is producing global disorder. Bret Stephens has a good article in the Wall Street Journal. In it he explores "the danger of America's will to weakness." "Multipolarity" (which Obama likes) produces a U.S. foreign policy akin to that of the European Union,
"a kind of diplomatic air guitar: furious motion, considerable imagination, but neither sound nor effect. When a European leader issues a stern demarche toward, say, Burma or Russia, nobody notices. And nobody cares. . . .
The significance?
The small and distant abuses of power, would grow bolder and more frequent. America's exhortations for restraint or decency would seem cheaper. Multipolarity is a theory that, inevitably, leads to old-fashioned spheres of influence. It has little regard for small states: Taiwan, Mongolia, Israel, Georgia, Latvia, Costa Rica. The romance of the balance of power might have made sense when one empire was, more or less, as despotic as the next. It is less morally compelling when the choice is between democracy and Putinism, as it is today for Ukraine.
He continues:
We are now at risk of entering a period—perhaps a decade, perhaps a half-century—of global disorder, brought about by a combination of weaker U.S. might and even weaker U.S. will. The last time we saw something like it was exactly a century ago. Winston Churchill wrote a book about it: "The World Crisis, 1911-1918." Available in paperback. Worth reading today. [more . . .]