Little by little, then all at once

While the evaporation of the U.S. presence in Afghanistan has drawn our attention, other momentous developments are taking place in U.S. relations with the outside world that barely have scratched the insular consciousness of our citizenry. Dealings with both major and minor powers have delineated the outlines of strategic decision-making—or perhaps “posturing” is the more apt term—at the highest levels. 

In both the Afghan and non-Afghan matters, there are two considerations: the goals the Biden Administration is pursuing and his team’s competence in pursuing them. 

The record is not encouraging on either count. 

The very concept of “diplomacy” implies the deployment of tact, restraint, and even charm based on the assumption that while states have competing interests, they should tread cautiously around conflicts that could escalate (i.e., most if not all of them). We humans glorify war, but we hate losing; even stalemated fights can be enormously costly. 

Given recent setbacks, we ought to be a bit more mindful of this fact, and no doubt average citizens are. 

From all indications, however, the denizens of our nation’s foreign policy/ military/intelligence establishment, often affectionately termed “The Blob,” are not. 

Belligerence, sometimes called “toughness,” is a popular stance among the domestic U.S. audience,    and no doubt that is a universal tendency among our species. We feel protected when our leaders promise us victory and safety, and powerful states get away with imposing their will on subject peoples. As Thucydides famously phrased it, “The powerful exact what they can, and the weak comply.” 

However, American “diplomats” have become imprudently accustomed to thinking that the U.S. is, and will ever be, the powerful state, the only game in town, the modern Athens lording it over weaker cities and dictating terms of submission. This was unsurprising during the Trump years as it reflected that personage’s self-image and worldview as the Master of All He Surveys. 

Biden’s people have replicated the boorishness. Secretary of State Blinken in Anchorage, Deputy Secretary Sherman in Tianjin, China, and most recently the State Department itself in its inflammatory declaration on Taiwan all have poked the Chinese in the ribs and twisted their noses for good measure. U.S. interlocutors consistently refuse to recognize China’s “red lines,” their non-negotiable, core interests, and think nothing of lecturing Chinese diplomats publicly to browbeat them for not doing the Americans’ bidding.

  

Wendy Sherman, schoolmarm [Photo ANDREW HARNIK/POOL/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES] 

At the same time, Biden & Co. seem to think that side conversations on topics of interest to the U.S. can proceed normally despite these ongoing attempts at public shaming. 

The behavior might work if the U.S. held all the cards. Because that is not the case, it is time to introduce another concept that originated with the Greeks: hubris. 

Whom the gods would destroy, they first drive mad. –Greek proverb 

Our diplomats’ attitude, apparently shared by the entire Blobosphere, is remarkably schizophrenic. First, the U.S. spokesperson slams China for all its naughty behavior while back home things like nuclear-powered submarines for Australia are openly described as meant to threaten China with destruction and thereby keep it in line. Then, cooperation is expected on issues important to the U.S. 

This is like saying to one’s neighbor, “You really are an asshole. Let’s meet at 4:00 to trim the hedge between our two properties.” 

It has not gone well. Nonetheless, failure seems not to have generated the slightest doubts about the wisdom of continuing to pursue this approach. 

A similar program was rolled out not long ago to deal with awful, terrible, loathsome, despicable, Big Meanie, etc., etc., Vladimir Putin. How did that episode go? The Americans’ freshly minted client state of Ukraine lost two big chunks of its eastern territory to separatists; then Russia annexed Crimea and announced that attempts to stir up military operations along the border will lead to the destruction of the Ukraine as a viable state (which wouldn’t take much in any case). 

The plutocrat-run Ukrainian protectorate and its neo-Nazi militia bands continues to sink into a hyper-corrupt Slough of Despond and periodically causes U.S. domestic politics to boil over into a frothy, putrid mess (Impeachment I, Hunter Biden). This failure could have been—and was—predicted by those who criticized the eastward march of NATO engineered by the Bushes I and II, Clinton, Obama, and some Trumpians. 

Unsurprisingly, this bipartisan plot to encircle Russia where memories linger of 26 million dead the last time that happened drew a reaction as outlined above. The Blob, instead of learning anything, cheered when Hillary (diplomatically) compared Putin to Hitler. 

What did our leaders think they could do when the Russians said, That will be enough? They could threaten nuclear annihilation but not much else. 

We are headed down the same path with the Chinese where Blobish schizophrenia is even more acute and of longer standing. After all, who exactly who paved the way for China to turn itself into the low-cost production behemoth of the industrial world and to compile huge piles of wealth to invest in its infrastructure and in technical advances? The neoliberal consensus, of which The Blob is an integral part, enabled leaders of both our major parties to convince themselves that out-shoring manufacturing and destroying the U.S. industrial base would not only provide juicy profits but also magically transform China into a clone of western capitalist societies. Someone should research whether they really believed this happy dream or simply could not resist the immense short-term gains to be hoovered up by their buddies. 

How ironic that American captains of industry waged a half-century Cold War against communism only to sell out their own workers to it! Apparently, they never heard the quote misattributed to Lenin that “The capitalists will sell us the rope with which to hang them.” He never said that though he should have. But I digress. 

What is particularly hard to fathom is The Blob’s persistent belief that by continually confronting and threatening America’s adversaries, the U.S. is guaranteed eventually to win because all these pansy rival countries must and ultimately will “back down.” Given the compelling evidence to the contrary, including the just concluded Afghan debacle, the stubbornness of this delusion is grounds for forensic study. 

American warships recently made a show of force in the waters around Taiwan, a provocation explicitly confirmed by official statements of U.S. commitment to its “democratic ally.” This term suggested a breach of the decades-old One China policy and obliquely questioned China’s sovereignty over Taiwan.

China’s leadership has said in every imaginable key and language that it is not prepared to countenance Taiwan’s independence and will take whatever measures required to prevent it, including the use of force. If the U.S. insists on pushing this dangerous envelope, China will respond militarily at which point the U.S. will face three undesirable options: 

—The U.S. backs down, avoids a confrontation, and is publicly humiliated. Any sitting president would be immediately pilloried in terms rarely seen and could easily find him/herself forced out of office. 

—The U.S. escalates to a nuclear confrontation, earning itself the eternal enmity of all humanity in the unlikely event that there is any left. 

—The U.S. engages in conventional warfare with China, which produces a long and nasty conflict, which ends, in all probability, with the Americans being handed their ass on a plate. If the U.S. “wins,” it then is stuck planning for inevitable next round of fighting and spending untold treasure defending an island half a world away. If Afghanistan cost $6 trillion over 20 years, imagine the price tag of that one. 

Earlier this week, Biden dispatched his national security advisor to an emergency meeting in Switzerland with his Chinese counterpart. Someone in Washington must have escaped the Blobbish bubble long enough to realize China might not be bluffing and that America is in no condition to countenance any of these scenarios. 

While immediate dangers have been avoided, there is no sign that the U.S. has shifted its course. The Chinese must have concluded that there is no reasoning with the Americans and no alternative to preparing for war, which they are plainly doing. 

What is the cause of this stubborn incapacity for seeing the world in anything other than imperial terms? Why can’t America see the benefits of sharing its toys? Or at least not whacking the other kids with sticks? 

One aspect of the mysterious Blob disease is that it is incapable of seeing itself as, well, a Blob, a rigid in-group toeing a party line that admits no real dissent. A recent article in the New York Times illustrated this fact by publishing an article mocking the very notion of The Blob. The author quoted a raft of foreign policy poohbahs who duly agreed that their critics are nincompoops (none of whom were quoted in response) and that the idea of a hegemonic “Blob” was nonsense—itself a sterling example of full-on Blobulousness. 

For example, note how the decline and ignominious fall of the U.S. puppet regime in Kabul stirred Blobbian groupthink to sudden, polemical life. Biden, shepherded into office with their serene approval, was roundly and promptly denounced for abandoning an outpost of empire. Bloboids argued that the rickety apparatus could have been held together a bit longer with some geopolitical sealing wax, thereby avoiding loss of “credibility,” the ghost of Neville Chamberlain, etc. No one was brought onto the TV talk shows or cable networks to offer an alternative view, and any doubters with career ambitions quickly saw that Biden’s decision to withdrawal should not be defended. 

As Daniel Larison wrote in Substack, "The idea that the U.S. would be better off by simply quitting an unwinnable war was considered unthinkable or nonsensical." 

What is never part of this imperial orthodoxy is any hint that the U.S. could fit itself into a world of coexistence with other states and peoples as equals rather than as a master announcing terms to its subjects. A system built on compromise and mutual benefit is unimaginable to them; we are either rulers or ruled. 

Instead, the world is a priori assumed to be implacably hostile and dangerous despite the disappearance of any real ideological competition of the Cold War sort. Threat exaggeration continues in an unbroken line from Kennedy’s fictitious “missile gap” to the Soviet bugaboo of the Reagan years and the convenient elevation of terrorism today, the latter having the special advantage of being impossible to eradicate and therefore eternal.

This post is already long, and the question of whence the intellectual ossification of this inbred gaggle must be set aside for further reflection. That said, the fact of The Blob’s obtuseness remains, and the very brittleness of its consensus makes it highly prone to misjudgment given that it has so effectively suppressed dissident voices. 

No one is tugging at the emperor’s sleeve to remind him that he is a mere mortal, and for that reason the gradual decline of U.S. world dominance could provoke errors that would turn into a precipitous rout. We could find ourselves in a very different world. 

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