I want to compare two eras, perhaps they are what one might call eras, or, say, just time periods, that can for my purposes to be seen in relation to each other and to other periods.
One good reason for using the United States for this comparison is that it was largely, but not solely, responsible for its domestic politics during the first period, and because it largely politically and militarily dominated, by default, non Communist world foreign policy, as well as its own domestic policy to the extent that there continued to be a difference between the two, in the later period.
One of the things I want to highlight is a comparison of the outcomes of domestic policy in the earlier period and the outcomes of foreign policy in the later one, during periods in which it seems to me a meaningful comparison of how the system has worked overall and in the long run, in both ways, can be seen in retrospect and over time.
Allan Nevins wrote a multi volume work on part of the first period, the run up to the Civil War. In that work, time and again Nevins referred to periods of what he called drift, where nothing much, politically, happened, especially regarding the issues of slavery, states' rights, and federalism, his chosen topics, for various reasons having to do with election outcomes regarding the legislative and executive branches, and other factors. He also talked at length about economic and industrial development, which both trended upward with intermittent busts throughout the period.
These lengthy times of drift resulted, in part, from what you might call degenerate but systemic checks and balances. This drift was the single most important fact that jumped out at me from the several volumes I read.
It was not as if these drift times were times when it was good for nothing much to have happened, but that is how the system worked in practice, and also how it had been originally designed to work, unfortunately.
One might more usefully refer to some of these periods of drift as ones of bitter deadlock, especially regarding slavery, states' rights, and Westward territorial expansion, which resulted in one kind of drift, but it is also helpful to recall other periods of drift, sometimes associated with temporary prosperity, as merely times of systemic political indolence in a generally weak federal system not really designed to ever do much anyway.
I personally believe that our system has been characterized best by drift generally, whether of drift of crisis or of indolence or of some other variety, since the founding, but these periods seem to display these tendencies in high relief regarding the run up to the Civil War on the one hand, and regarding world events since WWII on the other, even better than other times.
In terms of the earlier period, its drift alternated between crisis and indolence for 5 decades, during which there were many weak so called attempts to resolve the issues dividing the sectors. They seem often to have been more designed as Congressional members' political grandstanding, or as backhanded attacks on each other or the other party, than as serious practical proposals. These all failed, including ostensible settlements of the issues which then fell through, were modified, and fell through again or were repudiated later.
Interestingly enough, during this long period of time, 50 years, the political dispute between the sectors over slavery and states' rights actually worsened, giving rise to crises and deadlocks on the one hand, punctuated by long periods of indolent drift on the other, even though politicians more or less permanently, for generations, worked on these issues, until it finally resulted in the election of Lincoln, secession, and Civil War.
Looking now at the period from 1942 to 1990, regarding foreign policy, what can one say?
Our system continued to work in its usual way, but it increasingly came to work somewhat differently in foreign policy, where the Presidency, rather than Congress, has more control over foreign policy, military matters, and especially trade. Congress remains deeply involved in all these matters however.
The Presidency has, almost from the first, sought to circumvent Congressional approval wherever possible, and certainly where necessary, simply because of the difficulty of getting anything much done there in a certain way and in a timely manner.
Our system sought by inaction or deadlock to avoid entanglement in a world war in 1940 (similarly to WWI) until it was almost even too late to determine the outcome in favor of American survival in the long term against Hitler's global aspirations.
It took an attack on Pearl Harbor to accomplish this, not American political initiative. FDR had promoted American involvement in the war, largely at Churchill's urging, not because he was deeply concerned for Germany's neighbors or for Germans, or for Britain's or the West's plight, or for the imperial powers, or for Jews, but rather because he had long disliked Germany, a recently aspiring imperial power, which had been wrongly blamed for having caused WWI. Beschloss made the point about FDR's dislike rather clearly, The Conquerors.
Although the US and allies ultimately defeated Germany, Russia had done most of the fighting. We then almost put in place an agrarianization program for Germany, the Morgenthau Plan (Morgenthau was FDR's good friend), which the Russians loved, which would have been an open invitation to Russia to take over the rest of Western Europe, while the US meanwhile had intentionally left Russia already in control of Eastern Europe and by default the Asian mainland.
Russia's non aggression pact with Japan, which had made the attack on Pearl Harbor itself possible, and their take over of the Pacific then almost inevitable, did not prevent Russia from then later trying to swoop down on Japan at the very end of the war.
This was the same Russia, a so called ally, against which we then became embroiled in what was later called The Cold War, for the next 50 years, a Cold War which was thought to be over, but which has reignited in recent years. There was no Cold War so called peace dividend for reasons set out below. (Just as there was no peace dividend at the end of the Civil War, given the realities of its costs and of the realities of Reconstruction.)
Other critical consequences of the Cold War have been an economic booming of the non communist world since 1945, promoted largely by the US.
Carrot and stick diplomacy became an accepted way to confront communism, regardless of US domestic or Western Civilizational economic welfare.
Congress generally ignored domestic corporate and working class interests. See Trading Places, " Trading American Interests ". These works show how poorly the system has worked for promoting what is called the common welfare here.
It has proven perfectly willing, since the 1980s, to ignore white collar interests as well, although it had been on the basis of keeping white collar jobs that the prior trade and investment arrangements had been secured.
We insisted on requiring, during and after WWII, as a condition of security, a security now threatened with withdrawal for the first time by Trump, dismantling of Western civilization's colonial empires in the name of a liberal international globalist egalitarian economic order.
What have sprung up as a result of these Amerian iniatives since WWII, in the place of colonial empires, are aggressive nationalistic developmental regimes in what were once subordinate civilizations, which have now become rival economic and military states, and rival if not hostile civilizations based on rival ideologies and rival rationalities, call them rival enlightenments. Steingart's The War For Wealth is a sort of primer from a while back now.
These are problems which the government relentlessly avoids addressing directly for a variety of reasons, although it has been fully aware of the implications of its policies since the beginning really.
http://bozonbloggon.blogspot.com/2012/02/back-in-60s.html
One reason is that ideologically, Americans have no alternative to this liberal system, especially in the aftermath of WWII. Our system, which is very hard to reform in important ways, was written by men who claimed that its principles are the birthright of all people, who claimed it as their mission to spread this message everywhere, and who claimed, and still claim, to be willing to fight for the liberty and freedom of all people everywhere.
This means that we cannot even really acknowledge the existence of other civilizations. We cannot admit that they can exist outside a state; yet we built a system on an ideology which undermines all states and systems of states less than a universal state of all people everywhere.
Part of the intellectual underpinning for this ideology is connected with the Enlightenment notion of civilization, and this notion, at the time of the founding, only comprehended one civilization. It still does, on an enlightenment view.
This is where the concept of a liberal international economic order became a mechanism to work toward this impossible ideal. The main reason it has continued to be adhered to is not that it was or is feasible, but that it was immediately realized that such an ideology was congruent to existing powerful economic and financial interests in existing states everywhere (at least until the Russian Revolution).
Another aspect of the problem is that Americans turned away from Western Civilization, and especially against Britain's Atlantic hegemony at the beginning.
We cannot acknowledge Western Civilization as deserving more political allegiance than any other civilization because that allegiance itself to Western Civilization violates our founding principles which transcend mere civilizations and their component states. Huntington's The Clash Of Civilizations is required, as well as some works referred to therein.
American politicians have repeatedly had to deny that there is even such a thing as a clash of civilizations, because to admit such a thing is the kiss of death for Americanism.
What they have done is to turn apparent, and long standing, civilizational conflicts into what they call terror, and have declared a war on terror.
We are now in a situation globally similar in some ways to that of the states on the eve of the Civil War. DK sees it domestically as one analogous to the Civil War.
Other people including myself have said we have been in a global war, under the radar, for some time now. Pope Francis has said recently that the number of conflicts being waged around the globe effectively amount to “a piecemeal Third World War”.
I see global war as unfolding contemporaneously with civil war. Recent global wars have shown that this is a likely outcome for most states, even great powers. Civil wars are going on now here and there already, and other states are on the very brink of it. Professor Kaiser thinks we are, for example.
We have deadlock. Most people think to elect Clinton to assure that nothing drastic happens this term. I call that crisis drift. It will accomplish nothing. In fact, it will continue to exacerbate the tendencies in political economic social and civilizational developments adverse to American and Western interests that have been building, through political drift, since 1945.
See also this post: http://bozonbloggon.blogspot.com/2014/07/i-will-try-to-explain-something-hard-to.html
I will publish this post now, as a work in progress, and will edit it as I go along.
