Great article, the premises with which I agree, except this one:

“But far from investing in institutions to manage these problems, the United States has been busy eroding existing international structures for its own short-term foreign policy goals, from the undermining of the ABM treaty to the nuclear deal with India to foot-dragging on global warming.”

People of all political identifications are right to question global institutions. While there are many good people at the working level who are dedicated to and effective in doing their jobs, I believe these systems, particularly the UN, are fundamentally broken. I wish I could say it was because of the venal desires of those who serve only to enrich or empower themselves, but I fear it is because member governments of the international institutions we created after WWII have over time become acquiescent in the formulation of the least-common-denominator solutions these organizations continue to promulgate. In other words, the best becomes the enemy of the good, if not the mediocre, and sovereign governments pay only lip service to the idealized goals that are meted out in their pronouncements about how the world should work. Look at the IGPCC, the IAEA, even UNDP and UNICEF. Put their goals aside their accomplishments and look at the gap. It is not only the US, which still accounts for around 22% of all these organizations’ budgets taken as a whole, but many other countries that are simply not willing to surrender sovereignty to the will of the whole. I am a firm believer that we need these institutions to help us preserve our planet, but their lack of accountability and transparency, coupled with sovereign (and therefore narrow) interests does not give me confidence in their future effectiveness, no matter how much more actively the US engages.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a grand solution just now, but everybody needs to work on it.

A. Achbun

On de-regulation: Just because the Bush zealots were willing to stand aside for 6 years without fulfilling their obligations as leaders to re-assess the need for regulation, as they happily watched a cascading situation in the economy, doesn’t mean Clinton’s initial moves almost a decade earlier with respect to the economy (which functioned quite successfully under his watch) were wrong. It’s not Clinton’s fault Bush was asleep at the switch.

As to foreign policy, it was the Clinton military which kicked the Taliban out of Afghanistan with ease. Since then Bush has wrecked the military and, by bankrupting the country with his tax cuts for the rich, destroyed our ability to pay for our defense. “Soldiers without flak jackets” is how Bush should be remembered. But any attempt to try and smear Clinton because of Bush’s stupidity is completely strained.

So the realignment will need intense help from the liberal media establishment, who will turn up the volume with tons of “news” about how liberal professors and journalists think that there are “early impressions that Obama is effective in dealing with the economic crisis and foreign policy.”

Fukuyama states that the problem with America is President Reagan’s ideas – these “need to be reformulated or discarded…to navigate the current crisis and restore [America’s] credibility in the new era.”

Here are the three old ideas Fukuyama lists for curing America’s “Reaganitis:”

• More government regulations;
• More taxes so that the government can keep spending; and
• Abandon U.S. military strength and moral clarity in foreign policy, and invest in international institutions to manage foreign affairs.

First Fukuyama writes a book saying history is over – now he wants America to repeat history with another debacle like the Carter presidency?

Fukuyama’s ideas will weaken America economically and militarily. If Obama tries them – he’ll lose the 2012 election by a landslide. So it’s probably a good bet that Obama will keep the Fukuyama agenda under wraps…unless he gets a 2nd term.

Two thoughts, however: Americans are still very prickly about their sovereignty. In fact, many nations are–we are not alone in this. Americans will definitely hold their president’s feet to the fire if it looks like he is selling out real American interests just to “play nice with the Europeans.”

Second, Obama can’t do a darned thing unless he comes with genuine healing in his wings. And this means not stirring up hornets’ nests. Overturn the ban on federal funding of embryonic stem cells? Is that really the first foot to be put forward, given that he only won 52.6% of the votes?? Let him first pick the issues that unify us as Americans, not the issues that divide us bitterly.

Red State Gal
http://redstatefeminists.org