Urgent advice for State: Warn Obama to stop pushing the envelope (UPDATED 2X)

UPDATE 2:05 PM ET January 29
Adding two important news reports to the footnotes, both of which I'd misplaced at the time I published this post and just found.

Footnote #1: Egypt faces hurdles in securing IMF aid, January 25, Reuters. Although the January 25 report doesn't contain the news about the billion dollar-'bridge' loan that I'd mentioned in the text, it presents key observations that were dropped from the updated January 26 Reuters report I'd originally linked to.

Footnote #8: Pakistan stoking anti-Indian sentiments to divert attention from the heat at home, January 26, Times of India. At first glance this report doesn't differ markedly from the one in The Hindu about the LeT 'resurgence' in Pakistan but it brings out points which underscore the seriousness of the development, and not only for India. LeT is one of the world's most dangerous international terrorist organizations; that Pakistan's military let its leader out of his cage at home at this juncture is almost beyond belief. Almost.
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I was sitting on the patio one morning six years ago, enjoying the quiet and early Spring weather, when I heard the most godawful sound. I'd barely blurted, "What the --?" when I learned the sound was a squirrel's idea of a battle cry issuing from maybe 200 squirrel throats. All the squirrels in the neighborhood, it seemed, had banded together to run off a large rat and the chase was taking them through my back yard. I never saw or heard anything like it my life. And let me tell you that rat was burning rubber. Never saw a rat run so fast.

I told this story not to insult any government but to graphically illustrate that when sufficiently provoked and desperate, even the weakest governments can set the mighty United States back on its heels. Once this gets underway it can snowball into a trend.

With all such situations it's perceptions of American actions that count, or to be more precise the perceived pattern of actions. During the past year the perceived pattern is that President Barack Obama is throwing his weight around the world, everywhere he can.

I understand that Obama can cite reasons for each instance in which he's crashed national borders in pursuit of the bad guys. Yet the perception is that Obama has gotten hold of two very efficient lethal weapons -- U.S. Special Forces teams and armed drones -- and is deploying them anywhere in the world he sees fit.

But even President George W. Bush and his most aggressive predecessors in the Cold War managed to meddle in ways that didn't make it look as if the entire planet was suddenly under surprise attack from the United States. They knew when to back off -- and they were operating in a communications era when their every move in a foreign country wasn't broadcast around the world.

Times have changed. It's the piling-on phenomenon that's leading people to these perceptions Okay, so you wanted to shoot rockets at al Qaeda operatives in Pakistan's badlands. Okay, so you had to support Sarkozy's war against Gaddafi. Okay, so you had shoot rockets at al Qaeda in Yemen. Okay, so you had to take out Osama bin Laden when you found him. Okay, so you had to rescue an American citizen who was kidnapped by common criminals.

But all of these "okay" situations are piled on top of Obama expressing public support for Egypt's democracy activists and as much telling Mubarak to decamp. And piled on top of meddling in spectacular fashion in Pakistan's internal affairs. And starting a cold war with Iran's regime not to mention starting a cold war with Syria's regime.

All this within the space of a year.

I don't need to tell State that the juntas in Pakistan and Egypt are in absolutely desperate straits. They are both staring at the imminent prospect of a complete economic collapse in their countries. And the fear is that raising loans amounting to a billion dollars from the World Bank and African Development Bank until the IMF can (if it chooses) to bail them out might not be enough to stave off economic collapse in Egypt. (1)

Nor should I need to tell State that both juntas have broad and deep support in their respective countries, if for no other reason than the large number of civilians the businesses owned by the juntas employ.

So a reasonable person would assume that last month, after Egypt's junta gave a clear warning to the Obama administration to back off in Egypt, State would have immediately yanked the Democratic and Republican party NGOs that were operating in Egypt. I mean -- how much more of a warning do you need, when a security force raids the NGOs and confiscates their computers while the junta accuses the NGOs of being fronts for the American government and meddling in Egypt's internal affairs? (2)

But no, the NGOs continued to operate in Egypt -- all for a good cause, of course -- after State pulled their irons out of the fire in December. Now we learn as of yesterday some Americans working for the NGOs have been barred from leaving Egypt. This is a prelude to arrest warrants being issued -- or at least that's the implied threat of the action to prevent the Americans (and some Europeans who work for othe ngos from leaving Egypt. (2)

Obama is understandably furious about the situation but he could have seen this coming even before Mubarak left office. And now Egypt's generals believe they have no other choice but to find a scapegoat for the country's economic crisis. The Obama administration's ill-conceived attempt to bring more democracy to Egypt, which is using a very small number of Egyptians, has handed the junta the perfect goat.

Now I turn to Pakistan. The country is not only facing economic collapse but it's also in the throes of the worst fuel crisis in its history. (3) So why has the Obama administration decided that this is the perfect time to turn the heat up on Iran by trying to get Pakistan's regime to abandon the gas pipeline Iran is building for them, and sign up to get gas from the TAPI pipeline? (4)(5)

Is the answer that chipmunks are managing the Pakistan portfolio for the Obama administration? I ask this also because this is the same question they're asking in Afghanistan. I mean -- our war office and State couldn't even keep track of containers being transshipped through Pakistan, many of those containers containing desperately needed food supplies for Afghans.

Why "desperate?" Because the Obama administration and Congress haven't wanted the Afghan government to use an Iranian route for shipping food to Afghanistan and because the Northern Distribution Network, where it's the middle of winter anyway, is full up with shipping war supplies for NATO. So they've had a food shortage in Afghanistan, which has driven food prices, even for food basics, through the roof.

But how can you lose track of almost 160,000 shipping containers? The containers have disappeared in Pakistan. Gone! Poof! (6)

And not to put too fine a point on it but the U.S. command can't even win a war against a bunch of guys in baggy pants who take their orders from Rawalpindi. What's been the Obama strategy to deal with this situation? Play patty-cake with the Emir of Qatar and increase meddling in Pakistan. (7)

What has the answer been from Pakistan's junta? They've let Lashkar-e-Taiba out of its cage in Pakistan. (8) Do I have to draw stick figures to explain to State what that implies?

For starters, the junta is saying to forget Doha; the Obama administration can negotiate a truce with Mullah Omar all it wants, and it won't mean squat to LeT, which just might take the prize as the world's most dangerous international terrorist organization. (9) The larger implication is that the junta is signaling Obama that if he's worried about international terrorists taking over Pakistan's nuke weapons, the worry is misplaced because the junta will simply hand them a nuke if they get any angrier at him.

I understand that little blame for the entire mess I've described above can be laid at State's door. But someone has to take responsibility for conveying the facts of life to President Obama and State has to be the designated fool in this instance.

In summary, this is one of those times it's crucial for the American government to practice message discipline across the board. Sometimes you can have it all, but if you try to have it all at the same time, you sow the impression that you're crazy. That's a fast way to replace respect with fear. When people become afraid that you're both crazy and hogging their turf, they act in the same way a bunch of Washington squirrels did one fine morning.

1) January 26, Egypt says to seek extra $1 billion to support budget; Reuters

Egypt said on Thursday it would ask the World Bank for a $500 million loan and another $500 million loan from the African Development Bank to help it fill a budget gap widened by a year of political and economic turmoil.

Egypt has also persuaded the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to reduce the interest rate it would charge on $3.2 billion loan Cairo had requested from the IMF, Planning and International Cooperation Minister Faiza Abu el-Naga told reporters.

"We have achieved a reduction from the IMF on the interest rate on the loan from 1.5 to 1.1 percent," she said, adding that this would put the cost of the finance more in line with interest rates worldwide.

The turmoil in Egypt has pushed up unemployment, widened its budget and balance of payments deficits and drained its foreign reserves. Many economists believe a currency devaluation is imminent.

Egypt announced earlier this month it had formally asked the IMF for an aid package, saying it wanted the money as soon as possible and hoped an agreement would be signed within weeks.

The IMF, however, says any agreement would have to be accompanied by financial commitments from other international donors and attract broad political support within the country.

Thrashing out the technical details of a loan will take two to three months, it said.

The World Bank and African Development Bank loans would carry an interest rate of between 7 and 8 percent, Abu el-Naga said. Egypt would request a mission from the World Bank come to Egypt soon, she added, without giving details or a date.The central bank, trying to keep the Egyptian pound stable against the dollar, has run through $9 billion of its foreign reserves since June, when the government rejected an IMF agreement similar to the one it is now seeking.

The depletion accelerated before the parliamentary election and during a series of violent political protests in November and December, with the central bank spending at least $2 billion in each of the last three months. By the end of December, reserves had fallen to $18 billion.

January 25, Egypt faces hurdles in securing IMF aid; Patrick Werr, Reuters

2) January 27, 2012: Egypt Bans Travel for 10 U.S. Citizens; Ben Hubbard, Associated Press via TIME online

CAIRO) — Egypt banned at least 10 Americans and Europeans from leaving the country, including the son of U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray Lahood, hiking tensions with Washington over a campaign by Egypt's military against groups promoting democracy and human rights.

The United States warned Thursday that the campaign raised concerns about Egypt's transition to democracy and could jeopardize American aid that Egypt's battered economy needs badly after a year of unrest. [...]

The travel ban was part of an Egyptian criminal investigation into foreign-funded democracy organizations after soldiers raided the offices of 10 such groups last month, including those of two American groups.

The investigation is closely intertwined with Egypt's political turmoil since the fall of Hosni Mubarak nearly a year ago. The generals who took power have accused "foreign hands" of being behind protests against their rule and they frequently depict the protesters themselves as receiving foreign funds in a plot to destabilize the country.
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3) January 25, 2012: Energy Deficit Renders Punjab Uncompetitive; Dawn (Pakistan)

4) In the first version of this post I referred to the TAPI pipeline as "crazy;" without getting into a discussion of TAPI, I had it confused in my mind with the Nabucco gas pipeline. So many pipelines to keep straight.

5) This report is undated although it was surely published within the past week; I'm linking to this version rather than the International Herald Tribune report because of the wording of the title supplied by the Pakistani website that quotes IHT: US enticing Pakistan with cheap gas; Online International News Network (Pakistan)

6) January 27, 2012: Afghanistan bound 157,736 US containers; Aftab Maken, The News International (Pakistan)

ISLAMABAD: The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) on Thursday made a stunning revelation before the Senate Standing Committee on Commerce that a total of 157,736 containers of the United States destined to Afghanistan have never reached the landlocked country and disappeared inside Pakistan.
[...]

7) January 25, 2012: Brahma Chellaney learns U.S. Afghan War exit strategy is literally full of gas; Pundita

8) January 24, 2012:Hafiz Saeed ‘threatens' India; Hasan Suror, The Hindu

In a spectacle guaranteed to “send a chill through New Delhi,” as The Financial Times put it, Hafiz Saeed, the suspected mastermind behind the 2008 Mumbai terror bombings, is being feted in Pakistan as a “hero” attracting thousands of people as he “criss-crosses” the country at the head of a radical road-show targeting India and calling for “jihad.”
[...]

January 26, 2012: Pakistan stoking anti-Indian sentiments to divert attention from the heat at home; Times of India

9) January 26, 2012: What's wrong with the following sentence?, Pundita

U.S. President George Washington's foreign policy advice

The outspoken Lord Oakeshott, Britain's former Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman, did not receive the news in philosophical fashion when he learned the latest figure on the cost of the Afghan War to taxpayers in the United Kingdom.

"That's £500 for every taxpayer at a time when the public and household purses are stretched to breaking point," he snapped. "Britain would be a far safer and stronger country if we spent this money fighting gang warfare and illiteracy. The outlook is bleak when a fifth of our young people cannot read, write or add up properly ... virtually unemployable in a 21st-century developed society."

Yes, well, Oakeshott is up against the British foreign office, which has been in hog heaven since the advent of the 'Arab Spring.'

"We are going to be working at this for the rest of our lives," announced Foreign Secretary William Hague, after explaining that re-ordering the Middle East wasn't a video game one could simply walk away from when one got bored.

My reaction to learning we'd be working on the Arab Spring for the rest of our lives was to blurt, "What you mean 'we,' Kemosabe?"

Then I remembered the T-shirt message I'd once seen in Dupont Circle in Washington, DC: "Oh no! I'm becoming my mother!"

It's a little late in the day for any American to complain that Washington is becoming Whitehall, but as we head into the Labor Day holiday Americans who find themselves asking how the USA got so entangled in so many tangled foreign situations might do well to read the foreign policy portion of George Washington's farewell address as president.

The address, delivered in the form of a letter to the public, was meant to serve as a road map for the young nation and so it covers many topics -- including the perils of going into debt -- but below I've excerpted just the quotes pertaining to Washington's general advice on foreign relations.

(Other than inserting a few paragraph breaks, in a nod to internet readers' preference for short paragraphs, and taking the liberty of adding and deleting a few commas and modernizing the spelling of 'privilege,' I've left the letter as it was originally written.)

Now one may argue, and I think the French at least would argue, that Washington's decision while president to normalize trade relations with Britain at the time Britain and France went to war was not exactly a model of neutrality regarding European affairs. But the decision was made prior to Washington's farewell address, which distilled his hard-won wisdom about matters of state.

For a time Washington's advice on foreign relations, which was neither isolationist nor against temporary alliances in matters of "extraordinary emergencies," was generally followed by subsequent early U.S. presidential administrations. Then the advice was relegated to the dustbin of American history. And here we are today, facing the prospect of yet more foreign entanglements that will last us the rest of our lives.

And while one could muster an ocean of words to justify every U.S. intervention in the affairs of other countries and every long-standing U.S. alliance, and argue that America's gravest problems today are not the consequence of its foreign relations policies over decades, all those words crash against a singular rock-hard reality: The more the United States has ignored Washington's advice, the weaker the United States has become internally.

With that observation I bid you goodbye for a time. I'm determined to get in a few more days vacation then I must deal with personal matters before I can return to blogging. I'll try to check in on the morning of September 5 and if not, on September 15. Until then, I wish Pundita readers, and all fellow Americans, the best.

From the Farewell Address (pages 3 and 4)
President George Washington
September 19, 1796

Friends, and Fellow-Citizens:
[...]

Observe good faith and justice towards all Nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all. Religion and morality enjoin this conduct; and can it be that good policy does not equally enjoin it? It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, and, at no distant period, a great Nation, to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a People always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence.

Who can doubt that in the course of time and things the fruits of such a plan would richly repay any temporary advantages which might be lost by a steady adherence to it? Can it be that Providence has not connected the permanent felicity of a Nation with its virtue? The experiment, at least, is recommended by every sentiment which ennobles human Nature. Alas! is it rendered impossible by its vices?

In the execution of such a plan nothing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular Nations and passionate attachments for others should be excluded; and that in place of them just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated.

The Nation which indulges towards another an habitual hatred, or an habitual fondness, is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest.

Antipathy in one Nation against another, disposes each more readily to offer insult and injury, to lay hold of slight causes of umbrage, and to be haughty and intractable, when accidental or trifling occasions of dispute occur. Hence frequent collisions, obstinate envenomed, and bloody contests.

The Nation, prompted by ill will and resentment, sometimes impels to War the Government, contrary to the best calculations of policy. The government sometimes participates in the national propensity, and adopts through passion what reason would reject; at other times, it makes the animosity of the Nation subservient to projects of hostility instigated by pride, ambition and other sinister and pernicious motives. The peace often, sometimes perhaps the Liberty, of Nations has been the victim.

So, likewise, a passionate attachment of one Nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favourite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and Wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification:

It leads also to concessions to the favourite Nation of privileges denied to others, which is apt doubly to injure the Nation making the concessions; by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained; and by exciting jealousy, ill will, and a disposition to retaliate, in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld:

And it gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens (who devote themselves to the favourite Nation) facility to betray, or sacrifice the interests of their own country, without odium, sometimes even with popularity; gilding with the appearances of a virtuous sense of obligation a commendable deference for public opinion or a laudable zeal for public good, the base or foolish compliances of ambition, corruption or infatuation.

As avenues to foreign influence in innumerable ways, such attachments are particularly alarming to the truly enlightened and independent Patriot. How many opportunities do they afford to tamper with domestic factions, to practice the arts of seduction, to mislead public opinion, to influence or awe the public Councils! Such an attachment of a small or weak, towards a great and powerful, Nation dooms the former to be the satellite of the latter.

Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence (I conjure you to believe me fellow citizens) the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake; since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of Republican Government.

But that jealousy to be useful must be impartial; else it becomes the instrument of the very influence to be avoided, instead of a defense against it. Excessive partiality for one foreign nation and excessive dislike of another, cause those whom they actuate to see danger only on one side, and serve to veil and even second the arts of influence on the other.

Real Patriots, who may resist the intrigues of the favourite, are liable to become suspected and odious; while its tools and dupes usurp the applause and confidence of the people, to surrender their interests.

The Great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign Nations, is in extending our commercial relations to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements let them be fulfilled, with perfect good faith. Here let us stop.

Europe has a set of primary interests, which to us have none, or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence therefore it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves, by artificial ties, in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships, or enmities:

Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course. If we remain one People, under an efficient government, the period is not far off when we may defy material injury from external annoyance; when we may take such an attitude as will cause the neutrality we may at any time resolve upon to be scrupulously respected; when belligerent nations, under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us, will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation; when we may choose peace or war, as our interest guided by justice shall Counsel.

Why forego the advantages of so peculiar a situation? Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European Ambition, Rivalship, Interest, Humour or Caprice?

'Tis our true policy to steer clear of permanent Alliances, with any portion of the foreign world. So far, I mean, as we are now at liberty to do it, for let me not be understood as capable of patronising infidelity to existing engagements (I hold the maxim no less applicable to public than to private affairs, that honesty is always the best policy).

I repeat it therefore, let those engagements be observed in their genuine sense. But in my opinion, it is unnecessary and would be unwise to extend them.

Taking care always to keep ourselves, by suitable establishments, on a respectably defensive posture, we may safely trust to temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies.

Harmony, liberal intercourse with all Nations, are recommended by policy, humanity, and interest. But even our Commercial policy should hold an equal and impartial hand: neither seeking nor granting exclusive favours or preferences; consulting the natural course of things; diffusing and diversifying by gentle means the streams of Commerce, but forcing nothing; establishing with Powers so disposed; in order to give trade a stable course, to define the rights of our Merchants, and to enable the Government to support them; conventional rules of intercourse, the best that present circumstances and mutual opinion will permit, but temporary, and liable to be from time to time abandoned or varied, as experience and circumstances shall dictate; constantly keeping in view, that 'tis folly in one Nation to look for disinterested favors from another; that it must pay with a portion of its Independence for whatever it may accept under that character; that by such acceptance, it may place itself in the condition of having given equivalents for nominal favours and yet of being reproached with ingratitude for not giving more.

There can be no greater error than to expect or calculate upon real favours from Nation to Nation. 'Tis an illusion which experience must cure, which a just pride ought to discard.

[...]

Missing something?

Oh look it's a democracy! Come snuggle with the United States!

The title of this post refers to the punch line in a series of TV commercials in the USA for Sears Optical eyeglasses. The ads feature amusing skits of people in serious need of a pair of glasses, such as the woman who mistakes a police patrol car for a taxicab. But helped along by bravura performances from Tara L. Clark as a blind-as-a-bat cat owner and Squirty as a wild raccoon who can't believe his luck, one of the skits is so funny it's gone viral on the internet. (Click on the above link to see the ad on YouTube.)

There is nothing funny, however, about American officials who are so blind to what the United States stands for they snuggle with governments that march to a very different drumbeat than their own. Yet the officials are supported in their blindness by an equally blind populace. So in this post I'm going to break a taboo and wrestle with topics that are only whispered about in this country: monarchism and America's involvement with it. To set the stage I'll start with quotes from two recent news reports:

From the Globe and Mail (Canada), August 19, 2011:

Stephen Harper is working to recast the Canadian identity, undoing 40 years of a Liberal narrative and instead creating a new patriotism viewed through a conservative lens.

Restoring the “royal” prefix to the navy and air force this week is just part of the Prime Minister’s attempt at “creating a new frame” for Canada and Canadians. ...

From the New York Times, August 17:

A photograph taken last Friday of Gary F. Locke, the new United States ambassador to China, buying coffee with his 6-year-old daughter and carrying a black backpack at a Starbucks in the Seattle airport, has gone viral on the Chinese Internet. The seemingly banal scene has bewildered and disarmed Chinese because they are used to seeing their own officials indulge in privileged lives often propped up by graft and bribery and lavish expense accounts.
[...]
The first impression from the Starbucks episode has been bolstered by another photograph that shows Mr. Locke, his wife, Mona, and their three children carrying their own luggage after landing at Beijing Capital International Airport.

Chinese who saw them then spread the word that the family had gotten into an anonymous minivan because a formal sedan that had been sent to pick them up was too small.

“To most Chinese people, the scene was so unusual it almost defied belief,” Chen Weihua, an editor at China Daily, an official English-language newspaper, wrote in an article Wednesday.

Cheng Li, a scholar at the Brookings Institution who studies Chinese elite politics, said in an e-mail: “Ambassador Locke’s photo contrasts sharply with the image of the Chinese officials who often live in a secret, insulated, very privileged fashion.

Often I've heard it asked why Britain's political Right doesn't seem much less socialist than the country's Left. I'd say the answer is that the United Kingdom's welfare state has as much to do with Marxism as bread and circus did under the Roman emperors. I'd also say the same answer would apply to the welfare state in the Kingdom of Norway and the Kingdom of Sweden and a number of other countries that are constitutional monarchies.

Yet my fellow Americans have such difficulty seeing monarchism that they confuse it with something else. The same blindness can afflict Americans who insist that China is not much different from the United States. In his 2008 article for the May/June issue of Good magazine (Ten Reasons Why China Matters To You), Thomas P.M. Barnett, an American security analyst, wrote that "China’s transformation echoes much of America’s past. ... right now, China is somewhere in the historical vicinity of 'rising America' circa 1880."

In my retort (The National Petition Bureau will see you now, Dr Barnett), I pointed out that Chinese make the pilgrimage to a bureau that's a CCP place marker for an emperor's go-fers. I added in exasperation, "Ah yes, I remember as if just yesterday the tens of millions of American peasants in the 1880s who pilgrimaged to the nation's capital every year to seek redress from the emperor."

Dr Barnett turned out to have a sense of humor or at least a fair-minded attitude about receiving criticism because he linked my post at his blog. Yet that did little to allay my concern that Washington's foreign policy establishment was blind as a bat to the fact that modern China is an imperial society with a frownie face of Communist Party dictatorship painted on it, and that modern Britain and a good number of other NATO-member countries are basically monarchist societies with a smiley face of democracy plastered on them.

One could even make an argument that modern Mexico's most entrenched problems are rooted not in the rule of the Spanish but in indigenous imperial civilizations that predated Spain by thousands of years.

In fact, the more one starts looking around the world for societies that are not holdovers from the days of kings the more one appreciates that the United States of America has very few natural allies; i.e., countries that represent a real break with monarchism and the class systems that uphold it.

Norwegians might bristle at their society being described as monarchist. They would point out that their noble class has no political power anymore and that Norway today is an egalitarian society. However, it is an egalitarianism so rigidly enforced that the Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik believed after he set off a bomb in Oslo that he would be caught and killed by the police before he reached Utoya island.

His faith in the omniscience of Norway's government was dashed but the point is that the country's egalitarian "open society" is maintained by the second largest deployment of public-space CCTV cameras outside the United Kingdom. And Norway's generous public welfare system means that from cradle to grave Norwegians are easily monitored by the state, which helps the government make sure Norway stays an open, egalitarian society.

Yet Americans insist on describing such states as Leftist! Karl Marx would roll in his grave if he saw what passes today for many Leftist governments.

These same Americans decry their government's close alliance with absolute monarchies such as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. They do so without realizing that there is a long history of the United States being closely allied with monarchies; that many of these are no longer "absolute" but "constitutional" with parliamentary forms of government and voting rights makes them no less monarchist.

Americans were also miffed at what they considered snobbishness when they heard the Swedish Chairman of BP, Carl-Henric Svanberg, expressing concern for the victims of the Gulf oil spill by referring to them as "the small people."

Translation malfunction, explained his apologists. There was no malfunction; English is Svanberg's second language. And he wasn't being snobbish, he was being Swedish. Noblesse oblige and all that; one must always look after the basic needs of the small people so they don't revolt.

None of the above is meant as a criticism of the countries I've mentioned or their people, and one would be hard-pressed to find nicer peoples than the majority of Swedes or Norwegians -- and Canadians for that matter, who also live under a constitutional monarchy. I see no harm in people upholding traditions that provide them with a sense of order and give them continuity with their past, which is why I cheered on the royal pomp associated with the marriage of William and Kate. If it helped Britons get clearer on their values I was all for that.

The harm comes when Americans are so unclear on their own values, their own past and traditions, they can't engage closely with the rest of the world without becoming terribly confused. One consequence is that the more the U.S. government has tried to mesh with the "international community," the lower America's standing in the world has fallen.

Americans can't turn the situation around without first acknowledging that the international community is in large measure of bunch of royalists. Arriving at this realization doesn't mean Americans should eschew friendly relations with people in such societies or that official Washington should spurn engaging with the governments on issues of mutual interest. It does mean that Americans are asking for ever greater trouble by lumping "democratic" monarchies" with American democracy.

Over at ZenPundit, Mark Safranski has again expressed concern about what he calls an emerging American oligarchy, an elite that's manipulating the rest of the American populace to accept its rule. Meanwhile, Fareed Zakaria is seriously proposing that America replace its president with a prime minister and Congress with a parliament -- with an upper house, I suppose, to be stuffed with Mark's oligarchs, duly elected of course, so that Americans will stop the troublesome habit of vehemently disagreeing with one another.

Now just see how one thing leads to another. First you're snuggling with liberal monarchies, then authoritarian ones, then one day you're asking, 'Why is there no USA anymore? Why is there only the international community?'

Missing something?

Americans, who are you?

At 3.79 million square miles (9.83 million km2) and with over 310 million people, the United States is the third or fourth largest country by total area, and the third largest both by land area and population. (Wikipedia)

The following is from a discussion I wrote for the comment section at Zenpundit blog, which had linked to my post "Hollowed out” Mexico and hollowed-out USA.

Visit the comment section at the Zenpundit post for background on my discussion, which was to reply to blogger Joseph Fouche's critical views on how Americans act toward others and to elaborate on what I had meant by "hollowed-out America."

I'll add here that in a response to my discussion another blogger, Madhu, made the telling observation that Americans don’t understand Europe very well so they turn to 'experts' for guidance when talking about themselves. (Zenpundit is a 'blogger's blog.' I'd say many if not most of the best bloggers in the American diplo-defense part of the blogosphere read Zenpundit.)

I agree with Madhu; outside Washington and the international trade/finance sectors many Americans don't know much about European politics and know virtually nothing about European Union policies. So they don't recognize the profound impact that EU policies are having on Washington's policies -- a point I made in my recent post about "Euism," and which I've made many times over the years on this blog.

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[B]y ‘hollowing out’ of American society I was referring to what we’ve done to ourselves rather than how we’ve ’operated’ on those outside our shores. But there is one aspect of Washington’s interactions with peoples who are unfamiliar with American history that can’t be emphasized enough: Yes, Washington thinks "they’re just like us" EXCEPT when it comes to assuming they’re human.

Thus, Americans in Afghanistan can go on at great length to a Pashtun tribal leader about the need for rout out corruption in government but they can’t describe the Battle of Trenton or the Battle of Valley Forge. Yet they’re dealing with people whose lives are circumscribed by battles to maintain their independence — battles going back thousands of years and which they can describe in great detail.

And Americans can talk endlessly about the importance of democracy, but they never thought to explain to the chiefs why they came back to Afghanistan. They arrived with suitcases full of cash to buy help – but they never told the chiefs that they were there because the way al Qaeda attacked the US on 9/11 meant that many Americans couldn’t find so much as a fingernail of their massacred relatives to bury because the bodies were ground to dust.

Not to be able to bury one’s dead or even a piece of one’s dead — knowing THAT would have meant a great deal to the chiefs and those in their tribes. But the Americans never explained, never even cried, never showed emotion. THEY NEVER ACTED HUMAN; they never interacted with the Afghans in ways that are the same for all — not only all humans but all mammalian creatures. In other words, they displayed not a whit of common sense.

What do you talk about when you first sit down with a man whose life has been circumscribed by war and who knows nothing about you and your tribe? The answer is you tell me of your battles, I’ll tell you of mine and in this way we establish a commonality of experience.

You transform the rug or patch of sand you’re sitting on into the terrain of the battle, and you use sticks and stones or teacups as place markers for the troops to show how the battle was fought. In this way, you demonstrate that the battle is truly in your heart, that it means enough to you that you can bring it alive for another.

If you don’t show what’s in your heart, then you haven’t established a basis for developing a mutual understanding, so then there is no way to move off the dime. Only when you’ve demonstrated by your stories of war that your tribe also shed much blood for independence, can you move on to explaining stuff about government. You can explain that you were losing too many of your sons in battle so you devised a type of government that would help defend your freedoms and with less bloodshed. And so on.

But the history of America is one that shows a great willingness to do battle if there seemed no other option to defend Americans’ freedom. So actually Americans do have much in common with the Afghans – and it’s a key commonality. Yet it’s one we never revealed to them.

Well, I see I’ve gone on at some length and not yet gotten to the part about hollowing out. So in brief: All of Europe can fit 2-1/2 times into the continental United States. Yet one wouldn’t know that from listening to American foreign policy experts, who view the USA as if it’s a Mittel European country than can be traversed by car in an hour. Heck, one can’t even drive across Texas in a day.

America is a giant dreaming it’s a midget — and here I’m speaking of land mass and population size, not ‘civilization.’ Of course Americans owe a great deal to European civilization, but two world wars and Nato, along with a huge influx of Europeans to American universities and Washington after WW1, meant that U.S. defense/foreign policy began to reflect the strategies and tactics of the middle child in a large family — which is how small European nations have had to survive each other.

The upshot is that we have not created a distinctly American defense/foreign policy. For a generation we had a Natoist policy, but once the European Union rose up, we became a minority of one (the Canadians had the Commonwealth) at Nato despite our superior military power and wealth. So then the thinking of U.S. policymakers came to reflect the views of the European Union, which is where we are today.

I made a pass at discussing what I term ‘Euism’ [as in "EU"] in a recent post but the point is that when Americans talk of "we" in relation to the rest of the world — how can we do that, when we don’t know who we are?

Who we are has been hollowed out — not by the Europeans or any other external factor but by our own thinking, by our refusal to see ourselves as we actually are. This, despite all our talk of American exceptionalism.

The best explanation of American exceptionalism I ever heard came from a Japanese. He asked for a leave of absence from work after he was picked to manage a plant in the USA. He’d been raised on American movies but had never been to America; he wanted to see for himself what the country was like so he could better interact with his American employees. So he rented a car and drove the length and breadth of the continental USA.

He returned to Japan in a state of shock. All he could say for days was, "America is so big. It’s so big."

Yeah. But don’t tell that to Fareed Zakaria, who ended a segment on his recent CNN show about how to stimulate innovation in America by saying, 'In the next part we’ll see how America measures up to other countries in terms of innovation.'

It’s unfair to other countries to measure America against them. That’s because we’re so big. Even on our knees, we’re such a giant that if we sneeze the rest of the world catches a cold.

We’re a giant not only in terms of land mass but also population size. Americans are one of the very few peoples in the world who could maintain a good standard of living if we only traded with each other. That’s a little secret that Brussels and Whitehall would rather the American bumpkins didn’t know. That’s because it works to their advantage to have a giant dreaming it’s a midget at their beck and call.

But the "you gotta have a gang" mentality that led to Washington creating the United Nations and other multilateral institutions that came back to bite us was never necessary for the United States. That’s because we’re so big we’re a gang unto ourselves.

And it’s from that exceptional fact of our lives that we should conduct our foreign relations and build our defense policy. And we should lead the world by example, not by forming gangs of nations. [The more polite if somewhat dated term is 'multilateral approaches' which has morphed into the 'consensus of the international community.']

At the end of WW2 the vast majority of peoples in the world saw Americans in the role of The Perfect Son, not the role of The Boss [or Leader of the Pack]. Since then we’ve done everything to spurn the role we were given — a role, I might add, that is the highest honor that can be bestowed by men; it’s saying, ‘I am so proud of you, I see you as my son.’

Yet wisdom in foreign relations, as in one’s personal life, is knowing one’s role and playing it to the hilt.