Those words appear at the end of a very pointed column in today’s New York Times by Roger Cohen. The title of the column is ‘America First’ Has Not Upended the World. Except It Has.
Put simply, you should read it.
Cohen’s expertise has been foreign affairs.
He spent years covering the topic for the International Herald Tribune before he came to the Times.
He is a superb writer.
It is hard to extract from this column, in part because it is so tightly written.
Consider. After going through how Mattis and McMaster have to some degree reigned in the worst of this President to try to keep our actions internationally somewhat sane, we encounter the following:
Adults have taken charge. There is still a lot of noise, but “America First” has not upended the world.
Except that it has. A disaster is unfolding whose consequences for humanity and decency will be devastating.
Then comes an extremely pointed paragraph:
The United States under Trump has embarked on a valueless foreign policy. The president has not met a strongman whose machismo does not beguile him. He prefers guns to diplomats. Militarism and mercantilism constitute a new policy, unconstrained by any consideration of what the United States stands for in the world or the values its alliances have defended since 1945.
Yet Cohen has not yet get as pointed and as critical as he will.
Those words are followed by these:
This is a radical departure. America is also an idea. That idea is inextricable — whatever the country’s conspicuous failings — from the defense of liberty, democracy, human rights, open societies and the rule of law. Realist, neoconservative and liberal internationalist schools have different interpretations of how this may be achieved, and what limits exist on America’s capacity to extend the reach of freedom. But the unblushing, public embrace of the torturer for mutual gain does not appear in any pre-Trump foreign policy manual I know.
It is the notion of America as an idea is key to understanding the umbrage, the criticism that Cohen offers.
He goes through in detail Trump’s playing around with autocrats and dictators, and then offers another paragraph that places all of that in context:
The message is clear: The United States has granted carte blanche for despots. Whatever brutality Trump’s autocrat-friends inflict on human beings, whatever contempt they have for a free press or the rule of law, is no longer an American concern. Of course, the United States has allied with ruthless strongmen before; Stalin was one. But Trump’s moral abdication, divorced from any coherent strategic objective, has ushered America into new territory. This is not effective foreign policy realism; it is a form of depravity.
a form of depravit OUCH.
Cohen criticizes how this President has used or threatened to use his military, noting that the actions towards North Korea have been simultaneously dangerous and ineffective, then writing
What matters to this president is the news cycle, not strategy or principle.
The effect has been quite damaging, as can be seen in both France and Germany, the two most important “allies” on the European continent, or that should be (since Trump seems to be more inclined in the direction of Putin’s Russia).
Cohen covered Bosnia. He offers some words from a foreign service officer whose name you might recognize, because although Cohen does not tell us, that Foreign Service officer, Ron Neitzke, resigned on principle. These are the words from Neitzke that Cohen share:
“One must, in essence, be guided by the belief that a policy fundamentally at odds with our national conscience cannot endure indefinitely — if that conscience is well and truthfully informed.”
Cohen is writing in the context of American’ foreign policy. The final words of his column, some of which I shared in my title, are, however, equally applicable to much of what we see in Trump’s policies here at home as well.
Here are those final wors:
What Trump is attempting is no less than the destruction of America’s “national conscience.” This must be resisted by all means.
Indeed.
Despite our flaws as a nation, for much of our history we have been a beacon for others, which is why so many wanted to come here. We have been generous to others with disaster relief, with the Marshall plan. We have provided a model with our Bill of Rights, even as inconsistently as we have at times applied them. If there is any value to the notion of American Exceptionalism, it is found in things like these, not the bluster we are now seeing.
As to what we are now seeing, Cohen is right — “This must be resisted by all means.”
RESIST!
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