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Thursday, November 26, 2009

Buchanan: Multilateralism and globalism are on the way out; Unilateralism and nationalism are on the way in

Earning the World’s Contempt
By Patrick J. Buchanan
(American Conservative Blog) --

...Under the new center-left government that broke a 50-year hold on power by the LDP, Japan will cease refueling U.S. warships off Afghanistan, is demanding renegotiation of a U.S. troop deployment deal already agreed to and is moving out of Washington’s orbit — and closer to Beijing. Pyongyang, having tested a second nuclear device, continues to dismiss all U.S. demands.

China just backhanded Obama’s request to revalue its currency to stanch the steady hemorrhaging of U.S. jobs, technology, and factories to the mainland, and treated Obama’s call for openness and better treatment for dissidents and minorities with dismissive contempt.

Yet had it not been for U.S. magnanimity in throwing open its market to Chinese goods, Beijing would never have registered the double-digit growth rates it has seen for the past two decades.

Some gratitude China is showing.

Despite U.S. warnings, President Hamid Karzai has stolen the Afghan election in a fashion so brazen as to make a mockery of U.S. claims of his legitimacy. Corruption remains pandemic, and ignored, including in Karzai’s own family. He knows we have no other option.

Iran continues to slap away Obama’s open hand, secure in the knowledge that China or Russia will veto any serious U.N. sanctions.

Israel, too, has taken the measure of Obama.

“Bibi” Netanyahu, elected on a platform of no negotiation with Hamas, no Palestinian enclave in Jerusalem and no withdrawal from the West Bank, a la Gaza, has defied Obama’s demand for an immediate halt to any and all expansion of settlements. Not only has Bibi gone unpunished, his poll ratings have soared in Israel, and Obama has capitulated completely, leaving Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas so disillusioned and demoralized he is considering not running again.

The hopes raised by Obama’s Cairo speech have disappeared, as our traditional Arab friends like the Egyptians and Saudis have been hung out to dry.

Hillary Clinton may have pressed the reset button on relations with Russia — but there has been precious little reciprocity for the U.S. decision to scrap the ballistic missile defense in Poland and the Czech Republic.

Moscow has recognized Georgia’s breakaway provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent republics and is now busy meddling in Ukraine to inflict a humiliating defeat on our man in Kiev, President Viktor Yushchenko, in January’s election.

Again, none of the above represents a grave threat to any vital U.S. interest. Nevertheless, this lack of reciprocity, this lack of respect, this indifference to what the president is demanding or even asking is revealing about the era we have now entered — and about Barack Obama.

All that bloviation we heard for two decades — about the “Second American Century,” the “End of History,” the “New World Order,” America as “omnipower” and “indispensable nation,” the “New Rome” seizing its “unipolar moment” to impose “benevolent global hegemony” on mankind and “ending tyranny in our world” — it was, all of it, bullhockey.

Second, though Obama may be liked and admired by people all over the world, this counts for next to nothing in global power politics.

Brazil, Japan, China, Russia and Israel are all countries with their own national interests that do not necessarily comport with those of the United States. All have come to see Obama as a diffident, dithering, doubting dilettante who can be dissed with impunity. And none of these nations is going to sacrifice what it considers critical to win a smile from Barack Obama.

Multilateralism and globalism are on the way out. Unilateralism and nationalism are on the way in.

As other countries look out for their national interests first, why do we not do the same?

If we Americans will not put America first, who will?...MORE...LINK
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Chris Moore comments:

The liberal American elite sees itself as internationalist, and it imagines it is the envy of the world, similar to how the liberal Hollywood elite imagine that it is the envy of the peons in the American hinterlands. And in a very superficial sense, it is. But it’s a meaningless and empty position.

Sometimes the world encourages this vanity. Remember the reception Obama got in Germany? Little wonder the administration got it in its collective head that the world would roll over to its will.

But the truth of the matter is, America today is regarded the world over as the rich and vain playboy who is beloved by everyone in the bar while he’s buying their drinks, but deep down, no one really respects or takes seriously because they know he’s not a serious person.

I hate to say it, but the Baby Boomer generation of leadership, from Clinton through W through Obama and most of the pols in between, has been epically vain, flaky, naive and incompetent. Like Obama, it seems to believe that its wish is God’s command. And remember the Bush administration’s delusion?: “We’re an empire now, we create our own reality.”

These simply are not serious or responsible people. Yes, many Boomers are highly creative, and that has brought certain technological advantages to America. But the drawbacks far outweigh their contributions, and their general lack of competence and serousness has basically destroyed the country.
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"While other nations celebrate their heritage, we’re being taught to revile ours, and to transform our country into something, anything, else."

I agree 100%, and I think this condescending attitude that patriotism and love of country and culture is somehow provincial and backward comes out of the internationalist dogma that says nationalism is a relic of the past. This profound hatred of nationalism originated on the internationalist Left (because of its own delusions of grandeur and destiny -- that it and it alone held the key to the future of mankind), but today it has actually been embraced and encouraged by elements of the Right for their own greedy purposes. For example, multi national corporations and corporate advocates of open borders embrace internationalism, necessary in order to grow markets and drive down the price of labor. And of course, there was the pretentious internationalist Bushcon/Neocon scheme to "remake the Middle East," which is yet more Marxist-think drivel.

IMO, both the elitist Left and elitist Right have become an enemy to the American national interests and the American constitution, and now worship the false God of internationalism. The irony is, so many Boomers (and really all Americans) don't even realize it's their own internationalist pretensions that are the cause of their current misery and are dooming America’s future.

I guess years of atheist-materialist, internationalist Marxist-think has penetrated deeply into to the psyches of the "elite" on both the Right and Left and trickled down to the masses, and today most Americans don’t even know enough to take care of their own first. Not very “sophisticated,” that. Why, even an animal has more common sense.

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