Tag: 2020election

2020 Election, Foreign Policy, Politics, Realist Theory

An American Nationalist Voting Index – Speaking Softly

Bob Claude |

This is part of a series examining the issues in the presidential election. To see other articles in the series, click on the “2020 Elections” link on the Home page

Score

Biden -2.5 Trump +1.5

While Theodore Roosevelt often engaged in bellicose rhetoric, his foreign policy while president relied more on negotiation and adroit diplomacy to advance American interests. For example, Roosevelt relied on his diplomatic connections more than military power in avoiding an intervention by Germany in Venezuela to collect overdue debt. TR knew U.S. foreign policy needed to change to adapt to new challenges. In his time, it had to adapt by becoming more active in the world.    

As I mentioned in my posts on the History and Future of Nationalism, the world has changed again. The pursuit of liberal hegemony since the end of the Cold War has been proven to be unsustainable. Meanwhile, the rise of China, Russia, India and other regional powers ushered in a dynamic multi-polar system.  Trump‘s election in 2016 was a repudiation of the liberal model. Much of the change since then has been simply talk, but talk in foreign policy can also be substantive.  Nevertheless, foreign policy remains one of the sharpest contrasts between the two candidates.

Realist Foreign Policy

As I have argued previously, the new National Security Strategy promulgated by Trump in 2018 is one of the most important and least understood changes in modern American foreign policy. It rejects the globalist liberal crusade to spread Western values throughout the world and expressly adopts the realist strategy, which holds that international relations is a contest among nations, especially great powers, and that America’s only foreign policy goal should be to preserve its own national security and way of life. The text has its flaws, but it remains a watershed moment in recent history. Trump deserves a +1 for this achievement. 

In contrast, Biden supported the liberal globalist model in the Senate and as part of the Obama Administration.  There are encouraging signs that some of his current advisors recognize the failures of this strategy as discussed in this article from the DefenseOne website.   However, both Biden and Sen. Kamala Harris still focus on human rights rather than the real economic and geopolitical dangers we face. Thus, a Biden-Harris Administration would most likely return to the liberal model and so deserves a -1 rating. 

NATO Expansion

The American commitment to NATO is based on the post-World War II socioeconomic weakness of Europe in the face of looming Soviet Communist expansionism.  It is past time to reduce our commitment since Europe now has the capability to defend itself against Russian aggression.  President Trump has talked about this, but his substantive policy has been quite the opposite.  Much handwringing occurred when the administration announced the withdrawal of 9,000 troops from Germany. However, instead of coming home, they are destined for redeployment in Poland.  Moreover, we agreed to admit North Macedonia, a tiny remnant of the old Yugoslavia, to NATO, and thus to defend it even though it has no relationship to any real threat to the US.  Trump thus has failed to accomplish anything of substance in this area and deserves a zero.

However, Biden’s stated policy is worse. As the DefenseOne article mentions, he supports releasing Europe from the goal to  increase their defense expenditures to 2% of GDP in exchange for “cooperation” on China and Middle Eastern issues.  This ignores the fact that Europeans have very different views on those issues.  This would allow them to piggyback on our defense support while giving up little in return. It thus earns Biden another -1. 

Withdrawal from the Middle East

Perhaps nowhere has liberal hegemony failed so disastrously as in the Middle East. Rather than attempting to solve its centuries-old intractable problems, we should be supporting the development of an internal balance of power and become simply an offshore balancer (see this previous post). Unfortunately, neither candidate fully embraces this approach. Trump abandoned the JCPOA with Iran that controlled its nuclear development and instead threatened military action.  He has reduced, but not eliminated, the number of combat troops in Syria and Afghanistan.  On the positive side, the administration engineered the recognition of Israel by the UAE and encouraged its tacit alliance with Saudi Arabia. This lays the groundwork for a balance of power in the region between an Arab-Israeli coalition vs. Iran.  However, the lack of strategic coordination between all these policies earns Trump only a zero on this subject. 

Meanwhile, Biden supports trying to renew the JCPOA, but calls Saudi Arabia a “pariah state”.   While supporting military withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Middle East in principle, he then conditions it on effective control of Al Qaeda and the Islamic State.  Immigration and economic sanctions would be as effective in preventing them from attacking the US.   Biden’s approach does nothing to achieve a realist solution in the region and thus earns him a zero as well. 

China

China presents a multifaceted geopolitical, trade and domestic challenge to America.  President Xi Jin-Peng’s increasingly totalitarian rule and bid for world power came as a shock to globalist elites. It should not have surprised anyone with any knowledge of Chinese history and culture. President Trump rightly alerted the world to the danger and has successfully controlled some of their influence, notably through his campaign against Huawei. However, he has failed to build the global consensus necessary to effectively contain the threat. He rates a +.5 for his efforts.

In contrast, Biden has minimized the threat and was part of an administration that naïvely coddled China and allowed the US to become dangerously dependent on it.  The DefenseOne article suggests that his advisors now realize these errors and accept the need to respond.  However, given the former Vice-President’s past attitudes, he must be assigned a -.5 on this issue. 

Conclusion

There is no question that there are fundamental differences between the philosophies of the two presidential candidates on foreign policy.  Biden has been part of the globalist establishment for years while Trump has challenged it, though often by word rather than deed.  A future strategy must be based on the realism and restraint – speaking softly, not primarily by force – to be both sustainable and successful in the 21st century world.

2020 Election, Politics

An American Nationalist Voting Index – Draining the Swamp

Bob Claude |

This is part of a series examining the issues in the presidential election. To see other articles in the series, click on the “2020 Elections” link on the Home page

Score

Biden 0 Trump -1

Trumps victory in 2016 was powered by a call to “drain the swamp” in Washington, which never consisted simply of campaign reform.  It sought to end the kind of cancer described by Roosevelt – the control of government by a privileged few that subverts the very nature of democracy itself.  We also now know it means different things to different groups.  In this campaign, the call for reform has focused on not just campaign reform, but also on federal administrative and policing changes.  

Campaign Finance Reform

The Citizens United decision and our loophole-riddle campaign finance laws have loosed a flood of money whose origins are opaque and very probably illegal. Democrats introduced a bill that would plug some of those loopholes.  It attempts to limit the impact of Citizens United by requiring disclosure of donations of more than $10,000 from certain non-profits that were previously exempt. It cracks down on digital ad spending on social media platforms by requiring the same kind of disclosure of the source of ads required for television and radio commercials.  The bill also attempts to limit the use of social media for the kind of election interference we saw from the Russians in 2016 by banning campaign contributions from corporations with significant foreign ownership. Finally, it also prevents foreign individuals from purchasing social media ads.  Former Vice President Biden has endorsed these proposals and President Trump opposes them. This earns Biden a +1 and Trump a -1.

However, there is a sleeper issue in campaign finance that has been ignored by both candidates.   If you are like me, your e-mail box has been deluged by appeals for campaign contributions from any number of candidates and partisan political action committees.  They seek contributions of as little as five dollars by simple completion of a form on the Internet and a charge via PayPal or by credit card. While the identity of the donors must be disclosed, there are no rules requiring the verification of their identities.  A former Kansas attorney general recently issued an analysis of the contributions to the ActBlue independent committee’s which raised over $900 million for Democratic candidates.  It showed how ActBlue has gamed the campaign finance system so that the true sources of their contributions is almost impossible to determine. This makes it easy for large donors to break up their contributions or foreign donors to hide theirs.   If Biden or President Trump are really interested in controlling dark money, this loophole must be plugged as well.

Federal Administrative Law Reform

The failure of Congress to address a pressing issue has now become an excuse for forcing action through administrative rulemakings.  As I mentioned in my post on the US Supreme Courts’ s opinion on the DACA rulemaking, current law makes it difficult to control an executive agency’s impulse to fill this perceived gap. This essentially creates a fourth branch of government whose inner workings are known and accessible to only a few.

Federal executive power needs to be reined in through new legislation that

  • Limits agency rulemaking to discrete subjects narrowly delegated to the agency;
  • Prohibit agency action if its impact on the economy or the number of people affected exceeds certain thresholds;
  • Allows more opportunity to challenge a agency ruling and repeal it.

The DACA and Clean Power Plan rules of the Obama Administration show that Vice President Biden is a likely opponent of such reforms.  Meanwhile, Trump has relied on and touted his executive power instead of pursuing legislation to prevent a future president from abusing those powers. President Biden’s’ implied approval of current agency power results in a -1 for him on this issue while Trump deserves only a 0.

Law Enforcement Reform

The death of George Floyd and other African-Americans at the hands of the police and the FBI abuses of the FISA warrant system revealed in the Russia investigation  has highlighted another swamp that needs to be drained – the excessive and unchecked power of law enforcement.  As mentioned in this post, policing reforms must be based not only reducing qualified immunity and other changes in tactics, but also a top-to-bottom review of our law enforcement strategy.

Former Vice President Biden supports proposals to reform police tactics, but never mentions the need for increased funding for the police necessary to do their job of maintaining order in our communities. Meanwhile, the Obama Administration’s acquiescence at the least, and encouragement at worst, of the FBI’s FISA abuses does not inspire any confidence that he would support reform in this area.  These two positions cancel each other out and earn him a zero on this subject. While the Trump Administration is vigorously pursuing the FBI abuses via the John Durham investigation, the President has ignored, and at times demagogued, the police brutality issue, Again, the two positions cancel each other out and thus he also deserves only a zero.

Conclusion

It is truly discouraging that neither candidate shares Roosevelt’s level of concern about the perilous state of American democracy and civil rights. Trump’s failures are particularly galling since his 2016 campaign featured the issue.  It is up to American nationalists to press these issues with congressional candidates and in future elections.  

2020 Election, Politics, Uncategorized

An American Nationalist Voting Index

Bob Claude |

This campaign song title from the 1912 presidential election is nostalgic for reasons other than the obvious. Many historians believe the race between Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Taft to be among the most informative and substantive in American history, pitting several different visions of federal and state economic policy against each other for the American people’s consideration.  Wilson won with a plurality of the vote and his program became the model for our current regulatory system.

Today the American people need and deserve a similar debate that both illuminates relevant differences and unifies us behind policy choices. That debate should center on the choice between nationalism vs. globalism and it would appear that the Trump vs. Biden race would epitomize that choice. Appearances, however, can be deceiving, and a close examination of their records may show less of a difference than the media and campaigns portray.  This website will classify the issues from the standpoint of Theodore Roosevelt and identify the policy choices from a nationalist vs. globalist perspective.  Those categories are

  • Political Reform
  • Foreign Policy
  • Antitrust & Trade Regulation
  • Environment & Climate Change
  • A Strong America
  • Character

I will include specific issues that have been featured at some point in the campaign as well as key nationalist issues that have been largely ignored by candidates and the media.  While the analysis will focus on records of action or inaction, the ratings will also consider their current party ideologies.  The candidates will be rated on a plus or minus 3-point scale with a positive score indicating a nationalist position and a negative score indicating a globalist stance.

I hope you find this index helpful in analyzing congressional candidates as well. Please feel free to comment on and criticize the system as we move forward.