The generation of the Second world war was more clarity.
The attack on pearl Harbor on 9 December 1941 to unite the nation as never before. The United States has a confidence that Japan must defeat at all costs, no matter how long that might take, and how many lives are claimed by this war.
But after the defeat of Hitler coalition countries in 1945, the American society is split.
And when, in 1948, began a blockade of Berlin, when China came under the rule of Mao, when Russia in 1949, exploded an atomic bomb, and North Korea in 1950, attacked South, we again rallied, believing that for their own safety obliged to return to Europe and Asia.
The consensus of the cold war, implying that America is able to contain the Stalinist Empire, led to the creation of NATO and the new us alliances, from the Elbe to East China sea.
But Vietnam shattered that consensus of the cold war.
The left wing of the Democratic party that got us into the Vietnam war, in 1968, renounced it, ran to the other side and began to give favourable to the Communists from the third world, such as Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Ho Chi Minh and the Sandinistas.
Center-right presidents such as JFK, Nixon and Reagan, has recognized the need for cooperation with dictators who were supposed to stand on our side in the fight against communism.
And we did it. Pak Chung-Hee in South Korea. The Shah in Iran. President Diem in Saigon. General Franco in Spain. Somoza in Nicaragua. General Mobuto in the Congo. General Pinochet in Chile. Ferdinand Marcos in Manila. The list goes on.
Under Reagan the Soviet Empire finally collapsed, and then ceased to exist the Soviet Union that became one of the epochal events in world history.
American century ended with the triumph of the United States.
But after 1989 arose a new national consensus on what should be our role in the world. What are we supposed to act? That must fight?
Dean Acheson (Dean Acheson) in 1962, said about our British relatives: “Britain has lost an Empire and not yet found a new role.” The same can be said about us.
What is our role in the world today, when the cold war became the inheritance of history?
George Bush took us to war to expel Saddam Hussein from Kuwait. With the support of 90% of the population, he announced that America’s goal is to build a new world order.
Those who opposed him, Bush sarcastically ridiculed in Hawaii on 7 December 1991, when America celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the attack on pearl Harbor:
“We stand here today on the site of the tragedy, which gave rise to isolationism. And here we must understand it, and this time to avoid the dangers of today’s isolationism and his… sidekick protectionism.”
Bush and his new world order did not survive the elections, which took place in November of next year.
And then came the day of reckoning for our sanctions, because of which died thousands of Iraqis and for the American bases, which we own stupidity has placed on sacred ground in Saudi Arabia. It was 11 September 2001.
George W. Bush in response unleashed the two longest wars in American history, in Afghanistan and in Iraq, and then announced that our new goal is “ending tyranny in the world.”
The crusade of Bush II for world democracy also ended in failure.
Barack Obama tried to get us out of Afghanistan and Iraq. But he, too, failed, and got us into war in Yemen and Syria. And then started his own war in Libya, where there was yet another failed state.
What is the consolidated balance of these interventions, implemented after the cold war?
After 1991 we lost its global superiority in a four-fold increase of our national debt, bogged down in five middle East wars, and the neocons now noisily demanding to start the sixth, this time in Iran.
Now that America has abandoned its great purposes, such as the formation of the new world order and the struggle for global democracy, what is the next goal of us foreign policy? What is the strategy for achieving this goal? Does anyone know?
The globalists say we need to defend the rules-based world order. It is somehow not up to the majestic slogan “Remember the Alamo!” and “Remember pearl Harbor!”
After the end of the cold war has passed a quarter of a century, and we are still committed to the alliances of the era, although they were more than 60 years, and although they were created for protection of numerous countries on the opposite side of the globe. Now think about how many places in the world where America came into conflict with the nuclear powers: the demilitarized zone on the Korean Peninsula, the Senkaku Islands, the Scarborough reef, Crimea, Donbass.
What is so important to us all these places if we are trying to justify sending the American army to battle and ready to risk a nuclear war?
We already do not control their own destiny. We have lost the freedom to protect and support which we have called the founding fathers — the freedom not to get involved in other people’s wars on distant continents.
The American Empire is not viable today, as the British and French empires. We gave so many assurances that in the future, probably going to get involved in all the major crises and conflicts on the planet.
If we don’t rethink some of these guarantees and will not abandon them, we will never have peace. Donald trump once seem to understand this. Whether he understands it now?
Patrick Buchanan is the founder and chief editor of the American Conservative. He is the author of “Nixon war. Battles that have raised and cracked the President, as well as forever split America” (Nixon’s White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever).
