This is beautiful. Who knew that a lyrical meditation on generational change could be the vehicle to discuss contemporary foreign policy! The interesting question may be not why these massive shifts are occurring, but why a system built to wage the Cold War, which ended a third of century ago, continued under its own momentum for so long. A big rethink of America’s role in the world should have occurred during the first Clinton administration, but instead the supposed “global hegemon” just lurched, reactively, from crisis to crisis, decade after decade. When it finally settled on a new alternative mission, it was to plant rainbow flags in desperately poor places that didn’t want them. The victorious Taliban painting over the George Floyd mural in Kabul captures the vacuity and incompetence of the current elite. The institutions decayed into bureaucratic stasis, and the quality of the elites that managed them decayed even more. Your call to the rising generation of policy makers and officials is worthwhile, and I hope that their thinking will be more deeply historically informed, and less shaped by contemporary ideological deformations. Eager to read the second and third installments.
The Clinton administration was mostly purposeful and competent. The US confidently led the world, made peace in the Balkans and Ireland, and made a serious effort to solve the Israeli Palestinian conflict. The rot started in the Bush administration which was handed an extremely strong hand after 9/11, with Russia and Iran eager to cooperate with the US, and instead of strengthening US leadership, started aimless wars that weakened the US dramatically, strengthened its enemies, and destroyed the foreign policy consensus in the US. Perhaps most tellingly, the US, and the West more broadly, lost its confidence and therefore its ability to act. On the left, you have idiots attacking the West and praising enemies like Hezbollah and Hamas. On the right you have idiots attacking the West and praising enemies like Russia and North Korea. “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity”
I guess you are objecting to my criticism of the Clinton administration. What I said about the Clinton administration is correct. They had the chance to actually think about what the US military was for, and what it was supposed to do after the Cold War. Instead Clinton gave in to pressure from the military industrial complex and just made percentage cuts to the existing machine and let it roll along, even though the whole reason for the existence of most of the weapons being built had gone away. Clinton got his peace dividend, the military got to keep doing what it was doing. It was golden opportunity squandered. Not sure anything else you said is responsive to anything I said.
As one of the mentioned “bastard children of the lockdowns” (perhaps older by a few years), the possibility space excites and scares me in equal measure.
I am *not* ready to lead, or to provide real scaffolding for what comes next. And yet I question the old presuppositions anyway. I hope I learn quickly enough to be of value…and I fear not enough people know enough to be of value themselves.
This boomer would be happy to see George Washington's farewell address inscribed on the entrance to the State Department and for it to guide our foreign policy.
Yes - but as long as the right is in this liminal state of not knowing what to build, may I beg you to read Kevin Erdmann and Scott Sumner on the folly of accepting the consensus view on 2008 as a product of a housing “bubble” (which did not exist except perhaps in a few hyper local contexts), but rather due to a monetary and then credit access shock which has been followed on with a persistent housing shortage.
This is beautiful. Who knew that a lyrical meditation on generational change could be the vehicle to discuss contemporary foreign policy! The interesting question may be not why these massive shifts are occurring, but why a system built to wage the Cold War, which ended a third of century ago, continued under its own momentum for so long. A big rethink of America’s role in the world should have occurred during the first Clinton administration, but instead the supposed “global hegemon” just lurched, reactively, from crisis to crisis, decade after decade. When it finally settled on a new alternative mission, it was to plant rainbow flags in desperately poor places that didn’t want them. The victorious Taliban painting over the George Floyd mural in Kabul captures the vacuity and incompetence of the current elite. The institutions decayed into bureaucratic stasis, and the quality of the elites that managed them decayed even more. Your call to the rising generation of policy makers and officials is worthwhile, and I hope that their thinking will be more deeply historically informed, and less shaped by contemporary ideological deformations. Eager to read the second and third installments.
The Clinton administration was mostly purposeful and competent. The US confidently led the world, made peace in the Balkans and Ireland, and made a serious effort to solve the Israeli Palestinian conflict. The rot started in the Bush administration which was handed an extremely strong hand after 9/11, with Russia and Iran eager to cooperate with the US, and instead of strengthening US leadership, started aimless wars that weakened the US dramatically, strengthened its enemies, and destroyed the foreign policy consensus in the US. Perhaps most tellingly, the US, and the West more broadly, lost its confidence and therefore its ability to act. On the left, you have idiots attacking the West and praising enemies like Hezbollah and Hamas. On the right you have idiots attacking the West and praising enemies like Russia and North Korea. “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity”
I guess you are objecting to my criticism of the Clinton administration. What I said about the Clinton administration is correct. They had the chance to actually think about what the US military was for, and what it was supposed to do after the Cold War. Instead Clinton gave in to pressure from the military industrial complex and just made percentage cuts to the existing machine and let it roll along, even though the whole reason for the existence of most of the weapons being built had gone away. Clinton got his peace dividend, the military got to keep doing what it was doing. It was golden opportunity squandered. Not sure anything else you said is responsive to anything I said.
As one of the mentioned “bastard children of the lockdowns” (perhaps older by a few years), the possibility space excites and scares me in equal measure.
I am *not* ready to lead, or to provide real scaffolding for what comes next. And yet I question the old presuppositions anyway. I hope I learn quickly enough to be of value…and I fear not enough people know enough to be of value themselves.
This boomer would be happy to see George Washington's farewell address inscribed on the entrance to the State Department and for it to guide our foreign policy.
"Now is come the last age of the Cumaen prophecy:
the great cycle of ages is born anew.
Now returns the Maid, returns the reign of Saturn:
now from high heaven a new generation comes down."
BTW, here is Marc Andreessen explaining the kind of concessions SV wants from Europe.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60UH2Nhkg_s&t=2680s
Yes - but as long as the right is in this liminal state of not knowing what to build, may I beg you to read Kevin Erdmann and Scott Sumner on the folly of accepting the consensus view on 2008 as a product of a housing “bubble” (which did not exist except perhaps in a few hyper local contexts), but rather due to a monetary and then credit access shock which has been followed on with a persistent housing shortage.