12
THE obituary for liberalism was perhaps prematurely written and published. A few months ago, when Donald J. Trump was sworn in as the 45th president of the United States and announced his policy of ‘America First’ from his oath-taking pulpit, many mourned.
The premises which hold that states are moral creatures and that the purpose of the US is to spread the values of liberal democracy across the world seemed weaker than ever. They floundered further still in the months following as America itself, or rather America under Donald Trump, seemed uncommitted to liberalism itself, seeming to prefer a sort of direct democracy that would enable a strongman ruler who appointed his family to plum posts and ruled largely via executive orders that did not require legislative approval.
If not dead, liberalism seemed precipitously in decline, America looking increasingly inward, the world left to its own authoritarian futures. Trump wasn’t interested in the world, let alone policing the world; within weeks he had spurned the handshakes of America’s liberal allies and promised his supporters to uphold nationalism over liberalism. He thumbed his nose at Nato allies, promised he would drastically cut US diplomatic and aid programmes and hack off enormous portions of the UN budget provided by the US.
Then came last week. Following yet another grotesque chemical attack in Syria, this time in Idlib province, the conscience of the US, or rather its cable news-ravenous president, seemed suddenly moved. As many commentators who have been watching the devastation in Syria have noted, horrific chemical attacks have happened before, taking the lives of scores of innocent men, women and children. Many of the earlier ones have also deployed nerve agents, and enabled the sort of tableau of carnage that makes humans look worse than the most selfish beasts, and humanity as being utterly and completely dead. In sum, this new attack was not different in technique than those that have come before, those that have produced pictures, videos and pleas for help, all of them disregarded.
For many pro-intervention liberals, being the president of the US means being the president of the world.
This one was different, however, in timing. It came at an hour when the new American president found himself increasingly beleaguered, several of his promises left to flounder. Trump’s failure, along with Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan, to get Congress to pass the healthcare reform bill was damning, given that both the Senate and the House of Representatives are controlled by his party. The travel bans that had made so many thousands of his supporters giddy with joy in their hatred of refugees and immigrants, were blocked by judges who saw them as openly and clearly discriminatory.
If all that were not enough, there was the matter of Russia, or rather the Trump administration officials who were the focus of congressional investigations into Russia’s alleged meddling in the US elections. Trump likes to win, and he was losing; midweek he removed his favored adviser, Stephen Bannon, from the National Security Council. Just a bit later, he decided to bomb Syria. Syrian children, the very children whom he had twice tried to ban from entering the US, via the infamous travel bans, now deserved avenging, and America, the same America that had sworn off putting other countries first, would be the one to do it.
Liberal hawks who had been languishing in their funeral caskets during the dismal, less-than-100-day-old Trump presidency, rose from the dead. America, that policeman of the world, was not dead after all. It had merely been in hibernation, momentarily dormant until a new president discovered why defining American interest as world interest and state action as moral action, was such a delectable morsel. The day after the air strikes, a resounding barrage of editorials in American newspapers celebrated the action taken by the otherwise reviled Donald Trump. At least one noted CNN commentator, Fareed Zakaria, a fan of the bombing, declared it as being the moment that Trump had truly become president of the United States.
It is clear from the continuing hubbub, which has commenced apace even as little else is known about Trump’s plans for Syria, or even if he has any further plans for Syria at all, that for many pro-intervention liberals, being the president of the US means being the president of the world.
Trump has at least for now embraced this, perhaps because he has also just realised the political efficacy of the insistence that all American actions are morally right actions. As Afghans and Pakistanis can testify, American intervention creates far more problems than it solves. The hapless Syrians, suffering as long as they have, may cheer in their desperation but they cannot with any confidence claim that America will solve the internecine and multidimensional conflict raging in their country and that has in many ways spilled over into adjoining states.
Long-term solutions must be sustainable; exogenous influences can never produce sustainable stability. None of this is truer than in situations in which extremist groups —in the Syrian instance, the ferociously violent Islamic State group — are a component. As was seen in Afghanistan and Pakistan, local extremist organisations only gain strength when anti-imperialist propaganda is whetted by American intervention. So too, will be the case in Syria.
Trump probably does not care about any of this. Nor do the liberals who unerringly salivate at the prospect of war to spread their version of what is good and right for all. Far more likely is the simpler and more pedestrian explanation: Syria has been a timely distraction for a man struggling to stabilise his administration. The drums of war (or perhaps the launch of missiles) automatically convert even village idiots into heroes, and while Donald Trump may not have wanted war, he wants very much to be a hero.
The writer is an attorney teaching constitutional law and political philosophy.
Published in Dawn, April 12th, 2017
