The pandemic and the waning of American prestige

“Nations palpably on the way down tend to earn the contempt of other nations in spades.” So wrote Michael Anton, a veteran right-wing operative in Washington and a member of President Trump’s National Security Council, in a much-discussed essay published in the first months of Trump’s term. Anton is no longer at the White House, but through his thinking and writing, he tried to provide some intellectual scaffolding to Trump’s chest-thumping politics.

In the essay, Anton called into question the viability and value of the existing “liberal order,” and focused on the goal of restoring American “prestige” after years of apparent timidity and fecklessness on the world stage. “Pointless apologies, gratuitous insults to allies and friends, failure to honor commitments, transparent groveling to enemies — these rub salt in the open wound of contempt,” he wrote, citing, among other perceived humiliations, an incident in January 2016 when Iranian forces detained a number of U.S. sailors for a day. “Perhaps the largest contributor to contempt, however, is a general sense of decline.”

Anton’s words carry unintended irony three years later. The president he served has been pilloried precisely for his gratuitous insults to allies and friends, his failure to honor commitments, and, indeed, his sometimes transparent groveling before America’s putative adversaries. Continue reading.