Vietnam, Israel, Ukraine, and the Fluidity of Global Politics

 

By David K. Shipler 

                We have entered a period of flux in international alignments. After decades of relative stability in the so-called “world order,” interests are being recalculated and affinities revised. It is a risky, promising, uncertain time.

Vietnam and the United States, once enemies, have just announced a comprehensive strategic partnership, whatever that might mean. Israel and Saudi Arabia are on the cusp of putting aside their longstanding antagonism in favor of diplomatic and commercial ties. The Saudis and Americans are exploring a mutual defense treaty. Russia seems poised to swap technology for artillery shells from its problematic neighbor, North Korea, once kept at arm’s length. Russia and China are making inroads in some mineral-rich African countries, at the West’s expense. A rising China has adopted a forward military posture, threatening Taiwan more acutely than in decades. Ukraine is lobbying anxiously for its survival against Russian conquest as doubts about continuing aid arise from a wing of Republicans in a party once hawkish on national security.

Upheavals such as these will require deft statesmanship. Both Beijing and Moscow are bent on denying Washington what they call the American “hegemony” that has mostly prevailed since World War Two. The Chinese and Russian leaders, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, proselytize for a multipolar world, which appeals to developing countries resentful of post-colonial hardships. (Don’t they realize that Russia is the more recent colonial power, fighting to reimpose its historic colonialism on Ukraine?)

The global turmoil has tossed up a key choice for Americans: How engaged or how withdrawn shall we be? How entangled? How aloof? This will be an unwritten question on next year’s ballots. Both Putin and Xi will be watching. They surely hope for victory by the American neo-isolationism represented by hard-right Republicans—including Donald Trump. No such administration would stand astride the shifting tectonics of the emerging globe.

Ukraine is a litmus test. No matter the obscenities committed by Russia against helpless civilians. No matter Russia’s martial expansionism in the heart of Europe. No matter the mantle of democracy and freedom proudly worn by the United States. The extreme Republican right is playing on the ethnocentrism of its base and a weariness of foreign involvements.

It seems that Americans are fair weather fighters in war. As long as things are going well, they’re in it. But moral purpose takes second place to the likely outcome. Progress on the battlefield is essential to enthusiasm at home. That was true in Vietnam, where most Americans favored the war until it was not being won. It was true in Iraq and Afghanistan, whose wars garnered initial support until they dragged on inconclusively.

If Ukraine had succeeded in a blitzkrieg summer offensive this year, if Russian troops were being driven back on their heels, Biden’s additional aid package might draw less opposition. When defeat looms or a stalemate descends and victory seems elusive, passionate commitment wanes. It’s like a losing baseball team that can’t fill its stadium.

One pillar of policy that has remained solid is the NATO alliance, bolstered by the war, with few serious fault lines so far. That would change with an American retreat, however, as Hungary, at least, would probably hedge by tilting toward a resurgent Russia. And perhaps Turkey, which has been a wild card in the NATO deck, meeting Putin and straddling sides by serving as a conduit for Russia to trade in sanctioned goods.

Putin likes to talk about history, so he and his Kremlin colleagues have surely not forgotten that isolationist impulses have long run through American sentiment. While isolationism would delight them today, it caused suffering as the Soviet Union fought Hitler during World War Two. The US stood aside for more than two years--even as Nazi Germany pummeled Europe and marched deep into Soviet territory—and entered the war only after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.

Before that, Moscow had hoped the Americans would open a “second front” of combat on the west. Instead, the US sent convoys of supplies across the Atlantic. Among the goods were cans of beef stew, which Russians sardonically called “the second front,” a sly slur against America that I heard in Moscow more than three decades after the war.

The threat of postwar isolationism in the Republican Party, led by Senator Robert Taft of Ohio, alarmed former General Dwight Eisenhower enough to persuade him to accept pleas, which he’d repeatedly resisted, to run for president in 1952. He did not want his country to retreat. As Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe, he had experienced the critical essence of alliances. It is a concept disdained by Trump but well understood by Biden, who has spent much of his term shoring up old alliances and cultivating new ones.

Biden has also proved hard-headed and more pragmatic than principled—unless you see principle as a chessboard of security interests. Rhetorically, he pursues a global campaign for democracy against autocracy. But in the real game, he cooperates with authoritarian or semi-democratic nations when convenient: Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, and possibly a future Israel. Human rights get mentioned, then take second place. The square’s location on the board is more important than its color.

There are exceptions to this rule of pragmatic fluidity. One is the barely-shifting adversity with Communist-run Cuba, still under decades-long, futile American sanctions, even as diplomatic ties and tourism have opened. It is a stubborn, anachronistic position that makes sense only to Cuban emigres in Florida, a state that Biden is going to lose next year anyway.

Israel, too, is becoming more of an unfortunate example of democratic values and human rights cast aside for expedient political and security interests. Biden has given lip service to concerns over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s upcoming limits to judicial restraints on the executive and legislative branches; the plan has drawn vast opposition from Israelis who believe it will undermine the checks and balances central to democracy.

But in practice, Israel pays no price in US relations. Despite the explicit racists in the Israeli government, this week Biden assured Netanyahu of steadfast support. The President appears unlikely to exact serious concessions as his administration brokers the potential Israeli relationship with Saudi Arabia; whether the Saudis will do so remains to be seen.

In any case, Israel has been brushing off American reprimands for decades. A few words of criticism about the judicial “reforms,” the harsh treatment of Palestinians, and the expanding Jewish settlements on land that might otherwise constitute a Palestinian state someday, are easily ignored in Jerusalem. Washington’s complaints about settlements have never been reinforced by any consistent policy of pain or punishment, such as withholding significant aid.

That’s partly, but not only, the product of domestic American politics. Even as the destructive judicial changes loom, fawning Congressional delegations have been making pilgrimages there. But in addition, Israel is useful to US national security as a reliable military partner, technological wizard, and fellow gatherer of intelligence in a dangerous neighborhood. So, the hand-wringing about anti-democratic steps undermining American support appears seems unjustified.

Vietnam, too, has emerged as a convenient partner for the US, no matter its authoritarianism and miserable record on human rights. The Communist leaders in Hanoi are skillful navigators among the powers—China, an ancient rival and enemy and overwhelming neighbor; Russia, an old friend during the “American War,” and the US, now bidding for an increasing role in the Pacific.

 Not long after the United States lost its war against North Vietnam, Americans who traveled there were stunned to be received with grace, friendliness, and a lack of any obvious grievance—even in Hanoi, which US planes had bombed mercilessly as an estimated two to three million Vietnamese had died in the fighting. Whatever resentment persisted was usually—not always—cloaked by courtesy. After a war, magnanimity comes more easily from the victors.

                Earlier this month, nearly a half century after the American defeat, the Vietnamese again demonstrated their marksmanship, this time with a compliment. When the 80-year-old President Biden, attacked at home as too old for the job, visited Vietnam earlier this month to upgrade the relationship, he heard this flattery from the Communist Party General Secretary, Nguyen Phu Trong, who had seen Biden some eight years earlier:

“You have nary aged a day, and I would say you look even better than before.” Such is the fluidity of global politics.