Restraint: A post-COVID-19 U.S. national security strategy
The response to the COVID-19 pandemic has weakened the U.S. economy, the foundation of its national power. This has implications for U.S. foreign policy.
Health and economic fallout from COVID-19 makes setting realistic defense priorities more urgent
The response to the coronavirus global pandemic has severely weakened the U.S. economy, the foundation of national power. This reality has vast implications for U.S. foreign policy.
Two economic factors suggest narrowing U.S. foreign policy objectives: (1) U.S. GDP and tax revenue will shrink in 2020, with no certainty about when they might recover. (2) Record deficits and debt endanger future economic growth.
Political reasons for foreign policy restraint augment those economic factors: The public increasingly perceives non-security risks are paramount, and priority will go to domestic spending that aids recovery and increases domestic institutional resilience.
Federal discretionary spending will bear a greater burden because mandatory spending programs are politically harder to cut. Since defense accounts for nearly half of discretionary spending, DoD will likely face sustained cuts.
The U.S. enjoys a favorable geostrategic position with abundant protection from rivals, so it can cut defense spending without compromising security. Indeed, ending peripheral commitments in favor of core security interests strengthens the U.S.
Ending policies bringing failure, overstretch, and drained coffers always made sense—coronavirus makes the case more urgent.
U.S. federal budget authority by category (FY 2019)
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="2284"] Declining GDP and tax revenue and increased domestic spending post-COVID-19 will put downward pressure on DoD budgets.[/caption]
Abandon peripheral missions abroad and focus on core U.S. security and prosperity
As the pandemic demonstrates, non-military threats can be far more detrimental to Americans’ well-being than the non-state actors, rogue states, and authoritarian regimes that dominate military planning and drive DoD spending.
The decades-long pursuit of overly ambitious foreign policy goals disconnected from U.S. security contributed to the neglect of U.S. domestic institutions exposed by the coronavirus pandemic.
Recovering requires investment at home: education, health care, infrastructure, research and development, and policies that promote innovation and job creation.
For the past 20 years, the U.S. spent roughly $1 trillion annually on defense-related objectives (DoD, veteran’s care, homeland security, nuclear weapons, diplomacy) while domestic infrastructure in critical industries went under-resourced.
Rebalancing defense priorities to focus more on economic prosperity and public health will enhance U.S. power in the long term.
Middle East: Reduce overinvestment and military presence, which has backfired and weakened the U.S.
Core Middle East interests are (1) preventing significant disruptions to global oil supply and (2) defending against anti-U.S. terror threats. The former requires minimal U.S. effort; the latter requires intelligence, cooperation, and limited strikes, not occupations.
The Middle East accounts for just 4 percent of global GDP, yet for decades, the U.S. has attempted to reshape the region through military force, disrupting the regional balance of power, exacerbating political instability, and allowing terrorist groups to flourish.
Today, the U.S. has 62,000 troops in the region, many of them vulnerable to attacks by local militias. The U.S. is also fighting wars in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, largely based on exaggerated fears of Iran, a middling power contained by its local rivals.
The U.S. will be able to fund part of its coronavirus recovery by ending its participation in conflicts in the Middle East and nearby areas, such as Afghanistan and Somalia. This would free up tens of billions of dollars annually for higher priorities.
Additional savings can be had by focusing the Pentagon on its core warfighting missions and right-sizing force structure—reducing ground forces in particular, which have been swollen by these commitments.
The U.S., Europe, and Asia account for 81 percent of global GDP
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="2280"] The U.S., Europe, and East Asia are the hubs of the global economy, making them more important to U.S. security and prosperity than the Middle East.[/caption]
Europe: Shift security burdens to wealthy allies
The U.S. has strong economic and diplomatic interests in Europe, but the continent faces limited direct military threats. Despite the fall of the USSR, the U.S. maintains a heavy military footprint in Europe in the name of securing wealthy, relatively safe allies.
This arrangement served U.S. interests when a big U.S. military presence in Europe balanced the USSR’s military might while enabling allies to recover economically and unify.
As allies grew rich and the USSR collapsed, a sensible balancing policy became a subsidy that let wealthy allies “cheap ride” on U.S. taxpayers, driving excess DoD spending while subsidizing lavish social welfare programs for European nations.
Russia is a declining power (with a large nuclear arsenal). The EU dominates Russia in important metrics of national power: 3½:1 population, 11:1 GDP, and 5:1 military spending. European economies are also more dynamic than Russia’s.
Instead of jawboning allies for shirking their obligations, U.S. policy should shift the security burden onto them by (1) ending the European Defense Initiative and (2) implementing a responsible draw down of U.S. ground and nuclear forces on the continent.
This would not only free up finite U.S. resources for higher priorities at home or in Asia, but also encourage European allies to revitalize their militaries: increasing spending, prioritizing modernization, or increasing military cooperation with each other.
Asia: Fortify Asian allies with A2/AD capabilities to deter Chinese aggression at less risk
U.S. policy toward China—the only conceivable strategic competitor—balances several key interests: deterring Chinese territorial expansion against Asian allies, avoiding war, and ensuring a fair and beneficial trading relationship.
Efforts to balance against China should therefore be based on core U.S. interests and carefully designed and planned to reduce cost, minimize escalation risks, and protect trade.
U.S. goals in Asia are inherently defensive (to preserve the territorial status quo) and are best served by a military approach of “defensive defense”: an operational concept that limits U.S. costs by encouraging allies to develop their defensive capabilities.
By improving anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) capabilities—a network of sensors and missiles—U.S. allies can deter Chinese attacks more effectively and cheaply than via investment in aircraft and surface ships that mimic U.S. capabilities.
Allied defensive capability is less threatening to China than U.S. offensive capability. Reducing the perceived threat of direct attacks, A2/AD is less prone to spark costly, counterproductive arms racing.
Pressing allies to adopt this approach will allow the U.S. to jettison escalatory plans to defend them by attacking the Chinese mainland, lowering tensions and risks of a broader war with China and allowing for cost saving on U.S. forces in Asia.
U.S. force structure: Constrained DoD budgets means more tradeoffs and rebalancing among the services
With the world’s most sophisticated nuclear arsenal, large oceans separating it from rivals, and weak neighbors, the U.S. has a unique advantage over every other nation—security is abundant and cheap.
The U.S. accounts for 40 percent of global military spending—treaty allies account for 22 percent; Russia and China account for 17 percent. The 2020 DoD budget ($757 billion) exceeds Cold War highs in real terms, reflecting a false sense of insecurity.
Reduced DoD budgets can force debate and prioritization among programs and services—between what contributes to U.S. security and what is peripheral or even counterproductive—that large spending authorizations prevent.
Geography makes the U.S. a natural naval power and trading nation. Distance from other major states means the U.S. is perceived as less threatening—unlike China, which borders other Eurasia powers.
The Navy is the key service for projecting U.S. power globally and defending commerce if necessary while avoiding costly occupations. The Navy should command a larger portion of DoD’s reduced budget.
With no nation building and a large reservist pool, the U.S. can reduce Army, Marines, and special operations forces end strength.
Mission-driven reductions to force structure generate savings on personnel and procurement, enabling savings on operational costs, administrative overhead, basing, and other support functions.
U.S. military spending compared to allies and competitors
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="2284"] Total U.S. military spending vs. the rest of the world[/caption]
No major or regional powers are unscathed by the pandemic—strategic thinking will determine who comes out stronger
The pandemic has hit all major powers hard, including U.S. adversaries; the economic pain is well distributed.
China announced its GDP contracted at 6.8 percent in the first quarter of 2020, the first decline since 1976. The CCP relies on steady economic growth for legitimacy, and in a nation with almost no social safety net, job losses could breed discontent.
While earning some goodwill, China’s efforts to help afflicted nations are an attempt to mitigate the reputational damage from its early obfuscation of the outbreak, which led to the global pandemic. Businesses are also taking steps to limit their China exposure.
Record low oil prices could see Russia’s GDP fall by as much as 15 percent this year, resulting in more pressure to limit its military spending and interventions in places such as Ukraine and Syria.
Iran has been crippled by the virus. Infection has killed several of its senior leaders, and the collapse in oil prices has damaged its already shrinking economy, making this middling power even weaker.
Strong fundamentals undergird U.S. power: favorable geography; a technologically advanced society with a skilled, innovative workforce; and abundant natural resources. Post-COVID rebuilding will require focusing on these strengths to restart the economy.
The U.S. grew to become the global superpower by virtue of its productive economy; advanced technology, including nuclear weapons; and skillful diplomacy.
The pursuit of liberal hegemony—militarized democracy spreading fueled by threat exaggeration and hubris—has resulted in strategic failure, military overstretch, and a hollowing out of U.S. internal strength.
The coronavirus pandemic has exposed the extent to which U.S. power has been squandered. To recover its strength, U.S. should focus on the core elements of national power while avoiding excessive military projects and the overspending that entails.
The budgetary demands to recover from this pandemic will be enormous, but the fundamental sources of U.S. security are robust—and insensitive to mild deviations in military activities and spending.
Coronavirus is a terrible tragedy but nonetheless an opportunity to shed illusions and rebuild the real pillars of national strength for the long haul.
As long as U.S. focuses on its prosperity—rather than peripheral distractions—it will grow stronger at home and retain the ability to marshal the resources necessary for competition with any adversary.
This article has been republished with permission from Defense Priorities.
Benjamin H. Friedman is Policy Director at Defense Priorities and an adjunct lecturer at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs. Previously, he served as Research Fellow in Defense and Homeland Security Studies at the Cato Institute.
Alexander Vindman’s recent book, “The Folly of Realism,”throws down the gauntlet, as the name suggests, at the “realists” he thinks were responsible for failing to deter Russia and seize opportunities for defense cooperation with Ukraine.
According to Vindman, the former National Security Council official who testified against President Trump during his impeachment trial in 2019, this “realist” behavior incentivized Moscow’s continued imperialist predations, culminating in the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Vindman’s proposed antidote to what he considers the lapses of the past three decades is Benjamin Tallis’ framework of "neo-idealism," a lightly repackaged menagerie of post-Cold War transatlanticism’s greatest hits that is bizarrely presented as a novel outlook on the international system.
Fully squaring all the historical misjudgments presented in these 240 pages demands an exegesis of at least as many pages, and not just because there are so many — though one certainly doesn’t find themselves pressed for material — but because Vindman’s central arguments flow from larger, decades-long narratives about Russia and post-Cold War U.S. policy that simply do not stand up to scrutiny.
Nuclear policy emerges as one of the main causal drivers of Vindman’s story. No one can quarrel with the proposition that successive administrations took seriously the cause of nonproliferation in the post-Soviet sphere — they had every reason to — and that nuclear concerns shaped U.S. engagement with the Russian Federation to a significant even if not decisive degree.
But to suggest, as Vindman does, that the thrust of early U.S./NATO policy toward Russia boils down to nuclear concerns is to lapse into a narrowly tendentious reading of events that history doesn’t lend itself to.
Vindman, who interviewed the officials involved in negotiating the 1994 Budapest Memorandum from the U.S. side, was careful not to retread the solecisms so heartily indulged by many of his allies and fellow travelers. He concedes, and not insignificantly so considering how deeply this narrative has entrenched itself in recent years, that the signed memorandum did not contain U.S. security guarantees to Ukraine in exchange for relinquishing its supposed nuclear arsenal.
“There's no question in my memory and in my mind that the Ukrainians understood completely the difference between security assurances and Article 5 security guarantees. And they understood they were getting security assurances,” Vindman quoted Nicholas Burns, Senior Director for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia Affairs at the National Security Council, as saying.
These assurances, as I explained with my colleague Zach Paikin, did not commit the U.S. to undertake any specific commitments beyond what it agreed to in previous treaties. Indeed, it’s precisely because the memorandum was not legally binding and contained no concrete defense commitments that it did not have to be ratified by the Senate, as all treaties must be.
But this whole “denuclearization” business calls for a greater degree of technical scrutiny than Vindman affords it. Three of the 15 states that emerged from the Soviet collapse — Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Belarus — did not in fact “inherit” thousands of nuclear weapons. These were Soviet nuclear weapons, stationed across the Soviet Union but controlled from Moscow. After the Soviet collapse, these became Soviet nuclear weapons left over on the territories of former Soviet soviet states.
It was never established that Ukraine exercised legal, political, or operational control over these weapons, nor that the nascent Ukrainian state disposed of the considerable resources required to maintain them. Ukraine did not, in this sense, possess a nuclear inheritance that could be bartered away for Western security guarantees or anything else.
What we have before us, then, is not a geostrategic question but a largely operational challenge of removing these weapons, to which Ukraine had no recognized claim, from Ukrainian territory in an orderly way. This rather unremarkable process, though unquestionably a major part of the story of 1990s U.S.-Russia relations, is lent a degree of long-term political significance by Vindman that it simply doesn’t deserve.
So, what, then, is the larger picture and how does it fit into Vindman’s argument that the West’s woes stem from a decades-long policy of, if not appeasing, then at least turning a blind eye to “Russian ambition and exceptionalism?”
One cannot help but escape the sense that Vindman’s story suffers from the plight of Alexander the Great, who wept that he had only one world to conquer. His analysis is strongly tinted by the endless, yet strategically vacuous, expressions of goodwill, optimism about Russia’s Western path, and other such millenarian effusions that characterized U.S.-Russia relations up to the mid-2000’s.
But in the most important ways, U.S. policy has been guided all along by something quite similar to Vindman’s neo-idealism. The Soviet collapse gave Western leaders a generational opportunity to go about the difficult but necessary task of building a new security architecture that includes mechanisms not just to deter Russia, but also to engage it in ways that do not lead to security spirals in Eastern Europe. U.S. policymakers, less driven by balance of power concerns than they were enchanted by the seductive vision of a Europe “whole and free,” brushed aside the concerns of George Kennan, Robert McNamara, and a great many others to greenlight the limitless expansion of NATO, an alliance explicitly arrayed against the Russian Federation’s Soviet predecessor.
It seems to be a source of consternation for Vindman that Ukraine was not invited into NATO in those early days. Vindman’s implication that Ukraine was thus abandoned to Russia’s sphere of influence incorrectly frames the problem at hand. Washington’s fervid devotion to NATO’s “open door” membership policy and dogged refusal to countenance any framework for delimiting NATO’s boundaries shows that the lack of progress in this area was purely tactical in nature and certainly not grounded in systemic realist thinking.
There is also the peccadillo of democratic values, defense of which is supposed to be NATO’s entire raison d’être. In point of fact, polling shows most Ukrainians had no desire to join the alliance until as late as the mid 2010s, when it became impossible due to outstanding territorial conflicts with Russia.
Vindman’s indictment of what he wants the reader to believe passes for “realism” — more on that shortly — hinges on viewing Russia as an innate aggrandizer emboldened by the failure of successive U.S. administrations to deter it.
It all falls apart upon the most basic attempt at a more sophisticated structural analysis — one which would find that Russia’s behavior is consistent not with a grand strategy of conquest for its own sake but with what most realists would identify as balancing behavior in response to the eastward expansion of Western military and security institutions into the post-Soviet sphere, and Russian actions intended to preemptively deny such expansion.
Trudging through this book, with its unique blend of endless encyclopedic tedium heaped on top of the analytical equivalent of a children's pop-up story, can be best likened to navigating a swamp that’s shallow yet impossibly vast. But this rather unpleasant journey at least gives the reader ample time to meditate on the book’s central conceit.
Vindman unfortunately displays a woefully inadequate grasp of that which he tries to impugn: at no point does he demonstrate anything more than a cursory understanding of realist approaches to the issues he tries to elucidate.
One is left grasping in vain for any evidence that Vindman can pass the simple theoretical Turing Test of explaining any school of realism — let alone to distinguish between them — to the satisfaction of a realist. But Vindman’s underlying thrust is not to meaningfully engage with realist arguments on Ukraine’s post-Soviet transition, 1990’s U.S.-Russia relations, or nuclear proliferation in the former Soviet sphere.
Instead he wants to launder what has largely been an idealist, atlanticist handling of these issues since 1991 by pinning the neoconservatives’ manifold sins and lapses on a haphazard cluster of ideas and approaches clumsily christened by him as “realism.” There was no realism in the strategically shortsighted decision — condemned by many realists at the time — to enable successive waves of NATO expansion and encourage, against genuine U.S. and European security interests, the integration of post-Soviet states into the West’s collective defense umbrella.
The well-established idealist framing of American engagement with competitors as a manichean confrontation between democracy and autocracy is anathema to realism and, indeed, to a healthy understanding of U.S. national security priorities.
But it is true that actual realist ideas are rapidly making their way back into the foreign policy discourse after decades in the wilderness. As is always the case after an exiled intellectual movement rediscovers the levers of power, there will and should be a vigorous debate on what form these ideas will take when filtered through the vicissitudes of American politics and applied to the pressing challenges of our time, including the Russia-Ukraine war and the broader task of building a sustainable architecture of European security.
And whatever missteps are made along the way pale in comparison to a disastrous status quo that can be described by many names. Realism, it is not.
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Top photo credit: Pierre Poilievre and Mark Carney (Yan Parisien; bella1105 via shutterstock)
Just days after replacing Justin Trudeau and becoming Canada’s 24th prime minister, Mark Carney has advised Governor General Mary Simon to dissolve Parliament. Canadians will now head to the polls on April 28 for a long awaited and highly anticipated federal election.
Trudeau had announced his intention to resign as prime minister and Liberal Party leader on January 6, having served more than nine years as Canada’s head of government. Opinion polling had shown an increasingly sizable lead for the rival Conservative Party over the preceding 18 months, with about 25 percentage points separating the two parties by the time Trudeau announced he was stepping down.
Carney’s arrival on the scene has changed the dynamic decisively. A former governor of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England, Carney’s image as a steady pair of hands at the helm during a time of national crisis has allowed the Liberals to establish a roughly five-point polling lead in the early days of the campaign. What was almost certain to be one of the largest Tory landslides in Canadian history has since become a tossup.
Given the mounting popular perception that Trudeau’s government had mismanaged major policy files ranging from the economy to immigration to public order, this election was expected to be a referendum on nearly a decade of Liberal rule. But Trudeau’s departure and — more importantly — Donald Trump’s arrival on the scene have ensured that Canadians are likely to cast their ballots with the future rather than the past in mind.
The ballot box question “Who is best positioned to deal with Trump?” has become increasingly urgent due to the growing perception that the U.S. president is not joking when he repeatedly threatens to annex Canada and make it America’s 51st state. Few Canadians believe that the tariffs the administration has levied have anything to do with fentanyl — indeed, the Intelligence Community’s newly released Annual Threat Assessmentneglects to mention Canada as a source of America’s fentanyl crisis.
With no clear demands or conditions for how to avert (or lift) the imposition of tariffs, there is a sense among Canadians that the purpose of these economic measures is not to compel a negotiation nor to obtain specific policy concessions, but rather, in Trudeau’s words, to bring about “a total collapse of the Canadian economy because that will make it easier to annex [Canada].” Tariffs are seen not as a tool, but rather as a good in themselves capable — albeit at great cost, given the highly integrated nature of the North American economy — of repatriating jobs to the United States.
Carney has pledged to negotiate with the U.S. on trade only when “Canada is shown respect as a sovereign nation.” But Trump would be wrong to conclude that Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre would be easier to deal with. Poilievre’s brand of Canadian “prairie populism” is ideologically distinct from the more iconoclastic MAGA populism found south of the border. And unlike Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s call for an “Am-Can Fortress” which focuses on persuading Americans of the extent to which Canada can underwrite American security and prosperity, Poilievre’s brand of “Canada First” is more in line with promoting Canadian resource development for overseas export.
Given the perception among many Canadians that their country has become engulfed not in a mere trade dispute but rather a struggle to preserve their national sovereignty, Ottawa will likely be more willing than Washington to endure the pain that the ongoing tariff war will bring, even if Canada is more economically dependent on the United States than the U.S. is on its northern neighbor. And whatever the potential benefits of pursuing a deeper economic relationship with Moscow, many struggle to understand the logic behind talking up economic ties with Russia while placing Canada so firmly within America’s crosshairs.
Having secured re-election, Canadians can no longer afford to dismiss Trump as an aberration in American politics. Unlike during his first term when it was assumed that “adults in the room” would limit Trump’s room for maneuver, this time he has built a loyal administration willing to cheer him on. But the economic fallout of a sustained trade war with Canada may risk Trump’s most significant accomplishment — a generational political realignment in which a multiethnic working-class electoral coalition underwrites support for the Republican Party.
Given these circumstances, Trump would be wise to declare victory and move on. For example, he could claim that Trudeau was the problem and that his administration’s policies successfully drove him from power. Building on the positive tone of his first call with Carney, he could also publicly acknowledge that, while he continues to believe that Canada would be better served by joining the United States, such a venture is not practical nor economical so long as Canadians overwhelmingly oppose it. These entirely cost-free moves from the administration would help to avert potentially permanent damage to Canada-U.S. relations.
Canada remains the largest market for American exports, larger thanChina, Japan, Britain and France combined. It also remains a friendly and reliable source of (subsidized) energy — the largest provider of oil, gas and electricity to the United States by a wide margin. American leaders should take note when the Canadian prime minister, a member of the country’s centrist establishment, openly concludes that the longstanding era of Canada-U.S. cooperation “based on deepening integration of our economies and tight security and military cooperation, is over.”
Whatever discord exists between Ottawa and Washington on issues ranging from trade to continental defense, maintaining a cooperative — and respectful — relationship with Canada remains manifestly in the national interest of the United States.
At the Munich Security Conference in mid-February, U.S. Vice President JD Vance warned Europe not to back away from one of the West’s most basic democratic values: free speech.
“In Washington there is a new sheriff in town," he said, "and under Donald Trump’s leadership, we may disagree with your views, but we will fight to defend your right to offer it in the public square, agree or disagree.”
Vance continued, “Dismissing people, dismissing their concerns… shutting down media, shutting down elections… protects nothing. It is the most surefire way to destroy democracy.”
He added, “If you’re running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you. I believe deeply that there is no security if you are afraid of the voices, the opinions and the conscience that guide your very own people.”
Vance had just joined Donald Trump in running a successful 2024 presidential campaign that championed free speech and condemned the Biden administration for its censorship efforts.
On March 8, barely three weeks after Vance’s Munich speech, Columbia University graduate student and pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil was arrested and sent to a detention center in Louisiana to be deported. He is a legal resident married to an American woman who is pregnant.
Khalil was not charged with a crime. President Trump praised the arrest, saying that Khalil had engaged in “pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity” that his administration would not tolerate.
“We will find, apprehend, and deport these terrorist sympathizers from our country,” Trump added.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said his department has revoked more than 300 student visas. “We do it every day. Every time I find one of these lunatics, I take away their visas," he said.
When Turkish Tufts University student Rumeysa Ozturk was arrested this week, a video showed “masked, plain-clothes officers handcuffing and leading her to an unmarked car.”
Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin posted on X that Ozturk "engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a foreign terrorist organization that relishes the killing of Americans.”
"A visa is a privilege not a right," she added.
Yet, like the case of Khalil, no one knows what, if any charges she is facing. A judge ruled that she could not be removed from Massachusetts but the feds took her to the same Louisiana detention center anyway. Reports presume that it was an op-ed that Oztruk wrote last year with two other students criticizing the Israel war in Gaza that brought on the heat.
When asked about Oztruk, however, Rubio said no one should get a visa if they come to the United States to join protest movements that result in vandalism and “raising a ruckus” on campus. He would not say if Ozturk was being singled out for those activities.
The administration argues that the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 gives the government the right to revoke the green card of “[a]n alien whose presence or activities in the United States the Secretary of State has reasonable ground to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.”
Without issuing evidence that Khalil and Ozturk’s presence here in the U.S. would have “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences” (the statute says the administration has to notify Congress with their justifications, have they?) we can assume that they are being used as examples in order to chill speech more broadly.
The administration appears to be hiding behind this rarely used statute, but what the rest of us are taking away from all this is that the administration believes our First Amendment protections end at criticizing Israel’s government.
“One reason the actions against Khalil should give MAGA pause is that the administration seems to be acting on behalf of Israel, not the American people,” wrote Andrew Day for the American Conservative, who warned Trump supporters that “the precedent could enable a future Democratic president to target conservatives.”
Categorizing pro-Palestinian protesters as “pro-terrorist,” “pro-Hamas,” or “anti-Semitic” could feasibly be true in some of these cases, and yet, if these people are not actually committing crimes, their speech should be Constitutionally protected.
The Nazi marchers that the Americans Civil Liberties Union so famously defended in Skokie, Illinois, in 1978 were definitely anti-Semitic.
And the courts determined they had a right to speak.
It might be cliché to say that the entire point of free speech is to protect the speech we hate, but apparently it's a trope the Trump administration hasn’t heard enough.
Those cheering Trump’s rounding up of pro-Palestinian protesters might argue that supporting Israel and opposing Hamas has greater value than free speech, or even that those targeted are actual terrorists, putting them in a separate category.
But we can rationalize similar free speech exceptions about all sorts of positions.
In his Munich speech, Vance cited the prosecution of Briton Adam Smith-Connor, a physiotherapist and army veteran who Vance said had been charged with the “heinous crime of standing 50 meters from an abortion clinic and silently praying for three minutes, not obstructing anyone, not interacting with anyone, just silently praying on his own.”
Heidi Stewart, chief executive of Bpas, the UK’s leading abortion provider, said of Vance’s comments, “Bpas ... will always remain proud to stand against misogynistic and anti-democratic interference with British women’s reproductive rights by foreign extremists, whether they are the vice-president of the US or not.”
Someday, “foreign extremist” JD Vance could be considered a “threat” to U.S. foreign policy by another administration. Then what happens?
Vance’s broader point was that people of different views should be able to express them in Western democracies.
And he was right. The first time.
He told European countries last month that their greatest threats weren’t from Russia or China, but their retreat from some of their “most fundamental values,” that the United States has historically shared with them, with freedom of expression seeming to top his list.
“What I worry about is the threat from within,” Vance warned.
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Declining GDP and tax revenue and increased domestic spending post-COVID-19 will put downward pressure on DoD budgets.[/caption]
Declining GDP and tax revenue and increased domestic spending post-COVID-19 will put downward pressure on DoD budgets.[/caption]
The U.S., Europe, and East Asia are the hubs of the global economy, making them more important to U.S. security and prosperity than the Middle East.[/caption]
The U.S., Europe, and East Asia are the hubs of the global economy, making them more important to U.S. security and prosperity than the Middle East.[/caption]
Total U.S. military spending vs. the rest of the world[/caption]
Total U.S. military spending vs. the rest of the world[/caption]
