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The Banality Of U.S. Foreign Policy Analysis

The author, Jacob Heilbrunn, is an utter mediocrity, the sort who builds a reputation by writing banal opeds in the New York Times, in which he lampoons the people the New York Times wants to see lampooned, while coming across as a serious, responsible person. He built a reputation for himself as a critic of the neocons.

Of course, he never was opposed to the neocons. It was all a piece of theater, rather like the comedians who pretend to be against the Establishment, but crave to be accepted by the Establishment and make gazillions of dollars as reward for having done so.

On the strength of writing a silly, shallow book about the neocons--a subject that has been done to death ever since this group of Israel-Firsters emerged on the scene in the 1970s--Heilbrunn got himself a gig as editor of The National Interest.

This magazine, as the title implies, was created sometime during the 1980s to advocate for a "realist" U.S. foreign policy in opposition to excessive U.S. foreign policy activism. The problem was that the magazine was set up by the neocons. Its founder, publisher and editor was "godfather of neoconservatism" Irving Kristol. And while Kristol had little time for promoting democracy, human rights, global liberalism--or even NATO come to that--he was no non-interventionist. America needed to do whatever it needed to do to get rid of the bad guys and to support Israel.

Kristol was very crafty. He had been knee-deep in all kinds of CIA activities during the 1950s and 60s. He was the founding editor of the Congress for Cultural Freedom's flagship publication, Encounter. However, during the 1980s, he acquired a notoriety by seemingly opposing continued U.S. participation in its most famous post-1945 construct: NATO. Countless neocons would fulminate against Kristol. How dare he betray U.S. principles in this way? Kristol mischievously delighted in this little contretemps that he had caused. Kristol knew perfectly well that there was not the remotest chance that the U.S. would ever withdraw from NATO. What he sought to do--and what he largely achieved--was to get the wormy Europeans to stop criticizing the U.S. and to embrace, with a little more enthusiasm, whatever project Washington intends to cook up.

So, The National Interest was always largely a fraud. Today it's run by the Nixon Center. Ah Nixon! So it must be advocating for "realism"! It must be waxing nostalgic for the great days of masterful U.S. diplomacy. No, it is not. It's the same warmed-over neocon foreign policy stew available everywhere.

That's why its editor is Heilbrunn, a neocon who fooled everyone into believing that he was against the neocons. In this New York Times oped he gets in every cliche known to man about Trump's supposed "isolationism." This after Trump cheered on the latest Ukraine package, and this after Trump has signed off on Israel's maximalist agenda.

Most amusing of all, Heilbrunn berates Trump for his disdain for democracy and his love for autocracy. Wasn't the whole point of The National Interest that Americans should stop fretting about democracy and authoritarianism and instead focus on what is in the national interest of their country?

https://archive.ph/G7V9P

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I asked ChatGPT to explore the relationship between Hayek, the Hanseatic League, Mercantilism, and Tariffs. Here is what it had to say.

The Hanseatic League proves what mercantilists never grasped: prosperity follows trade freedom, not tariff walls.

While feudal Europe stagnated under tolls, tariffs, and dynastic squabbles, the cities of the Hanseatic League flourished. They abolished internal tariffs, secured trade routes, and let merchants—not monarchs—govern commerce. The result? A decentralized, voluntary trading network that birthed not only wealth, but culture, beauty, and civic pride.

Even today, the League’s legacy endures:

Lübeck, the “Queen of the Hanse,” enchants with its Gothic gables and canals.

Hamburg hums with maritime energy and modern elegance.

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Tallinn, with its intact Hanseatic old town, feels like a time capsule of cobbled streets and merchant houses.

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More Leftie Than Thou
"Jacobin" Magazine Celebrates A Strike Against Ol' Blue Eyes

Here at "The Gaggle" we have very little time for the "more Leftie than thou" school of thought--that's the approach to life according to which the only thing that matters is whether you take the right position on every issue under the sun from Abortion to Zelensky. No one in the world meets the exacting standards of this school of thought; any Leftie leader anywhere is always selling out to the bankers and the capitalists. The perfect exemplar of this is the unreadable Jacobin magazine. 

The other day I came across this article from 2021. It's a celebration of trade union power. And not simply trade union power, but the use of trade union power to secure political goals. Of course (and this is always the case with the "more Leftie than thou" crowd), this glorious, never-to-be-forgotten moment on the history of organized labor took place many years ago--in the summer of 1974 to be exact. Yes, almost half a century has gone by since that thrilling moment when the working-class movement of Australia mobilized and prepared to seize the means of production, distribution and exchange. 

Well, not quite. Organized labor went into action against...Ol' Blue Eyes, the Chairman of the Board, the Voice; yes, Frank Sinatra. Why? What had Sinatra done? Sinatra was certainly very rich, and he owned a variety of properties and businesses. But if the Australian trade union movement were, understandably, searching for the bright, incandescent spark that would finally awaken the working class from its slumber there were surely richer, greedier, more dishonest, more decadent, above all more Australian individuals it could have discovered. Australia was never short of them. Rupert Murdoch immediately springs to mind. Why Sinatra?

 

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