Patriotic chest-thumping has always been a turn-off. Pride of accomplishment is one thing. It is another to believe that because it gave rise to you yours is the greatest country in the world. Especially when you have visited no others.
But honestly, couldn’t we stand a little pride about now instead of shame?
Samantha Power thinks the country’s standing in the world was built on its perceived “willingness to undertake challenging endeavors and its ability to accomplish difficult tasks.” Writing in Foreign Affairs ahead of the change of administrations, the former U.N. ambassador wrote that the Biden administration’s foreign policy should “highlight the return of American expertise and competence.”
“The United States can reenter all the deals and international organizations it wants,” Power wrote, “but the biggest gains in influence will come by demonstrating its ability to deliver in many countries’ hour of greatest need.”
Now Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development, Power believes a display of U.S. competence here and abroad — policies that deliver tangible results — can help restore the country’s standing after four years led by an arrogant, aberrant administration. An effective international response to the coronavirus pandemic by the Biden administration could do just that. And along the way, “beat China at the biggest soft-power contest in generations, regain its reputation as the world’s ‘indispensable’ nation and, not incidentally in Power’s view, do good,” Karen DeYoung writes in The Washington Post:
Critics, both within and outside the administration, charge that Biden still has no overall strategy to address the pandemic, with piecemeal initiatives and authorities spread across departments. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has scheduled a hearing Wednesday on the administration’s international coronavirus response, with testimony from Gayle E. Smith, the Biden administration’s State Department-based coordinator on the issue, and Jeremy Konyndyk, director of USAID’s coronavirus task force.
Power sees a major part of her job as convincing Americans that helping others helps the United States. “As covid illustrates better than any contemporary threat,” she told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during her March confirmation hearing, “the fate of the American people” is connected to progress in the rest of the world. “Health infrastructure, economic prosperity, the curbing of extremism and radicalization . . . development and diplomacy have to be resourced and priorities alongside our essential defense efforts.”
Alongside that, we have to clean up our own act at home if we expect to regain our international standing. A video from the New York Times shows half a dozen active and retired police officers from multiple countries reacting to videos showing how policing is done in the U.S. “That’s a murder,” one says of the George Floyd video. The others are aghast. “I’m speechless,” says a cop from Northern Ireland. Confronted with the policy of “qualified immunity” for U.S. cops, the foreigners are stunned and confused. Also by the “warrior cop” mindset taught in U.S. police academies. If we are setting an example, it is a bad one.
Meanwhile, the republic teeters on the brink of collapse. Or at least the Republican half does, and threatens to take the rest of us with it.
House Republicans today are expected to strip Rep. Liz Cheney of her leadership position in the caucus for not adopting Donald Trump’s stolen-election catechism. For her part, Cheney refuses to bend the knee to Trump. Former vice president Mike Pence was thought spineless during his tenure, but he did his duty in certifying the election on January 6, even after Trump loyalists stormed the Capitol. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy proved himself not only more spineless than Pence, but feckless as well.
Rep. Adam Kinzinger, Republican of Illinois, warned McCarthy in a conference call that their claims the election was stolen would lead to violence. McCarthy blew off the warning and the rest will be in the history books.
Dana Milbank wrote in the Post:
Kinzinger tweeted about the exchange Monday and expanded on it during a National Press Club virtual gathering. “This was entirely predictable,” the sixth-term lawmaker said of the deadly attack, “and it was disregarded.”
Kinzinger brought all this up, he said, because McCarthy is seeking to oust Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.) as the No. 3 House Republican over her refusal to embrace the “big lie” that then-President Donald Trump won the election — the very lie that provoked the Capitol attack. “Liz is being chased out for one thing,” Kinzinger said. “… Her consistency. She said the same exact thing that Kevin McCarthy said on January 6th, which is Donald Trump is responsible” for the insurrection.
The corruption on display is as disheartening as any of our foreign military scandals from Mỹ Lai to Abu Ghraib, or domestic scandals from police killings to the treatment of refugees on the southern border. The United States could stand a bit of good press. Our psyches could stand it. The world could.
“For all the lofty pronouncements we can make about America’s global leadership,” Powell says, “it is our country’s actions, our ambition, our ability to get big things done that truly moves minds and changes futures.” A recommitment to those goals and a demonstration of them in action is overdue. Plus a repudiation of those who have demonstrated not just bad faith but lack of faith in what the world needs us to be again.