nation states as we know it, as distinct from feudal or tribal rivalries, is relatively new, coinciding with the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century. Warfare with mass produced weapons, standing armies, etc. are a blip in human history.
Wars between Greek city states and the conquests of the Roman Empire, etc. are a different category altogether.
1
We are war mongers, plain and simple. Not only have we sought regime change in any country whose leadership did not coincide with our views, but we openly invaded countries who had not attacked the U.S. anywhere in the world.
I was born in WW2, grew up during the Korean War, served during the Vietnam War, watched the invasion of Panama and Grenada, held my breath during the Gulf War with Iraq, and protested the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. That is more than enough war for one person's lifetime.
Trump won election by declaring America first. That was only possible because Congress failed to meet the countries domestic agenda while exercising a failed foreign policy of military dominance.
17
@allen roberts Concise and soooo correct - also drafted for the 'conflict' in V'nam.
My sons were born in mid-80s. Among their peers (ages 27-40ish) I have noted a nearly universal lack of Knowledge (at any substantial depth) and a serious lack of Interest in Understanding the reasons for and lessons learned from (recent W II forward) major conflicts - and thus they are Detached !
I think this is very dangerous for our global "policies and commitments" and for our society.
(far from a war monger) - awareness is a key to survival, and thriving.
still Proud to be an American but not like decades ago.
Eisenhower warned us "beware the of the military-industrial complex" !!
4
Agree and disagree with this column and many of the comments. It must be comforting to have a unified theory of macro-politics, a concise world view to follow step by step with logic, principles. But my own micro inconsistencies keep getting in my way.
I don’t think Iraq was a mistake- only a failure in it’s execution; similar to our ignoring the history of Vietnam, we ignored the diverse history of Iraqi groups.
I confess to looking at European infrastructure, Japanese bullet trains....and wondering why we still have rattling Amtrak service only. While we try to guarantee a free world, they are free to build everything else.
The UN, NATO, the World Bank - great paper tigers. Pakistan, looking for financing for their train wreck of a country, will probably get their loan, while pretending to help against global terrorism. The UN pontificates, and seats countries that treat half their population (ie, women, in case anyone is still clueless) as property. NATO- now has Turkey, that staunch defender of freedom and equality, as a partner.
Gee, why wouldn’t we support this version of global defense of liberty. Meanwhile, Afghans die while we talk peace with their killers.
I await a logical reconciliation.
5
Brooks -
Usually I find Brooks' views very sensible. But here he is a little off base. It is not a 'negative aspiration' that Americans want to protect their jobs. Although Americans have fought and died in foreign wars to spread democracy, they have not gotten their just reward: instead, American corporations have outsourced jobs (to those countries made safe for capitalism) and paid native workers sub-standard wages for the past few decades. No wonder Americans are angry. It seems to me that he and Kagan too have glossed over the point that their high-minded goal has been undermined by the realization that the reward carrot dangled in front of our eyes was an illusion.
11
It is one thing to spread ideals, like democracy with free elections, a free press, and peaceful resolution of conflicts, but quite another to go to war over these ideals. It is also noteworthy that two of our biggest post WWII disasters are Vietnam and Iraq, where we twice started or enlarged wars supposedly in the furtherance of these ideals. I'll never forget the quote of a young American officer in Vietnam who said, "In order to liberate the village, it was necessary to destroy the village."
America does its best work when we lead by example. If we are able to rid ourselves of our Presidential Menace in the next election, it will go a long way towards restoring our badly damaged credibility. We got ourselves into this mess (with a lot of help from our enemies), and it will be up to us to get ourselves out of it. That alone can serve as an example to the rest of the world of how to resolve a crisis peacefully. The last election, in November 2018, showed us the way. Now we must finish the job on November 3, 2020. We are better than this. I need all of you to join with me to prove it.
7
In the end, I am glad that Mr. Brooks seems to blame most of the current dissatisfaction on the disaster that was the Iraq War.
Let's be clear. Before 9/11 the United States was running a budget surplus, and carefully managing alliances to preserve and promote a liberal world order. Immediately after 9/11, the world grieved with us. This was a moment to embolden that liberal world order against the forces that seek to destroy it. A moment to address, internationally, the underlying concerns of those who have not economically benefitted from globalization. A moment to re-affirm our commitment to our allies as we seek to mitigate the effects of global climate change.
The United States was strong, and in a position of strength and moral leadership.
This was done away with in one fell swoop by the disastrous decision to invade Iraq. Based on the flimsiest of evidence, the neo-conservatives and George Bush decided to ignore the international community, wage a costly and ineffective war with no real plan (except hope) for a post-war Iraq, and drive up the budget deficit. All the while ignoring the housing bubble, cutting taxes, and wasting the lives of brave American soldiers, not to mention the hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis.
The result: over 20 trillion in national debt, a faltering economy that continues to only serve the interests of the wealthy, a distrustful international community, and not shockingly, a distrustful populace.
26
@Bandos results -- And an enormous extravagant Military Budget.. Neither war in Iraq was budgeted for! and the DOD expenditures accelerate our unfathomable national Debt while so many domestic programs are ignored.
Now we require national programs to Mitigate and protect our society from Climate Change effects !
The military funding and most other programs will pale in the face of this Urgent Requirement $$$
3
Some concerned citizens worry that the USA can not continue to spend nearly a trillion dollars a year on the military, defend bases in nearly every country on Earth and fight the worlds battles without going the way of the Soviet Union. Once we moving into a country we rarely ever leave, except Vietnam of course. Where is the sense of balance? Why do we protect Japan & Germany 75 years after WWII? We have to set priorities & ask for help in running the world liberal order. The USA can not do it alone for much longer.
2
@Mr. Jones
We cannot afford not to protect our allies. We have bases in germany and japan and korea because if we didn't those allies and their beneficial economies wouldn't continue to exist. These allies benefit us in many ways. You should just realize that.
4
@Martin Sorenson
A less convincing response is hard to imagine. Germany and Japan would stop existing if US based closed?! Bizarre.
1
While Brooks stresses the liberal order's promotion of what he believes to be universal values, it also provided everyone with matchless practical benefits -- peace, prosperity. liberty. Achieving any and all of these is absolutely in our self-interest. True, these benefits come at a cost and require cooperation with other nations and some self-restraint. As the saying has it, freedom is not free. But these costs are negligible compared to the returns. For the life of me, I can't understand why all of this is being thrown away. A lack of knowledge of history? Perhaps. In any case, it makes me very, very sad.
5
@Neil Grossman
"For the life of me, I can't understand why all of this is being thrown away. "
Really? Why do we think our government is incapable or unwilling to defend freedom and human rights abroad? Perhaps you should look at who is running our government and tick the boxes of lies, corruption, greed, cruelty, and racism. Perhaps you should look to the results of the Iraq Inc. war(s). Should we be skeptical and reluctant to do it again? For the life of me, I don't see how you can NOT understand why we loath to go down this road again and again and again.
1
I am old enough to remember a world before 9/11, and I think Mr. Brooks' world view is appalling. Since 9/11 the US has spent $6 Trillion in this "war on terror". We have in one way or another started wars in at least 5 countries - Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Ukraine, and the neocons in the Trump admin are now looking to start more conflicts all over the world, from Venezuela to Iran, North Korea to Ukraine, China to Russia, when is enough, enough?
The "Liberal World Order" that Mr. Brooks continues to champion is the main reason for all the chaos in the world in the last 2 decades. And we are bankrupting ourselves causing all these chaos. America is now hugely in debt. Our interest payment on debt alone costs us $400B a year. A Year! Think of what we could do with that money at home. The high speed rail in CA cost $1B. Our education budget cost $68B a year. All pale in comparison to what we are paying in interest to our mostly war debt. Our infrastructure is crumbling and our education is failing our youth while we continue to wage senseless wars overseas.
It's time for America to mind our own dang business. Let other countries mind theirs. It's also time for a 40 year moratorium on ALL immigration, so we can absorb and assimilate all those already here. We can no longer afford the endless immigration and endless wars that neocons like Mr. Brooks is proposing. This "invade the world, invite the world" policy must end. Neocons are killing America and the world.
3
@Listen
Agreed, but isn’t the weakening of world order exactly the #1 item on Putin’s wish list? His orange handmaiden has made his wish come true.
Finally, this one planet is shared by all. Together we can save our planet and survive.
1
I think David Brooks is absolutely correct. We have a people who are now so self-absorbed with their own comfort that they will happily ignore anything that gets in the way of that willful ignorance. We and the world are better off for the United States involvement. Sure we haven't gotten everything right but who does? With great power goes great responsibility. You don't have to like that fact but it is true now and will remain so. To whom much is given, much is required.
6
The UN and NATO were established and based on Western values. American foreign policy was established to share those values with the less fortunate parts of the world. Many of them don't share them. Some of this is due to limited education and narrow religion. In many places western freedoms are resented and not wanted by either those in power or the majority. Not everyone share our ideals.
Americans have never been internationalists, not even in the comments of the NYT. The strategy of Pax Americana, where the US played global cop and established an international system of rule by law, has been fabulously successful since 1945. It's original purpose was to stop Germany and Japan in particular and Western Europe in general from re-arming and repeating the conflicts of WW1 and WW2. But it proved able to unlock the peace and prosperity that liberal democracy was able to bring to much of the world.
.
The problem is that FDR, Truman, and Eisenhower and foreign policy wonks never acknowledged that this deliberately internationalist policy was the American strategy for decades. They told the American people that we were playing the benevolent hegemon to combat the existential threat of Communism and the USSR. This story worked fine until 1989-1991, when the existential threat from Communism for the most part disappeared. The American people wanted a "peace dividend", when really nothing had changed. They would have never have supported Pax Americana as a deliberate policy, even now when we can see how it led the world and the US to peace, prosperity, and global leadership. When countries compete, they fight militarily and economically, and all suffer. Businesses should compete, not countries. Global governance is not a zero-sum game, not in the 21st century. Most Americans, in particular Trump, just don't understand how we got here.
4
Thoughtful piece. What I notice from reading the comments is that many of them example just what Brooks describes, lack of trust in government, anger, blaming others. Not that what is noted isn't true, and depressingly so, but what happens next? That's what I'm interested in, working to build trust again, be open to the opportunities our freedom allows us here. I feel lucky to be of a generation that remembers trust and pride in our country, and feel terrible that our same generation has had a hand in destroying that trust. And I'm grateful that David Brooks seems to be grappling with the same problem.
7
@JB
He isn’t grappling with it at all. The first step in regaining that trust would be to acknowledge the “ mistakes” we have made and no, putting the words “ Iraq” and “ Vietnam” inside parentheses is not grappling with the problem.
I am deeply tired of the attitude of people like David Brooks. Mr. Brooks supported the Iraq War and I still remember a column of his where he essentially granted us absolution for any crimes we might commit along the way. In this column he could say something about our support for the war in Yemen, but he says nothing. He talks about rogue nations, meaning Iran and Russia no doubt, but ignores the rogue behavior of Saudi Arabia, supported by both Obama and Trump as it conducts a genocidal war in Yemen. Talk and self praise are cheap. If we are a good country, why do we keep engaging in bad behavior? And why are would be moralists like Mr. Brooks so unwilling to be honest about our crimes? Yes, crimes, not mistakes.
4
@JB, In his books, he does talk about the "weavers" often. I just finished the Second Mountain and it's a central theme of his work. But other columnists, they never give a solution, just reporting which we already know.
@Calleendeoliveira. Thanks! Will read. JB
Brooks notes, "These are young people who express high interest in human rights, but having grown up in the Iraq era, they don’t want the U.S. to get involved in protecting them."
However, Brooks does not report that these young people have learned how the U.S. "protects" human rights. Starting with the overthrow by the CIA of Prime Minister Mosaddegh in Iran in 1953 through disastrous intervention in Libya under Obama, no rational person could desire to be "protected" by the U.S.
5
Ok Brooks. You are correct that when the US exerts its influence it’s done for our interests. But if you’re asking to invade Iran, then you sign your children up to serve, whether they or you have other priorities.
5
If Americans were secure in their jobs, certain of their health insurance, knew that their retirement would be comfortable, had faith that quality public education would be funded and available, that the infrastructure would be maintained, that taxes would be equitable, that the woes caused by climate change would begin to be addressed etc then just maybe we could look outward.
Add to that loss of faith in our government who lied to us about Viet nam and Iraq. The certain knowledge that Congress listens to the wealthiest and not to us. That women have to fight to have control of their reproductive lives and Pence would turn us into a theocracy and a major political party is dominated by a frightened by man child with the temperament and mind of a spoiled six year old.
And you wonder why we look inward Brooks. What country do you live in?
16
Obama understood that the locus of world power is shifting to Asia, and he tried to align with Asian countries in the TransPacific Partnership to counter China.
You can't blame Trump for the mishandling of the rise of China and the mishandling of post cold war Russia. But he needs to build alliances, not destroy them.
3
There has always been a contradiction between American ideal and values and American foreign policy. There are many things that American has done over the last half century that have reflected those higher values.
The founding the the UN, the development of international human rights law, including the Nuremberg principles. We have supported food relief, medical aid and cultural exchanges that have made the term American stand for ideals in the minds of people the world over.
But the fundamental contradiction is that we often did so with conditions attached. You must buy American products, you must allow American banks to enter your economy, you must suppress local wages by suppressing unions, and those World Bank loans, too often they are for huge projects built by American companies that the host nation neither needs nor wants.
The policy that American's would support is one built on principles of international interdependence, respect for sovereignty and the real promotion of human rights, not just toward nations we disagree with.
And finally, the only war we should be waging today isn't against the abstract strategy of terrorism, it is the pressing need to save the planet.
There is no 'one nation first' strategy that can address climate disruption. There is one climate, one earth and there should be one goal to save it. Advancing this goal is where America should be first.
14
“These are young people who express high interest in human rights, but having grown up in the Iraq era, they don’t want the U.S. to get involved in protecting them. ”
This is a very misleading way to put it. The reality is that the US frequently violates human rights in the name of protecting them. Mr. Brooks has to know this, but he evaded the real issue by ignoring, for example, our use of torture, our bombing of cities including Mosul and Raqqa, and our support for allies as they violate human rights, most notably the Saudi and UAE war on the civilians in Yemen. And of course we support Israel no matter what they do.
You can’t have a serious discussion of US foreign policy or of human rights if you simply ignore the unpleasant facts as Mr. Brooks does in this column.
15
In WWII, we built a war machine and had a Department of War. From Korea on, we have kept enlarging the war machine and call it the Department of Defense. Words matter. The money spent does not go to schools. As a result, we have a less educated country that fails to heed lessons that going to war is not rah rah but something awful. Training diplomats should be emphasized as much as training soldiers. Part of education should be about history, geography, and learning a foreign language.
Maybe when we poll people about foreign policy priorities, at the same time we ask them to find on a map where the specific countries lie and what language is spoken there. The results would be enlightening.
9
The drumbeat is on for military intervention in the middle east. It will be unrelenting. People will be confused and not know what to believe or what to trust and ultimately will find the drumbeat hard to resist.
10
True, but at least this time we have a public that is generally skeptical of military adventurism. The statistics Brooks cites here are really heartening to me - it seems there's a strong bipartisan majority against wars of choice. That wasn't true in the Bush era.
It would be deeply unpopular to go to war with Iran or anyone else, especially after the first chest-thumping months are over and the body bags keep coming back with no end in sight. I wouldn't put it past Trump to start a war in the month or two before Election Day 2020 to profit off the brief spike in approval, but barring this, we might actually resist the war drums.
3
All true, but Mr. Brooks does not mention causes. Some of the malaise contributing to this desire to reject the international liberal order lies in the dissatisfaction of many Americans who, correctly or incorrectly, view that order as author of social policy that offends their religious sensibilities and that disregards non-state actors, especially the family, as primary cultural guardians. Whether we agree with those many Americans or not, government support for euthanasia, assisted suicide, abortion, no-fault divorce, the displacement of the central role of marriage, pro-transgender policy and anti-discrimination laws frighten many. These fears and attendant unhappiness explain at least some of the dissatisfaction with the liberal order.
2
@Francis D
Sure the fault lies with gays and women exerting their rights as humans to live their life in freedom. Gosh if women had stayed home and had babies or if gays had stayed in the closet, or if minorities hadn’t demanded to be recognized as citizens in this country the liberal world order would have been less frightening. I have little empathy for their fears, they have been counting on their white privilege in a hierarchy that coddled them and now they don’t have the skill set to work in world that is foreign to them. Time to grow up and develop some coping skills and recognize the world as it is and not as they wished it could be before “those” people exerted their rights.
1
It is not surprising in the least that Mr. Brooks is so openly blood thirsty for wars of American aggression and "capitalistic" imperialism. Nor is it surprising that he has a tremendous misunderstanding of why the "left" is finally standing up against these needlessly destructive and destabilizing wars of corporate imperialism. What is surprising is that someone can be so consistently, mind numbingly, and lazily wrong in their takes, and yet continue to rake in a huge income in such a cushy job.
Brooks says the "young" are distrustful and alienated from the outside world." That could not be any further from the truth. My generation, the Millennials, and the generation of my students are more interconnected than ever before, living in a world in a state of perpetual war and digitally connected to an international community in a way that Brooks'ies generation can barely comprehend.
We are neither "distrustful or alienated" from the outside world, but rather respectful and connected globally, while distrusted and resented domestically by a generation of David Brooks' that have failed our nation and especially our generations so thoroughly. The real problem is that Brooks can't see himself and his peers as anything other than torchbearing global heroes following in the footsteps of his father's generation, when in fact they were they are the failures who squandered the potential for global self-determination for another half percent ROI on their annual stock portfolio.
18
@Ryan
Ryan I am an old guy. Well said young man
@Ryan
You know Brooks is on the wrong track when he cites in his column an organization of the Koch brothers.
I am an Old Dove. I see no inconsistency in prioritizing human rights while also opposing foreign wars. In a study done around 2000, Iraqi women led the Arab world in employment and equal rights. Following the US war (sold on false premises to an ignorant public), Iraqi women are struggling.
I believe in an indispensable Western alliance. I don’t believe that it is in the interests of the US nor, for that matter, of citizens of rogue regimes, for the US to choose where to unilaterally meddle militarily in places we don’t know and don’t understand. If NATO or the UN think war is the wrong way to handle bad actors, we should be well advised to pay attention.
9
@Lawyermom
I always find it ironic that the same people who claim to champion "human rights" are also most eager to wage foreign wars. Wars are the grieviest assault on human rights. The war in Syria cost 400,000 lives and produced millions of war refugees. The war in Iraq cost at least 500,000 lives. The war in Yemen is causing gut wrenching misery for millions of her civilians, who are fighting hunger, cholera and all sorts of diseases. Much of the mideast is in chaos because of the wars we are waging in that region, and now it's spilled into Europe in the form of refugees and migrants.
America's other favorite form of war: economic sanctions, is also causing abject misery for millions of people around the world, from Iran to North Korea, Russia, Venezuela, Cuba. We are starving their citizens simply because they refuse to install a puppet regime that kowtows to this "Liberal World Order" that Mr. Brooks is proposing.
The US is the biggest violator of human rights all over the world, all thanks to neocons like Mr. Brooks and their "Liberal" World Order. History will not look back kindly on Mr. Brooks and his like minded, which includes Trump, Pence, Pompeo, Bolton, Kushner and the entire deep state including the CIA, that is, if the world survives them.
@Listen
Korea was the last US involvement that ultimately benefited the people of South Korea.
In the first Iraq war, the US was there with an international coalition to defend Kuwait from Iraq. In Afghanistan, we had a strong national interest against the Taliban regime which had allowed Al Quaeda to set up shop and launch attacks on 9/11.
If there is a regime like Nazi Germany, there is a clear human rights justification for all means of stopping it. In fact, even in such situations of genocide against it’s own people, the West has historically only resorted to economic sanctions against such states unless the West also perceives a national interest.
And economic pressure can help, as it did with ending apartheid in South Africa.
Wait a second.
1) There's nothing the US can really do about Hong Kong. That shipped sailed with the Sino-British Joint Declaration. Taiwan, yes. Hong Kong, no.
2) The current administration, with the support of the US Senate, encourages Russian cyberattacks. Just this week the President publicly stated for the second time he would welcome a Russian cyberattack on our own election if it helped him win.
3) The Trump administration is responsible for destabilizing the Middle East by unilaterally promoting the interests of Saudi Arabia and Israel over regional stability. This while attempting to concede US influence to Russian hegemony and simultaneously starting a war with Iran.
The US is still engaged in international affairs. We just aren't a power for peace and stability anymore. We are the bad guy. We are not experiencing the end of the liberal world order so much as the perversion of it. Trade routes aren't going to un-route themselves. The world is still interconnected. However, we've dedicated ourselves to making that world a more cruel and inequitable place starting right here at home. That's why we characterize the moment as illiberal rather than conservative.
17
It’s especially distressing that so often a Trump statement or action seems to arise from his need to score political points with his base, or to disparage US intelligence organizations because he fears they will reveal his iniquities, or just because he woke up bored one morning.
This president’s feckless misuse of his office is dangerous.
2
"The top priorities were protecting against terrorist threats, protecting jobs for American workers and reducing illegal immigration. These are all negative aspirations: preventing bad things from hostile outsiders."
-David,
the preamble to the Constitution: establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare for ourselves and our posterity"
We can't be a leader in the world unless we are leading at home. That's the problem which many Americans believe to be the case, both right and left.
5
Don't you eventually get weary from fighting battles on behalf of those who won't fight for themselves?
I think that's the problem. Not that Americans don't want the world to be peaceful, but because we are weary of being the ones bearing the lion's share of the burden. Of course, one could argue that we reap the most benefit from the world peace -- that the advancement of weapons and rockets over the almost 75 years since the end of World War II means that even as geographically isolated as we are from most countries, we are still at risk physically.
But at the end of the day, I think there's a sense that, if it really came to it, the US is one of few countries in the world the COULD turn its back on the rest of the world and fend for itself. Maybe with a different standard of living for some (mostly those who have a lot), but the "practical" skills many of these low-trust voters feel they have and that have been undervalued would be more important.
I'm not sure if it's complacency or exhaustion that's led us here. But I sometime wonder if giving people a little of what they've asked for isn't the best way to make them see the other side of the story.
It would help if we believed our so-called leaders. How can one support world engagement if one believes they are being lied to?At that point the status quo is appealing.
1
China would be cracking down on Hong Kong and other domestic issues regardless of the US' stance on internationalism. The same for Russia's bullying within its sphere of influence. Iran and the general hostility of the middle east frankly stems from US internationalism, rather than from our pulling back.
I agree that the US seeming to turn its back from the world is a bad turn of events. But its bad because it makes us less able to deal with these situations, not because it caused them.
3
Demagogic politicians coupled with foreign policy failures and stateless terrorists take from many voter a shared sense of reality, much less purpose. We don't have agreement on who our friends are, much less who the enemy might be, so we can't even get to the debate of how we allocate our resources. Mr. Brooks wants new leadership--but he wants it to lead in the direction he personally thinks is best, which is an older framework that few find attractive. And with less coherence, people lean towards their self-interest. How do you convince someone working three jobs that nation-building is important? Or that opposition to Russian expansionism is a bad thing when your President seems to favor them? Or that using military power is a good thing when we made such a hash of Iraq and Afghanistan? Right now, Americans see only the price of policy, not the benefits.
1
I would add to David's thoughts that, what we have underway now are policies that will not "grow the pie" but rather, "dividing the pie", based on the fallacy of "supply side economics". If our policies instead concentrated on making the pie larger, and allowing people at all income levels to "get their share", especially those in the middle class, it would actually sustain economic growth, with increased demand.
5
The Opinion piece assumes that our small nation (5% of the world’s population) at this moment has the “power” to “lead” the rest of the world.
That makes no sense to me.
I see our nation having a role in world affairs as one of a number of wealthy nations, that is all.
But even that depends on putting our national “house” in order. We (citizens) need to address our ongoing failure to rationally discuss important problems that must be addressed (economic and political inequality, social safety net, infrastructure, environment, immigration, etc) before we will be in a position to tell the rest of the world how to behave.
Unfortunately, we seem to be suffering from a dysfunctional electorate, devoted to “identity” politics rather than rational decision making.
Hopefully the rest of world will be able to manage without our help, until and unless we become more rational.
3
@Stephen Rinsler Perhaps Mr. Brooks agrees with you. Our foreign policy aspirations are "identity politics," too, just as you point out about domestic aspirations. Those aspirations are counter-productive in the long term. Also, I agree with you that we have lost face in the world. Not that we are not strong economically (we are), but we pursued bad wars in Vietnam and, probably, in Iraq. It's a shame. I still agree with Mr. Brooks's main points, and they don't really conflict with yours.
Would it not make more sense to say that the aspirations cited more accurately reflect self-interest rather than negative intent, although the former will certainly determine that the outcome will be negative in a broad sense? Protection of jobs is motivated by one's desire to maintain a lifestyle without adapting, which is related to both globalism and the immigration problems that represent competition.
Are we as a nation content and lazy? Our national malaise brings to mind the lyrics of Steppenwolf's "Monster".
1
@Melitides
I am pleasantly surprised at your reference to Steppenwolf's "Monster." A song seldom heard and under-appreciated. It provides a warning.
It looks like another Iraq--a ginned up war-- with the new "conflict" with Iran. I watch it all unfolding with extreme skepticism. I see a ploy to create a distraction or rally people around the flag. Sadly, I don't think we'll be any wiser this time around.
13
So complain by “Contacting” your two senators, your congressional rep plus Senate Majority Leader, McConnell and Speaker Pelosi.
Their websites each have a “Contact” link.
McConnell and Pelosi must also accept messages from outside their state and district.
You think It won’t make any difference?
How do you know?
If Millions of Americans flood just these 5 people with angry messages, they will have to listen.
Yep, the timing of this attack on the tankers seems so perfectly convenient. Here we go again...
@MerMer That is exactly what is happening but nefarious reasons surround the basis which is save the Saudis from Iran, save the Israelis from Iran. Do our good buddies the Russians a favor. do our good buddies the oilmen a favor, line the pockets of the current resident and then move on.
Contrary to David Brooks, the list of US foreign policy mistakes since 1945 is a good deal longer than just Viet Nam and Iraq. But, also contrary to David Brooks, our self-righteousness continues. Think about how hard this criminal administration is working today to maneuver us into a war with Iran. Consider that we have been at war continuously for almost 80 years. That we have hundreds of military bases in dozens of countries around the world. That our military budget dwarfs that of every other country. Why? Because that is the cost of empire. We promote our limited form of democracy when it is in our self interest and undermine democracy when it is not. The world rightly mistrusts our motives.
46
Speaking of "Rogue Nation" - we reneged on the Climate Change Accord and even worse broke the treaty that our allies and we made with Iran to monitor facilities, open up trade on the manufactured items, and curtail the proliferation of nuclear weapons - which was all good.
In other words, you want a rogue, David, look at the Republicans in office right now.
26
The second half of the 20th Century was the zenith of American influence (soft and hard), and the American citizenry was on the same policy page because there was a singular ideological foe; the USSR. We were able to position the Pax Americana against totalitarian oppression.
People need to be led and unfortunately the cynicism of today's politicians simply exploits people's ignorance instead. the collapse of the Trans Pacific Partnership TPP is a great example this. Without an obvious foe, getting people to buy into American global leadership get's that much harder. And politicians then take the easy way out: appealing to peoples fears.
10
I agree with you.
The notion that being a fellow CITIZEN should mark the limits of our concern is a moral failure.
In a post-modern world of climate change, mass migrations, renewed understanding of global interconnection on multiple levels, and so forth, we need a radically different moral horizon.
We need to see fellow HUMAN BEINGS as our neighbors.
We have studied war long enough; it is time to study and to practice a new way of making peace.
9
Impossible to disagree with most of this although Brooks has played a role in creating the climate of distrust he describes. Also Mr Kagan cited by Brooks seems to have forgotten the Pax Britannica which essentially lasted from 1815 to 1914. It wasn't perfect by any means and like the Pax Americana it wasn't entirely altruistic but it worked pretty well. For nearly 100 years there were no major Europe wide or World wide wars and Europe was pretty much the world in those days. This was fairly astonishing since European wide wars had been a more or less continuous feature of the previous 200 years. The Monroe Doctrine would not have been feasible without the Royal Navy's control of the sea and the British never sought to reverse the outcome of the War of Independence despite some provocations on the Canadian border.
Overall it probably points to the need for a global hegemon heavily invested in stability.
4
@John
Some of the people who lived under Brutish rule might disagree, such as the millions who died of famine in India and Ireland. And yes, those were avoidable deaths.
But you have inadvertently pointed out the problem with global hegemony by one country. The rulers tend not to notice the people they crush underfoot.
1
@John
Yes, it was not a bad idea ! Unfortunately, the idea of Empire was not accepted by the U.S.A. as it was contrary to the ideal of Democracy which the U.S.A. had. Sometimes Democracy has to be protected from Countries who would destroy it, and subvert those people who aspire to Democratic Ideals. Sometimes, it needs a Pioneering Sprite to lead the way, or Country to fulfil that role. Sometimes, it needs a Country to curtail the aspiration of a Nation who would retard the development of a group of Nations, as in The Hundred Years War, The Peninsula War or The First and Second World Wars. Sometimes, a Populace, who is "hard wired" with Democratic Principles, can call its self Great or Peace Maker. There is know Ocean between us, how can there be, when both Nations are "hard wired" for Democracy, and defend it. Mistakes, there have been plenty off, and most probably, more of the same, but, at least "we" try!
@Donald
This is a non sequitur that has nothing to do with wars and relative global stability. And famines were a commonplace occurrence in India long before the British arrived. In fact there were numerous ones across Europe between 1815 and 1875.
You have elucidated a key problem about civilization. In the history of the Western world. Rome and Greece were great civilizations and their decline and fall lead to the the Medieval "Dark Ages". The Renaissance, the age of reason and enlightenment culminated in our current era. It almost seems we entering a new Dark Ages? Are there lessons from the previous decline and fall?
First, what information or events lead to the declining support for the "liberal world order"? Was it good information or are we being
propagandized? Marketing in Media is no longer one of dissemination of information but a scientific technique of persuasion, which has bleed into the political system. So we may all be sheep.
Second, the liberal world order fights against human nature. Fear makes us run to the Alpha male, strong man for protection. So we live in a world of Fear, perhaps not legitimate Fear.
Third, we live in an era of enormous personal wealth, that allows most of us to live like the wealthy of just 100 years ago. It might seem we have too much to lose.
The rising power of China, will challenge us to either war or to create a greater world order. If we, the US, can't establish the new world order, we had better learn Chinese.
3
Many of us love and look forward to the writings of David Brooks. He is one of the few public intellectuals surviving today. But...........................................................
He misses many important points today. He misses the American Empire. America does some things for noble purposes and all things for the Empire. Like an empire of old, we must have control of everything and everybody, including obscure parts of the world. We don't act out of nobility and liberal democratic obligation; we act to control.
Much of the improvement he cites in the world flows not from us, but from the people of the countries who no longer war and now seek their own self-improvement.
And our economic interests drive us on to dominate. We may raise up some peoples and their wages through our multinational corporations, but only to the level we want for our own profit and economic control.
And finally, look at the people dying around the world due to our 'noble' interventions. Since 1945, we have been responsible for the death and displacement of millions of people. We do these things for the Empire and for our multinational corporations.
And so, we should still care about others. But we must no longer destroy the village (and kill the villagers) to save it.
16
"We’re in a dark spiral."
David, you've got to take some of the blame for providing intellectual cover to the right-wing during its formative period. We on the left always knew that given power, "conservatives" would give up their principals and abandon the Bill Buckleys, George Wills and David Brooks'. They always wanted absolute power.
Conservatives are now leading a project to return to pre-Enlightenment ideals. Trump is more a Louie IV or Henry VIII than an American president and the great liberal hope of the Enlightenment is being lost every day.
4
If Americans take a dark view of human nature, they need look no further than their own country. My husband is in training for his third job; our healthcare expenses keep increasing, grocery prices are through the roof, etc. We have no idea how we will pay for college for our two children.
We see us juxtaposed against entitled congresspeople and senators who are supposed to represent us, but pretty much only care about themselves. And they don’t even try to hide it anymore.
America has never been a beacon for diversity, and continues to struggle with abject racism, homophobia, transphobia, etc.
We don’t have our own house in order, and we are not some shining example to be shared around the world. That’s a delusion wrapped in red, white and blue.
16
We have danced with dictators to create world order.The WWII alliance to defeat Germany was the model and we used it to form the United Nations despite the Cold War that ensued at the end of the war.
I disagree that Iraq was a failure and that US lives were shed in vain there. It no longer is capable of attacking Kuwait or Israel, our allies, and the three diverse sects in Iraq are capable of forming a functioning government. We had the moral authority to invade and overthrow Sadaam after the Gulf war in 1991 as part of a broad coalition but we did not use our powers fully to do so. The problem today is that most Americans are confused about the threat from Russia and China. This takes astute leadership and diplomacy which this administration totally lacks.
The Iranians have a credible argument that Trump violated an international treaty signed by leaders of six nations. and the US' current sanctions are tantamount to an act of war.
How can US gain international support when a Japanese tanker is attacked and Japan's leader refuses to condemn it, and the crew disputes the facts of how they were attacked?
This administration has zero credibility at home and with other leaders so the alliances that kept the peace in WWII and since cannot be used to solve the biggest International headaches like Syria, Venezuela,Libya, Ukraine, Gaza, etc.
This is due to the total breakdown in US governance and the belief that the Iraq war was a complete failure. It was not.
1
A war not being a complete failure doesn't mean it was a good decision to start it.
The Iraq war may have been successful if it had been fought in an intelligent manner. However, we went into the war based on lies & totally unprepared. We did not understand the society we were invading & believed the lies of of the Iraqi anti-Saddam elites. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died. I’ve met several Iraqis & none of them would agree with you that the war was a success.
1
I believe that we, as a public, are children of lightness more than children of darkness--What tips the balance in one direction or the other are the societal conditions we find ourselves in. For the last decade at least, our legislative bodies have fueled an economy designed to make the rich even richer--while at the same time hollowing out the middle class. The ideology driving the development of this vast inequality has been a mix of supply side voodoo economics and Reagan's purposeful trashing of governmental obligations. Darkness does set in when the common good becomes auctioned out to the highest bidder.
5
Normally I enjoy reading Mr Brooks' essays, while often disagreeing with many of his viewpoints. But here I find too much naivité to get beyond the abstractions. One key reason the U.S. has assumed a global policeman stance for so many decades is to expand and protect our resources. Except for the initial reasons of entering both World Wars, and even then we reaped economic benefits. Clichéd as it is, the American 'empire' is now in decline.
The dark spiral we are in is due in part to the hawks as well as the chickens coming home to roost. I don't at all relish nationalism or the stay-at-home perspective that dominates our American mindset now. And I find it ironic that Trump is setting us up for even more conflicts abroad while ignoring infrastructure here.
The world is on top of us, so to speak, and closing the door while all the windows are wide open will not work. Climate change alone is forcing global issues on us -- while our elected leaders squabble about setting the thermostat in their meeting rooms.
We can't expect one leader to redirect a nation's descent into partisan cynicism -- we all have to rededicate ourselves to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all, with action beyond complaints and insults.
5
david, i do not recognize the u.s. abroad as you depict us. vietnam and iraq were not aberrations; we fought in the former to maintain a western dominant world order, a rearguard colonial war; the latter has a lot to do with maintain sunni regimes that control oil. even if i am wrong, all the military bases! all over! ringing russia, say. all defensive?? please, admit we dominated latin america, supported dictators like mobutu, overthrew allende, used the cia wherever we could to subvert leftist movements that were a lot closer to the liberal ideals of progress than american capitalism. why is that so absent in your dream of america. i am of the generation that opposed the war in vietnam; that grew up in the cold war. one doesn't have to be a stalinist to oppose the imperialist side of the americans abroad. i can't understand why you don't deal with that.
15
@ken harrowyou are absolutely correct Ken. For me the disillusionment started in Vietnam. We are not always good, peace loving, or freedom loving.
5
I agree. I also disagree with Brooks statement that Iran is destabilizing the Middle East. What about the Saudi’s? I agree that the Mullah’s are a problem, but the Saudi’s are the main destabilizing country in the ME. Look at how they are supporting the military governments in Sudan & Egypt. Yemen is a mess due to both the Saudi’s & Iran.
5
You were doing fine until you got to Latin American leftist groups being close to social democratic norms. There was nothing liberal or socially democratic about the FARC, ELN, or Sendero Luminoso. They were no more liberal than the Contras, and now we know, the Sandinistas. I will grant you Allende as the exception that proves the rule, yet recall it was Nixon’s doing during the end of Vietnam.
Brooks is right, whatever damage #sumacumliar is having domestically, it is 10-fold in international affairs, and will take far longer to repair.
"Wolves like Putin and Xi fill the void and make bad things happen, confirming the dark view and causing even more withdrawal."
Um, Mr. Brooks, you left out Trump.
16
Republicans have spent the last 40 years campaigning on fear... they always have something that scare the voters, and "only I can save us", "only I can fix this". It works, they keep getting elected. And Americans consistently figure they are in much more danger than they really are, measured in reality, and the average American is most fearful of things that are much less likely to harm them than things that really are likely to harm.
Americans fear "terrorists" - particularly "radical Islamic terrorists". However, since 9/11 "terrorism" has killed about 4,000 or so Americans. Meanwhile gun violence has killed 400,000 in the same period. Yet far too many Americans believe that 'more guns make us safer' - and while we eagerly spend Trillions fighting a worldwide, never-ending "War on Terror", we refuse to even experiment with even broadly popular gun control measures.
Why are Americans so afraid - and of all the wrong things? Because one major political party uses fear as a core reason for it's entire political platform.
21
David Brooks writes, "We’re in a dark spiral."
Indeed.
A dark and increasingly warm spiral.
In India, 123 degrees recently.
Show me the leader who will pull us out of that "dark spiral."
8
I believe we are turning inward for three reasons, First the terrible failure of the Iraq war which is still going on. Second the terrible cost of defending the free world while we crumble from within and third a president who is always in your face shouting about how the world is taking advantage of us. As an example its very hard to support defending a country where everyone gets free health care and education while you have no health care and a monster student debt.
7
@Thomas Renner
I can tell you nothing is free. That is, was and always will be just ignorant US propaganda. What other countries have done, and not just Europeans, is make the choice to pay for the vital social services of health care and education. The US prefers opiod crises, the endless poverty boogeyman keeps the slave labour in line.
France most definitely does not need US occupation, neither economically nor militarily, hence we invited you to leave when your usefulness expired, and none to soon. But nor does Germany, as they are better off than you in nearly all meaningful ways for 99% of their population. So I do understand your frustration.
Perhaps Poland is happy to host your occupying armies, as they are a little closer to the actual military threat and could also use some of the spending in their economies, which has always been a lot less than Americans imagined. US bases are closed ecosystems that don't leak a lot of business to make up for the inconvenience hosting them bring.
In other words, Brooks has glossed over far too many inconvenient facts for his appeal to be credible. We'd all be happier with less meddling from the US hegemon, not more, thanks.
1
I think the America Firsties have always been there (they’ve been squawking at my family’s picnics my whole life). A combination of raucous economic uncertainty coupled with conservative media and the Trump “presidency” has sent them from the picnic grounds to man the levers of our prized institutions.
They should be mouthing off harmlessly between chomps on their hot dogs. Instead they are deciding how the news is dispensed, how the nation is run, and how we present ourselves to the world.
The fact that so many of them are racists is just one more delightful feature of family picnics.
5
America was the project that would prove, or not, that a nation could be politically organized around the notions of liberalism put forward by European deep thinkers such as John Locke. We could make it work by a public commitment to respecting each citizen; all of us have a basic right to life, liberty (liberalism) and to chart our own course in life (pursuit of happiness).
Today we have social conservatives and unmoral economic brigands (investment banks in the new millennium) declaiming that this liberal project has failed (see Adrian Vermeule on "integralism"). What is left to us is some version of Gilead, Trumpista unmorality or a new expertly planned society on notions of social justice. None of these perspectives really looks beyond the national self outward to the world, to other nations trying their best to respect their citizen's right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Ben Franklin, that likeable old curmudgeon, thought the Constitution would do, for awhile, until the body politic corrupted and got the government it deserved. Disease is war with an unseen enemy where the effects are corruption of the body. The American disease is an arrogant selfishness, at times brutal and ignorant, that says my life, my liberty and my happiness trumps yours. It is ironic that our current protectionism, abandonment of the international liberal community, is a type of self quarantine within which the disease flourishes.
7
Yes, Iraq and Vietnam were disasters. But David Brooks Panglossian remonstrations ignore the monumental scope and multiple dimensions of these moral and material outrages and the blowback that devastates far more than multiple generations of veterans. Let’s just remember that both of these conflicts were a series of atrocities that were sold with an an endlessly repetitive litany of lies.
But Brooks ignores more than the true dimensions of Vietnam and Iraq when he prattles about America’s “well meaning” deployment of power into the world. What does he say about our interventions in Italy, Greece, and Iran? What about Honduras, Brazil, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua? What about the Philippines and Indonesia? Where in any of those places did the US intervene to build democracy and support human rights?
Our leaders are blind, fools, and worse.
Can we smell the coffee”. Or is it burning blood and cordite?
In the meantime refugees and their children flee from the charnel houses we’ve created in Central America and trudge a winding grinding journey through Mexico only to be savagely greeted by our very special form of tortured hospitality.
Hooray for US!
11
The issue is not, as Mr. Brooks would suggest, a cynical view of government that informs the public perception of foreign policy. Rather it is simply that the average American is uninformed.
American educational standards have not encouraged an understanding of history and contemporary politics. Nor does a reversion to religious dogma as the fount of all wisdom. Rote memorization is so much easier to teach and test. Lack of basic critical thinking skills builds and perpetuates an ignorant electorate.
So when Mr. Brooks bemoans America’s lack of interest in adopting foreign policies that build on a nuanced view of how the world works, he need only look at the domestic policies that encourage a more easily manipulated electorate, the religious right seeking to further their agenda, and the kleptocrats financing the Republican party of ignorance.
5
How true this is. When you speak of the average American being uninformed, I guess that is what you get when half the nation gets its news from Fox. Also, the education programs in the schools seem to be falling way short.
Some time ago, needing to hire some engineers, I interviewed 16 graduating candidates at a highly rated engineering establishment in the US. I was shocked to realize that none of the students could write properly.
Doesn’t say a lot about the education system does it?
1
David, it's been two and a half years since Obama left office who you cite as a leader with the correct international view. Not long enough to establish a major trend. Your cynicism, like mine, and like most of the voters you decry can be summed up in two words: Donald Trump.
The second problem here is the default option of military action as the primary method of maintaining order. That's a real lack of imagination and legitimate cause for cynicism. Add to that our selfish, ill advised, and unjust motivations for the international actions we do undertake, and the there you have the complete recipe for what you describe.
Yes, the right leader could change all this in a single election cycle. Who are you supporting David?
2
@Johnny And if I may -
Third problem here is the default option of militarized Police (equipment, training, and Attitude) action as the primary method of maintaining Domestic order. That too festers a real lack of imagination and legitimate cause for cynicism.
Young people might be wary of false flags and wars entered due to selfish economic pursuits ( Vietnam and Iran) and based on lies. That is far different than seeking to influence the world toward democratic governments that advocate for all its citizens and respect human rights.
I am more disgusted by the older folks who grew up benefiting from this long period of relative world peace, got theirs and now want to shut the world out.
The latter strategy will come back to bite our younger and future generations. No border wall will be enough when mass populations are displaced by war, genocide, famine etc.
7
We need more than a leader who will engage the issues if the day, we need one party, the Republicans, to also act like the country is more important than their re-election. Republicans and their constant fight against free elections in this country, enraging their base with racism using their propaganda media are what keeps our alleged leader in place. All must go.
3
@Joe c "Citizens United" unlimited unidentified funding and Influence Must GO!!!
The problem with America's leadership of the world is America's leadership at home. If every generation of Americans produced its share of Washingtons, Roosevelts, and Lincolns then, sure, we should be telling the world how to order itself.
But instead we produce Skrellis, Adelsons, and Trumps.
World leadership should be awarded to the countries that place highest on human development lists. I'm all for using American power, but let's let it be directed by Denmark, Finland, New Zealand, Australia, and Canada.
3
We have a strange habit of running around the world, to places that pose no foreseeable risk to the US, and practicing our warmongering, demanding countries become more like us in places where they have absolutely no desire to do so.
And the defense contractors get rich. Countries are left devastated, refugees flee and we’re right back where we started minus trillions of US taxpayer money.
Heck, we treat allies as our manservants.
Italy, who thought they were lucky to be an ally, just fired their top two intelligence officers because the Obama administration roped them into spying on their political opponents - as they did the Brits.
We need to do more walking softly and lay off the big stick for a while.
4
"Americans have lost faith in human nature and human possibility"
Of course they have, David. Look around you. The basic elements of the American Dream have been sacrificed at the altar of satisfying the needs of the 1%.
Charity should begin at home.
4
Mr. Brooks says, "We're in a dark spiral." Indeed we are.
America, like any other country, is made up of a variety of peoples with differing opinions. But in our short history America has been blessed to have citizens who have been able to set aside their differences, compromise on their desires and for the most part come together to act for the greater good of the nation and in the interests of the people.
We are no longer able to do that. What has changed? The American body politic has been poisoned. The poison is the right-wing Republican ideology of white Christian dominance. The poison is the Republican Party itself. The poison is FOX et al.
Americans no longer have faith in human nature and human possibility because we no longer trust each other, no longer believe truth is truth, no longer share the same reality.
Republicans have been using doublespeak for generations, attacking education and science, promoting fear and hatred of fellow Americans because they don't look alike. With FOX, twitter, facebook and right-wingnut radio, Republicans spread their venom and America is sickened.
Donald Trump sneaking into the presidency in 2016 is simply a puss-filled boil, the manifestation of our very ill body politic.
No single leader can grapple with this illness. Barack Obama did his best to pull us out of the dark spiral, but Republicans in Congress are a disease too far advanced to be cured.
The only hope for America is to exorcise the Republican Party malignancy.
7
A very general indictment that fails to distinguish between engagement with the world and the failed military interventions that have consumed so much blood and treasure. And to say that we need to focus more resources at home (which is true in the absolute, and cannot be argued against), to make that a priority, does not mean America must follow the selfish path of the egotistical president and demonstrate bad will to allies while asking dictators to help his re-election campaign. Once again Brooks professes deep morals and somehow manages to completely miss the boat.
2
I would remind Mr. Brooks that his conservative saint Ronald Reagan was president during the Tianaman square massacre.
I would also remind him that Clinton was president during the Rawadan genocide. His ambassador to the United Nations, Madeleine Albright either couldn't or refused to recognize that the atrocities being committed were actually genocide.
The Clinton administration stood back and did nothing. If Rawanda was a source of oil for our gas guzzlers you can bet we would have stepped in.
That's what I think Americans are sick of, the hypocrisy.
I think Brooks is confusing Americans view about our role in the world. They do want the U.S. to lead the world in supporting democratic and human rights. What they are opposed to is America being the one to force it on other societies like we tried to do in Iraq. Many neocons felt America could go into Iraq and transform it into a thriving democracy like we did after WWII in Japan.
2
A leader to "embody an optimism that pulls us out of the dark spiral." And will that leader be a Republican ever again? I think not. The GOP response after Helsinki and today tell us all we need to know. Fight! Vote!
1
Before you run around rampaging through the world creating more problems why not fix what clearly needs fixing, your own political system and "model"?
1
Mr. Brooks,
You have done a very good job of diagnosing the problem(s).
But not the causes.
As a 71 year old who has pretty much observed and experienced most of the post WWII era from the 1950s on I would submit the following as two major reasons we are where we are today:
1. The assassinations of most of the progressive, forward looking (and mostly young) leaders of the post war era. Lets start (in no particular order) with the Kennedys, King, Gandhi, Sadat, Rabin and even Lennon. How do you think things might have been different?
2. The de-emphasis and consequent de-funding of education generally, particularly history and other social sciences, especially in states that just wanted "lower taxes". We have been educating for employment and not for good citizenship. Without the "educated electorate" democracy requires "The Jungle Grows Back".
"Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to relive it".
7
Mr. Brooks' Pax Americana sounds wonderful, but American adventurism and bending the world to suit our capitalistic needs seems to have gone missing from his picture. Our mistreatment of South and Central America, and the Middle East have had repercusions as serious as the benefits of our rebuilding Europe and Japan.
Our southern border issues are a direct result of the destabilization of Central America. Our fear of terrorists is spawned by propaganda that lets us forget that our thirst for oil has made enemies.
American ideals shine a light on the world. We are a nation of ideas and values, not of privilege and tribes. Or we were.
We've gone dark as selfishness and arrogance became our goal.
1
Perhaps you should start at home by building a true democracy, devoid of gerrymandering and voter suppression. Follow it up by pursuing a foreign policy that emphasizes human rights, not geopolitical hegemony.
4
Sorry Mr. Brooks. Not interested. The things you want us to fix are not fixable. The rest of the world is a basket of deplorables just like some other people we know right here at home and so they are on their own.
1
Yes, what is needed is leadership: bring people along toward necessary goals, even if they are unsure or even resistant. People can be persuaded! Now, however, we are giving in to many peoples' worst instincts. This is abetted by our social media culture and adjustments have to be made to mitigate that phenomenon. But where will such leaders come from? Many plausible candidates will simple acknowledge that one must be too crazy, egotistic and corrupt to be a political leader in our culture. In the meantime, China, India are growing into dominance (population) and willingness to confront the West; Russia has a grudge against the West and willing to work with others against us. The American population is not only tiny in comparison, but is racing to the bottom of learning and responsibility. Will we end up being just a pause in the sordid history of the human race, and will "nasty, brutish and short" lives again be the norm for all but a few? What shall we do about the problem of complacent, selfish and uninformed voters? Or discouraged and exhausted voters? I think we will continue to be vulnerable to people like Trump, who pander to populist notions.
1
The case for American engagement in the world would be a good deal stronger with the American public were that engagement conducted forthrightly and not, more often than not, with lies and deception, serving interests and visions too far from America's ideals to be trumpeted openly.
Contrary to Mr. Brooks' repeated characterization, the war in Iraq was not just a mistake. It was a war initiated with deliberately cooked intelligence and a campaign of media manipulation orchestrated out of the Vice President's office, taking in this very newspaper. All with a view, not to righting human rights abuses, but to remaking the Middle East in a Neo-con imperial vision of "The American Century" that has not ceased to foment war as a first resort to this day.
Mr. Brooks hastily conjoins America Firsters, responding to Trump's demagogic xenophobia, with "New Doves" in a ham-handed effort to claim some balanced centrism for himself, but Americans under 30 who oppose the war reflex do not in any meaningful sense "arrive at the same place." Suggesting as much is no way to restore the positive American engagement in the world Mr. Brooks claims to pursue. Neither is conspicuously omitting to mention the other war with which Americans under 30 have grown up: the endless one in Afghanistan.
For all these reasons, "New Doves" reading Mr. Brooks might be forgiven for perceiving his condescending lecture as one more fundamentally dishonest, flag-waving drumbeat for war. This time with Iran.
2
David:
I disagree with one of your sacred assertions - that we have had decades of international peace since 1945. I need to remind you :
1. Korean War.
2. Bay of Pigs
3. Vietnam
4. Croatia
5. Iraq I
6. Afganistan
7. Iraq II
8. ISIS
9. War of Drugs (?)
This list does not include minor involvements - i.e. Granada (Ronald Reagan), Somalia (William Clinton) Suez Canal (Eisenhower).
Hardly a year has gone by without our international involvement with using violence to accomplish our purposes.
Clearly decades of peace have not occurred. Please base your arguments on the real facts, not the myth of Peace and World Order.
3
How do you want to build democracy abroad when it is being significantly eroded at home via voter suppression, corruption, cronyism, poverty and a corporate culture which is oppressive.
People cannot even afford rent and medications. And you want them to spend energy, money and blood on foreign adventures. Get real.
2
When the prominent mood facing complexity is exhaustion--well, Houston, we have a problem. Withdrawal from thinking about workable solutions is understandable to the seemingly dispossessed, who appear willing to leave them to somebody--anybody--else, even the Bull-in-the-China-Shop in Chief.
2
As ignorant as Americans are, I am almost glad so few bother to vote. I am also deeply bothered by this.
1
Read the last chapter of the best selling book in history, lately? Better brush up, 'fess up and be joyful in the knowledge you will be alive to witness it. Or, of course, the contrary. You were two thousand years warned.
Between 1815 and 1914 there were no major wars in Europe. In addition to Vietnam and Iraq you should add Korea since HST allowed Acheson to say we wouldn’t defend South Korea.
Brooks misuses of history to justify an aggressive foreign policy. If wars between big nations is a thing of the past, our confrontation with Russia and China seems to invite it. Moreover, if big conflicts are a thing of history, why our we outspending the next six countries combined in armaments?
Global wars remain real, if only because we have intruded into the arena of others. Agreements over the dissolution of the USSR and its eastern empire did not entail American military expansion into nations adjacent to Moscow’s borders.
Many wars are miscalculations—the lead up to WW1 or Hitler’s ill considered declaration of war against the US.
As for the body count, just what was the civilian deaths of Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan? How welcome was our interference in Argentina, Honduras, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic? What has been the blowback from our regime changes in Iran? Is Libya a success? Or Chile?
Just because we do not recognize the deaths we have caused does not negate the toll nor excuse the policy.
History is replete with countries who justified their actions because it kept the peace or brought civilization or economic growth. From ancient Rome to the imperialism France, Britain, and Belgium, to us, there are always rationalizations that can be called upon.
Greed, hostility, and ignorance. These are the three things that, according to Buddhists, poison life and the world. Trump, master of all three, cultivates them at home and abroad.
Politicians and the media often tells us that the American voter is smart. This is simply not true. The majority is ignorant enough to believe that the very notion of America First is a realistic option in a world that is ever more globalized—climatologically, financially, agriculturally, technologically, informationally, bacteriologically, virally, scientifically, socially, ethically, and in other ways. The majority of Americans are, politically and culturally, among the most underdeveloped people in the Westernized world—and, like Dear Leader Trump, proud of it, as well as loud and boorish about it.
America is in decline and the best we can do is laugh about it in late night comedy shows. We are all standing next to our own Nero, watching and laughing as our Rome burns down.
3
There are limits to what America can do. Iran's people are going to have to evict their own leaders. Ditto for the Palestinians and the North Koreans.
Our only real business now is getting rid of Trump.
3
Iran is surely in the clutches of intolerant religionists, as are we.
Zealots look in the mirror and see truth.
Brooks writes as though Trump hasn't yet appeared.
The house is on fire, and Washingtonians such as Brooks, who has never said no to appearing on a panel, twiddle and tsk-tsk.
We, the U.S. stumble around in a dirty world making it dirtier. Who believes, who? that the Iranian crisis is other than another self-serving ploy by the oaf?
3
Speaking of conviction: Sen. Bernie Sanders yesterday spoke up in re: the uncovering of a vast plot to deprive Lula of the presidency of Brazil, and demanded Lula be released immediately. You, David?
"... . Iran is destabilizing the Middle East..." I can think of a few more countries who have been part of this problem.
4
Might want to check out some of the US foreign policymakers who condoned a book entitled GOING ROGUE (by Palin et al)--which seemed to indicate that going rogue was a positive (huh?)... might tend to think that the concept or roguery has been a bona fide excuse for warring---also here in the US among some flamethrowers. So the pilots for this stuff have been alit for awhile.
So, David, who is this leader that will pull us “out of the dark spiral?” Is there a single important Republican who cares about any of this? Are you ready to acknowledge that the Democrats are our only realistic hope for a safe and decent future?
1
Central to the evolution of the reality Mr. Brooks describes is that an increasing number of Americans have simply lost faith in our country's leadership. To some extent, this is regardless of political party. It's due to a seemingly never ending series of cataclysmic events for which there appear to be no solution, at least not one that has been offered by the leadership class.
Some of these problems are of our own doing, while others are the result of an increasingly vocal opposition to the role that America has played, or not played, in the world. Pervasive throughout the hearts and minds of many in this country is the sense that our problems are spinning out of control, with many perceived as being irremediable by those who purport to lead the nation.
Still more challenges are visited upon us by the evolution of other countries and their leaders, who sense that America is no longer there for them, that they have to take care of themselves, America be damned.
In short, Mr. Brooks is right. The world order has changed, and it visits upon us a sense of insecurity, exacerbated by the belief that our nation's leadership is simply not up to the challenge. How else do we explain flitting from the likes of a George W. Bush to a Barack Obama to a Donald Trump?
Sadly, we are waiting for Godot, and a whole lot of Americans are fearful that Godot isn't going to show up any time soon.
Mr. Brooks, you mention the period from 1945 to the second Iraq War as though the U.S. was not fighting in wars in that time. Have you heard of Vietnam? That is only one such conflict.
More than this, Mr. Brooks, people are not naive and ignorant - we know about the CIA assassinations and overthrowing of foreign governments. We know that our failed interventionist foreign policy has created so many enemies that is has been the major driver of terrorism against us.
We are turning against people like you who have cheered decades of violence that - guess what - have not made the world safer and did not promote democracy, even if we claimed to be. I think it is you, Mr. Brooks, who needs to have their head checked.
Mr. Brooks,
Americans became very disinterested in foreign affairs the day the Draft ended.
4
"Then, in 1945 that [war] stopped. "
David,
If war "stopped" in 1945, as you would have us believe with your writing, then what was the 25 year involvement of the United States in Vietnam post 1945? I thought my history book said the US lost 58,000 dead and Vietnam lost more than a million people in that war where the US offered brutal, indiscriminate bombing runs? See Ken Burns for more info.
If war "stopped" in 1945, what was the US invasion of an entire country, Afghanistan, in 2001? Thousands of Americans are dead in what they would call a war. Hundreds of thousands of Afghani's have been displaced.
If war "stopped" in 1945, what was the US Invasion of Iraq? Every beautiful, old city in Iraq has been completely destroyed now displacing more than a million Muslims to Europe thereby destabilizing Europe for the first time since WW II. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi's have died. Thousands of American soldiers have died. Billions of dollars made by American contractors.
David, only a Republican willing to lie or live under a rock, or both, would say "war" stopped in 1945.
In 1945 the USA was just getting warmed up for continuous war for the next 90 years.
Please, David, spare us these kinds of lies and false articles.
2
The liberal world order has destroyed the planet. Free trade and the free flow of people is destroying the planet and cultures throughout the West. There is a new imperialism / colonialism: that of the developing world against the West. Countries and cultures are dumping their ballooning populations on our shores after they have devastated their own lands. It is a new time- there are over seven billion people with another three billion,at least, projected by 2050. No 'order' can accommodate that. We are allowing fake refugees to destroy our children's future. When things get bad those people will not lift a single finger to help our people.
2
"But the U.S. having been dragged into two world wars, leaders from Truman to Obama felt they had no choice but to widen America's circle of concern across the whole world." Uh, Woodrow Wilson campaigned and won in 1916 on his promise to keep US out of war, just like Democrats & Obama campaigned & won in 2006 and 2008 on promise to end Bush-Cheney foreign policy overreach and wars. In both cases, they lied & broke their promises, not because they were passively "dragged into" doing so but because they actively chose to. The messianic Anglophile Woodrow Wilson thought he could remake the world by lying to American public via the "Committee on Public Information" propaganda about Germany's supposed misdeeds. He and his henchmen then personally dragged America into WWI. Having done so, Wilson prevented the stalemate that was about to end WWI with likely neutral terms, and instead enabled Allies to decisively win & impose the extreme punitive conditions that ultimately directly gave rise to WWII. Wilson was like worst of Trump combined with worst of Bush-Cheney.
For millions of Americans who worked so hard on behalf of Democrats in 2006 so they could retake House & Senate & Obama in 2008, they betrayed everyone by then continuing Iraq & Afghanistan entire 8 years & expanding neo-con nonsense to Libya, Syria, Ukraine, etc. And incredible that anyone would cite fervent Iraq War neo-con Bob Kagan for anything.
1
"New Doves" is an interesting term.
Due to not teaching about each holocaust or ethnic cleansing every year of K through 12 education nor requiring two years of compulsory national service, too few U.S. citizens have an understanding of atrocities that happened in past or are currently occurring.
Without understanding context, they feel that intervention is more like imperialist barbarism and useless.
In my fantasy world, national leaders would each have Peace-first initiatives. That would result in greater diplomatic efforts, reduced warfare, stronger economies, and healthier and happier citizens.
2
"These are young people who express high interest in human rights, but having grown up in the Iraq era, they don’t want the U.S. to get involved in protecting them."..
oh, the Iraq war was about protecting human rights was it? Nothing to do with greed and abusing the sacred oaths of young soldiers by using them as instruments of naked brutality to achieve those aims.... maybe these young people don't like looking in the national mirror and seeing the wolf grinning back. "mistakes" weren't made, high crimes were committed
1
If George Bush and Dick Cheney went to jail for war crimes, that would do a lot to restore faith in justice, where America used to lead the way. Americans are fed up with our politicians getting away with murder (yes, actual murder), again and again.
3
@Ron Williams Exactly! But don't forget the neocons like Wolfowitz, Feith, Abrams, etc. who did so much to make it happen!
2
@Dino you are right. There's a long list of people who should be in prison. That's why there is no faith in the system, and you can't blame anyone for thinking that way. Now look at Flint, MI. More people getting away with murder, pure and simple.
the centre cannot hold.
1
Brooks puts the Iraq War on his list of 'debacles.' Let's call it what it really was, a war crime. If any other nation did the exact same thing, we would be seeking punishment for the instigators. As long as war crimes go unacknowledged and unpunished, our attempts to maintain that liberal international order will be undermined.
Also, I notice Brooks conspicuously leaves Trump out as one of his 'wolves' and maybe that's a good choice. Trump is far more parasitic, making his name and fortune by sucking blood and treasure out of the things others have built.
2
In case you hadn't noticed, we are currently a rogue nation.
1
Well, it's a nice bedtime story...
1
In my youth I favored an idealistic foreign policy similar to what I believe Brooke's to be. Now, I'm just tired. Tired of foreign countries yelling, "Death to America." Tired of our allies criticizing our actions. Tired of left wing intelligentsia hypocrisy in their all out assault on the US (ironically spoken within the free speech protections of the US that they despise) while praising thugs like Castro, Chavez, Maduro or terrorists like Hamas and such. Tired of the world thriving under the protections that we provide yet constantly complaining about the way we do it. Tired of being criticized for not intervening when some human rights catastrophe occurs and then being criticized for intervening when we finally do. Tired of waiting for a nice big "thank you" from the world for Pax Americana.
I'm now fine with the US giving the finger to the rest of the ungrateful world, to retreat behind our ocean borders, and to watch the rest of the world tear itself apart. Good riddance.
I could not agree more, Mr Brooks If you don't take care of your neighborhood, it doesn't matter how lovely your house is, you will still live in a slum.
2
Hey, I don’t blame the young “ new doves “. They really don’t know better, and they came of age in the Bush Era. Well, really the Cheney Era, but we don’t talk about that any longer. As for the Trumpers, they are older, and should know better. But years of FOX news and Facebook “ information “ has warped their brains, and souls. Throw in “ religion “ and they are truly brainwashed, and soulless. I’m 60, and I take very good care of myself. I want to outlast them, that calms me and makes me smile.
Seriously.
1
Growing up in one of the Soviet Republics, I (and many of us) looked up to the US as the beacon of liberty and democracy, standing on the side of Good against the Evil Soviets.
It was a mirage. The US never cared about liberty of others. It cared that the Soviets threatened the ruling capitalist class. The US obviously had no qualms about cozying up to the Chinese (capitalist) communists, and only became somewhat concerned now that those Chinese communist capitalists started threatening US dominance in the world. The US response to Hong Kong ;protests right now is a nice demonstration.
The American primitive understanding of liberty was always synonymous with democracy. It isn't. Liberty requires an independent judiciary, a legal system that works, freedom from corruption, an educated electorate, freedom of speech, and a system that does not exclude any sections of society from participation. Democracy is just voting, which can be manipulated (e.g., Erdogan; Republicans) or bring a moron into the White House by an uneducated, dumb electorate.
American blunders in Vietnam and Iraq were caused by their ignorance and lack of understanding of what actually works in America.
I wish the US was a true beacon of liberty. Unfortunately, it is not, and people who fight for liberty around the world have nobody but themselves.
2
Peace after 1945. Give me break! Korea, Vietnam, coup of democratic leader in Iran in favor of a dictator, coup in Chile in favor of a dictator, support of the mujaheedin some of whom later become our enemies, suppprt of the contras using money from arms sales of Iran, then support of Saddam Hussein against Iran, then then a war against Saddam, then getting some Arabs angry for maintaining a presence in their holy land leading to 911. Then another war against Saddam Hussein under false pretenses destabilizing the whole middle East with ISIS in Iraq and Syria blowing up as a direct consequence of the Iraq war.
1
I would put Netanyahu up there as a serious enemy of civilization where you list Xi and Putin. There is absolute proof that he has promoted atrocities and he has even been indicted for corruption by his own government. Please don't leave him out of the international rogues gallery.
Americans are not patient people. They run for antibiotics as soon as they are sick. They demand the border be sealed to keep 'those people' out, and they think that threats from a bully will get every bad actor to fall into line without so much as having to put combat boots on. Well be careful what you wish for. Negotiating and setting standards for behavior and then helping other places to inch themselves toward that line is far more likely to change the world and keepo the peace then is sending troops and aircraft carriers over. And acting like our past cannot come back to haunt us as in ignoring the holocaust and allowing hatred toward other people to rule the day is a recipe for history repeating itself. The real question for me is do Americans need to see the past repeat itself to realize that what has been gained since 1945 is accomplishment and not failure. Or do we need to destroy Iran and spend years occupying that country to realize that Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, etc were mistakes. Not to be repeated. Pounding the round peg and trying to make it fit the square hole is a fool's errand.
2
How have things changed? Trump is drumming up a war with Iran...America, up the creek without a paddle.
Lack of information is the problem! Lack of understanding and lack of concern! In this day and age of a very fast news cycle and struggles to make the paycheck stretch as far as possible with 1, 2, 3 kids on todays salerys it is impossible to digetst enough news and develop an indepth understanding of the intracacies of international relations, finance, and world history. Unforetunately, without that base amount of knowledge an awareness how can anyone comprehend just how bad 43's decision to invade iraq was and the effects 15 years later on the rest of the west, the middle east, russia and china?? Understanding China and it's 100 year marathon is an even hard egg to crack, let alone North Korea and Putin! All of these issues dont fit into the 6 seond news cyle we are fed in this country! So whose to blame us???
1
Israel is the most destabilizing country in the world, not only in the Middle East, where they don't belong, but in the US by meddling in US elections.
1
So the bad times all ended in 1945 - followed by a couple of mistakes (Vietnam and Iraq)?!!! I'm sure that the people of Chile, Panama, Korea, Grenada, Kosovo, Dominican Republic, Somalia, and Afghanistan (to mention only some of the places where US troops have killed) would think otherwise.
I'm no pacifist, nor am I tired of a position of global leadership, but I tired of this kind of chest-thumping feel-good drivel about american exceptionalism. It's high time for us to live up to the moral expectations we have of others and act like one of many equals.
Instead we get grainy black-and-white film purporting to prove that yet another mid-east demon is some kind of existential threat to the US.
1
One could argue that David's Pax Americana is no different than the Imperial Roman Pax Romana in which forceful suppression maintained "order", and they would certainly not be wrong in their argument.
1
"many Americans have lost faith in human nature and human possibility"
What I have lost faith in is the idea that US military intervention can really help human rights challenges around the world. The history of American intervention, particularly in the middle east, has not been good. When has "bomb em" ever worked to help the situation?
I have also lost my willingness to spend more on our military than most of the rest of the world combined.
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Americans are having a rational reaction to the consequences of our malicious interference in the affairs of sovereign nations that Brooks calls “leadership.” We have started disastrous wars in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya that have destabilized those regions for the foreseeable future. We have installed military governments throughout Latin America, beginning with the overthrow of Allende in Chile that have initiated mass migrations from Central America. We have sold arms to countries (e.g., Saudi Arabia and Taiwan) that will use them to destabilize their regions in the Middle East and in Asia.
If American foreign policy were helpful to anyone—including Americans—more Americans would be supportive. Using the Marshall Plan as a model, we can and should be providing resources in Central America that would enable their people to stay home. We should stop the economic punishment and isolation of Cuba.
American foreign policy has been nothing but punitive for over 50 years. It does not deserve the support of American voters.
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Building a “younger, credible leadership class” requires investing in education. Equally important to a STEM curriculum is required coursework in government and international relations.
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It's not often that I find myself agreeing with or appreciating David Brooks. Today, however, his point is a powerful one. The dark spiral looks to set to speed us onward to a bad place. Those institutions like the UN and World Bank have ushered in a period of unprecedented human success. Extreme poverty has fallen to the lowest point in recorded human history. But today this extraordinary achievement has become ordinary. I am reminded of Margaret Atwood's Aunt Lydia from the Handmaiden's Tale who said “Ordinary is what you are used to. This may not seem ordinary to you now, but after a time it will. It will become ordinary.”
The international rules-based order has yielded tremendous successes, which are demonstrable with data. But, sadly, we live in a time of denial.
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I deal with young people every day. Your overall analysis of their views is fairly accurate -- they don't believe in intervention and US leadership. And they don't trust their government. They grew up with blatant lies about the rationale for intervening in Iraq; the absence of WMDs is ever present in their minds. But I don't think their views represent an absence of overall trust. They open their homes to strangers on AirBnB, they go on blind dates based on mobile phone apps, they take care of each other's cats and dogs etc. it's their government they don't trust. They believe in human rights but not the instrument that would deliver those rights - the government. I try to tell them we need to reform these institutions to put their values into practice but they're just terribly cynical. It doesn't help either that their history classes skip over the good the US has done in favor of an endless narrative of violence and oppression. A more balanced view of our history would really help them but that's way out of style today.
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Geez David we have convictions but we do not want endless wars.
Geography education and diplomacy with geology thrown in would suffice.
This article defies relevance in our political climate of chaos.
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As I see it, the turning point was the war in Iraq, where the US, under the guise (and I believe lie) of spreading democracy, started a war that may never end. It was a major mistake to try to "spread democracy" by ignorantly starting a war and invading a foreign country.
It was a mistake that didn't work and we're reluctant to make that mistake again. Perhaps our leaders no longer know how to lead.
We'll suffer from that for decades to come.
Meanwhile China is building trust around the world by diplomacy and assistance. We're becoming a second rate nation.
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@
I agreed with you up until the comment about China building trust. That's not what is actually happening. I'm not going to go into all the problems inherent in their Belt and Road initiative, but you can find out about them if you are interested.
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@Thomas What I didn't say but believe is that there's obligation built into that trust. It's very complicated.
@Bruce you are correct, but -
Actually Bruce & readers, the advent of distrust occurred in the 60's - lied to about reasons-legitimacy of the Vietnam Conflict - assasinations of MLK< 2 Kennedy's, other black leaders, and similarly US sponsored coups in both Americas and eastern Europe. The other wars based on lies more recently have been adequately discussed.
and It is Not just the Wars/lies -
since Nixon - it is the expected norm for nearly all politicians (certainly for GOP and Dem parties) --
to lie, gerrymander, deceive, and so on -
to the US Citizenry during election campaigns to 'rig' the votes secured-denied - then continue to Lie to the people about why promises made were not (able to be) delivered.
The Reality is that we are now an Oligarchy presenting itself as a democratic-Republic.
Capitalism and Lies Rule.
you are suggesting that without American intervention, the political reality is chaos and bloodshed. It begs this question : how long do we spend blood and treasure until we have to give it up? 10 years ? 100 years? a thousand? We are being attacked and resented for our 'policing" the world. We also have our own self serving reasons for doing so but they are starting to wear thin.
If we want to continue to stopgap mankind's predilection to slaughter each other, we need to accept that it is never ending, increasingly expensive and will shower us with more violence and hatred from hostile powers into perpetuity.
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@john lunn
American leadership and established values have saved us from the 70million deaths of WWII and the 16Million deaths of WWI. No we are not perfect, but the Western concept of ethical thinking and fairness and human rights, should influence the course of human direction. If not us who? It will be China. It is not the overblown problems with immigration or religious intolerance, it is the basic principles that we have insisted upon and which our Western allies agree with.
The lesson expressed is that we have not spent the treasure and blood that my father's generation paid, and we got the dividend. We can continue to get that dividend if we don't give up on the principles. We are not paying with the bloodshed of the past. We don't have to go to war with China (God knows we have leadership that is trying), but we do have to have the cultural will to make our system the standard, or better the amalgam of East and West.
What is the right way to "intervene in human rights abuses"?
Are there not people within these countries who oppose human rights abuses and are obligated to act? Why is it always our troops who go in? And how successful are our efforts?
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Any post-WWII analysis of world affairs that fails to mention the cold war is incomplete. It drove US policy more than anything else from 1945 to the 1990s, resulted in the conflicts in Korea and Vietnam, was a factor in numerous other diplomatic issues (support for questionable regimes, assassinations, election interference, coups), and provided US leaders with an easily understood enemy which enabled them to garner support from voters for their actions. In fact, since the demise of communism in the former USSR and its allies in Europe, US policy has been wandering, indecisive, and murky.
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Prospects for the spread of democracy and freedom across the world, particularly American leadership in this project?
I have little hope for spread of democracy and freedom around the world, and not even America as an example of such for one overwhelming reason: In even the freest nations the strategy and mindset among the people is one of not counter entrapment thinking but how to entrap people, contain them, control them mentally and physically. And I'm ashamed to admit that too much of my thinking is along these lines as well.
Not even the freest nations have the counter entrapment philosophy of a Houdini, a safecracker, a Kafka or Orwell or a Papillon. In even the freest nations we have rather this or that political ideology, this or that sport in which object is to win, control the field, this or that business whose purpose is to bring customers under its brand, in short in even the freest societies we live entrapment philosophy rather than have design of system which defeats entrapment.
Of course many will argue that the very games of entrapment train the mind to break free of shackles, but it sure doesn't look like training; it looks more like Alcatraz determined to not even have the myth of possible escape. In school certainly tests are not given to see if you can break entirely out of the mold but designed to see if you can fulfill a predetermined purpose, and the tests are made more complicated only to discourage you from attempt at escape.
Papillon.
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Is China or Russia or Iran or North Korea or Venezuela dropping bombs and drones in 7 other countries right now? Have any of these countries conducted shooting military operations in 14 or so other countries in the past several years? Was it Iran and Russia that chose to end treaties/hard negotiated nuclear deals over the past year or so? Which of these "rogue nations" invaded a country half way around the world in the recent past after lying about it's reasons for doing so? Which of these countries has been involved in one or more shooting wars since 2001? What in fact is a "rogue" nation? Has Brooks finally lost touch with all reality?
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@Mike1968
Brooks is an American Exceptionalist. He's unaware that his intellectual cache has no credibility with those who have jettisoned American Exceptionalism.
A strange column. Were American interventions across Latin America, and the middle east successful in creating this golden age you speak of? Did overthrowing the elected leader of Iran work out well?
Is this golden age actually to be attributed to American actions, or is it more a result of European fatigue of ware and the steps towards creating the EU?
Our leadership seems to have done well in post war Japan, and perhaps Korea and Vietnam were necessary pushes against dictatorships.
To write this while not mentioning all the problems created by our foreign policy, however, seems disingenuous at best.
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Not so sure about your "causes" but absolutely agree with the effects. An insular world view given China, Russia and actors in the middle east is destructive to American interests and ultimately to Americans.
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Unfortunately we are too powerful an empire for our own good. If we are to survive we need leaders like Washington, Lincoln, Teddy, FDR, and Eisenhower. People of that ilk come along all too seldom to keep the US moving ahead. Chris Hedges, as dark as he is at time, is right in that the US empire is in decline. We are not educated, involved, informed enough as citizens to keep our country, our democracy (plutocracy) safe. We don't have the ability to be critical thinkers. It is obvious when too many let hate radio and people like Trump do their bidding for them.
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Two parts: calling the policy a "liberal international order" gets an immediate NO from conservatives when it may be more appropriate to call it an attempt to help democracy. Second, the average American cannot connect the dots. Helping democracy and success of other countries helps people in their own countries with two unintended consequences: they don't have such an urge to come to the US and reduces resentment towards the US. That resentment is what makes terrorists.
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Fine sentiments but sorely lacking in details. Short of actual warfare, trade seems to be our only weapon. Is David Brooks supporting trade sanctions or not? Certainly our lofty ideals have no impact on the dictators of the world.
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Perhaps, but voters on the left & right have different reasons for doing so. On the left, it's because they think the government has spent too much life and treasure fixing international problems without paying quite as much attention home. On the right, they just think that helping anyone else at all is money lost.
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The young are realizing the fact that the US preaches a phony democracy while consolidating power in the hands of a small minority of capitalists. Capitalism is anti-democratic and the young, enslaved in student loan debt are not buying into capitalist propaganda. The youth, who are the future may be smarter than the marketing minds of consumerism predict. The wholesale destruction of the environment is unsustainable, and the young people recognize it. They will have to pay the price for the boomers failures.
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