Have We Ever Had So Many Enemies?

I can't think of a time when we were choosing to have so many "enemies".

What a change from just 15-20 years ago!

Then we saw the opportunity to work with a Russia which had cast off communism and which we believed should see its future as part of a greater Europe.

Then we saw the opportunity to work with China, not as a competitor and threat but as a trading partner and a nation we could work with on matters like climate change to improve the world.

Then we saw Canada and Mexico as partners and good neighbors.

Then we viewed Western European countries as our closest friends and allies.

We did not agree on everything. We knew they had their own interests and that they would not mesh with ours in every case. We knew there were matters of trade we would need to argue through. But we believed we could do with an outcome that better served both nations.

The Trump Administration is picking so many needless fights.

We are facing a world divided. And much of it in my view is needless and more than that dangerous to our own and the world's interest.

Trump is explicitly turning his back on the idea of working together in a global world. I can think of few things more dangerous.

He is thumbing his nose at institutions and agreements built on mutual even if sometimes shaky trust which took years and in some cases generations to build: institutions and agreements like the WTO, NAFTA, Paris Climate Agreement, the United Nations itself.

As a result, we are losing our stature as an ideological leader in the world for the first time in my eighty-year life.

The sources of the rupture of trust between Russia and China and the United States are complex. There is enough blame to go around. Russia should not have taken possession of Crimea. But it has no intent of expanding its global presence as a nation a la the Soviet Union. To do so would be suicide. Putin and every thinking Russian know this.

China is indeed an economic competitor. Naturally. And they engage in some practices in the area for example of intellectual property that need to change. But that need not, it should not make them a geo-political competitor.

The issue of who controls theSouth China sea is real but has to be resolvable. Allowing this to lead to a geo-political clash of arms would be akin to allowing the Balkans lead us into World War I, which in fact is what happened. And the current use of draconian tariffs is a crude and I believe ineffective means to try to solve the intellectual property issue. We seem to have lost our belief in diplomacy. We look to economic and military pressure to get things our way.

More than a half-century ago, President Eisenhower in his farewell address warned the Nation against what he described as a "military-industrial" complex. It is alive and well. Not with nefarious intent. Not at all. It is espoused by well-meaning people dedicated to doing what they believe is right.

I attended a conference this week. I heard talks from two retired senior military officers and a former Secretary of the Navy. They made it clear that the objective of the U.S. was to ensure our military retained its position as the "dominant force." They talked of the "threat" of China as if it was committed to expand its control across Asia as Japan did leading up to WWII. They indicated we now had about 280 ships and were committed to 355, making this something of a numbers game.
The United States military budget already exceeds the next 5-6 countries combined.

The tragedy here is not just that we are spending money that could better be placed against other national imperatives and running up our national debt. Even more important is that it fuels and in some ways calls for the drive to find adversaries against which the weapons this money funds can be targeted and thus justified. That is the biggest risk of the "military-industrial" complex about which Eisenhower warned us.

Let me not be understood. I am not naive. We have people in the world who hold ideologies dramatically counter to are own and are out to bring down our value systems, our way of life. Terrorists, ISIS, some of the leaders in Iran. We need to have the military capability to thwart and defeat their attacks and we need allies, often including in my opinion Russia and China, to do so.

I served in the military.  I respect members of the military deeply. We need them. I am conscious and humbled by how they support our lives today. And have always done so, one family member to the next. A striking fact: members of the military constitute only about 1% of the population. Almost half of them come from military families.

We will always face threats in the world. We must be realistic. But we must recognize the need to work with others to combat these threats. There is nothing new in this. We have always depended on alliances and partnerships. We must treat other countries and their leaders  with respect. We must beware of allowing natural disagreements to lead to the rupture of trust and ability to work together for "win-win" solutions. We must be willing to view the world through they eyes of our partners and yes our "enemies" too.