We’re at a hinge point in history, six-time US ambassador says
US withdrawal may lead to a new world order we deeply regret
Iowa audiences heard an ominous warning this week from a former US ambassador who says American withdrawal from the world stage may lead to a new world order that we deeply regret.
Retired ambassador Ryan Crocker visited Des Moines this week. He is a career foreign service officer who held ambassador positions in some of the most dangerous countries of the world. He served three Republican administrations and three Democratic administrations.
I heard Crocker speak twice. He has a thorough grasp of the regions of the world and the role the United States plays in those regions. He served as US ambassador to Lebanon, Kuwait, Syria, Pakistan, Iraq and Afghanistan. Those are not plush assignments with beaches and cocktail parties. Three of his predecessors in those posts had been assassinated.
I think we can trust his non-partisan view of the seismic shift taking place in the world with the new administration stepping back from our long history of world leadership.
In a speech to the Rotary Club of Des Moines yesterday, Ambassador Crocker said that since the end of World War II, the United States has presided over 80 years of relative peace and prosperity. “It was not a perfect world, a perfect peace through those eight decades, but it was a world that avoided a major conflagration during the tensions with the Soviet Union and after the Soviet collapse. You compare that to the 20 years that separated WWI and WW2 when the United States was not on the world stage. It’s a pretty powerful argument to continue US global leadership.”
Yet with the Trump administration ending the US Agency for International Development, the Voice of America, and threatening to pull out of NATO, Crocker sees troubled waters ahead.
“A dangerous proposition”
“I am concerned that we may be at a hinge of history right now, where the American people, not just the administration, are rethinking – does the US really want to lead in this world? It takes money, it takes time, it takes effort. Maybe we should just leave it to others to run the world by themselves and look after our core interests here. I would suggest to you that is a very dangerous proposition.”
I asked the ambassador what message our allies and adversaries take from US withdrawal from the world stage.
“I think the entire world is recalculating – both allies and adversaries”, he says. “Our adversaries are wondering what opportunities may now present themselves to them if the United States is not going to lead a global response. Our allies are wondering where their security lies if it doesn’t lie with an alliance with the United States.”
Our allies are our true strength
Crocker says the main element of US power over the last 80 years has been not our own national strength, as powerful as that is. It’s been the strength of our allies.
“All of that with US leadership. If that leadership goes away, the alliances go away. We’re talking now about giving up the military leadership of NATO. The supreme allied commander in Europe may not be an American next time. Not because somebody eased us out – it’s because we said we didn’t want it anymore.”
Perhaps we should listen to this public servant who has put his life on the line for the American way of life. This Presidential Medal of Freedom winner. Secretary of State Colin Powell called Crocker “one of our very best foreign services officers.”
Perhaps those who shout, “America first!” should listen when Crocker says, “I just worry that for the first time in over 80 years…we may be looking at a new world order that we will not lead and we will not shape. It will somehow shape itself. And the history of the world suggests that shape may turn into something we deeply regret.”
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There are so many parallels the thinking of America in the 1930s and Germany in the 1930s. When Hitler came to power he first got himself elected to give himself legitimacy. He then proceeded to consolidate power by making himself in command of the military so he could sack those generals who didn't agree with him. He was anti-intellectual and then fomented a hatred of Jews to which he could ascribe the evils that befell Germany. America at that time, after WWI, did not want to get involved in European affairs, to remain isolated. We are seeing a withdrawal from the world stage, WHO, Voice of America, NATO, et al. Ukraine is a proxy war to curtail Putin, but we are now withdrawing our support and even befriending Putin. I wonder what Ronald Reagan would think of these developments? The autocratic appetite of Trump will not be satiated. People of color, LGBTQ citizens (especially trans) and those who step out of line (Tesla and Pro-Palestinian protesters) are being villainized. Our National Security leaders show their incompetence over Signal-gate. We are living in the most dangerous time in my lifespan.
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