I’ve been mulling over the following question: how did each of the modern presidents from Nixon to present impact the world the most?
Richard Nixon: Opening relations with the People’s Republic of China.
Gerald Ford: The Helsinki Accords. The human rights plank encouraged the growing dissident movements in the Eastern Bloc. They took seriously what the Soviets were willing to put on paper in the albeit non-binding resolution.
Jimmy Carter: Enabling the Islamic totalitarian revolution in Iran.
Ronald Reagan: Fomenting the end of the Cold War. “Reagan bolstered the U.S. military might to ruin the Soviet economy, and he achieved his goal” – Gennady Gerasimov
George H. W. Bush: This may be a controversial choice, but I’m going with the “New World Order” speech, or rather what it represents – encouraging the United Nations to take a more active role in foreign relations. One of the legacies of the UN is the enshrinement of the ethic that wars must never be won, only fought to the point of ceasefire.
Bill Clinton: Granting the People’s Republic of China access to supercomputer technology vital to targeting manned, unmanned, and munitions-bearing rocketry. It’s the one great leap forward in China that actually worked.
George W. Bush: The Iraq War. Aside from altering the geopolitical landscape in the region, it convinced Muhammar Qaddafi to cooperate with the US to end Libya’s WMD program.
Barack Obama: Opening Iran to financial markets, thus magnifying its ability to conduct proxy wars.
Donald Trump (first term): It may be a bit early to gauge the legacy of the Abraham Accords, but opening the door to Israeli cooperation with some of its Arab neighbors is bound to have significant impact on Iran’s regional ascendency. It also breaks from the stupid tradition that any negotiations between Israel and any of its neighbors must include the Palestinians, as if Palestinian and non-Palestinian relations can’t be delt with separately.
Joe Biden: Opening Iran to financial markets, thus magnifying its ability to conduct proxy wars – assuming the Ukraine Missile Crisis does not top this. (Our own Trent Telenko is cited in the linked article.)
International Affairs
Quote of the Day
What Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, Iran, and the other Islamist enemies of Israel have forgotten is that God chose the Jews to be a light unto the nations. Dispersed throughout the world, their light seems small and weak when times are good, but shines most brightly in the deepest darkness. The attacks of October 7 have stirred in the Jews — Hasidic and atheistic; Ashkenazi, Mizrahi, and Sephardic; Indian, Chinese, Australian, and American — what Lincoln called “the mystic chords of memory”. Today, in an existential crisis that may turn out to be the denouement of the central drama of Western civilisation, these unwilling protagonists — the whole people of Israel — are determined to defend themselves and the light they carry.
He’s got a point.
Quote of the Day
We are not a serious country because, as a democracy, we do not have serious voters. Autocracies like China and Russia have many disadvantages compared to us, but in the present historical moment, they are nowhere near as stupid as we are. One trembles for the future.
Close To The Edge
I’ve felt over the last couple of years, that there is a steep precipice in our path, up to which our current Ruling Class is staggering blindly. Not just our American path, but in the developed world generally, and in that of western Europe. Things just can’t continue as they are. There is a breaking point coming. Really, no one might accurately predict exactly what small spark will kick off the explosion or the fall from a great height, or exactly where it might occur. The precipitating powers move in the shadows, veiled by a news media which deliberately veils them anyway. Too many national and international elites are pursuing policies which benefit them, rather than the countries they are supposed to govern. Too many of the transnational ruling class, indeed, seem to be in competition to pour contempt and derision on their less-fortunate, relatively powerless fellow citizens … and that’s a situation which can’t continue indefinitely. People are too stressed, made angry by things which they can’t control. Road rage incidents, riots that flame up like a prairie fire, unprovoked beatings, mass brawls in fast food restaurants and on commercial airliners; people are snapping over the slightest provocation, a misheard word, a momentary inconvenience…
Edward Said
Many professors at Columbia University are dismayed that a campus culture with a long history of demonizing Israel as a barbaric imperialist state, and little to no history of criticizing terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians in the past, now actively embraces such attacks against Israelis today. “We are horrified that anyone would celebrate these monstrous attacks or, as some members of the Columbia faculty have done in a recent letter, try to ‘recontextualize’ them as a ‘salvo,’ as the ‘exercise of a right to resist’ occupation, or as ‘military action.’”
This attitude toward Israel is an outgrowth of the modern leftist doctrine that the West is history’s greatest aggressor. The sum of the West’s interventions in non-Western lands is automatically regarded with cynicism, including the post-WWI nation-building in the former Ottoman provinces – and especially the formation of Israel. Anti-Zionist leftists blindly trust the Arab side of the story, that the Israelis and not the Arabs instigated the 1948 war. Many if not most of this group – certainly the loudest – reject the notion that Jews have rightful claims to any of the territory west of the Jordan River; it was Arab-ruled before the Turkish occupation (albeit under governments headquartered outside of the region), it should be Arab-ruled again.