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We’re still on the speech at West Point. Matthew Continetti provides a particulary insightful essay on the shortcomings of our foreign policy. While acknowledging our fortunate geography, Mr. Continetti thinks we cannot continue to hide from our great power responsibilities.
The phrase “offshore balancing” did not appear in President Obama’s commencement address at West Point. It did not have to. Obama’s every word was informed by the idea that America should renounce nation-building, extended deployments, base construction, and other elements of hard power in favor of diplomacy, military-to-military partnerships, multilateral institution-building, and soft-power in general. “Just because we have the best hammer,” the president said in a particularly insipid use of cliché, “does not mean that every problem is a nail.”
Not the administration, nor its supporters, nor its critics have been successful in defining precisely what the “Obama Doctrine” is. But offshore balancing seems to me to be as good a way as any to describe the president’s strategy. What does it mean? Because of America’s favorable geography—oceans to the east and west, friendly allies to the north and south—its powerful military, and its commercial nature, our country need not be overly assertive in the world. …
… As America abjures its post-war strategy of onshore hegemony in favor of offshore balancing, what do we see? We see chaos in Iraq, Syria, and Libya, we see the annexation of Crimea, we see mounting tensions between China and Vietnam and between China and Japan. We see new moves by Japan toward rearmament and militarization, we see the return of the European far right, and we see the spread of al Qaeda franchises throughout the Muslim world.
I am not under any illusions. America will get the foreign policy that its elites desire. What they desire now is normalcy. And so this era of retrenchment may last for some time. The era of normalcy ushered in by Warren Harding lasted more than 20 years—right up to the moment Japanese Zeroes bombed Pearl Harbor. But, like all eras, it came to a close. One day America will have to go back ashore.
The last word on the speech comes from Charles Krauthammer.
… What is the world to think when Obama makes the case for a residual force in Afghanistan — “after all the sacrifices we’ve made, we want to preserve the gains that you have helped to win” — and then announce a drawdown of American forces to 10,000, followed by total liquidation within two years on a fixed timetable regardless of circumstances?
The policy contradicts the premise. If you want not to forfeit our terribly hard-earned gains — as we forfeited all our gains in Iraq with the 2011 withdrawal — why not let conditions dictate the post-2014 drawdowns? Why go to zero — precisely by 2016?
For the same reason, perhaps, that the Afghan surge was ended precisely in 2012, in the middle of the fighting season — but before the November election. A 2016 Afghan end date might help Democrats electorally and, occurring with Obama still in office, provide a shiny new line to his résumé.
Is this how a great nation decides matters of war and peace — to help one party and polish the reputation of one man? As with the West Point speech itself, as with the president’s entire foreign policy of retreat, one can only marvel at the smallness of it all.
An article from New Geography shows how California greens have priced ordinary citizens out of many parts of the state.
One of the core barriers to economic prosperity in California is the price of housing. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Policies designed to stifle the ability to develop land are based on flawed premises. These policies prevail because they are backed by environmentalists, and, most importantly, because they have played into the agenda of crony capitalists, Wall Street financiers, and public sector unions. But while the elites benefit, ordinary working families have been condemned to pay extreme prices in mortgages, property taxes, or rents, to live in confined, unhealthy, ultra high-density neighborhoods. It is reminiscent of apartheid South Africa, but instead of racial superiority as the supposed moral justification, environmentalism is the religion of the day. The result is identical.
Earlier this month an economist writing for the American Enterprise Institute, Mark J. Perry, published a chart proving that over the past four years, more new homes were built in one city, HoustonTexas, than in the entire state of California. We republished Perry’s article earlier this week, “California vs. Texas in one chart.” The population of greater Houston is 6.3 million people. The population of California is 38.4 million people. California, with six times as many people as Houston, built fewer homes. …
… The Californians who are hurt by urban containment are not the wealthy elites who find it comforting to believe and lucrative to propagate the enabling big lie. The victims are the underprivileged, the immigrants, the minority communities, retirees who collect Social Security, low wage earners and the disappearing middle class. Anyone who aspires to improve their circumstances can move to Houston and buy a home with relative ease, but in California, they have to struggle for shelter, endlessly, needlessly – contained and allegedly environmentally correct.
Allen Meltzer of the Hoover Institution says Ronald Reagan is alive and well and living in India.
Narendra Modi won an overwhelming victory in the Indian election. He avoided or minimized contentious issues, like Hindu nationalism. The Republicans can learn a lot by following a similar strategy on religion. Modi’s campaign emphasized growth, a better future, and a program for achieving improved living standards for everyone. He charged the current government with “tax terrorism” because it repeatedly changed India’s tax rates and tax law. That created uncertainty, an enemy of business investment and economic growth.
The Indian election was a classic confrontation between the proponents of growth and the advocates of redistribution and the welfare state. Growth won across the board in all classes and regions. The young especially voted for growth. The same message brought Ronald Reagan to the presidency for two terms. Like Reagan, Modi urged voters to choose growth and opportunity instead of redistribution, higher tax rates, and envy.
This message worked for President Reagan. And it worked for Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. It offers opportunity to the many willing to work for a better life.
Republicans should make this message their main themes in the 2014 and 2016 elections. We know that President Obama’s party, like the Indian Congress party, is committed to more redistribution, a larger welfare state, and more regulation of the internet, the environment, investment, consumption, business, and labor. That policy can be called “regulatory terrorism” because like tax terrorism it discourages investment and growth. President Obama, like the incumbent party in India, never tires of urging higher tax rates to finance more redistribution. …
What we eat determines how we think? That’s the premise of a WSJ article on the different cultures that produce wheat and rice.
Could what we eat shape how we think? A new paper in the journal Science by Thomas Talhelm at the University of Virginia and colleagues suggests that agriculture may shape psychology. A bread culture may think differently than a rice-bowl society.
Psychologists have long known that different cultures tend to think differently. In China and Japan, people think more communally, in terms of relationships. By contrast, people are more individualistic in what psychologist Joseph Henrich, in commenting on the new paper, calls “WEIRD cultures.”
WEIRD stands for Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic. Dr. Henrich’s point is that cultures like these are actually a tiny minority of all human societies, both geographically and historically. But almost all psychologists study only these WEIRD folks. …