Today’s column partly flows from the column of March 24, 2023:
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Let’s pick up where we left off five weeks ago.
Democrat presidential candidate Kamala Harris said on Oct. 29 that the 2024 election was a choice between freedom and chaos. Harris was right for reasons she didn’t mention.
Please consider this: If chaos is the correct word, has the Biden administration fomented it? If so, is it a bit rich to imply–and especially to imply falsely–that others will foment chaos?
For today, recalling a few examples suffices.
On the domestic front, recall the consequences of the Biden Administration’s opening the border.
On the international front, recall the consequences for Ukraine and Israel of their policies.
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Along that international line and related lines, the United States would do well to renew polite conversations with allies, who are our friends, all around the world.
Such conversations took place emphatically during the Trump 45 administration.
The bottom line is that the United States, having rescued the world in two hot wars and one cold one in the past century, needs allies to shoulder more of the burden for securing ordered liberty.
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Our allies, having long since recovered economically from the two hot wars, are generally comparable economically to the United States.
Since those wars, the United States has nevertheless provided a substantial share of allies’ defense, thereby allowing them to devote their own capital to other projects.
As a result, their infrastructure–roads, bridges, airports, railroads, ports, and all the rest–are superb while the United States’ infrastructure has, by comparison, deteriorated.
The United States has also borne the lion’s share of other projects, including space exploration.
Meanwhile, the United States has been otherwise generous to additional countries.
During these decades, the United States has largely and in effect been the world’s police department: The country that everyone else looks to first when something goes wrong.
Being a world leader shouldn’t mean disproportionately sacrificing treasure, much less blood, when others are as capable as our allies have long been.
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The United States is well within its rights to convey diplomatically to allies a message such as this:
Decades ago we should have persisted in politely having this conversation with you. That we didn’t do so is our fault, not yours.
We appreciate not only our alliance with you but also our friendship with you. We treasure both. We are especially grateful for international educational- and cultural-exchange programs that have brought such enormous benefit to our citizens and thereby to our countries. We want this alliance, this friendship, with all of you and these exchanges to continue.
As part of this alliance, the United States has come to your aid. You have long since been capable of being a full partner, which many of you speak of being. We welcome and encourage such an aspiration.
Full partners need to be full partners, not only in words but also in deeds.
As a full partner, it would behoove you as allies to do even more regarding those efforts, particularly defense, especially but not only when those efforts inure to your benefit.
When challenges arise in countries near each of you, it is each of you, not we, who should provide the lion’s share of the resources. Ukraine is but the most recent example.
You might also consider doing even more for countries not near you. Israel, for example, to understate the point, lives in an unfriendly neighborhood. When anti-Semites, including in the United States, chant “from the river to the sea,” they’re talking about the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. They’re advocating wiping all of Israel–all of it–off the map.
The United States won’t relent in supporting Israel. You know that you too shouldn’t relent.
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One of the lessons of history is that over time, great countries falter when they spread themselves too far, too wide, and too thin across the world and disregard their challenges at home.
We in the United States aren’t the Ancient Romans. We want no empire. We don’t dare spread our resources so far, so wide, and so thin that we bring about our own eventual downfall, as the Ancient Romans did.
This isn’t about the United States’ seeking a course of isolationism. This is about encouraging allies, as part of the internationalism that must continue, to carry their share of the load in treasure–and, let’s be candid–when necessary in blood.
We in the United States have our own needs to which we need to attend. We have overlooked our own needs–infrastructure particularly comes to mind–for long enough. We dare not do so any longer.
In our country, we have a game called “baseball.” Some of you play it. Some of you don’t. Either way, you may understand that “stepping up to the plate” means giving your all to your own tasks.
You, our allies, would do well to give full consideration to stepping up to the plate.
It’s time.
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Dr. Randy Elf appreciates having taken part in international-exchange programs.
COPYRIGHT — 2024 BY RANDY ELF
This post was originally published on here
