Source: Military & Aerospace
I noticed on the broadcast national news tonight that we, the United States, are supposedly prepping to strike Syria in retaliation for, allegedly, performing a chemical attack on its own citizens in Douma.
My first reaction was to wonder about the reactions of leaders around the world. It’s certainly true that American political leaders have a long history of using military strikes and related activities to distract attention from unsavory political incidents, as was once noted on Lawfare (I blogged about it but am not going to bother to dig it out) in a statistical study.
But the level of cynicism attending such incidents are inversely proportional to the general level of respect for the President in office at the time. For instance, when President Obama struck at Libya, his world-wide prestige was fairly high, and I believe that, to the extent that it applies and matters, he received a fair hearing in the various world capitals, and it accrued to the United States’ advantage.
President Trump, despite any of his Twitter-bound assertions to the contrary, has garnered very little respect world-wide. Unless the United States releases the evidence that shows the Syrian government is responsible for the attack, which seems unlikely as it might reveal top-secret data sources, my belief is that most world leaders will view this military strike, if in fact it takes place, with the greatest skepticism and cynicism.
This doesn’t just debit President Trump’s prestige and influence, but everyone in the United States, because our system selected Trump to be President. It suggests that our system is vulnerable to electing people who are deceitful, untruthful, and motivated by base urges unworthy of being part of the leadership of the last remaining superpower.
That leaves us diminished, our influence no longer evaluated for its moral dimension, but only for its military and commercial facets. Thus have the Evangelicals cursed the United States.
It doesn’t help that we don’t seem to be remorseful for this mistake. The Gallup Presidential Approval poll shows Trump with 41% approval, which is ridiculously low, yet is actually a rise from earlier catastrophic depths.
So if & when those strikes occur, not only will American prestige risk sinking even further, that drop may be permanent. I’m at a loss as to how successors to Trump can hope to recover the lost prestige and influence we can have on a world that often needs moral leadership.
Has Trump condemned this world to a final era of rancorous international relations, unrelieved by American resources and leadership that we formerly have provided? Thinking back, we have made many mistakes in the last 70 years: Vietnam, Richard Nixon, Bush II, the Iraq War, climate change denial, evolutionary theory denial … the beat goes on. Balancing those are the positives, such as scientific progress, exemplars of political fairness from time to time, and the great resources we can provide when disaster strikes.
But I fear the world may stop looking to the United States for political leadership.
