When Obama was in London for the G20 Summit, he made the following remark that seems to have disturbed not a few conservatives:
“There’s been a lot of comparison here about Bretton Woods… you know, last time you… saw the entire international architecture being remade,” Obama said. “Well, if, if it’s just Roosevelt and Churchill sitting in a room with a brandy, you know, that’s an easier negotiation.
“But that’s not the world we live in,” Obama said. “And it shouldn’t be the world that we live in. And so, you know, that’s not a loss for America.
Here is how Charles Krauthammer interprets Obama’s statement.
After all, it was Obama, not some envious anti-American leader, who noted with satisfaction that a new financial order is being created today by 20 countries, rather than by “just Roosevelt and Churchill sitting in a room with a brandy.” And then added: “But that’s not the world we live in, and it shouldn’t be the world that we live in.”
It is passing strange for a world leader to celebrate his own country’s decline. A few more such overseas tours, and Obama will have a lot more decline to celebrate.
I think a lot of conservatives of Mr. Krauthammer’s age spent too much time watching John Wayne war movies as children and soaking up a really misguided impression of how the world really works. World War Two was the greatest human catastrophe on record and it’s immediate aftermath found America and Russia in new and ultimately unsustainable positions as the sole superpowers of the world. Bretton Woods set up the modern system of global finance on terms very favorable to the United States. There was nothing necessarily wrong with that, particularly because we agreed to shoulder the burden for the security of Japan, South Korea, and Western Europe. We created markets in those areas for our products and soon became avid consumers of their products. But the world is under no obligation to submit to rules that favor the United States in perpetuity. And they won’t.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may be a kook, but he speaks for most of the world when he says this.
“The composition of the [United Nations] Security Council and the veto of its five permanent members are consequences of World War II, which ended 60 years ago. Must the victorious powers dominate mankind for evermore, and must they constitute the world government? The composition of the Security Council must be changed.”
The organizations and systems that were set up in the aftermath of the war reflected America’s tremendous power at that time, but they also reflected a shattered world with broken political and economic institutions. It was never going to be in America’s interests to play a permanent role as top dog. We needed to prevail over the Soviet Bloc and bring the anti-Soviet bloc along politically and economically so that we could mutually benefit. It takes a perpetual adolescent to see the rise of westernized economic rivals as a sign of America’s decline. It’s a sign of our success. The day when we no longer need to pay the lion’s share of the burdens for collective security will be the day of our final victory.
