When Obama was in London for the G20 Summit, he made the following remark that seems to have disturbed not a few conservatives:
“There’s been a lot of comparison here about Bretton Woods… you know, last time you… saw the entire international architecture being remade,” Obama said. “Well, if, if it’s just Roosevelt and Churchill sitting in a room with a brandy, you know, that’s an easier negotiation.
“But that’s not the world we live in,” Obama said. “And it shouldn’t be the world that we live in. And so, you know, that’s not a loss for America.
Here is how Charles Krauthammer interprets Obama’s statement.
After all, it was Obama, not some envious anti-American leader, who noted with satisfaction that a new financial order is being created today by 20 countries, rather than by “just Roosevelt and Churchill sitting in a room with a brandy.” And then added: “But that’s not the world we live in, and it shouldn’t be the world that we live in.”
It is passing strange for a world leader to celebrate his own country’s decline. A few more such overseas tours, and Obama will have a lot more decline to celebrate.
I think a lot of conservatives of Mr. Krauthammer’s age spent too much time watching John Wayne war movies as children and soaking up a really misguided impression of how the world really works. World War Two was the greatest human catastrophe on record and it’s immediate aftermath found America and Russia in new and ultimately unsustainable positions as the sole superpowers of the world. Bretton Woods set up the modern system of global finance on terms very favorable to the United States. There was nothing necessarily wrong with that, particularly because we agreed to shoulder the burden for the security of Japan, South Korea, and Western Europe. We created markets in those areas for our products and soon became avid consumers of their products. But the world is under no obligation to submit to rules that favor the United States in perpetuity. And they won’t.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may be a kook, but he speaks for most of the world when he says this.
“The composition of the [United Nations] Security Council and the veto of its five permanent members are consequences of World War II, which ended 60 years ago. Must the victorious powers dominate mankind for evermore, and must they constitute the world government? The composition of the Security Council must be changed.”
The organizations and systems that were set up in the aftermath of the war reflected America’s tremendous power at that time, but they also reflected a shattered world with broken political and economic institutions. It was never going to be in America’s interests to play a permanent role as top dog. We needed to prevail over the Soviet Bloc and bring the anti-Soviet bloc along politically and economically so that we could mutually benefit. It takes a perpetual adolescent to see the rise of westernized economic rivals as a sign of America’s decline. It’s a sign of our success. The day when we no longer need to pay the lion’s share of the burdens for collective security will be the day of our final victory.
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Final decision made by Winston Churchill while taking a warm bath and enjoying a brandy. As someone close to him vowed this to be the truth. She had a signed photograph of both Winston Churchill and General Montgomery.
Churchill himself penned a minute which read: “It seems to me that the moment has come when the question of bombing German cities simply for the sake of increasing the terror though under other pretexts should be reviewed. Otherwise we shall come into control of an utterly ruined land. The destruction of Dresden remains a serious query against the conduct of allied bombing. I feel the need for more precise concentration upon military objectives rather than the mere acts of terror and mass destruction, however impressive.”
“Dresden Bombing” Why?
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."A bit of our hidden history. What were we thinking of?
I recently rented a mini-series from Germany called ‘Dresden’. I haven’t gotten the scenes from the movie out of my head yet…to horrific for any words of mine.
kurt vonnegut was a POW in dresden when that happened, and 25+ years later, that experience became the basis for what many consider to be his magnum opus, Slaugherthouse 5.
That can be very tricky… the UN needs to reflect geopolitical reality in a way that diffuses conflict rather than encourages it. Neither the Security Council nor the General Assembly do that together they still only do so poorly.
Any change is risky in that it will require some nations to yield power and others to accept that they have not gained it.
For example the Arab world is not pleased with the Security Council because they have many votes in the General Assembly more per capita than most and also by actual power. It would be like New England clamoring to abolish the House and make the Senate supreme.
OT, Sorry to cut in but My “teabag” image is posted on redstate for a possible T-shirt. Scroll down to the hairy ball pic.
http://www.redstate.com/absentee/2009/04/10/open-thread-tea-party-gear/
Its just another example of how American “Exceptionalism” poisons US foreign affairs. The worst part is that any rational basis for “Exceptionalism” no longer exists because it was nothing but economic and therefore military “might makes right.”
I think it is more than American Exceptionalism. There is a practical matter of the stability and maturity of the countries with greater power in the UN. While no country is without corruption and the occasional loonie leader, some are much better equipped with the political checks and balances to deal with it.
We eventually throughout the W ideologies and we did it without killing anyone. Other countries, not so much.
But even so, many of the Security Council members were illegally benefiting from the Oil for Food program which never would have stopped unless the Iraqi war happened.
That was not reason to invade Iraq, but it does show that if even the most developed members of the UN can correctly do the work of the UN with their own checks and balances, how would less developed nations do it better?
edit
hat was not reason to invade Iraq, but it does show that if even the most developed members of the UN can’t correctly do the work of the UN with their own checks and balances, how would less developed nations do it better?
Ahhh… Wasp conceit at its finest. And why not? It’s Easter Sunday…
Because Japan and Korea are so Wasp-y?
France is so Wasp-y?
China and Russia are so Wasp-y?
At least Obama is a protestant. That’s something. What day it it? Is Tony Blair a Catholic today, or it that only on alternate Mondays?
It’s not conceit to note that the powers that won World War Two were right to set up a system of collective security in which they both took the biggest share of the responsibility and an outsized share of the voting power. Just because the world has changed since then and we need to adapt in recognition of that doesn’t make what was done a conceit.
When the UN was created, Riyadh had a population under 40,000. Today it has 5 million people. Times change, and the third world becomes the first world. Yet, just because a country gains population and economic clout doesn’t mean it has a commitment to liberal economics or liberal politics.
But I agree with you Booman. In 1945 the victorious powers via their respective empires objectively (though often tyrannically) represented the majority of the world’s population. Bygone days.
Wasp conceit, on the other hand, is to imply, as Andrew Longman does, that there is a pyramid of global social development at the top which sits wasp-man, and to then go on and postulate, that the current UN regime is still the least bad, because, unlike the systems of “developing” countries, the wasp model has built-in checks and balances. Hence neo-wasp man’s world rule is objectively the most enlightened and beneficial currently available, even if undemocratic, and should therefore continue by default.
Am I misreading Andrew? Are these not his views?
I don’t understand what WASPs have to do with it. Andrew made no such argument.
His argument appears to me to be that you have a bunch of countries that have basically bought into America’s post-1945 vision to the degree that they’ve joined in the G20-Bretton Woods system, into representative government with accompanying human and political rights, and into collective security. And then you have other countries that may have developed economically and politically and by population since 1945, but which are not solidly on board with the international system.
Europe, Latin America, Japan, Korea, and India all are functioning in the international system, but Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are not. Iran? Imperfectly, at best. Much of Africa is still struggling politically and economically.
It’s true that Russia and China have been problems from the beginning, at first ideologically and now more politically, but they’re so powerful that they cannot be ignored. The rest of the advanced economic powers are justified in excluding new members to the permanent Security Council that don’t share their basic political and economic assumptions and commitments. It’s not a conceit, it’s a bias in favor of countries that display stability and an at least an average commitment to human, political, and economic rights.
Don’t you realize that you yourself are making my case for me Booman?
You have merely rephrased what first Andrew implied and what I then fleshed out. You just put a slightly different spin on it: Waspman’s aka Angloman’s institutions rule a world in his own image. Others may be allowed into the Wasp club to the extent that they are good chaps, sociable and not trouble makers. Dear children: some fine day most all of you will have ascended to Waspman’s august level of being, then you too can become full club members and honorary Wasps. But you have to wait your turn and work within the system, and more importantly work on yourselves and on your manners. “Final victory” (your term Booman) will come when Waspman has created a world that is fully in his own image.
This vision of a benign white anglo imperialism is pure Milner Group ideology.
But no conceit, no no no.
First of all, I’m explaining my interpretation of Andrew’s argument, but I don’t really disagree with it.
I have no idea why you cast the entire post-war movement away from monarchy and in favor of Republicanism, internationalism, collective security, and human rights as the exclusive province of WASPs. Even if you want to talk origins, these values were co-created with France and the European continental philosophes, and exported unevenly by Napoleon.
More recently, the best ambassadors have been Koreans, Japanese, and Taiwanese. And pretty much all of Latin America has embraced these values in their rough outlines since 1990.
More often than not, criticism of the system involves its uneven application and not its underlying legitimacy. Those that do not have free and fair elections generally want them. People that don’t have the right to free speech and free assembly and the right to petition for grievances generally want those rights. Only on the question of freedom of religion is there still some fairly hot resistance in certain areas to the international system.
I don’t think there is anything particularly WASPy about any of it. Insofar as there are disagreements they are over details in the financial system (IMF, World Bank, third-world debt) or in the need for reforms in the UN, including the Security Council and its membership.
And, regardless, those with the power have the right and the means to promote and protect the values that the built this system to enshrine and perpetuate.