Category Archives: American History.

The Constitution in Formation.

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Briefly, the textbooks would tell us that the Americans declared independence from Britain, worked up a national government, found that the rig-up—the Articles of Confederation—didn’t work well, and then adopted the Constitution that exists today.  Historians have long, unavailingly, offered a more complex story.[1] 

            A recent book restates the more complex view.[2]   By 1760, Britain’s North American colonies had achieved a level of economic and political development that would enable them to stand as a group as an independent political community.[3]  The expulsion of the French from North America ended a long-standing threat that had encouraged a reliance upon Britain.  Some debate on a federation of the colonies became inevitable.  Indeed, it had already begun during the French and Indian War.  In 1760, a new king with new ideas, George III, ascended the throne in Britain.  His stubborn determination to bend all resistance—domestic or colonial–to his policies poured fuel on the colonial debate.  Crisis followed crisis from the Stamp Act through the Townshend Acts to the “Intolerable Acts” that followed the Boston Tea Party.  Two successive “Continental” Congresses were chosen to voice and advance American concerns.  Widely-followed debates centered on the continuing issues of the desirable limits of government power and the safeguarding of individual rights.  In the end, a war for independence sought to turn beliefs into reality. 

            Between 1775 and 1781, the Americans improvised a war government out of the Continental Congress.  However, they also engaged in a re-writing of colonial charters of government into state constitutions.  Generally, the new constitutions sought to shift power from the executive to the legislature and to increase democratization.  State governments also stifled dissident opinion, notably that of Tory opponents of independence.  There was a war on after all.  This same government continued to manage national affairs after independence had been gained.  As before the war, so after the war: intense political debate had a very wide following.  In one sense, it offered a kind of political education.  In another sense, however, it was white-male-property-owning democracy in action.[4]  These debates gave birth to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. 

            Yet the debates did not stop there.  What did the words mean?  How could they be put into action?  The ferment and debate continued.[5]  To take one example, who would decide the “constitutionality” of laws passed by Congress?  We have one answer today, but others then argued that the President could decide, others that the individual states could decide.  Then, what did the “men” in “all men are created equal” mean?  Did it mean only white males or did it mean “all mankind”?  Both abolitionism and women’s suffrage got rolling in the 1830s. 

            One trouble with “originalism” is that there were different factions of “originalists.” 

[1] Old favorites include: Lawrence Gipson, The Coming of the Revolution, 1763-1775 (1954); John Alden, The American Revolution, 1775-1783 (1954); and Richard B. Morris, The Forging of the Union, 1781-1789 (1987). 

[2] Akil Reed Amar, The Words that Made Us: America’s Constitutional Conversation, 1760-1840 (2021). 

[3] That is, they could manage the public business without falling into chaos; they could pay their way in the world without help from a foreign government. 

[4] Which seems to me preferable to government by only one or a few white-male-property-owning authoritarians. 

[5] In terms of establishing the credibility of the Executive Branch, see: Carol Berkin, A Sovereign People: The Crises of the 1790s and the Birth of American Nationalism (2017).

A Big Lack of Trust.

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            The rise of big business hotly followed the Civil War.  Railroads, coal mines, steel mills, oil, telegraphs, and banks all grew in size and wealth as America industrialized.  Big companies integrated horizontally and vertically.  They formed ‘trusts” to cut up the national market and set prices without reference to market forces.  Companies played a rough game with each other, with their workers, and with their customers.[1]  The aggrieved fought back in a variety of ways, none of them very effective.  State regulation of railroads, national anti-trust legislation, and guns and dynamite made headlines without braking the advance of big business. 

            Louis Brandeis, lawyer and then Justice of the Supreme Court, advanced a compelling theory of anti-bigness.[2]  Brandies argued that there could be neither competition nor bargaining in sectors where one actor dominated the market for goods, services, or employment.  Moreover, a dominant company—well the handful of men who owned or controlled it–could impose its will in other areas thanks to the wealth it accumulated.[3]  His views came to dominate legal and government approaches to the growth of big business from the New Deal to the Eighties. 

            If a criticism might be offered, it is that the approach is subjective, moralistic, and essentially aesthetic.  It didn’t try to measure whether customers were economically better or worse off from any particular size of or market domination by a company.  It believed that competition should not be carried to its logical conclusion, victory for one competitor.  It could cite many instances of bad behavior by companies without demonstrating the representatives of those anecdotes.  Fundamentally, it reflected a view that, when pushed too far, inequalities of wealth and power are unseemly. 

            This view finally sparked an effective response in the Reagan Era.  In 1978, Yale law professor Robert Bork published The Antitrust Paradox.  The “paradox” identified by Bork lay in the raising of consumer prices and the limiting of competition through anti-trust laws that effectively protected established competitors.  Bork argued that “consumer welfare” should be the standard for deciding whether some merger should be allowed.  The price and variety of goods offered to the consumer could be measured objectively.  Bork’s view gained dominance in the courts. 

            If a criticism of this approach might be offered, it is that it views humans too narrowly.  How much stuff people can buy and at what price isn’t the only measure of human happiness or welfare.  For example, trust in the larger social, political, and economic systems to give people what they believe to be a fair shake in life also is essential.  That confidence often is based in emotion and intuition, rather than cold logic.  It is subject to manipulation.[4]  It’s real.  It’s vital. 

            Now a new phase in anti-trust has opened.  The current approach has been labeled “neo-Brandesian.”  Its face is Lina Khan, the new chair of the Federal Trade Commission. 

[1] See Glenn Porter, The Rise of Big Business, 1860-1920 (1992) for a concise summary of the scholarly literature.  See Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye (1953) for a mid-century popular evaluation: “There ain’t no clean way to make a hundred million bucks…. Somewhere along the line guys got pushed to the wall, nice little businesses got the ground cut out from under them… Decent people lost their jobs…. Big money is big power and big power gets used wrong. It’s the system.” 

[2] Greg Ip, “Latest Antitrust Approach Has Its Own Risks,” WSJ, 8 July 2021. 

[3] It’s probably hard to regulate anything effectively when one party can hire all the best lawyers. 

[4] American media is the last great industry largely free from government regulation.  Long may it so remain. 

Too Much of A Good Thing.

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            The Great Depression (1929-1939) rocked capitalism.  Conventional economic thought offered no useful response.  Indeed, following its dictates only made things worse.  It held that governments should not intervene excessively in the natural workings of the capitalist economy.  However, if the “natural workings” of the capitalist economy puts 25 percent of the labor force out of work for a long stretch, then something new needs to be done.  Some countries—the United States, Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan–fumbled towards an effective solution.  Government deficit spending would have to fill up the gap between what the economy wanted to produce and what it needed to produce to maintain employment and living standards.  This actually worked, especially under the conditions of total war.[1] 

            It took a while, but after the Second World War these ideas were legitimized as more than just ad-hoc emergency measures.  Labeled “Keynesianism,” the legitimized government interventions, especially deficit spending, as a response to serious downturns in the business cycle.  Along with expanded provision of government services, the new approach seemed to be validated by the “Great Boom” of the post-war decades.  Health, education, and living standards all improved markedly during this time.  British Conservative Prime Minister Harold Macmillan crowed that “most of our people have never had it so good.” 

            Inevitably, a fly lit in the ointment.  The fly took the form of consequences that were unintended, unanticipated, and frankly undesired.[2]  Success at dealing with major down-turns tempted democratic political systems to apply the solution to less grave down-turns and then to enhancing up-turns.[3]  This seemed to reflect the invalidation of yet another old nostrum: that deficits financed by just printing money eventually undermine confidence in the currency, eventually stoke inflation to unacceptable levels, and eventually force central banks to raise interest rates.  “Eventually” never put in an appearance, so governments began to get the idea that free money actually is free.[4] 

            Now—or maybe “again” would be more accurate—storm flags are going up.[5]  A “perfect storm” in a rare one that combines several meteorological events.[6]         Cassandras discern something similar developing in economic policies. 

First, printing money raises asset values (stocks and bonds, houses).[7]  That’s great, except that just under half of Americans own no stocks and bonds, and ownership of most stocks and bonds is highly concentrated.[8]  Although much played up by the left, economic inequality really has risen dramatically.  That threatens to de-legitimize capitalism in the eyes of ordinary citizens. 

Second, easy money and government bail-outs do more than curb the negative effects of a recession or depression.  They also curb the positive effects.  Governments step in rather than allowing “creative destruction” to re-allocate economic resources and rewards.  Inefficient, non-performing firms don’t get driven under.  These “zombie”[9] companies continue to tie down capital and labor that would be better directed to new firms that are more competitive, efficient, and innovative.[10]  The share of “zombies” among publically-traded companies has risen from about 2 percent in 2002 to 19 percent by 2019.  Pouring money into “zombie” firms doesn’t increase production or productivity by any significant amount.  Instead, “creative destruction” lies at the heart of functional capitalism.  So, let her rip. 

Third, easy money and bail-outs are a part (not the whole) of the forces that have created an economy dominated by big companies.  Big firms can borrow the money needed to get bigger still.  They can buy start-ups before they grow into real competitors; they can hoover-up talented workers; and they can hire the armies of lawyers needed to cope with the immense and complicated regulations generated by active governments.  Hug rewards flow toward a company that can achieve market dominance.  Stomping on ants may come to seem preferable to thinking about uncomfortable innovations. 

In essence, capitalism is being smothered by the efforts to shield people from risk and adversity.[11]  In theory, it is not necessary to throw out the original Keynesian baby with the bathwater to solve this problem.  Governments must still save the economy in cases of serious down-turns.  The problems lie, first, in what it does after a crisis and, second, what it does when times are good.  The schoolroom solution is that governments should exercise some self-discipline.  After a crisis they should reel back in the debt they issued to revive the economy.  When times are good, they should refrain from trying to make them even better by printing more money. 

The solution rests on a hope that voters or interest groups will reward politicians who follow this path.  That hope, in turn, rests on a belief in civic virtue and a sense of self-restraint.  Will voters and interest group virtuous and capable of self-restraint?  Or are they habituated to government stimulus?[12]  Maybe it will take a big smash-up to change minds.[13] 

That opens up a discussion about “culture” (values, beliefs, behaviors) that is bound to be difficult.  It would be easy to give into cultural pessimism here.  Still, there’s always been “a lot of ruin in the Republic.” 

[1] On all this, see: Charles P. Kindleberger, The World in Depression, 1929-1939 (1973); and Alan S. Milward, War, Economy, and Society, 1939-1945 (1979). 

[2] See Gregor Samsa. 

[3] In the United States, it isn’t possible to blame only the “tax-spend-elect” Democrats for this.  Purely for electoral reasons, Republicans eventually responded with “tax-cut-spend-elect.”  Their latest tax cut came in 2017, when the recession of 2008 hardly even appeared in the rear-view mirror.    

[4] Two “oil shocks” in the 1970s led to a severe inflation.  After central banks defeated this inflation in the early 1980s, they pushed down interest rates to low levels.  Asian “sovereign wealth funds” soaked up a lot of the US Treasury paper thus generated.  See: Jacques Rueff, The Monetary Sin of the West (1972) for its criticism of the US for inflating the whole world’s economy.  More to the point, Rueff’s views influenced French president Charles de Gaulle to attack the value of the dollar in 1965.  See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exorbitant_privilege 

[5] Ruchir Sharma, “The Rescues Ruining Capitalism,” WSJ, 25-26 July 2020. 

[6] See: Sebastian Junger, The Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men Against the Sea (1997). 

[7] After Congress took flight from Keynesianism from 2008 on, the Federal Reserve Bank stepped in with “quantitative easing”: buying privately-owned financial assets to pump up their value. 

[8] Just over half of Americans own some stocks and bonds, but most stocks and bonds are owned by a few people. 

[9] Companies that don’t earn enough profit to pay even the interest on their debts. 

[10] On the very real  problems in Asia, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zombie_company 

[11] There may be a larger argument to be made about the other unintended effects of the post-war reforms on a broader range of citizens.  For example, Zachary Karabell quotes Alexander Brown, founder of the investment bank Brown Brothers (later Brown Brothers Harriman): “Don’t deal with people about whose character there is a question.  It keeps your mind uneasy.  It is far better to lose the business.”  Karabell, “The Capitalist Culture That Built America,” WSJ, 15-16 May 2021.  Reflecting on some of the comments I have read in my local township Facebook page, I think that you shouldn’t say things that would make Jimmy Stewart or Lee Marvin believe that you should have your mouth washed out with soap. 

[12] A question at the heart of the work of the “Concord Coalition.”  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concord_Coalition 

[13] William E. Leuchtenberg, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1932-1940 (1963). 

The Age of Revolt 1.

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            Where did “Trumpism”–the political movement–come from?[1]  It arose out of the profits and losses from globalization.  The costs were born by one segment of American society while the profits flowed to another segment.  The beneficiaries were, first and foremost, the “political, cultural, and financial elite.”  Their right to lead rested upon the pursuit of the common good. 

In theory, the free-trade policies pursued by a whole series of American administrations after the Second World War would benefit Americans.  They would allow the American economy to shift jobs producing low-value goods offshore and to redeploy assets toward higher-value jobs and goods.  For a long time, these policies had no costs for Americans.  The American economy emerged from the war with a long-term competitive advantage over anyone else.  It could have not only butter and guns, but low-end butter and high-end butter.  By the Sixties, that advantage had eroded badly.  As foreign competition began to bite, it turned out that a lot of people depended on those low-value jobs for their living and found it difficult to shift into high-value jobs. 

Globalization began to take a more serious toll on the American working class in the wake of the “Oil Shocks” of 1973 and 1979.[2]  That seems incomprehensibly long ago to most journalists and politicians, so they just ignore the larger story.  Then the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA, 1994) reduced tariffs on trade with Mexico and Canada.  It accelerated the early wave of job-losses.  Already in the 1990s, Pat Buchanan and Ross Perot could run for president, if not win, on the loss of blue-collar manufacturing jobs.  At the same time, China’s abandonment of suicidal Maoist economic policies and its entry into the World Trade Organization (1990) greatly accelerated the loss of jobs.  Those job losses not only tossed many workers into unemployment, they also left whole communities hollowed out and unable to address human problems.  They not only tossed workers into unemployment, they undermined the value of the homes that formed an important asset of many workers.  They not only tossed workers into unemployment, they also foreclosed the possibility of the children of the workers finding steady work at a living wage anywhere near their parents. 

Globalization may have eroded manufacturing jobs, but it created enormous opportunities for the American financial services industry.  Industrializing countries needed capital and expertise.  Wall Street could provide both, not least because of the inflow of Chinese profits to New York banks and to the swelling 401(k) savings of the Baby Boomers.  Increasingly “cosmopolitan” in its outlook, Wall Street also became increasingly influential over national economic policy.[3] 

The year 2008 marked a turning point.  A great deal of elite foolishness and some guile created the 2008 financial crisis.  That, in turn gave rise to revolts on the right (Tea Party) and left (Occupy Wall Street); and to the invasion of the political system by “outsiders” like Barack Obama and Sarah Palin.  Donald Trump, the ultimate outsider, was just a heart-beat away. 

[1] Gerald F. Seib, “Where Trump Came From—And Where Trumpism Is Going,” WSJ, 16-17 January 2021. 

[2] “In the wake of” does not mean “solely caused by.”   For more of my peculiar view of this process, see https://waroftheworldblog.com/2015/03/02/american-union-stay-away-from-me-uh/  and https://waroftheworldblog.com/2015/12/17/the-new-economy/

[3] For one highly critical view of this process, see Simon Johnson, “The Quiet Coup,” The Atlantic, 5 May 2009. 

The Asian Century 17b.

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Yet, for historians—if not for political scientists or economists—there is reason for cautious optimism.  On the one hand, the historical record suggests that democracies can be slow to mobilize their strength, but better able to mobilize that strength over the long haul.[1]  If one looks at (or, much worse, had to live through) the period from 1930 to 1942, one could easily believe that the liberal system had shot its bolt.  Economic depression, the collapse of new democracies, the appeasement of authoritarian nations, and military defeat slammed confidence in the Western system.  Three years later Berlin and Tokyo lay in smoking ruins. 

Second, “there’s a great deal of ruin in a nation.”[2]  The recent unpleasantness at the end of the Trump presidency led journalists and public intellectuals to invoke the example of the disputed presidential election of 1876.  Squalid as were those events, they also helped settle a period of deep division within the United States and helped bring on a long period of rising power and prosperity.[3] 

American business may be resistant to government guidance on China policy, but it is resistant to government policy on many things.  Usually, the outcome is satisfactory to most people.  American society is immensely creative and innovative.  The rapid development of two vaccines for Covid 19 demonstrate that old truth.  Conversely, the many problems with distributing the vaccine fall to the responsibility of the state and federal governments.  Hardly cause for business to defer to the state.  During the pandemic, American businesses have moved rapidly ahead with collaboration software (like Zoom), direct delivery bypassing stores, and cloud computing to manage all of it.  Compare this with the PRC’s treatment of Jack Ma, the entrepreneur who created Alibaba and Ant.  He got “disappeared” for a while after he suggested that entrepreneurial innovation outstrips old ideas.  About the subordination of business to the state for example. 

America remains remarkably open to immigration.[4]  Immigration helps off-set the aging of the native-born population, while admitting large numbers of people eager to work and to create their own futures.  In contrast, the PRC oppresses its own people and violates international agreements, like the Anglo-Chinese agreement on Hong Kong, in order to get more people to oppress.  China is not a country of voluntary immigration. 

By any standard, China’s economic progress since the death of Mao has been extraordinary in statistical terms.  However, much of that progress came from moving peasants out of low productivity rural farming and into higher productivity urban manufacturing.  The government has used subsidies, entry into the world market, and massive intellectual property theft to push China so far forward so fast.  There is good reason to wonder if the PRC has reached the limits of what can be obtained by such methods.  Just when they’ve alarmed the US. 

[1] This is a central theme of Gordon Wright, The Ordeal of Total War, 1939-1945 (1968).  It remains the best single volume history of the Second World War. 

[2] Adam Smith.  I forget where I read it, but it stuck with me. 

[3] Richard White, the author of The Republic for Which It Stands: The United States During Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865-1896 (2017), would wish to qualify this view if it ever came to his attention. 

[4] In 2017, 2018, and 2019, an average of 1,085,181 people obtained lawful permanent resident status each year.  In 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016, an average of 1,060,401 people obtained lawful permanent resident status each year.  See: https://www.dhs.gov/immigration-statistics/yearbook/2019/table1 

The Asian Century 17a.

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            It is now commonly accepted that the United States (US) and the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) are strategic competitors.[1]  All eyes regard this competition, for they represent two different approaches to government and economic management.[2]  China combines an effective authoritarian government with state-managed semi-capitalism.  The US combines democracy with a regulated free market.  For the duration of the “Fifty Years War”[3] the United States represented the preferred wave of the future for an ever-growing share of the world’s population.  Is the US able to win a new competition or have essential elements of its previous strength dissolved?  Is China better able than were Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union to win a competition with the US?  It depends where you look. 

Does the Covid 19 pandemic of 2020 offer any insight into the relative positions of the US and the PRC?  The answer must be NO if examined in international perspective.[4]  Democratic Taiwan did better than the PRC; the United Kingdom did even worse than did the US in spite of doing all the things that Democrats criticized the Trump administration for not doing.  The explanation for the diversity of results may have something to do with an Asian culture of compliance with the public interest in comparison with a Western culture of asserting individual rights at the expense of the community. 

It is sad, but true that the Covid pandemic is a transitory event.  It has been deadly and disruptive in its impact, but in a year it will be history.  More fundamental issues should be alarming.  So far, China has won the trade war launched by President Trump.  During 2020 its trade surplus increased, as did the trade deficit of the US.  The Trump administration’s attack on Huawei Technologies led the PRC to pour resources into its semi-conductor industry.  American efforts to get other countries to join in exerting pressure on China signally failed.  European, South American, and Asian countries are so entranced by the promise of the China market that they seek to fill the gaps when other countries try to pressure China.[5]  Nor is American politics oriented toward pursuing a coherent industrial policy during peacetime.  One of Trump’s last acts as President was to see his efforts to encourage an American rival to Huawei come to grief.  Intel announced plans to offshore some of its chip production; while Cisco rejected government entreaties to buy either Nokia or Ericsson.  Here they put the bottom line ahead of national strategy.  One of Biden’s first acts as President was to cancel the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline.  Here he put the demands of environmentalists over the interests of America’s Canadian ally (and over those of the American construction workers who had been building the pipeline). 

Finally, Chinese news media are portraying the riot at the Capitol as proof that American democracy is crumbling.  Many, here and abroad, would agree with this grim judgement. 

[1] Greg Ip, “China Played Its Hand Well in 2020.  Will It Keep Winning?” WSJ, 23-24 January 2021. 

[2] I’m not sure how Francis Fukuyama makes sense of this development.  Apparently, Hegelianism only takes you so far.  See Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man Standing (1992).  Still, he’s teaching at Chicago and I’m working at an educational wide spot in the road.  So,…

[3] The struggle from 1940 to 1990 between capitalist liberal democracy and autarkic dictatorships. 

[4] See: https://ourworldindata.org/covid-cases 

[5] For example, the European Union recently concluded an agreement with China to increase investment.  In doing so, they ignored a suggestion from Jake Sullivan, then President Biden’s national security advisor-designate that they should wait. 

My Weekly Reader 7 January 2021.

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            The Enlightenment had a good year in 1776.  The year witnessed the publication of “The Declaration of Independence,” Edward Gibbon’s History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations.  Smith attacked the prevailing “mercantilist” economic policies of the time, arguing that tariffs serve only politically-connected special interests at the expense of the larger community. 

            Broadly, for much of their history, Americans rejected free-trade as the best engine of prosperity.[1]  While James Madison advocated a ‘very free system of commerce” in the early days of the Republic, Alexander Hamilton preferred a mercantilist/protectionist line.  Tariff policy veered toward the Hamiltonian line once industrialization began, to the great distress of Southern cotton exporters.  After the Civil War, high tariffs became an article of faith among Republicans.  It is by no means clear that tariffs actually contributed much to American economic development in the “Gilded Age.”  Abundant natural resources combined with a scarcity of labor that put a premium on technological innovation probably did much more than tariffs.  Still, they didn’t hurt.  High tariffs as a protection against “unfair” foreign competition became a totem.[2] 

            Making a totem out of high tariffs came back to bite Republicans when passage of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act (1930) coincided with the plunge into the Great Depression.  Even though the Federal Reserve’s tight money policy during the 1920s played a far larger role, the high tariffs and falling trade explanation was ready to hand.[3] 

After the Great Depression drove many countries toward high tariff walls and autarky, after the Second World War wrecked most world economies, Republicans and Democrats converged on a new orthodoxy of free trade.  The United States played the leading role in designing the new world order of the Bretton Woods System.[4]  Americans continued this drive through the 1990s, with successive “rounds” of multilateral tariff reductions and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). 

Some of the economic and social dislocations of recent decades loosened the post-war consensus.  Republicans still clung to free trade as tightly as they once clung to high tariffs, while Democrats lost the enthusiasm for free trade that inspired them from Franklin D. Roosevelt through John F. Kennedy.  More recently, populist uprisings in both parties have disrupted the march toward a still more integrated world economy.  Senator Bernie Sanders attacked free trade in general and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) in particular during his run for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016.  Rival Hillary Clinton soon moved from being a leading proponent of the TPP to having her doubts to opposing it.  Donald Trump seized the Republican nomination in part by dint of his scalding criticism of NAFTA and Chinese trade practices. 

Will policy now snap back to normal under Joe Biden or are we at the dawn of a new era of managed trade?  The ability to formulate policies that help those displaced may hold the key.         

[1] Douglas A. Irwin, Clashing Over Commerce: A History of US Trade Policy (2017).  Reviewed by George Melloan, WSJ, 29 November 2017. 

[2] Tax cuts as the solution to every problem has become a similar totem for Republicans since the Reagan presidency. 

[3] See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic 

[4] The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Marshall Plan and support for European integration all were vital early contributions. 

Advice from a Guy Who Knows a Lot.

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            Seen in a somewhat historical longer perspective than one gets in the daily media, Donald Trump’s four years as president aren’t quite the anomaly that they seem.  In terms of foreign policy, the Trump administration identified the key problems, but came up with some wrong solutions.[1]   The duty of the Biden administration will be to recognize where their predecessors saw the target, then figure out better ways of hitting it.  Robert M. Gates stands above the partisan fray, possesses deep knowledge of American foreign relations and of the instruments of those relation, and has exhibited a sense of patriotic duty that should command respect.[2]  While he has discreetly avoided making a direct statement on the Trump administration, he has some good advice for the Biden administration.[3] 

            First, Trump was right: the “friends and allies” don’t pull their weight.  The Trump solution was to deride them and walk away.  The Biden administration should apply serious pressure on burden-sharing.  It also needs to pressure Germany over its own deal with Russia over energy supplies.  It also needs to pressure Turkey over its purchase of a Russian air-defense system and its meddling in Libya.  The United States needs to nudge NATO countries like Turkey, Hungary, and Poland back toward democratic norms.

            Second, Trump was right: many international organizations are messed up.  The Nineteenth Century British radical John Bright described the Empire as “a gigantic system of out-relief for the aristocracy.”  The same judgement applies to international organizations and the European and Europeanized elites of the former colonial countries who staff those organizations.  The Trump solution was to denounce them and walk away.  The Biden administration should apply serious pressure on reform.  The Biden administration also needs to make a serious effort to keep China from gaining a leadership role in all these organizations, because they will just manipulate these organizations to advance China’s national interests. 

            Third, Trump was right: the existing instruments of American diplomacy and “soft power” don’t work well in the new international environment.  The Trump solution was to ignore those instruments, leaving hundreds of patronage positions empty and relying on personal loyalists to deal with foreign leaders or by seeking direct personal contact.  The State Department has been in decline as the leader of American foreign policy since the Kennedy Administration.  The Defense Department, the intelligence community, and—off and on—the National Security Council have all shouldered it aside.  The US lacks the economic resources to compete with China’s Belt and Road Initiative.  America’s “strategic communications” are pathetic.  Just adding one more spending category to the wish-list of money to be raised by making the One Percent pay their “fair share” won’t be enough.  In every case, government partnerships with the private sector offers a better approach. 

            What if we have entered a post-Cold War era in which American leadership isn’t wanted? 

[1] Even that isn’t all that anomalous.  The George W. Bush Administration identified the correct problem in Muslim countries.  They are victims of long-term developments, rather than of brief experiences of Western imperialism.  The Bush Administration then came up with a disastrously wrong solution: knock over Saddam Hussein, declare democracy, put up some big box stores, and leave. 

[2] On Gates, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Gates 

[3] Robert M. Gates, “How to Meet Our Global Commitments,” NYT, 21 December 2000. 

The Asian Century 15.

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            Analogies hand us a useful device for understanding the unfamiliar in terms of the familiar.[1]  The key thing is to pick the right analogy.[2]  In Summer 2019, Walter Russell Mead offered the early Soviet-American Cold War as a useful analogy for understanding the contemporary relationship between the United States and the Peoples’ Republic of China (PRC).[3]  He emphasizes that the Soviet-American relationship plunged down-hill so fast that it caught the American public flat-footed.  Mead suggests that today China and the United States stand on the edge of a similar precipice.  If we go over the edge, no one can predict the duration or nature or outcome of the struggle. 

            Looking back at the Soviet-American rivalry for lessons, Mead asks about the impact of ideologies, the future “hot spots” of the competition, the impact on American society, the role of and impact on the high cultures (meaning higher education and technology) of the rivals, and how the densely woven relationship between China and America will affect and be affected by such a competition.[4] 

            Just as “the emperor counsels simplicity,” Mead counsels Americans to give much thought to understanding both themselves and China.  First, how do Chinese leaders see China and its place in the world?  Since the death of Mao, China has experienced tremendous economic growth under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party.  That economic growth created a large and self-confident middle class.  Some observers, applying the analogy of the European bourgeoisie in the 18th and 19th Centuries, believe that this middle class is showing the first signs of restlessness with the Party’s leading strings.[5]  Will Beijing pursue an assertively nationalist foreign policy to squelch dissent?  What might be the outcomes of such a policy?[6]    

            Second, how can Americans forge a consistent and effective China policy when the country is so deeply divided?  Here Mead penetrates much less deeply.  On the one hand, the origin of our discontents has not yet found any satisfying explanation.[7]  On the other hand, he doesn’t broach the subject of whether America even has the resources to rise to the challenge.  So, coming to know ourselves may be a lengthy undertaking.      

[1] See: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/reasoning-analogy/ 

[2] Ernest R. May, “Lessons of the Past”: The Use and Misuse of History in American Foreign Policy (1975). 

[3] Walter Russell Mead, “Americans Aren’t Ready for Cold War II,” WSJ, 11 June 2019.  It’s an encouraging choice of analogy in the sense that the Cold War never turned into a full-scale direct military conflict. 

[4] At this point, it might be useful to start building a library of Cold War history books.  Aaron L. Friedberg, In the Shadow of the Garrison State: America’s Anti-Statism and Its Cold War Grand Strategy (2000); John Lewis Gaddis, The Long Peace: Inquiries Into the Cold War (1989); and Geir Lundstad, East, West, North, South: International Relations since 1945 (2017) can all be recommended.   

[5] On the European analogies, see Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution, 1789-1848 (1962); and William L. Langer, Political and Social Upheaval, 1832-1852 (1969).  Sure they’re “old” books.  That’s because a couple of really smart guys got there first.  Everybody since has been nibbling around the edges. 

[6] For this analogy, see Volker Berghahn, Germany and the Approach of War in 1914 (1973). 

[7] Kevin M. Kruse and Julian Zelizer, Fault Lines: A History of the United States Since 1974 (2020) and Thomas Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum, That Used to Be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back (2012) fall into the Blame Republicans First camp.  Charles Murray, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010 (2013); and Stephan and Abigail Thernstrom, America in Black and White: One Nation, Indivisible (1999) are conservative interpretations of one theme in the conversation.  Reading the Conclusions and Recommendations of The 9/11 Commission Report (2004) would be a good way to begin. 

The First Draft of History.

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            Journalism is said to be the “first draft of history.  It’s only the first draft because journalists commonly do what most historians would not.  Historians try to give a full picture of what happened and why.  Their approach is let the evidence talk to them, then build an argument based on as much evidence as possible.  They’re not supposed to leave out important facts that get in the way of an argument they want to make.  Even the best journalists can do this.[1]

            In 2006, House Minority-Leader Nancy Pelosi saw the opportunity to win control of the House of Representatives by steering toward the center.  She lined up a bunch of centrist candidates and defined an agenda focused on material concerns weighing on ordinary Americans.  The result?  The Democrats added 31 seats in the election and Pelosi became Speaker of the House.[2] 

            When Barak Obama won election as President in 2008 he carried additional Democrats on his coat-tails.  Pelosi joined the Senate Democrats and President Obama in passing the Affordable Care Act, legislation on climate-change, and other costly measures desired by the Democratic left.[3] 

            In the 2010 mid-term elections Democrat suffered heavy losses to Republicans.  Pelosi was relegated to House Minority Leader once again.[4] 

            After grinding her teeth in frustration at not banging the gavel for eight years, Pelosi steered her caucus back toward the center.  She recruited moderate candidates like Colin Lamb and Abigail Spanberger, and she talked down the demands for the impeachment of Donald Trump.  Result?  Democrats regained a clear majority in the House of Representatives and Pelosi got her old job back.[5] 

            From 2018 through 2020, the Democrat majority in the House of Representatives indulged in a frenzy of Trump-hunting and leftist legislation that could never pass the Senate or be signed by the White House.[6]  It only passed President Trump’s renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).[7]  This was one big thing done in cooperation with the Republican-dominated Senate.  Other than that, it’s difficult to think of any significant legislation passed by the Congress in two years.    

Strassel concludes that “America remains a center-right country, and there is great political upside for politicians who govern in a center-right fashion.”  Was this her starting point? 

[1] See Kimberley Strassel, “2020’s Biggest Election Loser’s,” WSJ, 6 November 2020.  NB: I have enormous respect for Strassel based on reading her tenacious “I smell a rat” commentary on the Russia investigation. 

[2] This was an off-year election, when the party in power normally loses seats in the House. 

[3] What this ignores is that Obama had run and won on the issue of universal health-care.  This wasn’t Pelosi’s issue.  Among the costly bills passed were the not-big-enough stimulus bill to pull the country out of the recession triggered by the 2008 financial crisis, and the bail-out of the auto industry. 

[4] What this ignores is the flight from Keynesian economics on the part of both the Republicans and the Democrats after the financial crisis.  While this spawned the “Tea Party” faction within the Republican Party, it also caused President Obama to do much less on economic recovery that he might have tried to do.  The recovery from the recession dragged on, antagonizing all sorts of people. 

[5] What this ignores is that the Great Recession spawned a Democratic “Tea Party” in the form of Bernie Sanders and “The Squad.”  Pelosi found herself under the same harassment as had John Boehner, her Republican predecessor. 

[6] Endorsing the Green New Deal and Medicare for All, while making a foredoomed effort to impeach the president. 

[7] What this leaves out is that the House and Senate also passed the CARES Act on Covid-related economic stimulus.