I can’t like this post enough, JVL. Fumbling the bag when you are leading the most powerful nation in the history of the world is truly impressive. I don’t understand how people can’t see that soft power (spending money, exporting culture, etc) not only helped to end the Cold War, it’s going to help us beat China in this Great Power Comp…
I can’t like this post enough, JVL. Fumbling the bag when you are leading the most powerful nation in the history of the world is truly impressive. I don’t understand how people can’t see that soft power (spending money, exporting culture, etc) not only helped to end the Cold War, it’s going to help us beat China in this Great Power Competition. To me, this is the height of the ennui that Tom Nichols talks about so much. We are so bored with our wealth and success that we are willing to burn it all down senselessly. All to save PENNIES a year.
I do think the increased wealth disparity needs to be considered. I am not a communist, but it is fascinating that many people think that they will be financially better off if we become more like Russia. This is so very sad I would love to show Americans how real people in Russia live. There is a good reason why Russian soldiers going into Ukraine were looting toilets and fridges. Tucker Carlson in an elite metropolitan Russian grocery store is such an evil deception of gullible Americans. Maybe a few of our really crazy survivalist militia types think it would be great to live that way and think it would be “freedom”, but Putin knows what to do with those types. By the way Russians don’t get to have guns the way Americans do. America first most likely means a real decline in living standards for Americans and a loss of meaningful freedom, the problem is getting people to actually see this.
This is such an interesting article. What JVL proposes is consistent with the expressions of ambivalence that go along with being in an alliance with the US.
Yes re the ennui. Just want to support Nichols' excellent point: At the Principles First event, Mona talked with David French and Russell Moore - "Christianity in Crisis: Trump, Politics, and the Future of Faith." Mona said, "There was a good line in a piece by Pete Wehner in The Atlantic where he quoted a pastor, I think, who said, for a lot of these people [rabid, right-wing, evangelical Christians] Christianity is more of a hood ornament than a true faith. So what do you make of that? Is that what we're dealing with? Are these people, in a way, post-Christian?"
Moore responded: "I think that what is at the root of a lot of this is boredom. Yes! Yes! I think there is such an absence of genuine connection and genuine experience of transcendence in American life right now that people can get a kind of jolt. sort of an artificial simulation of life by hating people and lining up behind a political ideology" [https://www.thebulwark.com/p/christianity-in-crisis-trump-politics].
So, what we need is places of genuine connection. To me, that is accomplished only by face to face, recurring, local, community groups led by good and decent people who value the American values of the Declaration, specifically all men are created equal, all humans have inherent dignity.
I do understand it, I think. It's because the planning and application of soft power is invisible to most Americans. We see a few of the end results and the high-level view, but few of us have even been within 100 mi of a G-20 summit. We didn't see _how_ communism fell, we only saw _that_ it fell. So if someone comes to us and says we're doing it all wrong and that untrustworthy org over there is acting against our interests, they can sound pretty persuasive if you're already inclined to them.
I'd been working under that hypothesis for while, ignorant of Tom Nichols' work. However, in reading some of these comments I now suspect this is white patriarchy rearing it's ugly head (and I say that as a middle aged white guy).
Hey, JVL We do these things both because they enhance our power, and because we are NICE!
If nations didn't think we were nice, they would not find cooperating with us so easy to swallow. They would always be hoping for a way out. Instead, we find Sweden and Finland eager to join NATO.
Kathleen - let me say this as both an internationalist and as a guy who's spent the last 15+ years full time in international development.
I feel like I dropped the ball by NOT explaining more what JVL laid out here - that this post-WW2 order that includes the IMF, the World Bank, and NATO was not *JUST* done b/c the US is nice.
The people who designed this understood this was also very much in America's self-interest. Rebuilding Europe was the right thing - but it created trading partners, created political stability, and made more of the world in America's image.
That always seemed obvious to me.
Starting with Pat Buchanan, there was this revival of the isolationist and anti-Europe wing of the GOP.
Trump being Trump was able to create a powerful narrative. I don't mean "powerful" as in "compelling to me" or to you or to JVL. It was compelling to those who gave little thought to foreign affairs - who deeply distrusted Europe + the highly educated people who led the country and leading media outlets.
And people got it wrong when they sought to prove Trump as Manchurian Candidate - when he was Trump as Putin's Cat's Paw - a useful idiot manipulated by flattery, power and money.
Now I feel like we need to alert people to the threat of social-media-platform algorithms and the flood of disinformation out there supporting Trump and Putin.
MAD is not just an anachronism it’s Mutually Assured Destruction you can’t find economic waste there but it is a shame the Earth gives up so much in the making of it.
Think about it. America's leading position in the world dumps a whole extra load of concerns on the plate of the average American. I had an international friend who used to say, “You Americans are so insular.” I said, we have so much going on within our own country--50 different states—that it is hard to focus on 180 countries." I also said, “Maryland is the size of New Zealand. how much do you know about Maryland?”
I remember Buchanan's attacks on GHWB during the campaign - and as a Bush voter, I wondered why he did not energetically respond.
(And as we learned in retrospect, GHWB was diminished during the 92 campaign. The President didn't seem to respond to Buchanan or to challenges from Clinton and Perot the way he should have.
But I got off my point - was anyone better placed or equipped to respond to the dangers of isolationism and to explain the importance of the international system than GHWB?
I think this is important. We are self-interested, sure, but we also have some values that make our dominance a pretty good thing for our like-minded allies. It is better to prefer liberty to oppression, voting to coups, and life to violence. I want the US to live up to these values (more and more; it’s a mixed record to be sure), even if we sacrifice some advantage that a cold-hearted realist would find in extorting a neighbor, say.
Soft power is a complicated thing to explain to voters, and honestly I doubt more than 30% of voters can comprehend how soft power benefits them (that's being generous). It's a nebulous concept that takes decades of investment to pay dividends.
Everyone should understand that USAID is nice. The concept can be made into a slogan or a bumper sticker. A starving child, an HIV-positive baby, a pregnant woman in need of a hospital: none of these are abstractions. A dumb person can understand that these are bad outcomes that can be prevented with pennies of their tax dollars.
JVL says our voters are dumb, and I believe this to be a correct interpretation. But if they are dumb and mean, then I think we as a country are beyond redemption.
It’s just carrot and stick, simple at the base level, playground of atomic land mines for tramp to do that awful dance around the atomic mine field. JV you are a great writer.
A way to explain it could be that soft power, specifically exporting our culture, is what is has currently put China in that bind that it’s in. Currently, China faces a marriage and fertility scarcity. The reason is women are fighting for equality in both the personal and professional realm. That has put China in a precarious position geopolitically and put it behind the 8-ball in their competition for global hegemony with us.
I am not sure I believe that it cannot be explained to a group that is attracted to a mob-adjacent demagogue. I'm not convinced it cannot be explained to a part of the coalition that is engaged in business ownership.
Bill Gates had the best explanation for the work of the Gates Foundation in Africa. He said a lot of it had to with making sure he had future customers in the world's next expanding economy.
Here's how they could explain it. The best boss understands what needs to get done, but they have a calm and considerate way of communicating with people. a mean boss has hard power and nothing else. the best bosses have both the hard power to fire you and the soft power to support you.
Agree, Kathleen. Good management is two-headed. When I worked in the private sector, I got a lot of management training. I remember an x and y graph that explained good management of employees: The relationship is on one axis and the task to be done is on the other. You want both.
It's great this came up. I've tried to explain how in so many ways Trump falls short if viewed as a leader/manager.
A good leader:
Articulates visions that inspire his/her team
Listens and empathizes
Speaks truth - especially to power
Holds him/herself accountable
Credits others for the success of his/her team
Welcomes and even seeks out those who disagree with him/her
Plans several steps ahead
Challenges his/her core beliefs
Challenges the assumptions behind his decisions
Trump falls laughably short - EXCEPT on the vision piece - and in a very specific way.
He is excellent at reading his audience and selling them on something. The power of the Trump narrative - even if based on complete BS - boggles my mind.
Honestly, I don't even think we're doing it to save pennies a year.
I think if the MAGA base was asked, 'would you want to save the lives of 20 million Africans from dying of AIDS at absolutely zero cost to you, yes or no?' they would say 'no'. They see the deaths as a good thing. Less of them, more of us.
Saving pennies is the excuse they can use to avoid having to acknowledge in public that they see PEPFAR as a failure *because* it saved so many lives, not in spite of it.
I can’t like this post enough, JVL. Fumbling the bag when you are leading the most powerful nation in the history of the world is truly impressive. I don’t understand how people can’t see that soft power (spending money, exporting culture, etc) not only helped to end the Cold War, it’s going to help us beat China in this Great Power Competition. To me, this is the height of the ennui that Tom Nichols talks about so much. We are so bored with our wealth and success that we are willing to burn it all down senselessly. All to save PENNIES a year.
I do think the increased wealth disparity needs to be considered. I am not a communist, but it is fascinating that many people think that they will be financially better off if we become more like Russia. This is so very sad I would love to show Americans how real people in Russia live. There is a good reason why Russian soldiers going into Ukraine were looting toilets and fridges. Tucker Carlson in an elite metropolitan Russian grocery store is such an evil deception of gullible Americans. Maybe a few of our really crazy survivalist militia types think it would be great to live that way and think it would be “freedom”, but Putin knows what to do with those types. By the way Russians don’t get to have guns the way Americans do. America first most likely means a real decline in living standards for Americans and a loss of meaningful freedom, the problem is getting people to actually see this.
"Russians don't get to have guns the way Americans do".
This could end up being Trump's fatal miscalculation.
This is such an interesting article. What JVL proposes is consistent with the expressions of ambivalence that go along with being in an alliance with the US.
Yes re the ennui. Just want to support Nichols' excellent point: At the Principles First event, Mona talked with David French and Russell Moore - "Christianity in Crisis: Trump, Politics, and the Future of Faith." Mona said, "There was a good line in a piece by Pete Wehner in The Atlantic where he quoted a pastor, I think, who said, for a lot of these people [rabid, right-wing, evangelical Christians] Christianity is more of a hood ornament than a true faith. So what do you make of that? Is that what we're dealing with? Are these people, in a way, post-Christian?"
Moore responded: "I think that what is at the root of a lot of this is boredom. Yes! Yes! I think there is such an absence of genuine connection and genuine experience of transcendence in American life right now that people can get a kind of jolt. sort of an artificial simulation of life by hating people and lining up behind a political ideology" [https://www.thebulwark.com/p/christianity-in-crisis-trump-politics].
So, what we need is places of genuine connection. To me, that is accomplished only by face to face, recurring, local, community groups led by good and decent people who value the American values of the Declaration, specifically all men are created equal, all humans have inherent dignity.
I do understand it, I think. It's because the planning and application of soft power is invisible to most Americans. We see a few of the end results and the high-level view, but few of us have even been within 100 mi of a G-20 summit. We didn't see _how_ communism fell, we only saw _that_ it fell. So if someone comes to us and says we're doing it all wrong and that untrustworthy org over there is acting against our interests, they can sound pretty persuasive if you're already inclined to them.
Life is boring now. We need cause trouble. It might be fun!
I'd been working under that hypothesis for while, ignorant of Tom Nichols' work. However, in reading some of these comments I now suspect this is white patriarchy rearing it's ugly head (and I say that as a middle aged white guy).
Rearing? Why do you think the "southern strategy" was even possible. Why were southern Democrats a thing? Cuz they are were and is racist
The South never gave up or changed in 1865, and they've been been on a mission to recruit fellow travelers, the legacy Know Nothings, ever since.
Hey, JVL We do these things both because they enhance our power, and because we are NICE!
If nations didn't think we were nice, they would not find cooperating with us so easy to swallow. They would always be hoping for a way out. Instead, we find Sweden and Finland eager to join NATO.
Trump is doing away with any notion that we are “nice”. He is a pig and we elected him - twice.
Kathleen - let me say this as both an internationalist and as a guy who's spent the last 15+ years full time in international development.
I feel like I dropped the ball by NOT explaining more what JVL laid out here - that this post-WW2 order that includes the IMF, the World Bank, and NATO was not *JUST* done b/c the US is nice.
The people who designed this understood this was also very much in America's self-interest. Rebuilding Europe was the right thing - but it created trading partners, created political stability, and made more of the world in America's image.
That always seemed obvious to me.
Starting with Pat Buchanan, there was this revival of the isolationist and anti-Europe wing of the GOP.
Trump being Trump was able to create a powerful narrative. I don't mean "powerful" as in "compelling to me" or to you or to JVL. It was compelling to those who gave little thought to foreign affairs - who deeply distrusted Europe + the highly educated people who led the country and leading media outlets.
And people got it wrong when they sought to prove Trump as Manchurian Candidate - when he was Trump as Putin's Cat's Paw - a useful idiot manipulated by flattery, power and money.
Now I feel like we need to alert people to the threat of social-media-platform algorithms and the flood of disinformation out there supporting Trump and Putin.
MAD is not just an anachronism it’s Mutually Assured Destruction you can’t find economic waste there but it is a shame the Earth gives up so much in the making of it.
Well said, Howard!
Think about it. America's leading position in the world dumps a whole extra load of concerns on the plate of the average American. I had an international friend who used to say, “You Americans are so insular.” I said, we have so much going on within our own country--50 different states—that it is hard to focus on 180 countries." I also said, “Maryland is the size of New Zealand. how much do you know about Maryland?”
All really well put, Howard. I remember Pat Buchanan's speech at the 1992 R convention. It was full of vitriol.
I remember Buchanan's attacks on GHWB during the campaign - and as a Bush voter, I wondered why he did not energetically respond.
(And as we learned in retrospect, GHWB was diminished during the 92 campaign. The President didn't seem to respond to Buchanan or to challenges from Clinton and Perot the way he should have.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/04/01/barbara-bush-book-george-h-w-bush-bill-clinton-1992-election-graves-disease-226337/)
But I got off my point - was anyone better placed or equipped to respond to the dangers of isolationism and to explain the importance of the international system than GHWB?
I think this is important. We are self-interested, sure, but we also have some values that make our dominance a pretty good thing for our like-minded allies. It is better to prefer liberty to oppression, voting to coups, and life to violence. I want the US to live up to these values (more and more; it’s a mixed record to be sure), even if we sacrifice some advantage that a cold-hearted realist would find in extorting a neighbor, say.
Soft power is a complicated thing to explain to voters, and honestly I doubt more than 30% of voters can comprehend how soft power benefits them (that's being generous). It's a nebulous concept that takes decades of investment to pay dividends.
Everyone should understand that USAID is nice. The concept can be made into a slogan or a bumper sticker. A starving child, an HIV-positive baby, a pregnant woman in need of a hospital: none of these are abstractions. A dumb person can understand that these are bad outcomes that can be prevented with pennies of their tax dollars.
JVL says our voters are dumb, and I believe this to be a correct interpretation. But if they are dumb and mean, then I think we as a country are beyond redemption.
It’s just carrot and stick, simple at the base level, playground of atomic land mines for tramp to do that awful dance around the atomic mine field. JV you are a great writer.
Certainly the "leaders" they have elected are both dumb and mean...
Or evil and mean. In Trump's case, narcissistic, sociopathic, Machiavellian, ignorant and mean, but probably with at least average intelligence.
A way to explain it could be that soft power, specifically exporting our culture, is what is has currently put China in that bind that it’s in. Currently, China faces a marriage and fertility scarcity. The reason is women are fighting for equality in both the personal and professional realm. That has put China in a precarious position geopolitically and put it behind the 8-ball in their competition for global hegemony with us.
I am not sure I believe that it cannot be explained to a group that is attracted to a mob-adjacent demagogue. I'm not convinced it cannot be explained to a part of the coalition that is engaged in business ownership.
Bill Gates had the best explanation for the work of the Gates Foundation in Africa. He said a lot of it had to with making sure he had future customers in the world's next expanding economy.
Here's how they could explain it. The best boss understands what needs to get done, but they have a calm and considerate way of communicating with people. a mean boss has hard power and nothing else. the best bosses have both the hard power to fire you and the soft power to support you.
Agree, Kathleen. Good management is two-headed. When I worked in the private sector, I got a lot of management training. I remember an x and y graph that explained good management of employees: The relationship is on one axis and the task to be done is on the other. You want both.
🎯
It's great this came up. I've tried to explain how in so many ways Trump falls short if viewed as a leader/manager.
A good leader:
Articulates visions that inspire his/her team
Listens and empathizes
Speaks truth - especially to power
Holds him/herself accountable
Credits others for the success of his/her team
Welcomes and even seeks out those who disagree with him/her
Plans several steps ahead
Challenges his/her core beliefs
Challenges the assumptions behind his decisions
Trump falls laughably short - EXCEPT on the vision piece - and in a very specific way.
He is excellent at reading his audience and selling them on something. The power of the Trump narrative - even if based on complete BS - boggles my mind.
Honestly, I don't even think we're doing it to save pennies a year.
I think if the MAGA base was asked, 'would you want to save the lives of 20 million Africans from dying of AIDS at absolutely zero cost to you, yes or no?' they would say 'no'. They see the deaths as a good thing. Less of them, more of us.
Saving pennies is the excuse they can use to avoid having to acknowledge in public that they see PEPFAR as a failure *because* it saved so many lives, not in spite of it.
COMPLETELY agree!!!
They see deaths of 20 million black people as a good thing.
You left off the rest of it, 'too bad it wasn't in this country'.
Agree wholeheartedly and sorrowfully...
What the man said. 👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼
❤️❤️❤️