It was not difficult to define American geopolitical strategy over the seven decades<\/p>\n following World War II \u2014 at least until 2009. It was largely bipartisan advocacy, most ambitiously, for nations to have the freedom of adopting constitutional governments that respected human rights, favored free markets, and abided by the rule of law. And at the least, we sought a world in which states could have any odious ideology they wished as long as they kept it within their own borders. There were several general strategic goals as we calculated our specific aims, both utopian and realistic.<\/p>\n (1) The strategic cornerstone was the protection of a small group of allies that, as we did, embraced consensual government and free markets, and were more likely to avoid human-rights abuses. That eventually meant partnerships with Western and later parts of Eastern Europe, Great Britain, and much of its former Empire, such as Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. In Asia, the American focus was on Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, and Taiwan. The U.S. military essentially guaranteed the\u00a0security of these\u00a0Asian nations, and they developed safely, shielded from Soviet or Chinese Communist aggression, and more recently from Russian or Chinese provocations.<\/p>\n (2) The U.S. also sought a stable, globalized world, predicated on free commerce, communications, and travel. This commitment on occasion involved ostracism of, or outright military action against, rogue regimes of the sort run by thugs like Moammar Qaddafi, Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic, Manuel Noriega, or the Taliban. There was no predictable rule about what offenses would earn U.S. intervention, and there was plenty of argument domestically over what should properly prompt such action. Perhaps a general observation was that rogue dictatorships that began killing Americans\u00a0or lots of their own people, or that invaded their neighbors\u00a0or threatened U.S. interests\u00a0were most likely to be targeted.<\/p>\n (3) The U.S. tried to combat terrorism, whether, as\u00a0in the past, Communist-inspired or, more recently, prompted by radical Islam. In the latter regard, the U.S. sought to make the world unsafe for al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, and various terrorist groups funded by Iran and, more stealthily, by opulent Persian Gulf autocracies and rogue Middle East regimes like that of the Assads in Syria. Without the American war on terror, the world would have been an even more dangerous place.<\/p>\n (4) America sought not to invade but to isolate and ostracize a few radical regimes that threatened our friends or the general postwar order. Applying that rule to today\u2019s world, that would mean policies designed not to go to war against Cuba, Nicaragua, Iran, North Korea, Syria, and Venezuela, but to prevent them from harming their neighbors or U.S. interests.<\/p>\n (5) There was special consideration given to isolated and vulnerable democracies or evolving democracies that might well not have existed if it were not for help and support, the exact nature of which remained implicit rather than codified by formal treaties. In this regard, attackers that aimed at destroying Israel or Taiwan outright were assumed in some way to earn the enmity of the United States. Any attack would prompt help to the attacked.<\/p>\n (6) Americans were outraged, albeit selectively, over genocide, particularly if it involved Westerners or occurred in Europe. For example, the U.S. intervened against Serbia, but not against the far more lethal mass murderers in Cambodia, the Congo, or Rwanda.<\/p>\n (7) The U.S. accepted that large nuclear nations such as China, Russia, and Pakistan were largely immune from American pressures. Consequently, we sought various formulas of coercion and incentives, alienation and enticement, to ensure that these powerful, aggressive nations did not bully our friends or destroy the existing postwar order.<\/p>\n For all the policy blunders and moral hypocrisies of the last 70 years, American strategy mostly worked and thus created the present globalized world. American foreign policy ensures its continuance. At times, isolationists unduly prevented U.S. police action; at other moments, nation-builders na\u00efvely thought they could remake the Third World into the image of the West. Sometimes interventions worked, at other times not so well; there would be no Hyundai or Samsung without the Korean War, even as Vietnam was lost to Communism. Iraq was finally freed from a genocidal monster who turned oil money into death for his own people and his neighbors; but it was not firmly set on the path of constitutional government after the abrupt American pullout.<\/p>\n Over the last five years, those long-held strategic principles have largely been ignored or rejected by the Obama administration. There is real doubt today that the U.S. would risk coming to the aid of South Korea, Japan, or Taiwan. If Putin tomorrow sent a division into Estonia to deliberately provoke an Article V NATO response, he might well not get one \u2014 and therefore may well try. If Iran tested a bomb next year, the U.S., for all its now-trite \u201cunacceptable\u201d and \u201coutrageous\u201d talk, would likely shrug and assume that a nuclear Iran was analogous to a nuclear Pakistan or Israel and thus no big deal. Our allies assume that since 2009 American friendship is mostly rhetorical or ceremonial, but no longer exists in the sense of any serious guarantees.<\/p>\n The U.S. might intervene again against a dictator, but only if it could do so by leading from behind, with other powers in the front line, and only if the target were weak and clearly tottering. So, for example, we followed France and the United Kingdom into Libya, once it was evident that Qaddafi\u2019s days were numbered, while steering clear of unilaterally punishing Syria for WMD use, although thousands more had been killed in Syria than in Libya, by an Assad who had much more fight in him than did Qaddafi. We certainly have had little interest in the Mogadishu-like landscapes into which these two Mediterranean countries have descended. American intervention is currently predicated not on the nature or threat of the rogue regime, but on two criteria: Would removing a rogue killer entail casualties? And: Would other countries lead the intervention?<\/p>\n After the laudable elimination of Osama bin Laden, there is currently no real war on Islamic terrorists, except for the NSA surveillance program, some remnants of the Bush\u2013Cheney anti-terrorism protocols, and an under-the-radar drone targeted-assassination program, in which, acting as judge, jury, and executioner, the administration sends armed Predators to blow up suspected terrorists (and anyone unlucky enough to be near them) in Pakistan. Otherwise, both the world and the American public long ago ceased to care about workplace violence, man-caused disasters, overseas contingency operations, the promise of trials\u00a0for terrorists in civilian courts,\u00a0Miranda<\/em>\u00a0rights given to foiled bombers, renditions bad then good, Guantanamo rhetorically closed, the Muslim Brotherhood largely secular, and jihad little more than a personal journey. As of now, when innocent people are killed, as in the Benghazi attack, the president pontificates about tracking down the murderers \u2014 and the world tunes him out.<\/p>\n Rogue nations \u2014 Iran, North Korea, Venezuela \u2014 now have little fear of the United States. In fact, in their hubris they go out of their way to insult the U.S. by gratuitously sending to the U.N. a former hostage-taker of American diplomatic personnel, or promising to send another missile over our allies\u2019 air space, or lecturing the U.S. president on his country\u2019s sins.<\/p>\n Taiwan and Israel must know that U.S. friendship now entails no implicit commitment to their security. If Israel preempted Iran and took out the latter\u2019s nuclear facilities, it would be just as likely that the U.S. would embargo spare parts as provide them. If in the 1970s the security of Taiwan was in doubt, now the uncertainty extends to Japan as well.<\/p>\n Whereas the U.S. might pursue a rogue commandant who terrorized gays or started carbon-spewing fires, there is little chance that we would intervene to stop a mini-holocaust. A rich vocabulary that the mass killing was \u201cintolerable,\u201d \u201cunacceptable,\u201d and belonged \u201cto the 19th century\u201d would not be necessarily followed up by any concrete action. Red lines, deadlines, and step-over lines are assumed by those to whom they are applied to be face-saving measures that assure provocateurs that inaction will follow. Tough talk by itself, designed to prevent escalations, has a bad habit of ensuing them.<\/p>\n The Obama initiatives of the last five years have ended in general failure. \u201cReset\u201d with Russia \u2014 an effort to undo the Bush-era ostracism of Russia after the Georgia invasion \u2014 only encouraged more aggression and anti-Americanism. In fact Putin seems to harbor a particular grudge against Barack Obama, as if U.S. sermons in combination with perceived weakness demand a crude Russian demonstration of our hypocrisy.<\/p>\n The special relationship with Turkey only empowered Erdogan to undermine democracy and promote an intolerant Ottoman Islamism.<\/p>\n Isolating Israel brought no dividends. Engaging Iran and dropping sanctions has probably ensured its soon-to-be nuclear status and the alienation of our former allies in the Sunni Arab world. Our policy with regard to Egypt would be seen as a disaster, if anyone could figure out what exactly the American policy was.<\/p>\n The pivot to Asia was a toothless gesture. If Obama\u2019s current Asian policies persist, most of our major allies in the Pacific will probably go nuclear in the next few years.<\/p>\n There is not much special relationship any more with Britain or Israel. In Latin America we have no particular affinities for those few beleaguered states that resist the growing trend toward totalitarian socialism and instead hold out for free-market constitutional government.<\/p>\n We have offended a successful Canada over the Keystone pipeline, and pleased a failed Mexico by ignoring our own immigration law and thereby providing jobs for its citizens, remittances back home, and a nice safety valve for Mexico City\u2019s social and political disasters.<\/p>\n A final irony? The above recessional from the world is not predicated on conserving resources at home and bulking up our \u201csoft power\u201d by running budget surpluses, keeping growth high and unemployment low, and restoring faith in the U.S. dollar. Our retreat from the world was accompanied by an historic indulgence of running up serial record budget deficits, piling on regulations and taxes to ossify and redistribute the economy, and using ruinous zero interest rates to jump-start an economy that won\u2019t jump under this administration\u2019s policies.<\/p>\n What drives the Obama anti-strategy?<\/p>\n The world is confused. Is the U.S. just inept, and therefore our friends and enemies for a while longer are putting decisions on hold, assuming that wiser heads in the Democratic party, or the voters in 2014 and 2016, will correct the aberration? Or is the new anti-strategy a deliberate effort to diminish U.S. influence and outsource regional problems to local hegemonies, on the theory that Iran, Russia, and China have more legitimate influences in their own neighborhoods?<\/p>\n Who knows? But most people abroad fear that we have entered a very dangerous period. It is becoming clear that the United States cannot continue on its present course and still be the United States, and without the United States in the lead, the world cannot remain the world as we have known it since 1945. But, unless a return to sanity arrives before then, the next two and a half years are a window of opportunity for lots of bad people to cash in their chips and take their winnings to the bank.<\/p>\n NRO\u00a0contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the\u00a0<\/em>Hoover Institution<\/em><\/a>\u00a0and the author, most recently, of\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0The Savior Generals<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Our allies and our enemies have seriously recalculated where the U.S. stands. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0National Review Online\u00a0 It was not difficult to define American geopolitical strategy over the seven decades following World War II \u2014 at least until 2009. It was largely bipartisan advocacy, most ambitiously, for nations to have the freedom of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[247,846],"tags":[72,217,1055,1049,1021,162,1068],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-1RV","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":8440,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/why-the-next-president-will-face-a-dangerous-predicament-abroad\/","url_meta":{"origin":7187,"position":0},"title":"Why the Next President Will Face a Dangerous Predicament Abroad","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 28, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson\u00a0\/\/ National Review Online For a time, reset, concessions, and appeasement work to delay wars. But finally, nations wake up, grasp their blunders, rearm, and face down enemies. That gets dangerous. The shocked aggressors cannot quite believe that their targets are suddenly serious and willing to punch\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Democracy"","block_context":{"text":"Democracy","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/politics\/democracy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"pic_giant_052815_SM_Iraqi-Army-G","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/pic_giant_052815_SM_Iraqi-Army-G-500x292.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":7874,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/where-is-obamas-broad-coalition\/","url_meta":{"origin":7187,"position":1},"title":"Where Is Obama\u2019s \u2018Broad Coalition\u2019?","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 18, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Potential allies against ISIS doubt America\u2019s commitment to being engaged abroad. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online The so-called Islamic State has left destruction everywhere that it has gained ground. But as in the case of the tribal Scythians, Vandals, Huns, or Mongols of the past, sowing chaos\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Middle East"","block_context":{"text":"The Middle East","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"President Obama addresses servicemembers at MacDill Air Force Base. (Joe Raedle\/Getty Images)","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/09\/pic_giant_091814_SM_Barack-Obama-Troops-G-500x291.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":7254,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/foreign-policy-from-bad-to-none\/","url_meta":{"origin":7187,"position":2},"title":"Foreign Policy: From Bad to None","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 29, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Our enemies are gloating, and our allies are grimly deciding where to go from here. by Victor Davis Hanson Barack Obama had a foreign policy for about five years, and now he has none. The first-term foreign policy\u2019s assumptions went something like this. Obama was to assure the world that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Foreign Policy"","block_context":{"text":"Foreign Policy","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/foreign-policy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6750,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/jumping-off-the-global-tigers-back\/","url_meta":{"origin":7187,"position":3},"title":"Jumping Off the Global Tiger’s Back","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 14, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"The Obama administration has little interest in world leadership. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0National Review Online\u00a0 The United States has ridden \u2014 and tamed \u2014 the wild global tiger since the end of World War II. The frantic ride has been dangerous, to us, but a boon to humanity. At\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "International Relations"","block_context":{"text":"International Relations","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/geopolitics\/international-relations\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/Globe.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":7978,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/election-day-whats-at-stake\/","url_meta":{"origin":7187,"position":4},"title":"Election Day: What\u2019s at Stake","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 5, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/ FrontPage Magazine The election and reelection of Barack Obama have seemingly realized the progressive dream of transforming America from its traditional Constitutional order to one more similar to Europe\u2019s\u2013\u2013an activist rather than a limited federal government, one whose power and reach extend into the market\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Our Contributors"","block_context":{"text":"Our Contributors","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Photo via FrontPage Magazine","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/votejpeg-42b1d7963e761260-500x320.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":11078,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/our-long-history-of-misjudging-north-korea\/","url_meta":{"origin":7187,"position":5},"title":"Our Long History of Misjudging North Korea","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 23, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review There\u2019s a lot to learn from seventy years of failure to stop the Kim regimes\u2019 aggression. North Korea has befuddled the United States and its Asian allies ever since North Korean leader Kim Il-sung launched the invasion of South Korea in June 1950. Prior\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "MacArthur"","block_context":{"text":"MacArthur","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/macarthur\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7187"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7187"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7187\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7189,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7187\/revisions\/7189"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Axis](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/7362461084_31a3519b2a.jpg?resize=300%2C199&ssl=1\")
djensen47 via Flickr<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n