Robert D. Kaplan
America’s policy class has been obsessed for decades with presidents Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden. That is natural, since they have been the country’s national leaders. But decades from now, they will have been mostly forgotten like the Gilded Age presidents Rutherford B. Hayes, Chester A. Arthur, Benjamin Harrison, and so forth.
The fact is, most of America’s presidents have been little more than competent managers, and our time is little different than in past eras. George W. Bush will be remembered for the tragedy of the Iraq War. And Donald Trump obviously will cut a large figure in history, for better or worse, because he has drastically changed the nature and style of the presidency.
The same goes for the overwhelming majority of European leaders and NATO secretaries-general. Though they command attention among the policy elites, they, too, will be forgotten. Few of them, since Margaret Thatcher,
have stood out as believing in anything in particular. They have droned on about international law only because they have had the luxury to do so, having been defended since 1945 largely by American taxpayers.
An unstated reason for Europe’s particular animus toward Israel over the decades is that the continent’s leaders secretly resent Israel’s willingness and ability to regularly defend itself through tough military action: something Europe’s elites never had even to countenance, and arguably couldn’t manage.
They rightly condemn many of Israel’s actions in Gaza, brought on by the worst atrocity since the Holocaust. Still, they have virtually forgotten the 650,000 dead in Syria and the many tens of thousands of dead in Sudan in recent civil wars. Antisemitism, among other things, resides in selectivity.
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