Now that the British have voted to secede from the European
Union and America has chosen a president who has never before held public
office, the French appear to be following suit.
In Sunday’s runoff to choose a candidate to face Marine Le Pen
of the National Front in next spring’s presidential election, the center-right
Republicans chose Francois Fillon in a landslide.
While Fillon sees Margaret Thatcher as a role model in fiscal
policy, he is a socially conservative Catholic who supports family values,
wants to confront Islamist extremism, control immigration, restore France’s
historic identity and end sanctions on Russia.
“Russia poses no threat to the West,” says Fillon. But if not,
the question arises, why NATO? Why are U.S. troops in Europe?
As Le Pen
is favored to win the first round of the presidential election and Fillon the
second in May, closer Paris-Putin ties seem certain. Europeans themselves are
pulling Russia back into Europe, and separating from the Americans.
Next Sunday, Italy holds a referendum on constitutional reforms
backed by Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. If the referendum, trailing in the
polls, fails, says Renzi, he will resign.
Opposing Renzi is the secessionist Northern League, the Five
Star Movement of former comedian Beppe Grillo, and the Forza Italia of former
Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, a pal of Putin’s.
“Up to eight of Italy’s troubled banks risk failure,” if Renzi’s
government falls, says the Financial Times. One week from today, the front
pages of the Western press could be splashing the newest crisis of the EU.
In Holland, the Party for Freedom of Geert Wilders, on trial for
hate speech for urging fewer Moroccan immigrants, is running first or close to
it in polls for the national election next March.
Meanwhile, the door to the EU appears to be closing for Muslim
Turkey, as the European Parliament voted to end accession talks with Ankara and
its autocratic president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
In welcoming Muslim immigrants, Germany’s Angela Merkel no
longer speaks for Europe, even as she is about to lose her greatest ally,
Barack Obama.
Not only
Europe but the whole world President-elect Trump is about to inherit seems in
turmoil, with old regimes and parties losing their hold, and nationalist,
populist and rightist forces rising.
Early this year, Brazil’s Senate voted to remove leftist
President Dilma Rousseff. In September, her predecessor, popular ex-President
Lula da Silva, was indicted in a corruption investigation. President Michel
Temer, who, as vice president, succeeded Rousseff, is now under investigation
for corruption. There is talk of impeaching him.
Venezuela, endowed with more oil than almost any country on
earth, is now, thanks to the Castroism of Hugo Chavez and successor Nicolas
Maduro, close to collapse and anarchy.
NATO’s Turkey and our Arab ally, Egypt, both ruled by repressive
regimes, are less responsive to U.S. leadership.
South Korean President Park Geun-hye, her approval rating in
single digits, is facing impeachment and prosecution for corruption.
Meanwhile, North Korea, under Kim Jong Un, continues to test
nuclear warheads and missiles that can hit all of South Korea and Japan and
reach all U.S. bases in East Asia and the Western Pacific.
The U.S.
is obligated by treaty to defend South Korea, where we still have 28,500
troops, and Japan, as well as the Philippines, where new populist President
Rodrigo Duterte, cursing the West, is pivoting toward Beijing. Malaysia and Australia are also
moving closer to China, as they become ever more dependent on the China trade.
Responding to our moving NATO troops into Estonia, Latvia,
Lithuania and Poland, Putin has begun a buildup of nuclear-capable offensive
and defensive missiles in Kaliningrad, its enclave between Poland and
Lithuania.
Should we get into a confrontation with the Russians in the
Eastern Baltic, how many of our NATO allies, some now openly pro-Putin, would
stand beside us?
The point: Not only is the Cold War over, the post-Cold War is
over. We are living in a changed and changing world. Regimes are falling. Old
parties are dying, new parties rising. Old allegiances are fraying, and old
allies drifting away.
The forces of nationalism and populism
have been unleashed all over the West and all over the world. There is no going
back.
Yet U.S. policy seems set in concrete by war guarantees and treaty
commitments dating back to the time of Truman and Stalin and Ike and John
Foster Dulles.
America emerged from the Cold War, a quarter century ago, as the
sole superpower. Yet, it seems clear that we are not today so dominant a nation
as we were in 1989 and 1991.
We have great rivals and adversaries. We are deeper in debt. We
are more divided. We’ve fought wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen
that availed us nothing. What we had, we kicked away.
America is at a plastic moment in history.
And America needs nothing so much as reflective thought about a
quarter century of failures — and fresh thinking about her future.
