Victor Hanson wrote a thought-provoking, if not very original, column praising the United States for its role in protecting “at risk nations”. He writes:
So why does the United States take risks in guaranteeing the security of countries such as Israel and Taiwan? Surely the smart money – and most of the world – bets on its richer enemies. The Arab Middle East has oil, hundreds of millions of people and lots of dangerous radical Islamic terrorists. China is more than 1 billion strong, with the fastest-growing economy in the world.
But President Obama should remember that America does not think solely in terms of national advantage. In fact, only the United States seems to have an affinity for protecting tiny, vulnerable countries. In two wars and more than 12 years of no-fly zones in Iraq, America saved the Kurds from a genocidal Saddam Hussein…
All of these people – Israelis, anti-communist Chinese, Kurds, Greeks and Armenians – have a few things in common. They have relatively small – and often shrinking – populations, aggressive neighbors, few strong allies, many expatriates and refugees in the United States, and a tragic history of persecution and genocide. Half the world’s Jews were lost to the Holocaust. Had Mao Zedong – the most prolific mass murderer in history – gotten his way, the entire anti-communist Chinese population who fled in terror to Taiwan would have been wiped out. In the early 1920s, nearly a million Greeks perished in Asia Minor – ethnically cleansed by a Turkey that had at one time conquered and occupied Greece for more than 350 years. A million Armenians perished during the breakup of the Ottoman Empire during World War I. The stateless Kurds have often been persecuted by Arabs, Iranians and Turks…
Only America is moral and strong enough to protect the world’s historically vulnerable but culturally unique peoples. It would be a shame if we forgot that – either out of desire for profit or because we became fed up with the bother.
As much as we would like to think of America as if it were a benevolent individual, or some sort of super-hero out to protect the little guy, in reality it is more like a vast political machine. As immigrants stream into its borders, they form well-organized lobbying groups capable of seizing control of certain aspects of this machine. At the same time, it sometimes does serve America’s strategic interests to protect small nations and peoples. While Hanson praises America for protecting the Kurds, it is worth noting that such protection has mainly been at the expense of Iraq. The U.S. has done comparatively little to help the Kurds on the Turkish side of the border because friendship with Turkey is considered more important than human rights for Kurds. Similarly, there are strategic reasons why it is important for the U.S. to support (at least de-facto) Taiwanese independence from mainland China.
Even a broken clock is correct twice a day (once a day if it is a military clock). Likewise, even a political machine will do the right thing once in a while. While there may be some human sentiment involved now and then, my impression is that as the United States grows in population and complexity, this human factor decreases in importance. In other words, political decisions are increasingly subject to special interests, big business lobbying and foreign pressure. As the U.S. loses its cultural identity, “right” and “wrong” will mean less and less.
And that brings us to Hanson’s last paragraph. Yes, it is important to protect “culturally unique peoples”, but it needs to be recognized that one of those peoples is the American People. If we accept Hanson’s premise that an important part of American culture is to protect the little guy, then it follows that we have a responsibility to protect American culture – if not for itself, then at least for the small, “at risk” nations.
If, and when, the United States deteriorates into a third world cesspool (due to uncontrolled immigration and anti-assimilation policies), then what will become of nations like Taiwan, Armenia and Greece? Who will they then look up to to protect their interests? Certainly not Eurabia.
Interestingly, there’s a Steven Walt post that points toward a much more Machiavellian view of U.S. support for small entities: it blocks the path of other great powers seeking to project their strength.It’s also worth noting that Daniel Larison has a post picking holes in Hanson’s narrative and giving a counternarrative that is similar to Walt’s.
I have predicted several times in the last several months that given enough time, Taiwan will willingly re-join the PRC mainland. Proof that I might be right is Hong Kong — In their most recent elections, pro-Beijing parties won big. Blood almost always beats creed.
To me, Taiwan, and the question of whether a small island full of Chinese people should or should not be ruled over a big country full of Chinese people, isn’t worth the bones of as much as one Pomeranian musketeer.
Unfortunately, I fear that the United States is bent on destroying the nations it grew from. There’s no doubt in my mind that part of the reason European elites have been so eager to embrace mass immigration, and so deaf to the real discontent of their own people, has been to remain in lockstep with the military hegemon on their continent. I’m pretty sure that pressure from the US to maintain an “acceptable” immigration policy would nip any European nationalist movement in the bud (unless Russia or some other power backed them up, which might be why Marine Le Pen has been in favor of strengthening French ties with Russia).
Jew, there is something you should be aware of regarding so-called American protection of Iraq’s Kurdish minority. While American and European NATO aircraft were patrolling northern Iraq to enforce their self-appointed no-fly zone ostensibly to protect the Kurds, they were operating from Turkish airbases. The same Turkish airbases where the Turkish air force would routinely declare “special” fly days that would ground Western aircraft while their own would fly into Iraq to strike at Kurdish targets. Everyone was aware of what was going on but the perfidious nature of NATO double dealing never ended up getting out to the general public. Funny thing is, it was those ever perpetually victimized Kurds that were most responsible for the massacre of the Armenians. Being a victim doesn’t prescripe someone for being a perpetrator too; then, now, or in the future. Something that is often forgotten in the fuzzy logic of America today.
Victor Davis Hanson’s article is complete trash because it ignores two simple truths. America’s morality only exists when politically convenient for it to exist. For example, there is little historical memory in the West of India’s outright military annexation of Goa and Sikkim, because it is politically inconvenient for those facts to be remembered because they undermine well cherished shibboleths. Secondly, the political balance such as it exists only exists because of American military hegemony. It doesn’t end conflict, one cannot change human nature, but only postpones it for an even greater blood letting further down the line. Americans forget that the surest peace lies in absolute victory, that greater bloodshed can be avoided by swift decisive military action rather than a long drawn out attrition. The global peace engendered by American empire is as false as that of the former Soviet Union or Yugoslavia. Score settling will be the inevitable result of American military withdraw, which is why those most dependent on American largess are those most interested in perpetuating American empire their own citizens wishes be damned..
As the old saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. American intervention in protecting the “weaker” parties in international disputes will mirror the same giant clusterfuck that is America’s domestic intervention to protect it’s most vulnerable citizens (or mere residents at that). Shameless mooching from uncle sugar/sucker and the enabling of bad behavior from people/nations that would otherwise have to face reality.
“As immigrants stream into its borders, they form well-organized lobbying groups capable of seizing control of certain aspects of this machine”.
What immigrant group can do such thing?
Also many proeminent “Eurabians” Jews are leftie third-world lovers: Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Ed Miliband, Job Cohen and don’t forget Daniel Cohn-Bendit who as one of main leaders and instigator the 1968 revolution in France.
You’ve never heard of the Israel lobby?