The Highway Forums General Discussion Open Forum The Postwar Consensus

“…the attitudes, dispositions, and governing behavior of Western leaders…is all but demanded by the LIO.* The liberal world order requires that national sovereignty be ceded to the dictates of international organizations. As such, to be a loyal member of the LIO in good standing, political elites must betray their responsibility and office as trustees of the people who elected them. They are no longer accountable to their own people, but are clients to global patrons.”

On this paradigm, self-appointed leaders run the world as a publicly-traded corporation, with “global citizens” playing the role of stockholders who have theoretically invested in the “global community” (both vacuous euphemisms) but who have no power, no involvement in management, no decision over how things are run, and have thus spun the political roulette on whether or not their investment will return a “profit.” This system also encouraged, if not mandated, mass, global migration. What did it matter if one’s historic country of origin was overrun with Muslim, Indian, or Mexican immigrants if they were, first and foremost, busy worker bees and consumers? What could be a better tool to destabilize traditional national loyalties and demoralize a people devoted to their particular ways of life (language, religion, laws, customs, norms, etc.)?



…the CIA under Truman, and then every president since, began to engage in international clandestine espionage. This was viewed as necessary at the time, given the communist and Soviet threat. Yet even after the fall of the USSR, Presidents Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama, and Trump continued to use the CIA to spy on other countries, steal their secrets and technology, topple unwanted dictators and foment color revolutions, and assassinate high-ranking but troublesome officials. This was carried out against friend and foe alike. The result of the out-of-control agency was a high cost in human lives and national treasure, if not the United States’ reputation and good will with her allies.

The CIA is just one example of many of the bureaucratic agencies that form the intelligence and foreign policy arm of America’s dominance and bid for control over the international order. There are, however, many more agencies, contractors, NGOs, think tanks, interest and lobby groups, media organizations, academic institutions, individuals, and the U.S. military itself that constitute the “foreign policy community” in Washington, D.C.



….This analysis and prescription was universal, with one exception: Israel. The effort to establish a state of Israel in Palestine far predated the World Wars. However, both wars played an intimate role in bringing about an Israeli state. After Britain entered the First World War in 1914, Zionists began to influence British policy against the Ottoman Empire, which culminated in the November 1917 Balfour Declaration that announced support for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.” Fulfillment of this vision, of course, would have to wait until after WWII. The holocaust and ethnic cleansing by the Nazis, combined with the expiration of the British Mandate over Palestine in 1948 (originally set up by the League of Nations after WWI), resulted in David Ben-Gurion of the Jewish People’s Council declaring the establishment of the state of Israel on May 14, 1948. Within twenty-four hours, the United States recognized Israel. (The previous year, the United Nations had passed a resolution to partition Palestine and approve the creation of an Israeli state).

The emergence of the United States after WWII as the military and economic leader of the West and the nascent organizations of a new liberal world order, the existence of this order as eternal opposition to nationalism, fascism, and authoritarian regimes, and the creation of Israel as a safeguard against Jewish genocide and triumph over the Nazis—all this meant that the fate of Israel was directly tied to the LIO, and more specifically to the United States as world leader. Israel was a special case: she was to be protected and aided by the Western powers and the LIO, yet she was also regulated by them. Israel was sovereign, but conditionally, according to the approval of the LIO’s organizations. The historic approach of treaty-making between two sovereign nations on mutually acceptable terms was gone. In the seventy-six years since the Israeli state was established, the U.S. has not had an official treaty with her, even though the U.S. has poured billions of dollars and endless military support—let alone political backing—into her survival and prosperity. Instead, Israel is a perpetual “partner” and has a “special relationship” with the United States. This approach exemplifies how the U.S., as world hegemon, unilaterally runs and oversees world events and interstate relations the way a CEO runs a corporation.

One of the other things we talked about in the paper is how the Coronavirus has exposed a widespread contempt in the United States for science and scientific expertise. This is clear if you look at the messaging from political leaders in the U.S. versus those in Europe, certainly in liberal democracies in Europe. Leaders there are much more willing to follow the lead of scientific experts. Their constituents expect that and would look askance at leaders who are flagrantly disregarding the advice of scientific experts. I think that’s a difference that you see in this country. - The battlefronts of World War II and COVID-19 look very different, but long term consequences remain the constant