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Eric Edelman on Restoring American Leadership in the World
The Hertog Scholar at the Center for Strategic Studies, Eric Edelman has had a distinguished career in government, having served as ambassador to Turkey and to Finland, and as Under Secretary of Defense for Policy in the George W. Bush administration. In this Conversation, Edelman reflects on increasing threats to the U.S.-led international order and considers the dangerous consequences of a continued decline in America’s geopolitical position and influence. Edelman also shares his perspective on how America can strengthen its resolve and commitment to lead in the world.
Published in General
This is a very good review of the post war order, the continuing need for US leadership and some important observations about how such leadership has to be “cultivated” but the reasons the post war order was constructed no longer exist.
Europe and Asia are not war torn and impoverished. Trade with each other and the US financed by the US rebuilt their economies making them dynamically competitive. China followed Japan, South Korea and other Asians to grow by export led growth, picking off products successfully commercialized by the US. The US economy isn’t big enough and their’s are too big for us to continue to be the motor for their export led development. They like, Europe have to look at their own consumers for the development dynamism.
GATT which set out to undo the protectionism that helped send the world economy into the great depression was gradually replaced by the WTO and which was eroded by bilateral and regional trade deals that don’t play the same role and loss of US leadership.
The IMF, created to prevent trade restrictions imposed by countries defending fixed exchange rates never really played that role, and fixed exchange rates ended in the seventies. The dollar still plays that role sufficiently that it can’t devalue to adjust it’s trade balances.
The World Bank, after more than half a century of efforts to find a development role that actually helped economic development never found that role because development comes from domestic policy and indigenous cultural factors, not from foreign assistance, but it and the regional banks bought loyalty to the system that enhanced US influence needed in the cold war.
NATO played its role successfully as part of the US containment policy and has yet to find a new role because the U.S has not.
When the Soviet Union collapsed the post war order needed to reboot but GHW Bush wasn’t into that “vision” thing. Then we got Clinton who demonstrated that the world needs US leadership more than photo ops.
George Bush after Clinton’s 8 years of ignoring terrorism and deterioration in the middle east, was unwillingly plunged into a war on terror which he approached as if it were Europe where dangerous thugs could be destroyed and replaced by building representative governments. An expensive harmful fantasy that endures.
Then we got Obama who reminded us that if the US doesn’t lead from in front with some articulated purpose the world is an extremely dangerous place and tends to come apart. (cont)
So here we are still without defining our role in the world but beginning to recognize that we must lead. The world needs us but needs us in a different way than it did in the immediate post war world. While President Trump is an unlikely leader to articulate a new post cold war vision and role for the US, he is or can be a transitional leader. As President Trump deals presumably on an ad hoc but pragmatic way with the major issues of the day, I expect that it will be woven together by folks like our Secretaries of State and Defense, their staffs and new new foreign policy class of thinkers (once the anti Trump hysteria ends) into a new post cold war vision. This will require a new Democratic party to become the kind of bi partisan consensus we had in the post war world. If not under Trump, the next President will have to and if not him or her, then a far more dangerous world, led by China, will extract something from us, which will probably include war.
The neocon view from one of the 50 signers of a pre-election public letter* calling Donald Trump incompetent in foreign affairs, and an architect and apologist of the Bush foreign policy that thrilled the American electorate and has reaped such huge dividends for the country…such as the Obama Presidency.
From his interview with Wolf Blitzer on CNN in August, 2016 during the general election campaign:
In case you’ve forgotten, Trump’s opponent was Hillary Clinton.
“I used to be a Democrat,” said the ambassador during the Kristol interview. Why am I not surprised?
“Have we benefitted from this system? Yes.” says Ambassador Edelman.
You bet we have. How could all the connected courtiers in the Beltway enjoy the power, perks and riches of the Imperial City without the Empire? How could all those counties surrounding DC be so inordinately wealthy – and so heavily Democratic?
*strangely not mentioned in the 75 minutes.
It would probably help to reconnect foreign policy to the interests of the american people generally, and not think tank vulgar self-gratification.
I would seriously recommend a good read of Mearsheimer’s The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities as a good antidote to this neocon dribble of Edelman’s. Here’s a review.