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| 2018-12-30 |
| [Foreign Policy] n a world with fewer rules, the only truly effective one is knowing what you can get away with. The answer today, it turns out, is: quite a lot. As the era of largely uncontested U.S. primacy fades, the international order has been thrown into turmoil. More leaders are tempted more often to test limits, jostle for power, and seek to bolster their influence‐or diminish that of their rivals‐by meddling in foreign conflicts. Multilateralism and its constraints are under siege, challenged by more transactional, zero-sum politics.Multilateralism and its constraints are under siege, challenged by more transactional, zero-sum politics. Instruments of collective action, such as the United Nations Security Council, are paralyzed; those of collective accountability, including the International Criminal Court, are ignored and disparaged. Nostalgia can be deceptive. Too fond a portrayal of the era of Western hegemony would be misleading. Iraq’s chemical weapons use against Iran in the 1980s; the 1990s bloodletting in Bosnia, Rwanda, and Somalia; the post-9/11 wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; Sri Lanka’s brutal 2009 campaign against the Tamils; and the collapse of Libya and South Sudan: all these happened at a time of‐in some cases because of‐U.S. dominance and a reasonably coherent West. A liberal and nominally rules-based order hardly stopped those setting the rules from discarding them when they saw fit. The erosion of Western influence, in short, looks different from Moscow, Beijing, and the developing world than it does from Brussels, London, or Washington. Still, for better and for worse, U.S. power and alliances have for years shaped international affairs, set limits, and structured regional orders. As the West’s influence declines, accelerated by U.S. President Donald Trump’s contempt for traditional allies and Europe’s struggles with Brexit and nativism, leaders across the world are probing and prodding to see how far they can go. In their domestic policies, many of those leaders embrace a noxious brew of nationalism and authoritarianism. The mix varies from place to place but typically entails rejection of international institutions and rules. There is little new in the critique of an unjust global order. But if once that critique tended to be rooted in international solidarity, today it stems chiefly from an inward-looking populism that celebrates narrow social and political identity, vilifies minorities and migrants, assails the rule of law and independence of the press, and elevates national sovereignty above all else. Trump may be the most visible of the genre, but he is far from the most extreme. The wind is in the sails of strongmen worldwide. They realize, at times perhaps to their surprise, that constraints are crumbling, and the behavior that results often fuels violence or crises.The wind is in the sails of strongmen worldwide. They realize, at times perhaps to their surprise, that constraints are crumbling, and the behavior that results often fuels violence or crises. Myanmar’s mass expulsion of 700,000 Rohingya, the Syrian regime’s brutal suppression of a popular uprising, the Cameroonian government’s apparent determination to crush an Anglophone insurgency rather than tackle the grievances fueling it, the Venezuelan government’s economic warfare against its own people, and the silencing of dissent in Turkey, Egypt, and elsewhere are but a few examples. All are motivated in part by what leaders perceive as a yellow light where they used to see solid red. |
| Posted by:Besoeker |
| #7 Herb, ol buddy, some days its really not worth chewing through the strap. |
| Posted by: Injun Bucket8891 2018-12-30 20:03 |
| #6 I believe Herb missed his dose of Haldol today |
| Posted by: Injun Bucket8891 2018-12-30 19:57 |
| #5 Unenthused by linguistic disunion, Revolting Black Irishman Clooney: "Yon swamp is so deep That its crocodiles weep At the state of John Q. Cameroonian!" |
| Posted by: Glarong Sproing5248 2018-12-30 18:29 |
| #4 #3 - WTF? |
| Posted by: Frank G 2018-12-30 16:58 |
| #3 " the Cameroonian government’s apparent determination to crush an Anglophone insurgency rather than tackle the grievances fueling it" The unelected US government’s apparent determination to crush a working class insurgency rather than tackle the grievances fueling it. |
| Posted by: Herb McCoy 2018-12-30 13:47 |
| #2 I *did* notice that the article was critical of all things Trump administration, but oddly silent about the previous one. So that explains it. |
| Posted by: Secret Master 2018-12-30 13:26 |
| #1 If you persist to the end of the article you'll see that the author was a "special assistant" to BHO. |
| Posted by: Matt 2018-12-30 13:18 |