America the Caring and Collaborative: Obama's Foreign Policy Speech

Imagine a foreign policy address written by a human resources officer and you have the essence of Obama's West Point speech.  Be more collaborative and cooperative (with our allies)  Operate with transparency (drone strikes). Work within the established bureaucratic framework. (World Bank, IMF.)  Do more with less. (Huge military cuts; smaller Army.) 

Little to inspire here. But it really is a foreign policy for our current mood.  Americans want all the benefits of being the "Last Remaining Super Power," but are balking at the costs.  Christopher Caldwell sums this up as us wanting to have our cake and eat it too:  http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/d6f891c0-e694-11e3-9a20-00144feabdc0.html#axzz33INKQDM8

Obama likes to present himself as the "anti-Bush," but this is only a head fake.  In essence, he has continued the Bush foreign policy on counterterrorsm, and is even more aggressive on drone strikes.  He doubled down on Afghanistan, agreeing to a troop surge.  He continued the withdrawal from Iraq, which was already happening.   (Obama's policy on Latin America also is identical with Bush's.)

In sentiment, however, Obama embodies the old Henry Wallace-George McGovern wing of the Democratic Party, which deeply distrusts America's power and intentions.

Consider how fortunate he is--we all are--that no major challenge to American power has occurred on his watch.  Yet, anyway.  Still two and a half years to go.

The "Patriot" Snowden's Interview

Snowden gives a long and dissembling interview with Brian Williams of NBC. http://www.nbcnews.com/#/feature/edward-snowden-interview   The press is slowly waking up out of its naive stupor about this guy, realizing that his NSA revelations have just benefited Russia and China. 

We should make a deal with Moscow:  give him to us and we'll hand over convicted spies Ames and Hansen to you. 

 

Freemasons and the Hidden Hand of History

Americans shy from talking about, or even thinking about, the role secret societies sometimes play in shaping our world.  I think this is because Americans tend to believe what they read, and tend to think history is largely transparent.  Latins, in contrast, tend to distrust what they read, and believe history is shaped by conspiratorial forces.  (Or else, why would a book like Galeano's "The Open Veins" be so popular?) 

Here's an entertaining and knowledgable piece on freemasonry by an accomplished historian of religion. I post it in large part because it is so unusual to see anything posted on it in a mainstream website. http://www.patheos.com/blogs/anxiousbench/2014/05/masons-and-catholics/ 

In France and Latin America you can read about the masons from time to time.  Knowledgable Africanists like to point to the still-important role freemasonry plays in cementing West African elites to the political class in France.

Freemasonry probably motivated at least some of the Sons of Liberty before the revolution.  Many of the founders, like George Washington, were Masons in "blue" lodges. (They didn't have the 33 degrees of the Scottish Rite.)  In the fun movie "National Treasure," the Declaration signer Charles Carroll was incorrectly described as being a mason. (He was a Jesuit-educated Catholic.)

The strong mason influence in the early Republic provoked the founding in New York of the Anti-Masonic Party, the first "third party" movement in the United States.  Some Anti-Masonic members later helped found the Whig Party in the 1830s.  (The Mighty Whig himself bears no grudge against freemasons.)

Joseph Smith was a freemason in NY before founding his church. 

Masons founded the Texas Republic.  An obelisk near the San Jacinto battlefield commemorates all the masons responsible in the founding, a who's who of early Texas history.  Santa Ana's freemasonry may have spared him his life after being captured in that battle. 

My guess is the 1830s represented the peak of masonic influence in the U.S.  But on the darker side of things, don't ignore the role masonry played in founding the Ku Klux Klan, especially during its great revivial in the 1920s.  (Driven to a large degree by the rise of Catholic influence in the Democratic Party and the candidacy of Al Smith in 1928.)

In 1995 Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan launched his "Millon Man March" on Washington DC.  During his speech, Farrakhan alluded many times to the Masonic founding of the Republic.  (Nation of Islam has unmistakable masonic influences; its founder Wallace Fard Muhammad was a Prince Hall mason.)

Supposedly, the Republican presidential ticket in 1996 featured two masons, Bob Dole and Jake Kemp.  The hidden hand didn't help them.

Anyway, I could go on...

Latin America: A Perfect Idiot Wises Up

"Hope springs eternal in the human breast!"  How encouraging it is to see Uruguayan scribbler Eduardo Galeano, the author of "The Open Veins of Latin America,"  now stepping away from his influential book.   I assumed his stupidity was incurable. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/24/books/eduardo-galeano-disavows-his-book-the-open-veins.html?_r=1#   Of course professors won't drop it from their curriculum, as the article reports.  

Maybe Galeano is becoming like American novelist John Dos Passos, a leftist who wrote "The U.S.A. Trilogy," (parts of which are great, by the way) but who became disillusioned later in life and backed Richard Nixon in his presidential runs.

"Open Veins" stands in the great tradition of Latin American literature to blame someone else for regional problems.  Probably this started with Rodo's "Ariel."   Perhaps the one good thing to come from "Open Veins" was that it inspired "The Guide to the Perfect Latin American Idiot,"  which may be about Latin America, but it has universal applicability. 

Explaining the Rise of the UKIP

Tim Stanley in the Telegraph, one of the better young conservative journalists today, discusses the UKIP's impressive win.  Politics is about competing idea-systems; parties get punished when they stray from their core beliefs.  http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/timstanley/100273205/european-elections-the-ukip-revolution-is-broad-radical-and-worthy-of-respect/

The British press has been killing the UKIP; will it continue to alienate a large part of its readership, like the US press has for so many years?    

Nationalism: Answering the "Who Are We? Question

The history John Lukacs pointed out (in many books) that we in the last century still were living the effects of the great nationalist wave.  But in this new 21st century--which Lukacs saw as beginning in 1989-1991 or so, nationalism is demonstrating its remarkable staying power.  The main news in the last two weeks were about elections dominated by nationalists: Modi's BJP in India, and now the European Parliament elections.  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2638960/Will-earth-Ukip-confident-triggering-political-earthquake-winning-European-elections-tonight.html  In Europe, the nationalists are reacting against cruel austerity policies and the constant effort to lower wages with cheap immigration.

Nationalism is a good thing: you can't have a functioning democracy or true civil liberties without a self-identified "people."

China and Russia: Nixon Wouldn't Approve

When I saw the picture on the front page the other day of Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin drinking a toast to their new gas import deal, I thought Nixon must be rolling over in his grave.  Our strategy now seems to be pushing Beijing and Moscow toward greater cooperation, which will limit our policy options toward either one of them.  George Friedman of Stratfor explains the significance:

This does not portend a return to the Sino-Soviet axis against the West of the 1950s. China is far too intertwined with the U.S. and European economies to attempt a grand realignment, and regional frictions, particularly in Central Asia and the Pacific, would further complicate such an alliance. Nonetheless, tighter bilateral relations would give Russia and China a stake in each other's futures. With significant investments in Russia, Beijing would have no desire to see an unstable Russia, and vice versa.

China now has sufficient interest in cooperating with Russia to avoid conflicts -- whether direct or in their overlapping spheres -- that could detract from Beijing's ability to manage attempts at containment by the United States and its allies. Russia is one of the few powers capable of significantly resisting or interfering with major U.S. foreign policy initiatives. Beijing's willingness to enhance its strategic relationship with Moscow reflects its belief that the United States poses a far greater threat to Chinese interests than does Russia. Similarly, giving another power a stake in Russian stability will help Moscow deter U.S. attempts to isolate or destabilize the country, particularly as tensions with the West continue to escalate.