The string of horrifying mass shootings in Uvalde Texas, and elsewhere shines a uncomfortable light on our domestic policy failures in America. Propagandists of the left and right will blame the availability of guns, inadequate school security, social media or other convenient bogeymen.. They all will be right, but for the wrong reasons. Their shallow debate ignores even more intractable socioeconomic causes.
Theodore Roosevelt was a gun enthusiast and avid hunter. However, he also believed that every right comes with corresponding responsibilities . People should learn how shoot to build a disciplined character. Those without such character should not be allowed to own firearms. To the extent we can identify those individuals before they acquire a gun, I believe TR would have favored it and other controls to insure guns were used responsibly. Thus, background checks probably would not have bothered him as well as other limits on ownership.
However, there was more going on here than the use of a gun for an evil purpose. The school shooter in Uvalde had suffered from bullying at school due to a speech impediment as well as other apparent nonconformities (see article). He also apparently came from a difficult family life. Many mass shooters come from equally traumatic backgrounds, as this article points out. Thus, when we talk about school safety, it is past time to also talk about protecting vulnerable adolescents in large impersonal school environments. . It is also past time to ensure that they have access to the mental health resources and family support they need.
The COVID pandemic has strained the fabric of our families and the entire nation. Heinous acts like shootings are the results of a downward cycle of despair and anger. If we truly wish to reduce their incidence and preserve our basic rights, it will require meeting our responsibilities by accepting limitations on our own freedom and the expenditure of money and social policies necessary to combat the underlying causes of such despair and anger.
No sensible man will advocate our plunging rashly into a course of international knight errantry;…But neither will any brave and patriotic man bid us shrink from doing our duty merely because this duty involves the certainty of strenuous effort and the possibility of danger.
Theodore Roosevelt, America Part of the World’s Work, February, 1899
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a pivotal moment in modern European history. The feared Russian military juggernaut that spawned one of the most successful military alliances in history has now been proven to be a shadow of the threat it was supposed to be. Moreover, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s recent comments about using the war to further weaken Russia means it will continue to bleed arms and men in a long war of attrition, absent escalation of the war by the use of WMD. The shock of the invasion has also prompted Western Europeans to finally start to step up in the defense of their continent (see this video about the impact on Germany). The US should harness their new-found resolve to end its unconditional commitment to the defense of Europe and to transition NATO to a European-only alliance.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) began as a stopgap measure to protect a socially and economically prostrate post-WWII Europe from the very real threat of a Stalinist Soviet Union. Today, Western Europe has an economy that is 10 times the size of Russia’s and a larger military (for more background, see the analysis by Prof. Stephen Walt in this article). Britain and France are also nuclear powers and are capable of expanding their strategic capability to adequately deter a Russian nuclear threat. The likely addition of Sweden and Finland to the alliance will add Swedish armaments and Finland’s experience to the alliance. It also extends the NATO ‘s borders with Russia and forces it to dilute its force strength along that border.
In contrast, Russia’s failures in Ukraine shows its military currently lacks the capability of mounting a complex operation on a broad front. It will take years for the Russians to learn the lessons of these failures and it is not clear that their sclerotic political system can do so. Thus, the only likely real threat to Western Europe in the next five years would occur on a much narrower front such as the Baltic states, which could be defended by the current European membership plus the new Scandinavian members.
In fact, Europeans already have such an alliance in the European Union. The Treaty of Maastricht creating the EU has a counterpart to the Article 5 of the NATO treaty, which requires members to treat an attack on one member as an attack on all. Specifically, Article 42.7 of the Maastricht Treaty says
If a Member State is the victim of armed aggression on its territory, the other Member States shall have towards it an obligation of aid and assistance by all the means in their power, in accordance with article 51 of the United Nations charter”.
Thus, the real purpose of NATO is to commit American troops and potentially our own homeland to the risk of defending Europeans.
This commitment dilutes our ability to respond to more direct and immediate threats. First, we have serious domestic social and economic needs that demand our time and attention here at home. Moreover, as both a Pacific and an Atlantic power, the United States has crucial geopolitical interests in Asia as well as in Europe. No institutional equivalent of NATO exists in Asia to counter the challenge of China and North Korea. Those security threats will have to be managed with an active diplomacy involving the Pacific Rim nations and India. Finally, we must address threats in our own hemisphere where China is seeking influence and immigration from failed states in Latin America is threatening American opportunity here at home.
It will take at least five years for Europe to build its defense capability to the point where it can defeat a Russian attack even on a narrow front. The U.S. should increase the number of troops in Europe to prevent Russian intimidation during that transition. At the same time, we should announce our intention to end our Article 5 defense commitment as part of a restructuring of NATO. After the five-year transition, American troops should be withdrawn from Europe and reassigned to other potential threats.
While Theodore Roosevelt called America to fulfill its duties at home and abroad, his caution against engaging in “knight-errantry” calls us to stay focused on the proper priorities and live within our national means. The US formed NATO to meet a critical post – war duty, but it is now fulfilled and it is time to should move on to address new duties and challenges.
My friends, in the interest of the working man himself, we need to set our faces like flint against mob violence just as against corporate greed
Theodore Roosevelt, The New Nationalism, August 31, 1910
The historic fissures in the Republican Party were laid bare this weekend after the resolution adopted by the Republican National Committee calling the January 6 insurrection “legitimate political discourse” and it’s rejection by former Vice President Mike Pence and Senate Minority leader McConnell. The resolution is a shameful betrayal of the party’s nationalist tradition dating back not only to Theodore Roosevelt. but also Abraham Lincoln. As TR said so plainly, our loyalty as Americans is to the Constitution and the country, not to any one person and no grievance by any group justifies the use of violence in a democracy.
As I’ve written before here and here, this division between the Trump’s populist right and the remaining wings of the Republican Party is part of a realignment in American politics that began in earnest with the 2016 election. Similar fissures exist in the Democratic Party between the Democratic socialists and the various wings of the party establishment, as shown in this recent poll. The frightening part of the current realignment process is that the two extremes embrace or tolerate violence to achieve their objectives and seem to be driving both parties at the local party level. Indeed, a recent poll showed a third of Americans believe violence to achieve political goals is acceptable.
It has been my experience that the internal party elite like the RNC are generally more extreme than their respective primary electorates. Whether this is now true of the two major parties will be determined in the upcoming primary elections. Will Trump loyalists succeed in ousting Georgia Governor Brian Kemp? Will firebrands like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green survive their primaries? What happens to Michigan Congressmen Peter Meijer and Fred Upton, who voted for the impeachment resolution after the January attack? And how successful will democratic socialist movements be in taking over local party organizations as happened in Nevada? If the authoritarian extreme prevails in those contests, true American nationalists will have to conclude, as TR did in 1912, that the parties are now … “empty husks…incapable of approaching the great problems of today” and form a third party to pick up and carry the American nationalist banner.
