WHAT A BEAUTIFUL WORLD THIS WILL BE, WHAT A GLORIOUS TIME TO BE FREE

Francis Fukuyama postulated that the breakup of the Soviet Union signaled “the end of history.”  History, of course, had other ideas.

In the three decades since the old world order disintegrated, a lot of different poop has hit a lot of different propellers.  It’s hard to see patterns that make sense.  But hey, the internet is full of folks (including me) who’ll see patterns for you, or impose them where none exist if necessary. 

It’s not exactly pattern recognition, but Bill Kristol recently noted an interesting historical coincidence on two Christmases, thirty years apart.  On Christmas Day in 1989, shortly after the Berlin Wall was first breached, Leonard Bernstein played a free concert at the Brandenburg Gate.  On Christmas Day, 2019, Li Wenliang, a doctor in Wuhan, China, told reporters about a new and mysterious disease he’d encountered.  (Characteristically, he was reprimanded by political authorities for rumormongering, and died a short time later, ostensibly from the virus.)

Kristol argues that those two events, exactly thirty years apart, can be viewed as the beginning and the end of an interregnum, a period between two eras, when the world order was in flux.  I like using Christmas as a framing device (especially now that it’s legal to use the word “Christmas”), and I don’t mind the interregnum concept.  I just don’t see that it’s over.  What’s the new pecking order?  Who’s the new boss?  Same as the old boss? 

I guess we were the old boss, or at least we thought we were.  Since the end of World War II, through 13 different presidents, in war and in peace, in good times and bad, we’ve clung to a sense of American exceptionalism.  We’re different.  We’re better.  Just ask Hitler, Tojo, and Gorbachev.  (Pay no attention to that Ho Chi Minh fellow.  Nobody likes him anyway.)

In his inaugural address, President Kennedy said, “we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty."  It sounded good at the time, but when we moved from theory to practice, things didn’t work out quite as expected.  Kennedy sent a few military advisors to Southeast Asia.  What could go wrong?

Quite a lot, as it turned out.  Southeast Asia became a killing field, with a death toll that eventually exceeded 3 million people.  By 1970, Richard Nixon was president, and he was worried.  Not about the death toll.  No, he worried that America was turning into “a pitiful, helpless giant.”  If we refused to fight tyranny, he said, “the forces of totalitarianism and anarchy will threaten free nations and free institutions throughout the world.” 

Fighting tyranny sounds nice.  I wish we knew how to do it.

Americans have many virtues, but we are a restless people with a combative streak.  Humility and restraint are not our long suits.  We read in our Bibles about David and Goliath, and we identify with David, the plucky underdog with God on his side.  But we usually act like Goliath. 

Our futile attempts at nation-building in the Middle East were typical Goliath moves.  And while we were thrashing about ineffectually, Vladimir Putin was doing some nation building of his own.  With the help of the Russian maffiya, he rebuilt Russia from a failed state into a successful transnational crime syndicate.

One theory about the collapse of the Soviet Union is that they bankrupted themselves trying to keep up with us militarily.  If this is true, it’s ironic.  Our vaunted military superiority has become less and less useful in protecting us from 21st century threats.  Sure, America can still win battles, assuming we can find anyone willing to fight us.  But those who wish us ill have learned that they no longer need to defeat us on battlefield.  Hackers are cheaper than soldiers, and more effective – at least against us. 

Give Putin credit.  Instead of trying to out-Goliath us, and decided to be David.  He invested relatively small sums in bribing and blackmailing western politicians, and in planting disinformation on social media platforms.  And he hit the jackpot.  First Brexit, and then Trump.  The EU is coming apart, Trump is dismantling our civilian and military national security apparatus, and leaders of our former allies are laughing at us.  All we needed was a plague, right?

Now who looks like a failed state?  Fifty years after Richard Nixon first uttered the phrase, Donald Trump is doing his best to turn us into a pitiful, helpless giant. 

We’ll learn whether the condition is permanent on November 3.  I don’t care so much about regaining giant status, but it would be nice not to be pitiful and helpless.  Right now, though, I’m just amazed at how far and how fast we’ve fallen.