So We’re No Longer The Leader Of The Free World. So What?
An article in The (failing) New York Times caught my attention yesterday because aside from Lindsey Graham’s threat to impeach Joe for pulling out of Afghanistan, this piece of reportage on what will happen if we bring our troops home has to rank as one of the most mis-conceived views on American foreign policy that has ever been published anywhere.
The article says that our withdrawal will shift the geopolitical balance of power in favor of the Russians, who as we leave the region will become the dominant power in the Near East. I quote: “Russia, China and Pakistan all stand to gain influence in regional affairs with the West’s withdrawal, while the United States and India stand to lose.”
It also turns out that Russia has been making nice-nice with the Taliban for at least the last year, holding multiple discussions with Taliban leaders in Moscow even though Russia has declared the Taliban to be a terrorist organization which the Russian government cannot recognize, at least in official terms.
Put all of this together and what you wind up with is that the Leader of the Free World since 1945 is now just one of a bunch of countries — U.S., China, Russia, India, Japan, Germany — which will be competing to be in charge of the globe. At least this is the prediction from the World Economic Council, the outfit which will hold its annual glitterati meeting at Davos, Covid-19 or no Covid-19.
So, let’s assume that Joe doesn’t back down on his plan to bring the troops home, and let’s further assume that the Russians will end up getting themselves back into Afghanistan politics again. This will tip the global strategic balance of power away from the United States?
Right on! I can’t wait. I have lived through more than 60 years of America playing the Great Power Game and I can’t find anything which shows me that being the Leader of the Free World helped this country become a better or more just or more humane society at all.
Don’t get me wrong. We have solved some very important social problems in my lifetime which most of the rest of the world either ignores or doesn’t have to deal with in any real way. And how we addressed these issues is really what being the Leader of the Free World should be all about.
When I rode over the Delaware Memorial Bridge at the end of the Jersey Turnpike in 1956, the hot dog and soda stand on Route 40 had a sign which said: ‘Colored — out back.’ When I was in San Francisco in 1987 I met a guy who couldn’t get married to another guy with whom he had been living for the past 14 years.
What did these remarkable social changes and the millions of people they impacted have to do with whether we were the leaders of the Free World? Not one, goddamn thing. You think the Taliban care that two women can now legally marry and raise children in all 50 U.S. states? For that matter, why should they care?
Yesterday we started getting reports about a new resistance against the Taliban that has already started up. It’s not clear who these new ‘freedom fighters’ are, or who’s in command, but I guarantee you they will soon be getting weapons from the same source which armed the mujahedeen against the Soviet troops in 1979. That was us. Add an ‘a’ to the ‘us.’
So here we go again. The same way that leaders of both the free and unfree worlds we have been going into Afghanistan for now more than one hundred and fifty years.
I can only hope that now that America has finally ‘lost’ a war, we will begin to create a foreign policy based on something more rational than which country has the biggest swinging dick. And if this means letting a new Leader of the Free World piss away the lives of its military in places like Afghanistan, as Grandpa would say: “a bi gezinte hai.”
Which means, stick it up your you-know-what.
