December 17, 2024
Against imagined isolationism, outgoing Senate Republican leaders are advocating a return to Cold War militarism.
One of the characteristics of American elder statesmanship is that even when old and ill leaders retire from public office, they do not actually relinquish power. They remain dominant figures in Washington and continue to use their historical position to shape events. Nancy Pelosi is expected to retire from Democratic House leadership in 2022 at the age of 82 (and is). Currently recovering from hip replacement surgery (after a fall in Luxembourg over the weekend) She was busy working on the phone before she got injured. This is to prevent Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez from becoming the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee. Similarly, Mitch McConnell, 82, is said to have retired as Senate Republican leader. He is also prone to health concerns.He sees a rise in isolationism in both major political parties, including a recent fall that left him with a concussion, and he’s actively trying to become an elder statesman championing traditional Republican foreign policy hawks. We are making progress.
On Monday, McConnell announced: long essay in Foreign affairsthe traditional organ of America’s national security establishment, warns of the “cost of American withdrawal.” Because the article contains criticism of right-wingers who are skeptical about continuing military aid to Ukraine, mainstream media has framed it as presenting a principled Republican alternative to Trumpism. . According to Axios“Mr. McConnell is signaling to Mr. Trump, and to the entire Republican Party, that he intends to be an active combatant in the impending Republican civil war over foreign policy.” Axios had explained before McConnell is the leader of the Republican Senate resistance movement against Trump. of independent have single McConnell said he was “one of the few Republicans to criticize Trump these days, even as most of the party remains aligned.” McConnell’s alleged condemnation of Trumpism earned bipartisan praiseboth are advertised republican party and Democratic Party.
It would be pure insanity if Democrats allowed McConnell to become the face of the anti-Trump resistance movement, following in the footsteps of Dick Cheney and Liz Cheney, who were supported by party elites in recent elections. . If that happens, we might as well surrender, because the militancy and imperialism of Republican hawks is even more dangerous than Trumpism.
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Progressive analysts Nancy O’Keir and Matt Das also contributed. Foreign affairs, accused Joe Biden and Donald Trump said they have a “foreign policy of nostalgia.” The same criticism applies even more to McConnell. He offers a fantastical vision of a return to the unbridled militarism of the early Cold War in the 1950s and 1960s, when the United States faced off against the Soviet Union, China, and anti-colonialism. There are rebellions all over the world.
The great fantasy of the original Cold Warriors is that the threat comes from a monolithic international communism, which is a contradiction in terms to the fact that the Soviet Union and China have very different ambitions and are, in fact, in frequent conflict. It was always meant to be ignored by the United States. Mr. McConnell has a similarly short-sighted worldview, saying that Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea “have been working hard to undermine the U.S.-led order that has underpinned peace and prosperity in the West for nearly a century.” We are working more closely together than ever before.” What Mr. McConnell has not bothered to think deeply about is the fact that, to the extent this is true, it is because the United States has chosen to surround these countries with sanctions and regional alliance systems such as NATO (Europe) and the Abraham Accords. ARU (Middle East) and AUKUS (Asia). The United States’ assertion of superiority in all aspects has brought previously hostile nations (particularly Russia and China) closer together.
Like Biden and Trump, McConnell speaks the language of the last century and the fantasy of unchecked American hegemony. It’s no coincidence that Mr. McConnell evokes the “arsenal of democracy” and the bipartisan military Keynesian program that powered decades of domestic economic growth.
Equally strange is McConnell’s division between isolationists who want to retreat and internationalists who support America’s global efforts. This framework itself is reminiscent of years of attempts by Cold War centrists (both liberals and conservatives) to steal the historical courage of Roosevelt-era antifascism for a permanent American militaristic policy. .
Sadly, there is little true isolationism in Donald Trump’s Republican Party, from the nomination of the ultra-hawkish Marco Rubio as Secretary of State to the bellicose attitude that characterized Trump’s first term in office. I also understand.
In fact, as McConnell acknowledges, the so-called isolationism of the “America First” Trumpists is actually a policy of pivoting to Asia to contain China. The desire by some (though by no means all) Trump advisers to reduce the Russia-Ukraine war is aimed at gathering resources to build an anti-China alliance.
There is much to criticize about this Asia-focused policy, but at least it is based on the pragmatic view that the United States has limited resources and must therefore choose its battles. This strategy is an heir to the conservative realism of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, who argued that it was more profitable to pit Russia and China against each other, but to continue to pretend that an international communist alliance existed. I realized that it was stupid. McConnell, by contrast, sounds like a blinkered Cold Warrior in his late manner. national review Editor James Burnham not only continued to fight the Vietnam War, but also rejected détente with the Soviet Union and Nixon’s opening to China.
A policy of taking on all rival nations made little sense in the early 1970s, but in 2024, when the rise of China made it more difficult to maintain America’s claim to global primacy. It’s completely a delusion.
The Cold War analogy is apt, since Mr. McConnell literally wants the United States to return to Cold War-era spending levels. in Foreign affairsMcConnell said.
In 2018, the National Defense Strategy Board, a bipartisan group of defense experts established by Congress, found that maintaining U.S. military superiority requires sustained real growth in the defense budget between 3% and 5%. He emphasized that there is. Noting the worsening threat, the committee called the scope “marginal” and said it would be large enough by 2024 to “support an effort commensurate with the U.S. national effort seen during the Cold War.” advocated a budget of
To put this proposal into perspective, the United States currently (as McConnell points out) spends 3 percent of its GDP on military spending. During the Korean War, the percentage was 13.8%, and during the Vietnam War, it was 9.1%. This means that the military budget would have to increase three to four times its current level to return to Cold War spending levels.
Do Americans really want a return to the Cold War era? By promising to end stupid wars, Barack Obama won the largest majority in American presidential politics in recent history. In both the 2016 and 2024 elections, Donald Trump gained significant support by presenting himself as an anti-war candidate whose rivals were warmongers—and his victories in both elections were likely decisive. Ta–.
Trump’s pitch was cynical, of course, but Democrats like Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris (who inherited Biden’s foreign policy) actually supported the highly unpopular military. It was also effective because he was too attached to his principles. His anti-war position is a sham, and he embraces his own unstable and erratic kind of militarism.
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But to make this case, Democrats need to restore the party’s antiwar sentiment. The danger is that too many party leaders will repeat the failed strategy of supporting the Cheney family and the national security establishment, leaving Mitch McConnell as the leading foreign policy opponent of Trump. If that happens, the Democratic Party will once again be held back by its inability to shake off the illusion of an aging society that refuses to accept that the world has changed.
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