An America First Foreign Policy
Let's start in the Middle East. Because, why not? Today, I explain how to conduct policy analyses that outperform the "experts."
You might think that today’s piece would be about Thanksgiving—or at the very least, about thanks—but you’d be wrong. It’s about foreign policy. Teaser: it’s the lead in to today’s column on the Middle East.
Often, when I tell people that I’ve written another foreign policy piece, they ask whether I have any foreign policy credentials. The answer is that I don’t, other than a demonstrable track record of having been right when the credentialed crowd got things entirely wrong.
Those of you who’ve read The New Civil War know what I think about our Credentialed Elite (spoiler alert: not much). Our entire credentialing system is designed to promote a consensus around the orthodoxy. (After all, when you translate “peer reviewed paper” into normal language, it becomes “I convinced my friends that my paper was worth publishing).
Consensus breed safety. Because no one can be radically more wrong than anyone else, all jobs, positions, and sinecures remain safe. Of course, no one can be much closer to right than anyone else, so (once again) all jobs, positions, and sinecures are safe. Works out well for everyone, other than those who think that it might be a good idea to get things right—in this case in foreign policy.
So what’s my trick? I’m a methods guy. I’m also most interested in things that are obviously broken. Where expert opinion, consensus, conventional wisdom, or the official story are about right, we as a society are pretty well served. No one needs me to pile on. I become most interested when the experts have been saying variants of the same thing for a very, very, very long time and producing consistently lousy results. Give me a setting like that, and I know that one or more of their underlying assumptions is wrong. My “trick” is that I clear the deck, go back to square one, and build a fresh analytic model from the ground up.
Decades ago, I did a ground-up rethink of the Middle East that started with a simple question: What if the Great Powers had applied to the dismemberment of the Asian side of Ottoman Empire the same rationale they’d employed in dismembering the empires of continental Europe? That is to say, what if they’d treated Middle Easterners with the same respect they’d shown to southern, central, and eastern Europeans?
Building from there, I reached a stunning conclusion: Israel emerges as the sole model that should have been emulated rather than a problem to be solved. Only in the case of Israel did the dissolution begin with a well-defined nation and carve a state around it. (An effort to do something similar with Lebanon was so poorly implemented as to have been laughable). Many of Israel’s continued conflicts stem from the incompleteness of the carve-out. Too many people who still lament the loss of empire live west of the Jordan.
Today’s column shows how the completion of that task constitutes the fulfillment of an America First foreign policy.
“America First” can’t mean an American withdrawal from the world, for the simple reason that America can’t withdraw from the world. America First must mean finding ways to bolster American interests, promote American security, and maintain American freedom of action. To do that in today’s world, the U.S. must remain first in power projection capability, first in military technology, and first in diplomatic clout.
The trick is achieving all of that while reducing costs, outlays, casualties, footprint, and imperiousness. There’s only one way that can happen: Rather than doing all the work ourselves, we sign up as senior partners to regional powers willing to invest in their own security, might, and technology. The U.S. would provide broad statements of interest and principle, diplomatic cover, materiel, and support. Regional allies would deal with strategic decision-making and day-to-day operation. No more American micromanagement, hectoring, or attempting to remake foreign cultures in our own image.
In that vein, here’s my analysis showing that recent events, a largely forgotten peace plan from the first Trump Administration, and the national security team President Trump is putting in place should operate in the Middle East.
For more information about Bruce D. Abramson & American Restorationism, visit: www.BruceDAbramson.com
To learn more about America’s Spiritual Crisis and the new religion of Wokeism, see: American Spirit or Great Awokening? The Battle to Restore or Destroy Our Nation (Academica Press, 2024).
To learn more about how America’s elites destroyed the republic, see: The New Civil War: Exposing Elites, Fighting Utopian Leftism, and Restoring America (RealClear Publishing, 2021).
To learn more about the ideology driving today’s anti-American leftism, see: American Restoration: Winning America’s Second Civil War (Kindle, 2019).
To learn more about our work at the American Coalition for Education and Knowledge, visit us at The Coalition for America.
To learn more about how I turn the ideas I discuss here into concrete projects that serve the interests of my clients, donors, and society at large, please e-mail me at bdabramson@pm.me.