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I was privy to reading an editorial by Liz Cheney, daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, that berated President Obama up one side and down the other for abdicating America's special role in foreign affairs. Well, among other things. Her tenuous grasp of historical events (or her lopsided attempt to sway the Wall Street Journal's readers with a selective interpretation of events) was... interesting to say the least.
Speaking to a group of students, our president explained it this way: "The American and Soviet armies were still massed in Europe, trained and ready to fight. The ideological trenches of the last century were roughly in place. Competition in everything from astrophysics to athletics was treated as a zero-sum game. If one person won, then the other person had to lose. And then within a few short years, the world as it was ceased to be. Make no mistake: This change did not come from any one nation. The Cold War reached a conclusion because of the actions of many nations over many years, and because the people of Russia and Eastern Europe stood up and decided that its end would be peaceful."
The truth, of course, is that the Soviets ran a brutal, authoritarian regime. The KGB killed their opponents or dragged them off to the Gulag. There was no free press, no freedom of speech, no freedom of worship, no freedom of any kind. The basis of the Cold War was not "competition in astrophysics and athletics." It was a global battle between tyranny and freedom. The Soviet "sphere of influence" was delineated by walls and barbed wire and tanks and secret police to prevent people from escaping. America was an unmatched force for good in the world during the Cold War. The Soviets were not. The Cold War ended not because the Soviets decided it should but because they were no match for the forces of freedom and the commitment of free nations to defend liberty and defeat Communism.
If Liz Cheney thinks that competition of every form was not part of the basic Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States, one must wonder what she thinks that the Apollo program (culminating in the landing of Apollo 11 on the moon on July 20, 1969) was all about. Did we spend millions of dollars to retrieve moon rocks for NASA to distribute to VIPs as paperweights? In reality, the intense competition in "everything from astrophysics to athletics" was the most basic expression of the international posturing that put the final nail in the coffin of the Soviet Union's centralized economy. It was each country's best effort to convince their allies and the non-aligned powers that their economic and political systems were superior. It was the ultimate point of pride and the end of every logical debate when the United States could, in nearly every instance, point to the fruits of its labor as either the best in the world or point out that the Soviets had bested the West by chicanery. By chicanery I am referring to one of the best-known instances of Soviet cheating: turning the GDR (German Democratic Republic i.e. East Germany) women's swim team into a husky-voiced, peach fuzz-growing band of she-men to compete against Janet Evans in the 1988 Olympics. The end results of an endeavor almost always tell the story of superiority and our ability to demonstrably outdo the Soviet Union in nearly every facet of military technology (specifically aircraft, submarines and nuclear weapons) and even in many Olympics told the story: a free society can best one that is repressively yoked to the state.
Furthermore, Cheney seems to have rewritten fundamental American history when it comes to the Cold War. For each time we were involved in successful movements that broke the hold of the Soviet Union (Solidarity in Poland and the mujahideen turning Afghanistan into the Soviets' version of Vietnam) an opposite instance can be given in which we stood on the sidelines and watched freedom-loving people die at the hands of Soviet troops without lifting a finger to assist them (Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968). Liz Cheney needs to remove her rose-colored glasses and realize that, in many cases, as a method of our foreign policy the United States incited and supported opposition against the Soviet Union that we knew were likely to fail, nearly sure to result in casualties and then watched them happen without intervention to stop the killing. They were legitimate and needed foreign policy maneuvers, but Cheney writes as though Americans were the ones dying all over the world to spread freedom. In nearly all cases, no American casualties were registered: we bankrolled the people that were actually pursuing the part of the Cold War that could end in disfigurement or death. Those that were persecuted and ruled like 20th century Messenian helots by the modern day Sparta deserve the credit for risking their lives by refusing to be party to business as usual. America was, at best, a reluctant Theban democracy led, at times, by Epaminondas-like figures. The best way to earn ill will in the former Soviet Union is to cast ourselves as the heroes of the Cold War and those that did the majority of the dying as interesting but unimportant bit characters.
The approach was evident in his speech in Moscow and in his speech in Cairo last month. In Cairo, he asserted there was some sort of equivalence between American support for the 1953 coup in Iran and the evil that the Iranian mullahs have done in the world since 1979. On an earlier trip to Mexico City, the president listened to an extended anti-American screed by Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and then let the lies stand by responding only with, "I'm grateful that President Ortega did not blame me for the things that occurred when I was 3 months old."
People like Liz Cheney think it is an excellent idea for the President of the United States to be Paul to the Gospel of liberal democracy and constitutional government and, frankly, I think that the President should be our chief messenger when it comes to persuading other countries to convert to our method of governance. However, it is complete and total foolishness to believe that the President can make an ounce of progress converting possible liberal democratic states while playing deaf and dumb about an incident that indicates our country does not support the method of government itself if the method results in unacceptable leaders. Allowing that message to echo in perpetuity, which it has since the day in 1953 that we initiated the coup d'etat against Mossadeq in Iran, fatally undermines anything and everything any American emissary has to say about the benefits of liberal democracy. Until an American President, as Liz Cheney derisively puts it, pressed the "reset" button on the Mossadeq coup the residents of the states that we need to convert to liberal democracy to improve our national security, the Islamic entities of the Middle East, would absolutely refuse to listen to any discussion of changing government structures of their own countries. To that point, Muslims in the Middle East treated every American President touting democracy the same as an atheist treats a Christian that flagrantly sins while proselytizing to them: with patience looking towards the end of the lecture with no intention of converting or outright contempt for the evangelist. Cheney is clearly unfamiliar with the notion of leading by example.
Asked at a NATO meeting in France in April whether he believed in American exceptionalism, the president said, "I believe in American Exceptionalism just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism." In other words, not so much.
One that is truly exceptional will avoid any and all opportunities to trumpet their own exceptionalism. It is precisely this humble nature that makes them truly exceptional and this aversion to hubris is one of the primary attractions for an exceptional person or country's followers. The King James Bible concisely states just as much in Proverbs 16: 18: Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.
Mr. Obama has become fond of saying, as he did in Russia again last week, that American nuclear disarmament will encourage the North Koreans and the Iranians to give up their nuclear ambitions. Does he really believe that the North Koreans and the Iranians are simply waiting for America to cut funds for missile defense and reduce our strategic nuclear stockpile before they halt their weapons programs?
No, he doesn't believe that North Korea will unilaterally give up its nuclear weapons if the United States achieves nuclear disarmament. Nor does he believe that Iran will simply give up its nuclear ambitions in such a situation. What he does believe, however, is that if the United States backs its demands for a world devoid of nuclear weapons with significant steps towards eliminating its own stockpile then our allies will likely vigorously follow our lead and our "allies" like China and Russia will be more likely to exert pressure on North Korea and Iran, respectively, to renounce their nuclear weapons programs. When one spine stiffens in a room, others are empowered to follow suit. The one thing that we do know is the only other country with the nuclear clout to straighten its back and empower other countries to take a tougher line on non-proliferation is Russia and that will never, ever happen.
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