Broader Lesson from the Fraying of the West

Is the idea of NATO and joint Western defence fraying? T.Greer wrote a balanced, well-thought post on the topic. Change in views, in the list of what matters etc can be very disruptive.

“Sons dishonor their fathers. Daughters rise against their mothers. Ancestral ideals are cast aside, and possibility staggers forth from its long captivity, ready to wreak vengeance on mankind.”

 

Fourteen years ago, well before Trump, ex-US Secretary of Defence, Robert M Gates was worried that joint Western defence was at risk. Since World War II, he said, the US (politicians, voters) felt that keeping Europe “whole, prosperous and free” was beneficial to America. But that mood was starting to change, he warned:

“If current trends in the decline of European defense capabilities are not halted and reversed, future U.S. political leaders—those for whom the Cold War was not the formative experience that it was for me—may not consider the return on America’s investment in NATO worth the cost.”

 

This sounds almost prophetic today. Trump is proving to be that “future political leader” who asks – What’s in it for America? Greer says this is a pattern of history and demographic change:

“The young, no longer so young, will have the demographic weight needed to engulf their fathers. The glacier breaks and the old world is swept away.”

The mood and ideas change; a new generation comes in; and the new leaders start to reflect the new ideas of the next generation.

 

To those in the West who believe that one man, Trump, has single-handedly changed priorities of the entire US, Greer tells them to accept that there is a generational change in the population, an ideological change in the population, and Trump is reflecting (and yes, riding on, and amplifying) that new wave. So what is the way forward for those who feel the old ideas were correct?

“Build no arguments on unsure foundations. Do not resort to presuppositions long agreed on. The time has come to reason your case from first principles.”

For example:

“It is no longer sufficient to argue that NATO, or a free Taiwan, or any of ten thousand other things, are good because they buttress American hegemony. That presupposes American hegemony is a thing worth preserving in the first place—a presupposition not shared by all.”

 

I felt there is a deeper point here, that applies far beyond America, Europe and NATO. The left, worldover, would do well to reason from first principles to explain the merits of the older, pre-right, systems and values. Just assuming those values are self-evident or that anyone with sense/ morality would agree with them, well, that simply won’t work. Worse, it sounds very condescending, as if the left is saying, it’s so obvious, how stupid or evil must you be if I have to explain it to you?

 

But I also wonder if therein lies the problem. Most people on the left cannot reason from first principles. They can just parrot lines and policies of leaders of the past. But surely, there must be some/enough people in the left, who can build their case from first principles, applied to the modern age? Some of them will probably be charismatic too. Find such people, make them the leaders of the left and we might have a more balanced outcome. In elections, and then in policies.