I wrote something a while back – a pretty sad piece, actually – where I recalled thinking America was the capital of the world. No one had told me so. I hadn’t read it in a book or heard it in a song or anything. It just seemed logical: areas and their capitals seemed to scale up in concentric circles, so that my city had a city hall, and my territory had a city, and my country had a territory…I was pretty certain the world had a capital country, and that the capital of the world was the United States.
As I grew up and learned more and more I learned about the country, the more sense it made that this was the case. The United States military was the most powerful on earth. Its economy was the largest. When kids in other countries were singing foreign songs, they weren’t singing French songs or Norwegian songs or South African songs. No, more often than not they were singing American songs: pop, rock, gospel…American.
The moral code that the world followed seemed inextricably American, and the quintessentially American truth, that “all men are (for the most part) created equal,” and granted “the inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” was the standard by which we judged all other countries’ moral codes. Add to that other standard American fare the world seemed to inhale, like McDonald’s, rap, basketball, Cowboys, Spring Break, the Marines, broad themes like “freedom,” “hope,” and you’ve essentially painted the American flag by numbers. Even Christianity seemed American – to the extent that it was no longer British – and how couldn’t God’s own country be the capital of the world?
More than being the center of the world, though, was America’s obvious leadership of the world. In a 1951 ALA bulletin article called “The United Nations: And American Leadership in the World Crisis,” Walter C. Laves wrote that the “Heritage of the U.S.A. in Times of Crisis” was an especially important subject to all the peoples of the United Nations “when one considers the intimate relation between the values and ideals of the American heritage and those which underlay the United Nations community as they are expressed in the United Nations Charter.”
Hugh White summarized this, in the Atlantic last November, much better than I can: “In the early 1990s America’s economy pulled out of a sharp recession, the stunning success of Operation Desert Storm renewed American faith in its armed forces, and the seemingly universal appeal of America’s values and ideals appeared vindicated by the swift spread of liberal democracy and market economics in lands liberated from communism. By the middle of the decade it seemed — not just to Americans, but to others all around the world — that America had achieved a remarkable and indeed unprecedented position at the apex of the global order. The country appeared poised to exercise an unchallenged, benevolent global leadership based on American values, democratic politics, and open markets.”
The idea of American indispensability has not not only been accepted by other nations…it has been promoted. Presidents of France and Chancellors of Germany have spoken openly about the need for US leadership in the world. Arab citizens call on the United States – on camera – to come to their land and step into one situation or the other, and respond with curses and flames when America does nothing. West African politicians threaten each other with invitations to the United States to investigate some crime or criminality on the part of their rivals.
Where one would expect the nations of the world to reinforce their own sovereignty and trumpet their own seat at the big-boy table, many seem content to toe the line in an American-led Western-centric world order that cedes real decision-making power on international agreements and disputes to the United States of America.
The nations of the world embraced American leadership for all its benefits. Partnership with the United States risked few enemies, brought alignment with large consumer markets and free trade agreements, and – quite frankly – was more fun. Why stand your ground in your oppressive communist regime when you can open up the channels to Britney Spears, spaghetti westerns, and the NBA? Thinking through the countries I’ve visited, while politicians have thought of Western alignment as advantageous, their people have just thought of it as cool, from Japanese b-boys to Congolese rappers.
The general response from America? “Long may it continue.”
Perhaps no one is quicker to that response than your average Republican. With its trademark penchant for befuddlement, the Republican party is all at once insular and protectionist while also arrogant and insistent on the United States’ place as the leader of the free world, and the imposer of order. Even moderate Republicans have threatened war with an astonishing number of countries for interests that are not always super-easy to discern. Lord knows where the more hawkish in their quarter would have us by not but for the grace of God. While Americans in general have long embraced the idea of American world leadership, Republicans have worn it like a badge of honor. According to Pew Research last month, Republicans are more likely than Democrats to assert that the United States “stands above other nations.”
American Exceptionalism is – or at least it was – fiercely protected, too. During the Obama years, especially, any perceived shirking of global responsibility was frowned upon, and ANY action that made the US seem anything less than Lord of All was met with much pearl-clutching. Remember the reaction to President Obama bowing to the Emperor of Japan? Conservatives decried the show of respect as not only against State Department protocols, but also against American stand-above-all-ism. Policitical Pistachio called Barack Obama’s bow to Emperor Akihito “treasonous.”
When Obama didn’t attack Syria following Bashir al Assad’s use of chemical weapons on his people, and his crossing of the red-line, we were told that the United States would be seen as weak. That dictators all over the world would unleash Armageddon because they now saw that the man in the White House was no man at all, and that America was no longer a super power. During the 2016 presidential campaign, candidates like Chris Christie called Barack Obama everything from feckless to a petulant child. When Obama made the mistake of saying the United States was the most respected country in the world, in 2015, it was all Fox News could do to hold back the perpetual ecstasy it seemed to derive from an American decline under Obama.
Conrad Black wrote in the National Review of how the US had lost the world’s respect, a pretty bold statement to make especially when based on little more than other countries deciding to do what they want rather than checking in with the United States every step of the way. Perhaps my favorite article of all on the general subject is one by Raghida Dergham in the Huffington Post, in which she describes how America has punished Obama for his weakness. As Chris Christie said, “The first thing we need to do to make America stronger is to strengthen our military…Those are the kinds of things that are going to send a clear message around the world.” (More on that “Republican manifesto” here…)
Though all evidence points to enhanced American standing in the world under Barack Obama, the potential weakness suggested the former President’s unwillingness to bomb things or commit Ameerican troops or tell other countries what to do was perhaps his greatest sin. Racist undertones and domestic manufacturing woes aside, a huge part of me feels that this, too, is what a large number of Americans meant when they flew flags, banners, and caps in support of making American “great again.” They meant “take shit from no one,” “drop bombs if they ask too many questions,” “Amerikuuuuuuh!” exceptionalism that is about as American as baseball, apple pie, and certain strains of freedom. American the beautiful, and the great. It’s intoxicating, and I kind of get it.
Which is why I’m so confused by Republican silence – and even acquiescence – in the face of new, ACTUAL decline of American standing in the world.
Don’t get me wrong…I personally have no love lost for the glory days of answer-to-no-one dominance. I’m an America-Firster myself, long believing that any sort of world order is probably best formed from a collection of self-interested nations whose long-term self-interests align. This would see the countries of the “West” largely play together as partners, not as followers of one alpha. Responsibility would be shared, as would risk and expense, and specific roles or positioning would be less important than outcomes.
But I’m also a big fan of consistency, and hypocrisy gives me headaches. It’s very hard to watch a party I should be proud of bend itself into all sorts of excuses and explanations as America’s standing in the world falls under a president they’ll back on anything from media attacks to daft economic policy and a healthcare policy that is essentially “undo whatever Obama did.”
And now Republicans, long the defenders of American honor, now have nothing to say to protect America’s “rightful place in the world. Suddenly, they are the America First party, content to stand by, as America’s role as leader of the free world falls into doubt, just 6 months into this most recent Republican presidency. Where they railed against Obama’s slight head movements in front of the Saudi King, they are suddenly okay Donald Trump’s praise and adulation of Vladimir Putin, our long-time antagonist. Where Obama was seen as hopelessly weak for negotiating with Iran, Donald Trump is allowed to say he’d be “honored” to meet with North Korea’s Kim Jung Un, an actual petulant child.
The power of the White House, and everything it should represent, is being called into strong question from both inside and outside US borders, and from friend and foe alike. And where Conservatives theorized about PERCEIVED loss of American influence, I heard no meaningful response when the European Commission president – in full condescension mode – narrated to a laughing audience how he tried to explain to the President of the United States how laws work. “We tried to explain to Mr. Trump in Taormina in clear German sentences…but it seems our attempt failed.” “Mr. Trump…doesn’t get close enough to the dossiers to understand them.” It was Mr. Trump the whole time. Never President. Just Mr. Has a sitting US president ever been so roundly mocked?
Regarding the president’s visit to Saudi Arabia, Fareed Zakaria posited that “Mr. Trump got played,” and I have to say the argument is pretty persuasive, complete with awkward pictures of hands on a glowing orb. When the White House Press Secretary was questioned on the official reaction to the visit, and whether the Presidency considered Mr. Trump’s first international trip as president a success, he used words like “historic,” which I guess can be accurate in that he’s the president and the trip happened, but is also completely ignorant of the world’s mood following the visit.
And where the Republican manifesto during campaign season was unflinching American might and support of our allies, the starboard side of the American ship is pretty mum on Angela Merkel’s summation of Trump’s visit: ““The times in which we could completely depend on others are, to a certain extent, over,” “I’ve experienced that in the last few days. We Europeans truly have to take our fate into our own hands.”
The statements of politicians on the campaign trail can be waved away, but perhaps not as easily if the majority agrees with them. A recent Gallup poll showed that 57% Americans believe the world views the US unfavorably than favorably, the worst performance for the US on that question in a decade. And where 29% of respondents said that world leaders respected Donald Trump, 67% said the same of Obama in 2009. Even John McCain, he of the bomb-all-comers foreign policy 8 years ago, believes that the US’ standing in the global order was better under Barack Obama than it is under President Trump.
I don’t quite know how to explain this difference in response. A friend (and frequent proof-reader) who read the sections preceding this paragraph told me it was obviously racism: the right would rather see the country burn under a white man than thrive under a black one. With all due respect, I’m going to decline that angle. Racism is undeniable, but I don’t know that it’s the answer to everything. Republicans have been no kinder to Bill Clinton or Hillary Clinton or to Bernie Sanders than they’ve been to Barack Obama.
I think the more honest answer is that the Republican party is lost, and is no longer sure what it stands for. The reliable bastion of fiscal conservatism is now forced to carry torch on a budget that includes $21B+ for a wall, and on a tax plan which will widen the deficit by trillions over the next decade. The party that wanted a much tougher stance on Russia now has to defend a president whose views on Russia range from complacency to suspicious admiration. The defender of the church and family values is now the party led by P*ssy McGrabberton, he of the Moscow sexcapades and third marriages.
Other potential explanations include Republicans never really caring about any of the stuff they said they cared about – and instead just being a savvy political machine that pandered to the sentiments of a nostalgic middle America that really and earnestly just wants America to be great in the traditional ways of American greatness: the presence of opportunity internally and the command of global respect externally – and the Republican party being manipulated by a master craftsman at the unwitting peak of his bewildering powers.
Whichever the answer, we should all be sad for the party of Lincoln. Without a credible voice for certain American values to check the advancement of others, we risk a country skewed too far to one side too quickly. If swathes of the country feel under-represented now, how much worse will it get when people simply stop taking their party seriously, and the significantly older demographic that makes up the Republican right starts to expire? I personally would prefer a Republican party whose motivations were easy to discern, and whose ideals were consistent. If the alarm bells were tinkling under the Obama presidency, the foghorns should be absolutely blaring under this Trump one.