A little more than a century ago, after radically changing the course of US foreign policy, Woodrow Wilson left New York City escorted by an armada of naval vessels to become the first American President to visit Europe. His mission was clear: negotiate the terms for peace with the vanquished German leadership, defining a post-war world America now would fully engage with rather than simply watch from the safety advantageous geography had always granted.
Wilson’s reception in France and England was like nothing anyone had ever received anywhere or anytime before. Millions coming out to cheer the man they credited with turning the tide of history’s most devastating conflagration. Everywhere were grateful throngs fighting for a glimpse of the man all appeared happy to follow into a future they were certain couldn’t be worse than their recent past.
How wrong they were would start coming fully to light on September 1, 1939 when Nazi tanks rolled into Poland, but the seeds were planted in Versailles when French Premier Clemenceau got the blood from a stone his nation demanded, forcing Germany to endure the national shame and futility its democracy failed to survive. The lesson history would teach is that policy by emotion, particularly the dark recesses of vengeful bitterness and petty abasement creates a canvas for catastrophe. Allowed to fill in with the predictable elements our worst inclinations contribute, such a landscape will surely produce events that coalesce and quickly cascade at a pace beyond anyone’s best efforts to control.
Near one hundred and two years after Wilson’s triumphant arrival, VP Mike Pence couldn’t pay anyone enough to turn out and wave along the Irish countryside. Literally nobody was interested in bidding our second in command anything more than an international negative salute. The servile shadow of a President who has presented European democracies with the exact same ugliness they adopted to guide their post-WWI diplomacy arrived in Ireland with a forced smile and bad faith, and was welcomed accordingly. Earlier this year, Trump received much the same in London, his fabrications aside.
When Wilson came to Europe he had the creation of a League of Nations as his primary focus. The aim was to provide a forum for proactive diplomacy meant to head off the disastrous miscalculations that sparked WWI’s carnage. He limped home less convinced such idealism was possible after “a just and stable peace” suffered the same unbridled animosity he took in as a southern boy during Reconstruction, Germany was going to pay, come what may…. just like Dixie of Wilson’s youth. Ultimately, America rejected The League of Nations as well, opting for “normalcy” and retrenching back into isolationism only FDR’s full array of political talents, and a “day of infamy” succeeded in casting aside.
What we have now, reflected in the arbitrary and capricious spurts of an anti-statesman, is the same toxic stew of fear, ignorance and complacency that festered for two decades before exploding into catastrophe in Europe and Asia 80-odd years ago. We learned then what many thoughtful people are afraid we will learn again… the modern world does not grant a pass to idiocy for very long. When the planet’s leader shakes allies down, and blusters inanities at regimes who don’t play, dominoes will begin to fall.
Kashmir, Hong Kong, North Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel-Palestine, Iran, Syria, Brazil, Great Britain, for God’s sake. Our Earth is a fluid place, a dynamic host of variables that will not sit still for nonsense. Moronic tweets usually composed of American exceptionalist gibberish injure US interests and waste time we will not get back, all the while destroying a national brand still reeling from post 9/11 folly.
Forget fixing things, now we are the problem. A cruel and petty country, more interested in indulging xenophobia than providing any kind of safe harbor for anyone. Jordan has refugee camps that span as far as the eye can see. The latest proposal this Administration may or may not honor is 15,000 refugees, worldwide. Total! Bahamians, who survived obliteration are not welcome. Think about that.
American foreign policy is now based fully on MAGA sensibilities. That is, we suffer ungrateful allies, who are only interested in fleecing us, and enemies we have always been outsmarted by. In other words, a set of propositions only a sociopath, or millions of Fox/AM consumers, could love. But at the end of the day the cornerstones really aren’t too different from the Post WWI mindsets that kicked Woodrow Wilson in the teeth, even as he was accorded the welcome of a Roman conquerer. What’s critical is what it led to then, and what it will lead to now if we don’t reset STAT. To paraphrase one of the titles of Churchill’s masterful trilogy of memoirs that captured post-WWI’s consequences…. “a storm is coming.”BC
Batten down the hatches!!