The confirmed death toll now approaches 300 from the missile attack by Russia-backed Ukrainian rebels against a Malaysian Airlines jet. We can stipulate that the foreign policy of President Barack Obama, who works against American interests in both the domestic and the international sphere, is a catastrophe – a frighteningly real study in what happens when America empowers her enemies.
Still, the failure to recognize Putin’s Russia as a hostile power; the delusion that we are part of an “international community” that functions like a global body politic with universal values and common interests under a recognized “rule of law”; and the consequent conceit that figuring out what our strategy should be hinges, like a prosecutor’s case, on proving the rogue’s intent beyond a reasonable doubt – these are not merely Obama fantasies. They are the gospel according to the bipartisan ruling class. With some honorable exceptions like John Bolton, the GOP’s transnational progressives have been nearly as infatuated with Vladimir Putin’s regime as Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and John Kerry.
The international realm in which we actually live is a jungle, not a community. Order is imposed by power, not law. A body politic operating under agreed upon principles that promote freedom and punish crime can afford to take the position that an accused is innocent until proven guilty. This is not so in the international arena, where there are few if any universal animating principles, where freedom is widely denied, and where the criminals are often the rulers. In the international realm, the United States is better off remaining strong and acting in accordance with the wisdom of U.S. Marine General James Mattis: “No better friend, no worse enemy.” To the extent the global order has been reasonably orderly for much of the past half-century, it is because American power—when exercised in furtherance of American interests—is a force for good. It is not because we’ve strengthened international institutions, which serve the interests of authoritarians and are designed to allow rogue nations to even the playing field against American power.