While the Storm Clouds Gather

8/10/2019 While the Storm Clouds Gather

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VOLUME XIV, NUMBER 4, FALL 2014

A Journal of Political Thought and Statesmanship

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Bruce S.

ornton:e Parthenon

WilliamVoegeli:

Turning 60

Allan H.Meltzer:

e PikettyBoom

Rich Lowry:e

Pity Party

Bradley C.SWatson:

RichardEpsteins

LiberalismPeter W.Wood:

Henry Davidoreau

ChristopherCaldwell:

Fukuyama onDemocracy

Steven F.

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RichardBrookhiser:

e Long Road

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AlgisValiunas:

George

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Claremont Review of Books wFall 2014Page 28

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Essay by Angelo M. Codevilla

W S C G*

And I will restore to you the years that the locusthath eaten.

Joel 2:25

F , -cials, former officials, and academics athundreds of centers, schools, founda-

tions, and institutes who make up Americasforeign policy establishment have supposedthat Americas peace would result from inter-national order, and that securing such an or-der must be our foreign policys main task. Aquarter-century after President George H.W.Bush sent a half-million troops to the Persian

Gulf to establish America as the leader of anew world order, we have suffered growingdisorder among and within nations, and in-creasing disrespect for America. In fact, any

nations peacealong with historys rare in-stances of orderis the temporary result ofindividual peoples pursuing their own agen-das. Tat is because peoples live and die fortheir own version of peace rather than for anyinternational order.

We Americans now find ourselves im-mersed in quarrels within and among peoplesfrom the earths farthest reaches. A majorityof us demands less involvement in those quar-rels, and more effectiveness against our ownenemies. Above all, Americans want peace,especially at home. Far from contradictoryor unreasonable, these desires are aspects of

the same sensible determination to leave oth-ers business to them, while doing a better jobminding our own.

Distinguishing our business from othersis only part of the solution to our problem.For a generation, the U.S. governments in-decisive military action has squandered therespect of friends and enemies alike. Tereshould be no illusion that mere policy canovercome this deadly legacy, or that it can beovercome entirely. Restoring the years that

the locust hath eaten, will require characterand good fortune, even more than intellect,to an extent available only through divinegrace.

How do we refocus American statecraftto its proper principles while confronting theconsequences of having long neglected them,as the clouds of war gather? Like all who findthemselves in trouble, Americans had best re-flect on how we got into our present fix beforemaking our next move.

Dreaming and Ruling

A , . -nans history of American diplomacy(American Diplomacy, 19001950)

had noted that, though Americans in 1900

could not imagine any threats from abroad,50 years later they could hardly think of any-thing else. Why had America become less safeand more anxious even as it had become muchmore powerful? Because in the interveninghalf-century it had replaced the founding gen-erations focus on affairs that are peculiarlyAmericas own with attempts to manage theaffairs of other peoplesa departure fromstatesmanships natural focus that entailed ahost of troubles.

* Te opening lines of Irving Berlin's "God Bless Amer-ica," introduced by singer Kate Smith on Armistice

Day in 1938:While the storm clouds gather far across the sea,Let us swear allegiance to a land that's free.Let us all be grateful for a land so fair,As we raise our voices in a solemn prayer.God bless America,Land that I love.Stand beside her and guide herTrough the night with a light from above.From the mountains, to the prairies,o the oceans, white with foam,God bless America, my home sweet home.


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Te original rationale for confusingAmericas interest with mankinds had beenthat great power requires it. But TeodoreRoosevelt, the first president who wieldedAmericas new power abroad, had done sowhile keeping a sharp focus on Americas owninterest. He mediated peace between Russiaand Japan for Americas sake, not theirs, and

regarded the Philippines and the Caribbeanas outworks of Americas defense.

Tis is worlds away from how imperialistssuch as Republican Senator Albert Beveridgeviewed the results of the Spanish-Americanwar: self-government and internal develop-ment have been the dominant notes of our firstcentury; administration and the developmentof other lands will be the dominant notes ofour second century. Had .R. won his bidfor the White House in 1912, he would havejoined the Great War strictly to prevent Amer-icas Atlantic frontier from being monopolizedby a hostile power. Instead, Woodrow Wilson

turned the Great War into World War I in or-der to make the world safe for democracy, inconcert with other nations that he gratuitouslyimagined to be similarly inclined.

A hundred years later, we know all too wellwhat we got from trying to improve the worldby reordering it: a century of war and upheav-al that cost hundreds of millions of innocentlives.

Each of our foreign policy establishmentsseveral factions imagines that all peoples areinterested in adopting its particular recipe fororder and progress. For liberal international-ists it is secular, technocratic, socio-econom-ic development; for realists its predictable,self-interested, moderate behavior; and forneoconservatives, democracy. Tese Ameri-cans aim to put an end to mankinds historyof brutal contention by guiding the nationsalong their preferred paths. Tinking thisway has led them to discount the foreign-nessof foreignersthe real differences betweenreligions, civilizations, and regimesand todisrespect the reality of diversity in the dic-tionary meaning of the word, and to indulgetheir fantasies.

Foremost among their fantasies is the no-tion that they can accomplish great thingswithout bothering to square the ends soughtwith the means necessary to achieve them.Te millions, billions, and now trillions ofdollars available to U.S. officials, the lure thatAmerica has ever exerted on mankind, theprestige that our incomparably efficient andgenerous armed forces have won for America,the eagerness of foreigners to seek Americanhelp for their own ends and in their own quar-relsall have tempted policymakers to thinkof themselves as possessing the wisdom and

the right to pull mankinds strings. SinceWilsons time, and especially since WorldWar II, this has led American officials to un-dertake projects that they could not or wouldnot carry to success, and the failures of whichhave defined America as impotent.

In 1919, Woodrow Wilson said thatAmerica had no other purpose than to serve

mankind. At the Paris Peace Conference thatconcluded World War I he imagined that hecould pacify all nations for all time by pro-moting democracy, order, and progress. Butthe borders he brokered spawned wars thathave yet to end, while his pursuit of Progres-sive fantasies reaped Lenin, Mussolini, Stalin,Hitler, and Mao. Yet those fantasies remainour bipartisan ruling classs orthodoxy.

Te Republicans of the 20s made war on(mostly American) armaments and brokeredyet more treaties. Teir guarantee of Chinasterritorial integrity, made as they were divest-ing themselves of the capacity or the intention

of enforcing it, helped to bring on war in thePacific. Teir efforts to rescue the Versaillesreatys economic follies with inflationaryloans helped sow the Great Depression.

Beginning in 1933, Franklin RooseveltsDemocrats dreamt of a grand alliance with theSoviet Union for world progress. No dreamhas proved more fateful to modern America.As the distinguished historian Robert Con-quest has noted, the conjunction of dreamingand ruling is deadly. Ignoring Communismsruthless, hostile character, Roosevelts brainstrust reduced Americas aims in World WarII to persuading Stalin to share their dream.Tis ended up misleading a substantial por-tion of his followers into blaming their fellowAmericans for the Cold War, and divided usalong lines that endure to our day, sowing ev-ermore discord.

In 1950, the ruman Administration choseto spend over 36,000 American lives in Koreato achieve a stalemate rather than defeat the ag-gression by which Stalin and Mao were break-ing the U.S. policy of containment. Tismade sense only in the progressive dream ofworld order through a grand alliance. In lightof this dream, Korea had to be fought in thatdisastrous way because it was the wrong warin the wrong place against the wrong enemy.Policymakers showed how uninterested theywere in America's own business by not fight-ing, or even defining, what they considered tobe the right war for containment. When Sena-tor Robert aft argued in A Foreign Policy forAmericans (1951), and General Douglas Ma-cArthur repeated to Congress, that Americashould fight only for its own interest and forvictory or not at all, Americas foreign policyelite denounced them as dinosaurs.

No Victory, No Enemies

B , -ing for our victory and our peace or notat all had become intellectually as well

as politically incorrect. Henry Kissingers Nu-clear Weapons and Foreign Policy (1957) andTe Necessity for Choice (1961) applied (and

translated into readable English) economistTomas Schellings teachings that humanconflict takes place within an inescapable ma-trix of choices that rationally precludes anybut limited objectives. ogether, these booksbecame our ruling classs bible of internationalaffairs. Tat bibles priests tried to counter theCommunist worlds conquest of South Viet-nam without ever trying to defeat its sponsorsmilitarily. Tere is no victory in Vietnam,for anybody, said President Lyndon Johnson.North Vietnam, backed by the Soviet Union,thought otherwise.

So did Senator Barry Goldwater, who told

the country as plainly as he could that if theVietnam war was worth fighting, it was worthfighting to victory, but that if it was not worthfighting to victory it was not worth fighting atall. Our bipartisan ruling class called him anunsophisticated warmonger.

Our ruling class, convinced as it was thatthe world operated as Kissinger and Schellingsaid it did, thought it inappropriate to identifyany set of persons as the enemy whose elimina-tion or constraint would bring us peace. Andso, President Johnson identified Americasenemies in the world as poverty, ignorance,hunger, and disease. Tis also reflected ourruling classs view of Vietnam as a contest ofrival strategies for social engineering. Accord-ingly, the U.S. armed forces were ordered tohold the line while civilian nation-buildersdid the decisive work. Our military did notmake war on North Vietnam, nor even cutit off from Soviet and Chinese supplies. TeVietnam war has remained, farcically, the par-adigm of Americas foreign policy. Not once inthe ensuing 40 years of military engagementshas the U.S. government identified any en-emy whose elimination would bring us peace.Keeping good relations with the governmentsthat supply, or otherwise support, enemies-in-arms has taken precedence over our owntroops lives.

During the 1960s and 70s U.S. foreignpolicys Rooseveltian priority, now labeled

dtente, sought to integrate the Communistworld into the world order. As a token of goodfaith, the U.S. removed from Europe the stra-tegic nuclear forces that had been the mainstayof its defense, dismantled our air defenses, de-cided against defending against ballistic mis-siles, and increased trade with and extended


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rorism was born and raised by certain govern-ments, and still has roots both material andpsychological in many existing regimes, andthough individual organizations are of someimportance, the phenomenon has transcendedall of those factors.

In 1960 the Muslims who engaged in anti-American terrorism did so mainly for secular

political reasons. Between the mid-1970s and2000 anti-American terrorism took on theaspect of civilizational war. Now, it is tran-scending even that, and is becoming theraisondtreof countless persons who feel hatred forAmerica for any number of personal reasons.Until recently, for example, some men (andwomen) became terrorists because they wereMuslim. Now, some become Muslim as an ex-cuse for acting out their hatred of and disdainfor Americans. Te terrorism that plagues usis becoming merely one of the things that hap-pen to nations that lose the respect of othersincluding sectors of their own populations.

Tus, even as bin Laden disappeared intoirrelevance long before dying, and the bulk ofthose who ever saw him or communicated withhim were killed, and as terrorists and terroristacts increased by an order of magnitude, ourruling class has engaged in a fruitless, partisandebate about whether or not al-Qaeda or someother organization has been fought effectively.

Te war on terror that President GeorgeW. Bush declared against nobody in particularlargely reprised the Vietnam war. U.S. armedforces occupied Afghanistan and Iraq as theyhad occupied South Vietnam, and attemptedto rid these countries of certain unsavory or-ganizations and individuals. As in Vietnam,the U.S. government tried to pacify local war-ring factions and to broker coalition govern-ments among them, all the while reformingthe economy and society. Only nowadays, inkeeping with its own evolving identity, ourgovernment fights violent extremism by de-nying any and all absolute truths (too divisive),as well as by foisting onto the rest of the worldits own support for feminism and homosexu-ality. Not surprisingly, most of the Afghansand Iraqis who have fought us have done sobecause Americans got in the way of their lo-cal struggles and because our coarsening wayof life is a moral affront to them.

At the same time, our ruling class directedhomeland security (nominally) against allcitizens equally rather than discriminately,against plausible enemies. It told Americansto trust one another less than ever, whiletrusting the authorities more. By branding aspolitically incorrect the obvious security fo-cus on Muslims, our elites made the designa-tion dangerous extremists a matter of theirown likes and dislikes. Te ruling classs new

powers and discretion compounded its Wil-sonian sense of entitlement to reform lesserfolk. Accordingly, the decisions about who arethe publics true enemies continue to springominously from the private prejudices and in-terests, the partisan friendships and enmities,of the officials who make them.

Hence, computer searches find that the

term extremist correlates in the major news-papers with conservative or right-wing attwelve times the rate it does with liberal or

left-wing; and the Department of HomelandSecurity compiles dossiers against pro-lifersand such antigovernment activists as home-schoolers and gun owners. Why shouldntofficials from the Internal Revenue Service tothe Federal Elections Commission act accord-ing to what they hear from their superiors andwhat they read in the best media about whoand what endangers America? Tus is the waron terror drawing Americans into a spiral ofdomestic strife.

Te American statesmen of both partieswho for the past hundred years thought thatAmericas peace and mission would be servedby improving and reordering mankind got itbackward: that effort has ended up undermin-ing our national identity and fomenting waramong ourselves. No amount of persuasion,inducement, or force could ever have made

democracy safe among diverse peoples withunsteady and undemocratic political and re-ligious sentiments. Whats more, because theunderstanding of freedom is not just divergentbut often contradictory among different peo-ples, the latest version of American statesmensconfusion of our own good with mankindsencapsulated in George W. Bushs Second In-augural statement that America cannot be freeuntil the rest of the world is free as welleffec-tively condemns our country to a foreign policyathwart reality, one that cannot achieve the

peace among ourselves and with all nations ofwhich Abraham Lincoln spoke.

In 1900, former Secretary of State Rich-ard Olney warned Americans that

[No great power]can afford to re-gard itself as a sort of missionary na-tion charged with the rectification oferrors and the redress of wrongs theworld over. Were the United States toenter upon its new international rolewith the serious purpose of carrying outany such theory, it would not merely belaughed at but voted a nuisance by allother nationsand treated accordingly.

Olneys prediction has come true. Whyshould anyone respect the United States to-day? And what are we going to do about it?

Swearing Allegiance

I home and respected abroad, the next gen-eration of statesmen must dedicate them-

selves to recovering and applying the ways inwhich Americans once understood their coun-trys greatness. Te connection between the

danger and disdain that are ours today and ourruling classs ideas is not accidentalany morethan the safety and honor we once enjoyedwere accidental to our statesmens ideas fromGeorge Washington to Teodore Roosevelt.

Te ultimate source of our current dysfunc-tion is our elites belief that they are morallyand intellectually entitled to nation-buildpeoples abroad and Americans at home, whomthey likewise deplore. In what may have beenhis most revealing speech, President Wilsonurged his listeners in October 1914 to be theirbrothers keepers at home and abroad:

I remember a classmate of mine say-ing, Why, man, cant you let anythingalone? I said, I let everything alonethat you can show me is not itself mov-ing in the wrong direction, but I am notgoing to let those things alone that I seeare going downhill.

Wilson and his successors have behaved aspresumptive masters to all peoples, even thosethey were elected to serve.

America needs statesmen who view them-selves as faithful representatives of our identityrather than as potentates entitled to reshape it,and who respect the discrete identities of for-eign peoples. Tis begins with holding fast tothe Declaration of Independences basic point:since all men are created equal, none has theright to rule another without his consent. Ourgovernment has fouled our lives and those offoreigners by pretending to possess rights andcapacities it does not have. Te remedy lies infocusing it onto its legitimate endsthat is, toguard Americas peace and to win its wars.

Te domestic side of the war on terror hasunderlined how far our bipartisan ruling classhas departed from what the founders calledpopular government (now called democracy).Failure to return to popular government asoriginally understood would be more terriblethan any series of terrorist attacks.

During World War II and the Cold War,the U.S. government trusted the Americanpeople to guard the home front against en-emies whose capacity for infiltration and ter-ror far exceeded anything of which todaysterrorists are capable. (A revealing exceptionwas FDRs internment of Japanese-Americans,motivated by labor and business resentment


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When courts stray from the Constitution,were on their case.

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of Japanese-American success rather than byany threat they posed.) oday we are told tofollow our government in trusting only thosewith badges around their necks. Mistrust ofgovernment-wary Americans verges on hostil-ity. Increasingly, the American people recipro-cate that hostility. No democracy can survivethis way.

Our ruling class defines as extremism thecommon-sense observation that Americas ter-rorist enemies are Muslims acting on behalf ofcauses promoted by many Muslim regimes andsupported, to various degrees, by millions ofMuslims. It indicts as extremism the Ameri-can peoples resistance to its mandates of politi-cally correct thoughts, words, and deeds.

Only a renewed dedication to following thepeoples common sense can restore true secu-rity at home. Te only proper way to desig-nate against whom we must protect ourselvesat homein practice, how to do profilingproperlyis to follow our Constitution. Tat

means public debates followed by elections fol-lowed by the legislative process that culminatesin votes and laws, as well as in administration oflaws that respects the sovereign peoples sense.

urning back from the past centurys mis-guided foreign policy does not mean trying towash our hands of the world, any more thanit means clipping the American eagles talonsor turning it into an ostrich. On the contrary.Reearning respect will surely require the useof more power than a nation would need thathad not already squandered so much of it.Backlogs of bad judgment, of inattention tovital interests, and of defeat can be workedoff only by examples of good judgment and byvictories that inspire confidence.

Overseas, our ruling class has assumedthat terrorism is the work of rogues andthat most if not all religions, nations, cultures,and subcultures are fundamentally inclinedto peace and international order. In reality,what happens among foreigners results fromcharacteristics and choices that are irreduc-ibly their own; we Americans cannot nation-build others into something they are not.Respect for their separate character, as well asfor our own, requires us to hold responsiblethose who are powerful among them whentheir policies and proxies injure us.

In short, the Age of error emanatingfrom states, from would-be states, and fromso-called failed states in no way eliminatesthe ancient rules of foreign relations. Tefirst of these, from which all others follow, isto safeguard our way of life from foreign in-terference. Tat means pursuing peace by allmeans that may be required to keep us safe inour independence. As Te Federalistexplains,we intend to give no offense to foreigners, and

suffer none ourselves. Or, as Teodore Roo-sevelt put it a century later, we must speaksoftly and carry a big stick.

George Washington, to whom we owe somuch else, put the same truth this way: Ob-serve good faith and justice towards all na-tions; cultivate peace and harmony with all.Tat is because our overriding business with

foreign nations is to have as little trouble aspossible with them. Washington named nosubstantive objectives for our foreign rela-tionsonly peace. He had learned the hardway in the 1790s that involvement in oth-ers wars hazards peace among Americansthemselves. We ought to be learning that, too.Since quarrels and wars are sometimes un-avoidable, John Quincy Adams warned thatwe must enter the lists in no cause other thanour own. Any peace depends on the charac-ter of whoever wins the war.

Keeping our peace and winning our warsis both the end and the means of securing

respect. In peace and war, this means neverletting favors go unrewarded or injuries un-avenged, making commitments smaller thanthe capacity to fulfill them, and fulfilling theones that we make.

Reciprocal respect is the aim of peacefulforeign relations. Reciprocity may well havebeen the word that Americas founding genera-tion used most often in describing its interna-tional aims. Gauging the extent to which reci-procity is possible is as much a challenge in ourtime as it was in theirs. Accepting the reality ofothers sovereignty over their own business isthe prerequisite for reciprocity. Te distinctionbetween our business and their business isthe natural limiting principle of internationalaffairs (as it is of interpersonal affairs). Whileothers may forbear much that we might do inour own interest, they will not stand for any-thing we might presume to do in theirs.

Because our peace, like anyones, dependson the power to defend it, military prepared-ness is the first priority of our business. Ourpreparedness must match any possible conflictin which our business may involve us. For ex-ample, it is imprudent and self-discrediting toinvolve America in controversies with powerscapable of launching ballistic missiles at us un-til and unless we have a respectable anti-missiledefense. In our time, a geopolitics worthy of re-spect has to be backed by missile defense.

Force, in all its forms, is fundamental to re-spect. Whether any foreigners like us or hateus is strictly their business. We have zero sayover what they may or may not find offensive.But whether anyone fears offending us is ourinalienable responsibility.

Especially when we judge an item of busi-ness to require the use of force, the pursuit of

peace by the most rapid means possible mustbe the guiding principle of our military opera-tions. Tis is because the preservation of ourcharacter transcends all other business, andbecause history does not record instances ofpeoples mores improving in wartime.

Te Muslim World

H so long, America begins to resem-ble Rome in the 4th century A.D.,

as described by Montesquieu: there was nopeople so small or weak that it could not dothem harm.

Guarding ourselves from the dangers ema-nating from Muslim civilizations decay is theleast of our problems, though it is emblematicof them all. Tese dangers stem not so muchfrom any resources, strength, or attractivenesson the part of our enemies as they do from ourown bad judgment and weakness of character.

Objectively, the Muslim world is no morea geopolitical challenge today than it was twocenturies ago. Even less than when Napoleonconquered Egypt could any Muslim armytoday contend with a major Western one. Anuclear-armed Iran, though more formidablethan now, would be no exception. None of to-days Muslim countries feed themselves. Teyproduce a smaller (and declining) proportionof the worlds goods and services than in colo-nial days. It is no coincidence that the onset ofterror from the Muslim world coincided withthe U.S. and British governments disastrousdecisions between 1966 and 1973 to accede tothese countries assertion of sovereignty overthe oil on which they happen to sit, to the pro-duction of which they do not contribute, andthe revenues from which they misuse grossly.Easily, we could restore Muslim countries tothe abject poverty they earn. Te bitter divi-sions among Muslim potentates are just aseasily exploited. Te few among them whoare willing to die in religious-political frenzycan be accommodated. No outsiders envytheir way of life. Without mixing with them,we could do whatever we pleased to whoeveramong them would defy us, and to the fewamong ourselves who sympathize with them.

Why then have troubles from that partof mankind consumed our attention in thiscentury? Ridding ourselves of them wouldnot require doing all we could. Te minimumwould suffice, namely, to hold the potentatesin any given place, whose identities are knownpublicly, responsible with their lives for anyincitement or anything else that comes fromthose places that we consider injurious tous. Tis is consistent with international lawas well as with common sense, and does not


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and is vulnerable to shifts in energy prices. Itsoligarchic rulers sit uneasily atop a declining,cynical population. Its main asset in its driveagainst Ukraine, the Baltics, Belarus, andGeorgia is these states near total lack of mili-tary power and correct sense that their Euro-pean neighbors to the west will not help them.Te Poles, in turn, and with an awful sense of

dj vu, recognize that Germany would ratherwork with the Bear than help Poland defenditself.

Western Europes readiness to acquiesce toRussias domination of the former Soviet Em-pire makes it all too clear that, were Russia tosucceed, Europe would not resist any demandsthat Russia might make. Tus Russia wouldbecome Eurasias hegemon, radiating powerinto the Atlantic. Tis is the danger for us. Butwe must be clear about the nature of the prob-lem: which is not Russias power, but rather thecivilizational collapse of Europes capacity toresist Russia, or the Islamic world, or anything

else for that matter. Tis means that in order tosafeguard our Atlantic flank, which is of highinterest, we will have to act without the help,and often in defiance, of some of the countrieswhose independence we must protect.

Tough the U.S. cannot exert decisive mil-itary force deep in Eurasia, it does not need todo so, much less to fight Russia militarily any-where. Supplying military hardware to thepeoples who are threatened directly by Rus-sian military power would be enough to makethem nuts sufficiently hard for the Russiansto crack as to make doing so a daunting do-mestic problem for Russias rulers. Americasmain leverage against Russias resumption ofsomething like the Soviet Union is economic.We have the decisive power to cut Russia offfrom the world through secondary economicsanctions. Te affected countries would pro-test vigorously, but none could afford to cutthemselves off from dealing with Americaand with all the others who do. Russia wouldhave no choice but to yield, and fast.

We have not employed this decisive instru-ment of statecraft for the same reason West-ern Europe is acquiescing in the new Russianempire: imposing major sanctions would re-sult in many of our own citizens losing busi-ness. Until now, politically influential businessinterests, in league with their counterparts inEurope and elsewhere, have made sure thatsuch economic sanctions as the U.S. govern-ment applies cause little if any economic dis-ruption to their bottom line. Both Republicanand Democratic administrations have usednon-disruptive sanctions to express displea-sure at Russias expansion first in Georgia andthen in Ukraine, but cheap sanctions are notserious, and serious ones are not cheap.

Our choice regarding the Russian stormthat is moving toward the Atlantic is straight-forward: we can stop it, probably withoutbloodshed, by bending short-term economicinterest to long-term geopolitical interest, orwe can continue the kind of crony capitalismthat prefers making money over keeping ourpeace.

With regard to Chinas drive for hegemo-ny over the Western Pacific, our choices areanything but simple, and are fraught with allmanner of danger. Tey are a severe test ofstatesmanship.

Our war in the Pacific 70 years ago result-ed from ill-considered involvement in the re-gions ancient animosities. Tough our victoryburied them under our overwhelming power,the rise first of Japan and then of South Ko-rea and Southeast Asia to productivity andwealth, and since then of China to power andambition, is making the pax Americanafrom which we and others have benefiteda

thing of the past. o avoid repeating the er-rors of the 1920s and 30s, we must resolve tobring our ends and means into balance.

Our post-1945 commitments in the regionremain, even as our power to fulfill them de-clines in absolute terms and especially in rela-tion to Chinas. Without exception, the regionsgovernments fear China. Many have territorialcontentions with it and racial animosities to-ward it. Te decline of American power is lead-ing Japan ever closer to building military forcesto rival Chinas. Te Philippines scramble tohold onto what remains of U.S. power there.aiwan and Singapore worry. South Korea, forits part, is listening to Chinas increasingly un-subtle offer to broker the Korean peninsulasunification if South Korea will exchange itssecurity alliance with the U.S. for one withChina, oriented against Japan.

Danger of Chinese hegemony, of waramong the countries of the region, of align-ments that might well shift against us, and ofour own military intervention under unfavor-able circumstances is all the more serious be-cause the military capabilities are great on allsides. Yet any possible confrontation wouldtake place in the context of the massive eco-nomic interdependence (even symbiosis) be-tween the countries of the region and betweenthem and ourselves.

Te military situation is straightforward:China's strategy is to prevent interference bythe United States and to establish military con-trol over the western Pacific some hundreds ofmiles offshore and over as many of the islandsthere as possible. It has developed and is per-fecting ballistic and cruise missiles, as well asaircraft and submarines optimized to do justthat. It intends its small but growing force of

require any sort of occupation of hostile ter-ritory. Secondly, todays Muslim world beingeven more consumed by internecine warfarethan it has been in many centuries, the begin-ning of wisdom for us is to recognize that thiswarfare is their business, and not to interferewith its bloody and exhausting course.

Protecting ourselves from the troubles of

the Muslim world requires that our officialsdispense with crippling political correctness,and face reality. Te U.S. governments offi-cial position, as President Obama has statedrepeatedly, is that the self-declared IslamicState is not Islamic. But the people who runI.S. and who actually have Islamic credentialsthink otherwise. Undersecretary of StateRick Stengels statement that ISIL is bereftof ideas, theyre bankrupt of ideas. Its not anorganization that is animated by ideas, onlyconfuses ourselves.

Being clear with ourselves, that ortho-dox Islamnever mind the Wahabi version

that rules Saudi Arabia and the Sunni Gulfstatesdictates savage cruelty toward anyresistance to its rule, should, at the very least,keep our government from continuing to em-power, enrich, and accredit persons who havedone, are doing, and will continue to do harmto us. A new generation of statesmen mustdispel their predecessors dreams that theMuslim world, and the entire Tird World,will rise to new ways of life superior in justiceand morality to our own. Once we recognizewho these peoples are and resolve to defendour principles and identity, that set of stormclouds will loom small.

Te same cannot be said about our otherforeign policy problems.

Greater Challenges

R as much as it can of the old SovietUnion poses a classic geopolitical

challenge: the possibility that all of Europemight be dominated by a hostile power. Rus-sias leaders think in Soviet terms and possessa major stock of nuclear arms. Nevertheless,notwithstanding the awful possibility thatany quarrel with Russia might involve nuclearwar, our resistance to its expansion is highlyunlikely to lead to nuclear war because the useof such weapons would be counterproductiveto Russias purpose.

Meeting Russias challenge, somewhat likemeeting the Muslim worlds, depends less onmilitary force than on mustering our ownpolitical resolve. oday, Russia is weak: itsarmys reach is short, its fragile economy con-sists of oil and arms. It has to sell oil and gasmore urgently than others have to buy them,


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intercontinental ballistic missiles to force theU.S. to realize that protecting aiwan, Japan,and other nations in the region risks the de-struction of American cities. China has anti-satellite weapons with which it would try todestroy the space-based communications andintelligence assets on which the U.S. militaryrelies. In response, though our government

has pivoted naval and air forces from otherregions to the Pacific, the total U.S. militaryinventory in the region continues to decline.

More importantly, the U.S. has no militarystrategy for safeguarding the aircraft carriersthat would be its principal instrument in amilitary confrontation. We have no defensesagainst Chinas long-range missiles and nomeans of defending our Pacific bases againstthe medium-range missiles that would beaimed at them.

U.S. officials have emphasized their faiththat Chinas rise as a world power is driven byenlightened self-interest and that it will lead

to its internal liberalization as well as goodglobal citizenship. None of its neighbors ispersuaded. Chinas political system, driven asit is by ruthless, amoral, intra-oligarchic com-petition, seems likelier to be moderated bythe seriousness of opposition to its immoder-ate behaviorif by anything.

As always, the more complex the challengethe more that wise statesmen must rely on thefundamentals of their craft. Te AmericanFounders lived by the maxim if you wouldhave peace, prepare for warand so shouldwe. Preparing to defeat Chinas military plansfurthers rather than contradicts our desire tocontinue mutually beneficial economic rela-tions with it.

Not least of the perversions of statecraftthat compose Henry Kissingers legacy is theconcept of creative ambiguity. Te currentgeneration of officials has accustomed them-selves to imprecision in policymaking and di-plomacy, believing that they thereby preservetheir options. No, they create options forothers. A new generation of statesmen, revers-ing Kissingers baleful legacy, should strive forthe utmost clarity in our relations with Chi-na. Serious, clear, unambiguous policy thatcommunicates clearly to all what the UnitedStates is ready, willing, and able to do is thekey to such peace as may be possible.

Let us follow the example of John QuincyAdamss relations with Russia, the despotismpar excellence of his day, which had proclaimedthe supremacy of monarchical over republicanways and had signaled its intention to expand itssettlements in North America. Adams, want-ing peace and friendship with the tsar whilekeeping more of his settlements out of NorthAmerica and asserting our own identity, left no

doubt in Russias mind about where Americastood on these matters. odays America hasfar more sticks and carrots than Adams did.But these are valid only insofar as they answer,precisely and satisfactorily, the questions in theminds of the governments with which we deal.What plans and means do we have to defeatwhat possible Chinese military moves? Does

China understand what our limits are? Doeseveryone else? Does China, and do others, un-derstand what our objectives in the Pacific areand that our means match our ends? Do wehave in mind and can we sustain a relation-ship with Japan that satisfies its concerns? Justas Adams left no doubt about where Americastood, neither should any statesmen todayleave any doubt in Chinese minds.

A Prayer

A Pacific, Americas shrinking navy has

allocated $3.5 billion to develop biofu-els so that it can meet its goal of drawing halfits energy from renewable sources by the year2020. Tat is because the current administra-tion deems what it calls anthropogenic cli-mate change to be the most serious problemthe country faces.

As the self-declared Islamic StateSad-dam Husseins security cadre leading Wahabifaithful from around the globebeheadsAmericans in what used to be Syria and Iraqand invites others to imitate it, Americaspresident trumpets his intention to destroyit while the U.S. armed forces carry out anaverage of six air sorties per day against it de-stroying mostly empty buildings.

As Russias regular forces drop pretensesof being Ukrainian dissidents and run over aUkrainian army that the United States hadpersuaded to give up its nuclear weapons inexchange for a guarantee of security, the U.S.governments assistance to Ukraine consistsof non-lethal equipment featuring our armysdisgusting MREs, meals ready to eat. At leastit might have treated the beleaguered Ukrai-nian military to rations from France or Italy.

o restore respect and secure peace, Amer-ica would have to be governed very differentlyfrom the way it has been for a long time. Letus pray that God may Stand beside her andguide her / Trough the night with a lightfrom above.

Angelo M. Codevilla is a senior fellow of theClaremont Institute, professor emeritus of In-ternational Relations at Boston University, andthe author, most recently, of o Make and KeepPeace: Among Ourselves and with All Na-tions(Hoover Institution Press).

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While the Storm Clouds Gather