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You see someone trip and fall face-down.
Do you...
(a) ask whether the person is hurt, and offer a hand to help the person stand up,
(b) walk by on the other side of the street, not getting involved, or
(c) kneel on the person's back and whisper "How much will you pay me to let you up?"
For the past month, the United States has been loudly and conspicuously in the (b) category.
As of yesterday's show by the President and Vice President, the United States of America has officially moved on to (c). When we see someone in trouble, whom we could help at trivial cost, it's not an opportunity to help a fellow-creature, it's an opportunity to exploit weakness. The weaker someone is, the more we can extort.
President Zelensky has been offered two related deals in recent days. One says he should "make peace" with Russia by allowing Russia to keep all the land it's captured, with no guarantee that Russia won't invade again next year to capture some more. The other says he should give the United States a bunch of mineral rights, with no guarantee that the United States will help it defend itself, now or ever. To put it in terms Donald Trump would understand, "What's in it for me? Why would I take either of those deals?"
I guess the answer is "If you don't take the deal with Russia, they promise to keep killing your people and destroying your country. If you don't take the deal with me, I promise to cut off your military aid and make it easier for Russia."
I suspect that if Donald Trump read the above, he would agree completely that the United States has moved on to (c), and there's nothing wrong with that: what's the point of having power if you're not going to use it for your own benefit? Why would I help somebody who's not helping me? Trump sees himself as a Mafia Don, negotiating with his equals (mostly Putin and Xi) to carve up the rest of the world among them; why would he bother involving the NPC's in his negotiations, or help someone who's inevitably going to end up in Putin's slice of the pie anyway? Much smarter to extract as much as he can from a weak country before handing it over to Putin, just as he always extracts as much money as he can from a failing business before having it declare bankruptcy.
Traditional (20th-century) US foreign policy would say, instead, that we and all of our allies benefit from a rules-based international order, in which wars of territorial acquisition have been mostly consigned to history. So when somebody violates that rules-based international order by invading a neighbor, it's in the interest of us and all of our allies to punish the violator.
And most individuals would like to think of themselves as good, kind people in category (a); it's only at the national level that we're apparently willing to be Mafia-types offering protection rackets. What we want in a leader doesn't always match what we want in ourselves.
Which leads us back to different models of leadership. Confucius distinguished several kinds of kings: in order of desirability, the king who is respected, the king who is loved, the king who is feared, and the king who is pitied. Donald Trump has never aspired to be respected or loved, only feared.
To put it another way, people follow a leader voluntarily because the leader has a reputation for making good decisions that benefit the followers. For much of the 20th century, other countries followed the United States because it seemed to be doing mostly-good things, mostly-successfully, and its people seemed to be mostly happy and prosperous. By contrast, people obey a ruler because they'll be punished if they don't. Countries in the Russian orbit obey the Kremlin because if you step out of line, your infrastructure gets destroyed and your people slaughtered like Ukraine's.
The "rule by fear" approach is fragile: it makes people hate you, so if you stop punishing them for a moment, they start to doubt that you will, and they stop obeying you. So you have to find things to punish people for continually, even if most of them are obeying you; you have to constantly escalate the level of obedience and obeisance you demand, in order to justify maintaining your rule of fear.
By contrast, the "lead by example and competence" approach only requires that you do what was in your and your people's best interest anyway: have a decent, happy society and make decisions for it that actually work. (Not that that's easy, but it's a worthy challenge.)
Do you want your President to lead a country that leads much of the world, or rule a country that rules much of the world?
(a) ask whether the person is hurt, and offer a hand to help the person stand up,
(b) walk by on the other side of the street, not getting involved, or
(c) kneel on the person's back and whisper "How much will you pay me to let you up?"
For the past month, the United States has been loudly and conspicuously in the (b) category.
As of yesterday's show by the President and Vice President, the United States of America has officially moved on to (c). When we see someone in trouble, whom we could help at trivial cost, it's not an opportunity to help a fellow-creature, it's an opportunity to exploit weakness. The weaker someone is, the more we can extort.
President Zelensky has been offered two related deals in recent days. One says he should "make peace" with Russia by allowing Russia to keep all the land it's captured, with no guarantee that Russia won't invade again next year to capture some more. The other says he should give the United States a bunch of mineral rights, with no guarantee that the United States will help it defend itself, now or ever. To put it in terms Donald Trump would understand, "What's in it for me? Why would I take either of those deals?"
I guess the answer is "If you don't take the deal with Russia, they promise to keep killing your people and destroying your country. If you don't take the deal with me, I promise to cut off your military aid and make it easier for Russia."
I suspect that if Donald Trump read the above, he would agree completely that the United States has moved on to (c), and there's nothing wrong with that: what's the point of having power if you're not going to use it for your own benefit? Why would I help somebody who's not helping me? Trump sees himself as a Mafia Don, negotiating with his equals (mostly Putin and Xi) to carve up the rest of the world among them; why would he bother involving the NPC's in his negotiations, or help someone who's inevitably going to end up in Putin's slice of the pie anyway? Much smarter to extract as much as he can from a weak country before handing it over to Putin, just as he always extracts as much money as he can from a failing business before having it declare bankruptcy.
Traditional (20th-century) US foreign policy would say, instead, that we and all of our allies benefit from a rules-based international order, in which wars of territorial acquisition have been mostly consigned to history. So when somebody violates that rules-based international order by invading a neighbor, it's in the interest of us and all of our allies to punish the violator.
And most individuals would like to think of themselves as good, kind people in category (a); it's only at the national level that we're apparently willing to be Mafia-types offering protection rackets. What we want in a leader doesn't always match what we want in ourselves.
Which leads us back to different models of leadership. Confucius distinguished several kinds of kings: in order of desirability, the king who is respected, the king who is loved, the king who is feared, and the king who is pitied. Donald Trump has never aspired to be respected or loved, only feared.
To put it another way, people follow a leader voluntarily because the leader has a reputation for making good decisions that benefit the followers. For much of the 20th century, other countries followed the United States because it seemed to be doing mostly-good things, mostly-successfully, and its people seemed to be mostly happy and prosperous. By contrast, people obey a ruler because they'll be punished if they don't. Countries in the Russian orbit obey the Kremlin because if you step out of line, your infrastructure gets destroyed and your people slaughtered like Ukraine's.
The "rule by fear" approach is fragile: it makes people hate you, so if you stop punishing them for a moment, they start to doubt that you will, and they stop obeying you. So you have to find things to punish people for continually, even if most of them are obeying you; you have to constantly escalate the level of obedience and obeisance you demand, in order to justify maintaining your rule of fear.
By contrast, the "lead by example and competence" approach only requires that you do what was in your and your people's best interest anyway: have a decent, happy society and make decisions for it that actually work. (Not that that's easy, but it's a worthy challenge.)
Do you want your President to lead a country that leads much of the world, or rule a country that rules much of the world?