Chinese leaders at a December meeting led by Chinese President Xi Jinping reiterated their consistent focus on “pursuing progress while ensuring stability.”
Stability, hmmm.
Following WWII, global stability became a major goal of a United States tired of fighting wars begun in Europe and Asia. We led development of multinational institutions like the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, the United Nations, and others to promote cooperation. We built a comprehensive global security network through multi-national alliances like NATO, bilateral security pacts such as those with Japan, South Korea, and Israel, and troop, Navy flotillas, and other military asset deployments in Europe and Asia to head off future conflicts. We fostered democratic reforms worldwide, e.g. President George H.W. Bush made the spread of democracy a key part of his national security policy.
Today these citadels of stability have begun to crumble.
Politico reported that international polling shows large shares of America’s closest allies now view the U.S. as “unreliable, disruptive, and a negative force.” This follows President Donald Trump scaling back on commitments to multinational organizations like the IMF, the UN, NATO, EOCD, and humanitarian organizations; announcing his intent to take over Greenland, make Canada a U.S. state, and institute what he calls his America First DONroe Doctrine around the Gulf of America; and criticizing longtime democratic allies, e.g. Trump described Europe as a “decaying” group of nations led by “weak” people, while cozying up to Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and other anti-democratic dictators.
Perhaps nothing symbolizes the disruption of America’s policy on global stability more than the president’s rebranding of the Department of Defense, a defensive force for peace, as the Department of War with an avowed warhawk as Secretary. Trump said he was signaling to adversaries, “America's readiness to wage war to secure its interests.”
So, instead of restraining war we now encourage it?
Disruption rather than stability became Trump’s policy at home as well – from firing, rehiring, then firing again thousands of federal employees, to disregarding court orders and targeting opposing law firms and judges, to abruptly imposing stiff tariffs and threatening trade wars, to impulsively withholding appropriated funds to states and authorized programs, to whimsically pardoning felons found guilty by juries of their peers, to aggressive and disruptive acts by masked ICE agents, to dismissing senior military officers for alleged disloyalty, to his seemingly 24/7 unpredictable, chaotic, and divisive social media posts.
Speaking at a major gathering of government officials and international power brokers in Qatar in December, Donald Trump, Jr., explained, “What’s good … what’s unique about my father, is you don’t know what he’s going to do.”
Happy disruptive New Year.
"Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast" – I Corinthians 15:58.
Crawford is an author and syndicated columnist from Jackson.
