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| What America used to be, to do--the Marshall Plan 1947 |
"We live in a world, "proclaimed psycho Stephen Miller, the most powerful voice in the Chaos White House, to interviewer Jake Tapper, "in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time."
The United States has used force, particularly against countries much weaker militarily, from time to time over the past half century. But no American policy maker would ever have used these words as justification. They are the words of many past despots, conspicuously reflecting the Nazi point of view. Is it just the end of hypocrisy for at least some political leaders, or the end of something else?
By kidnapping the head of state of Venezuela, however evil and illegitimate, the United States blatantly violated the UN Charter and the basis in international law that has limited global violence and kept us from constant chaos and fear. These laws were enforced by the restraint of the major world powers.
But there is no other real enforcement mechanism other than the mutual benefits that restraint brings. For example, in freedom from maintaining a highly militarized society, almost always a dictatorship, and the economic freedoms associated with free trade. These are apart from the manifold benefits for so many, of living in a relatively peaceful world--and a peacefully and effectively interrelated world.
Such an action is also against United States law, meant to support these international norms. But a comatose Congress is the supposed enforcement mechanism.
In his Substack column, normally about the Supreme Court, Steve Vladeck concludes: "And so, as has been true in so many other contexts in recent years, a blatantly unlawful use of military force overseas will go un-remedied—because there’s no viable legal pathway to challenge it; and because the one branch of government historically in a position to hold the executive accountable in these cases (you might remember it—Congress) has become completely feckless not just in general, but in pushing back against unlawful unilateral uses of military force, specifically."
But "unilateral force" doesn't fully describe it. There was no public discussion, no legislative involvement. The "nation" wasn't remotely behind it. Nobody voted for anything remotely like it. At least three-fourths of Americans as reflected in polls are against it. Instead this is the use of overwhelming military force by a small group of people, several of whom are clearly unstable. And apparently no way to stop them.
Since the kidnapping and killing , there have been threats from the Chaos against Columbia, Mexico and Cuba (though Boss Chaos said Cuba's economy will collapse because of the Venezuela oil spigot being turned off, not requiring American bombs.) But Steven Miller's comment was addressing not the situation in Venezuela (in which, according to one media report, Miller may take a more active role) but Sunday and Monday's increasing drumbeats of threats against Greenland.
Miller points out the mostly undisputed fact that no one is going to attempt a military defense of Greenland once the the United States moves to take it over. But if actual military occupation occurs, the Prime Minister of Denmark said it would be the end of NATO, because all its member nations are required to come to the defense of any member nation attacked militarily. Denmark is a member nation, and Greenland belongs to Denmark. Europe isn't going to send forces against the US, so NATO would dissolve.
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| Founding of NATO |
The ramifications of a collapse of NATO would be immense. After the conflagrations of two world wars, the United States led a new global world order, not only with the United Nations, but by fostering the unification of Europe and its close ties with the US. Along with the Marshall Plan, that revived the economies of western European nations, and the economic intertwinings that it materially encouraged (leading eventually to the European Common Market and then the European Union), the mutual defense pact of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was essential.
The immediate effect of NATO dissolving would be chaotic. What would happen to all the US military bases in Europe under NATO command? Without NATO, would European nations expel American forces? How would it affect Europe's ongoing fears of Russian aggression? Inevitably, the presence of nuclear weapons would become a very real and active factor.
The Chaos administration may rely on other forms of intimidation short of military invasion of Greenland. (One also wonders whether the US military, so far utterly compliant with the dictator in chief, would go so far as to attack a defenseless outpost of a European ally for no military or legal reason.) But NATO, the United Nations and restraint of at least overt bullying as foreign policy have made the world what it is since World War II. Which among other things is a world that could work together to address climate distortion, including its effects--even if those efforts so far have been been way too weak.
So it is no wonder that in examining the economic as well as political future of the world, the Eurasia Group--a top political risk research group headquartered in New York-- has changed its emphasis on China as the greatest risk to the world. It is the United States of Chaos, as a result of nothing other than its own choices.
"The United States is itself unwinding its own global order," said Ian Bremmer, Eurasia Group's president and founder. "The world's most powerful country is in the throes of a political revolution."
Vladeck writes of the Venezuela action within a larger framework that in addition to other concerns, has guided the United States in the world. He adds later: "But my own view is that the United States crossed a very dangerous line last night—not just legally, but morally...One can only wonder the price we’ll pay in the long term for stooping to that level."
It is the moral basis for restraint, and for the values it represented to the world (self-determination, non-aggression, compassion, rule of law, etc.) that has defined America to the world, and to itself. What happens when that goes away, and we are just the world's biggest bully? Two world wars taught our 20th century forebearers the answer.
