It's a Long Fall From the Top
Many years ago, a young Vietnamese man left home in his early 20’s, hoping to build a life abroad. He spent some time in Europe before landing in New York, eking out a living. Like many immigrants, his homeland was never far from his heart, and they were under the boot of an oppressive regime. Fortunately for him, he was in the Land of the Free, so he pushed and wrote letters trying to rally the US to his cause.
“We love what you did in France, freeing them from the Kaiser and all that, what if, and hear me out, you helped free us from an invading force?”
“Which force is that?”
“...France?”“Umm, we’ll get back to you on that.”
The US was plainly uninterested in helping Vietnam secure their freedom because they couldn’t bring themselves to hold their ally to the same standard they held their German adversaries. Fast forward a few decades, and Ze Germans are at it once again. This time Vietnam finds themselves overtaken by Japan, which was even worse than France, but a storming of Normandy and a couple atom bombs later, Japan is back out of the picture. This intrepid Vietnamese traveler has now become a leader back home and took this as the right opportunity to declare independence. France is out. Japan is out. Now is the time.
(Ho Chi Minh rings up the White House)
“Hey Truman, we did it! Care to help us out?”
“Well, we have France on the other line, and they say they want to be in charge again.”
“Why? They suck! Just help us be free.”
“Yeah, so, we’re gonna help France with some weapons and stuff. Sorry.”
(There's a call on the other line.)
“Heyyy, this is Joe Stalin from up north. I heard you needed some help?”
“Yeah man, definitely. I thought we could count on those freedom boys, but I’ll take what I can get.”
And with that the die was largely cast for what would end up being an absolute disaster for the US. The Vietnamese leader, Ho Chi Minh, would ally himself with the Soviets and consolidate enough power to be a thorn in the escalating Cold War, eventually leading to a brutal campaign and one of the biggest failures in US military and diplomatic history.
The current administration has clearly missed that message. It has operated under the premise that you can cow sovereign nations into submission through insults, stupid trade wars and tariff brinkmanship. It’s clearly not working as the bluster from the White House grows because apparently you can win them over if you’re enough of a jerk. It’s not gonna work in either the short or long term.
So where does that leave us? Well, we can look at Brexit and a country who got too big for their britches and married that with a fundamental misunderstanding of how the world works. They left the European Union figuring they’d come out on top only to find out that, nope, that’s not gonna happen. Europe realigned itself with people they can trust and committed to the cause. England’s not an enemy to the EU, but they’re not necessarily a friend either. Looking ahead, I think we’re in for the same kind of fallout for the US. We will be diminished on the world stage for decades, at the very least.
In the first Trump administration, there was a clear sense that if the world just waited him out, proper politicians would take back over and we’d move on. Kind of weird, but we’re back in the club. This time around, they don’t have that luxury as the President and Donald Trump go around setting fires in every corner of the house. We can’t be trusted. Certainly the current administration can’t be trusted, but every four years we could be lurch further into chaos. It’s one thing to put up with us when we’re still largely a part of the team. It’s another when we turn on our allies and become a bully. Imagine Ralphie teaming up with Scut Farkus and turning on Flick and Schwartz. Gross.
My best guess is that within the next couple of years, we’re going to see the US isolated diplomatically. NATO and other formerly formidable alliances will have to assume that we will be hostile from here on out. We’re already seeing it. Portugal, for example, has ruled out buying F-35s from us because we’re unreliable. Canada and Mexico will likely end up in a strong, united front to oppose the US on the continent, and Europe is slowly edging away like you do when that one guy no one likes shows up to the function. You know the one.
Since WWII, hte United States has been the preeminent world power and steered the general direction of world events for decades. But nothing lasts forever. China is growing, and our repudiation of our allies and other countries in need will drive them into the arms of a hostile nation. New alliances will form and we may not like them. Even if Trumpism is somehow eradicated, those wounds will not heal for some time and the world for future generations will be fundamentally different than the one we knew. In many ways, the era of politics we knew, from maybe 1980 until 2016 is over. It is unrecoverable.
Vietnam didn’t have to turn out the way it did. The US could have rebuffed France and built a new, natural ally to buffer the spread of communism instead of accelerating it. To be fair, diplomacy is hard in the best of situations and predicting the future is a fool’s errand. It requires foresight and long-term planning which are two things our administration is desperately lacking, but when people and nations get desperate, they’re often willing to turn to whomever or whatever will help get them, and we might not like where they go.
