bobknightfan
Banhammer'd
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/ar..._fall_rot_at_the_top_in_higher_ed_133046.html
There was always a self-serving component to this criticism. Foreign policy elites have conveniently overlooked their role in propelling Trump to the White House. The Bush administration sought to take the fight to the terrorists and promote democracy abroad with, in the words of President Bush’s second inaugural address, “the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.” But the Bush administration left a legacy of mismanaged wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which squandered U.S. credibility.
The Obama administration touted its “smart power” as opening a new era in American foreign policy. Unfortunately, President Obama displayed a reckless reluctance to back diplomacy—or even his own public declarations—with the credible threat of force. Irresoluteness and a wild overestimation of his gifts for persuasion contributed to the emergence on Obama’s watch of heightened danger from Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea; humanitarian catastrophe in Syria producing a massive flow of refugees destabilizing neighboring Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey, as well as Western Europe; and the resurgence of Islamic extremism throughout the Middle East.
With a dismal record of miscalculation and floundering stretching across two two-term administrations, small wonder that many voters rallied to Trump, who promised to smash the establishment and restore America’s standing. But is President Trump the answer to America’s foreign policy woes?
Rightly noting that no one can say with confidence how the onrush of events will affect Trump’s foreign policy thinking, Walter Russell Mead, a Hudson Institute senior fellow, asserts that Trump’s professed approach departs from the two major schools of thought that have dominated post-World War II America. Hamiltonians aim to construct a world order devoted to finance, trade, and security, while Wilsonians promote human rights, democratic governance, and the rule of law. In contrast, Trump’s thinking, according to Mead, is rooted in the cultural appeal of the country’s first populist president, Andrew Jackson.
Jacksonians believe that government’s “chief business” consists in protecting the nation’s individual liberty and promoting economic prosperity. They prefer to avoid international involvement except when American national interests are directly threatened; then they favor responding swiftly and decisively.
Jacksonianism, in the person of Donald Trump, has returned in large measure, Mead suggests, because many working-class men and women lost faith in the Democratic and Republican establishments. Significant numbers of middle-class voters believe that elite Washington policymakers disregard the consequences of open borders and free trade for the non-elite. And they think that elites of both parties view them as “bitter” people who “cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations”—as, Mead notes, “Barack Obama famously put it in 2008.”
To restore a U.S. foreign policy that advances America’s interest in maintaining a liberal international order, we must correct two weighty and closely connected errors that have produced the policies that have estranged in particular the lower-middle class: first, overlooking the beliefs, practices and associations that sustain liberal democracy; second, neglecting the basic cultural and religious convictions that determine how different peoples understand their interests, set their priorities, and fashion their policies.
This, however, is not the prism through which foreign policy elites view the moment. The “resistance” that has greeted the Trump presidency from the Democratic Party establishment and influential establishment conservatives only convinces Trump supporters that they were right—that the elites routinely ignore their voices, perspectives, and aspirations.
Meanwhile, elites persist in expecting grassroots populists to listen to the experts even though the makers of American foreign policy have made a succession of major mistakes in the course of the last 16 years and fellow members of America’s governing class have presided over the transformation of the bastions of their own authority—the nation’s colleges and universities—into purveyors of intolerance masquerading as champions of inclusiveness.
The corrective is straightforward, though daunting obstacles stand in the way. We must replace the desultory and often-illiberal education provided by our colleges and universities with a truly liberal education rooted in the study of constitutional, diplomatic, military, and religious history; political and economic principles; literature; and foreign languages and civilizations. This will prepare those who conduct American foreign policy to understand the world as it is and not as they posit or wish it to be.
The foreign policy elites who fear and loathe Trump are asking the perennial question: who will guard the guardians? That’s important. They should consider also a still more fundamental question: who will educate the educators?
There was always a self-serving component to this criticism. Foreign policy elites have conveniently overlooked their role in propelling Trump to the White House. The Bush administration sought to take the fight to the terrorists and promote democracy abroad with, in the words of President Bush’s second inaugural address, “the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.” But the Bush administration left a legacy of mismanaged wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which squandered U.S. credibility.
The Obama administration touted its “smart power” as opening a new era in American foreign policy. Unfortunately, President Obama displayed a reckless reluctance to back diplomacy—or even his own public declarations—with the credible threat of force. Irresoluteness and a wild overestimation of his gifts for persuasion contributed to the emergence on Obama’s watch of heightened danger from Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea; humanitarian catastrophe in Syria producing a massive flow of refugees destabilizing neighboring Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey, as well as Western Europe; and the resurgence of Islamic extremism throughout the Middle East.
With a dismal record of miscalculation and floundering stretching across two two-term administrations, small wonder that many voters rallied to Trump, who promised to smash the establishment and restore America’s standing. But is President Trump the answer to America’s foreign policy woes?
Rightly noting that no one can say with confidence how the onrush of events will affect Trump’s foreign policy thinking, Walter Russell Mead, a Hudson Institute senior fellow, asserts that Trump’s professed approach departs from the two major schools of thought that have dominated post-World War II America. Hamiltonians aim to construct a world order devoted to finance, trade, and security, while Wilsonians promote human rights, democratic governance, and the rule of law. In contrast, Trump’s thinking, according to Mead, is rooted in the cultural appeal of the country’s first populist president, Andrew Jackson.
Jacksonians believe that government’s “chief business” consists in protecting the nation’s individual liberty and promoting economic prosperity. They prefer to avoid international involvement except when American national interests are directly threatened; then they favor responding swiftly and decisively.
Jacksonianism, in the person of Donald Trump, has returned in large measure, Mead suggests, because many working-class men and women lost faith in the Democratic and Republican establishments. Significant numbers of middle-class voters believe that elite Washington policymakers disregard the consequences of open borders and free trade for the non-elite. And they think that elites of both parties view them as “bitter” people who “cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations”—as, Mead notes, “Barack Obama famously put it in 2008.”
To restore a U.S. foreign policy that advances America’s interest in maintaining a liberal international order, we must correct two weighty and closely connected errors that have produced the policies that have estranged in particular the lower-middle class: first, overlooking the beliefs, practices and associations that sustain liberal democracy; second, neglecting the basic cultural and religious convictions that determine how different peoples understand their interests, set their priorities, and fashion their policies.
This, however, is not the prism through which foreign policy elites view the moment. The “resistance” that has greeted the Trump presidency from the Democratic Party establishment and influential establishment conservatives only convinces Trump supporters that they were right—that the elites routinely ignore their voices, perspectives, and aspirations.
Meanwhile, elites persist in expecting grassroots populists to listen to the experts even though the makers of American foreign policy have made a succession of major mistakes in the course of the last 16 years and fellow members of America’s governing class have presided over the transformation of the bastions of their own authority—the nation’s colleges and universities—into purveyors of intolerance masquerading as champions of inclusiveness.
The corrective is straightforward, though daunting obstacles stand in the way. We must replace the desultory and often-illiberal education provided by our colleges and universities with a truly liberal education rooted in the study of constitutional, diplomatic, military, and religious history; political and economic principles; literature; and foreign languages and civilizations. This will prepare those who conduct American foreign policy to understand the world as it is and not as they posit or wish it to be.
The foreign policy elites who fear and loathe Trump are asking the perennial question: who will guard the guardians? That’s important. They should consider also a still more fundamental question: who will educate the educators?
