It was a small thing, really, but one of those small things that feels like a sign of something much bigger.
This week, the military junta that rules the African country of Niger announced the revocation of its military agreement with the United States, and the coming expulsion of U.S. troops based in the country. The country’s leadership also announced its turn to Russia. The move followed a disastrous visit by American officials, who arrived to lecture the hard men who led last summer’s coup about the need to restore democracy, and to stop talking to Iran about providing it uranium.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the top American officials, Molly Phee and Celeste Wallender, incensed Niger officials by speaking to them in a “condescending” way. If the U.S. can’t somehow convince the Niger junta to reverse its decision, America will not only lose an important drone base in the heart of a region that produces Islamist terrorists, but will also give Russia significant footing in a strategically significant African region. Plus, it will be easier for Iran to gain access to uranium.
It is possible that there was nothing Washington could have done to avert this calamity. On the other hand, when you are faced with a diplomatic situation in which your nation has so very much on the line, you have to proceed with all possible caution. Given the rather non-progressive sensibilities of African strongmen, how much sense did it make to send female diplomats to lecture them?
Yes, we might think Africans backward in their traditional views of the proper relationship between men and women, but this is simply part of the world’s diversity that the liberals bang on about constantly. A diplomatic approach to the world requires, you know, diplomacy.
You don’t have to approve of African male sexism to understand that it is a fact of life, and that it must be taken into account when dealing with cultures unlike one’s own.
Three summers ago, I talked with African female legislators at a political event in Italy. The women had strong opinions about Western cultural colonialism. All three were Christians, and did not like the encroachment China was making on the continent. But they all agreed that the West—that is, the United States and the European Union—hurt its own interest by refusing to accept African cultural norms.
They were talking about how Western diplomats pressure Africans to normalize LGBT, among other things. The African lawmakers—and note that they were women—said that Africans feel disrespected and, well, condescended to by the progressive Westerners. China, on the other hand, doesn’t care how the Africans choose to live. Beijing is only interested in power and resources.
According to these women, Africans know perfectly well that the Chinese are not coming to them out of the kindness, but they would rather deal with foreign powers that respect their cultural sovereignty than with the constant nagging by Western liberals.
This is a point the Hungarians and others in the former communist bloc of Europe know very well. The U.S. ambassador to Hungary often lectures the Hungarians on how backwards they are, behaving in a shockingly rude way to his host country. A couple of summers ago, visiting Warsaw for a conference, I was in a car with Poles, when we passed the U.S. embassy. It was flying the LGBT Pride flag. The Poles said they interpreted this as an official American insult to their Catholic sensibilities.
They were right, of course. No Victorian-era missionary could ever match the moralistic certainty displayed by left-wing Americans and Europeans, when it comes to instructing the savage Other about its failings. At least the missionaries understand that they have to behave with a modicum of intercultural respect to the natives. That can mean participating in discomfiting exchanges—like eating disgusting foods—for the sake of establishing mutual respect, and ultimately converting the others.
Three years ago, the American ambassador to Niger raised the Pride flag at the embassy, in the heart of the conservative Islamic nation, and issued a public statement affirming the U.S. government’s dedication to LGBT rights. Why? How did that advance American interests in this strategically critical central African nation?
For all we know, the Niger junta’s claim to have been disrespected last week by the American delegation is nothing but a cover story to justify its ruthless policy shift. Nevertheless, it is a plausible claim, one that will no doubt resonate with ordinary people in that savagely poor land. After last year’s coup, the Russian mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin praised the power grab as “the fight of [Niger’s] people against its colonizers.”
The late and unlamented Prigozhin’s words would be widely seen as the nonsense they are, if U.S. and Western cultural arrogance didn’t give them the air of truth.
Back in the 2016 campaign season, Democrat Hillary Clinton famously denounced cultural conservatives, especially working-class ones, as “deplorables”—people worthy of contempt. Since then, many on the American Right have worn that description as a badge of honor. They knew then, and they know now, that ruling-class liberal elites not only disagree with them (which is normal), but they actually hate them. They return the sentiment.
This week I met a conservative friend visiting Budapest from a major Western European country. We talked about geopolitics. He told me that it was a bitter red pill for him to swallow to realize that as much as he dislikes the governments of Russia and China, the fact is that the forces destroying the things he values most—the Christian faith, the traditional family, and the sense of nationhood—all start in America. It’s hard to disagree.
On Monday, Gallup released a poll showing that fewer Americans these days consider China and Russia to be their nation’s enemies. What’s more:
Additionally, 5 percent of Americans now say the U.S. was its own worst enemy, which is up 4 points from last year. Pollsters noted this is the highest percentage of Americans who said the U.S. is its own worst enemy since 2005. Eleven percent of independents said the U.S. was its top enemy, according to the new poll.
They have a point. Long gone are the days when America was the uncontested global hyperpower. Washington has squandered its material power on wars that made the world more dangerous, and also exposed the U.S. to accusations of hypocrisy. To many outside the U.S., American claims to defend democracy and advance human rights are little more than moralization justifying American cultural, economic, and military hegemony.
And now, with the ideological virus of wokeness having thoroughly infected American institutions, even the Pentagon, Washington grows ever more alienated from the world—even as the moralistic fervor that fuels wokeness intensifies the U.S. government’s eagerness to wage culture war on deplorables near and far.
Conservatives from Deplorable-American ranks can only say to the world: We feel your pain. They do it to U.S. too, on the home front.
And there is evidence that deplorables are noticing. A retired U.S. military source close to the data confirmed recently what I had only been told anecdotally by armed forces veterans: that military families, long a main source of recruits for the all-volunteer army, have been so alienated by the Pentagon’s woke contempt for traditional American values that they have discouraged their sons and daughters from serving.
Can Washington wake up to what its solipsistic moralism is doing to American interests abroad? Not only are woke elite policymakers turning American allies, and potential allies, against the US, but they are also earning the contempt of the most loyal and patriotic class of Americans—precisely the ones they will depend on to fight America’s battles.
You can’t wage culture war on conservatives at home and in foreign lands, and expect those same people to show up for you when the shooting starts. This, it appears, is a lesson Washington is going to have to learn the hard way. And so too will Europe, should Vladimir Putin use his new Niger allies to direct more African migrants northward into the continent, for purposes of destabilization.
Again, it is perhaps a small thing that African strongmen felt condescended to by visiting female U.S. diplomats. But little gestures like these can convey big sentiments. American diplomats used to know this, before U.S. elites came to think of the entire world as a liberal college campus.
When Culture War Affects Real War
Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Molly Phee
Photo: United States Mission Geneva, CC BY-ND 2.0 DEED
It was a small thing, really, but one of those small things that feels like a sign of something much bigger.
This week, the military junta that rules the African country of Niger announced the revocation of its military agreement with the United States, and the coming expulsion of U.S. troops based in the country. The country’s leadership also announced its turn to Russia. The move followed a disastrous visit by American officials, who arrived to lecture the hard men who led last summer’s coup about the need to restore democracy, and to stop talking to Iran about providing it uranium.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the top American officials, Molly Phee and Celeste Wallender, incensed Niger officials by speaking to them in a “condescending” way. If the U.S. can’t somehow convince the Niger junta to reverse its decision, America will not only lose an important drone base in the heart of a region that produces Islamist terrorists, but will also give Russia significant footing in a strategically significant African region. Plus, it will be easier for Iran to gain access to uranium.
It is possible that there was nothing Washington could have done to avert this calamity. On the other hand, when you are faced with a diplomatic situation in which your nation has so very much on the line, you have to proceed with all possible caution. Given the rather non-progressive sensibilities of African strongmen, how much sense did it make to send female diplomats to lecture them?
Yes, we might think Africans backward in their traditional views of the proper relationship between men and women, but this is simply part of the world’s diversity that the liberals bang on about constantly. A diplomatic approach to the world requires, you know, diplomacy.
You don’t have to approve of African male sexism to understand that it is a fact of life, and that it must be taken into account when dealing with cultures unlike one’s own.
Three summers ago, I talked with African female legislators at a political event in Italy. The women had strong opinions about Western cultural colonialism. All three were Christians, and did not like the encroachment China was making on the continent. But they all agreed that the West—that is, the United States and the European Union—hurt its own interest by refusing to accept African cultural norms.
They were talking about how Western diplomats pressure Africans to normalize LGBT, among other things. The African lawmakers—and note that they were women—said that Africans feel disrespected and, well, condescended to by the progressive Westerners. China, on the other hand, doesn’t care how the Africans choose to live. Beijing is only interested in power and resources.
According to these women, Africans know perfectly well that the Chinese are not coming to them out of the kindness, but they would rather deal with foreign powers that respect their cultural sovereignty than with the constant nagging by Western liberals.
This is a point the Hungarians and others in the former communist bloc of Europe know very well. The U.S. ambassador to Hungary often lectures the Hungarians on how backwards they are, behaving in a shockingly rude way to his host country. A couple of summers ago, visiting Warsaw for a conference, I was in a car with Poles, when we passed the U.S. embassy. It was flying the LGBT Pride flag. The Poles said they interpreted this as an official American insult to their Catholic sensibilities.
They were right, of course. No Victorian-era missionary could ever match the moralistic certainty displayed by left-wing Americans and Europeans, when it comes to instructing the savage Other about its failings. At least the missionaries understand that they have to behave with a modicum of intercultural respect to the natives. That can mean participating in discomfiting exchanges—like eating disgusting foods—for the sake of establishing mutual respect, and ultimately converting the others.
Three years ago, the American ambassador to Niger raised the Pride flag at the embassy, in the heart of the conservative Islamic nation, and issued a public statement affirming the U.S. government’s dedication to LGBT rights. Why? How did that advance American interests in this strategically critical central African nation?
For all we know, the Niger junta’s claim to have been disrespected last week by the American delegation is nothing but a cover story to justify its ruthless policy shift. Nevertheless, it is a plausible claim, one that will no doubt resonate with ordinary people in that savagely poor land. After last year’s coup, the Russian mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin praised the power grab as “the fight of [Niger’s] people against its colonizers.”
The late and unlamented Prigozhin’s words would be widely seen as the nonsense they are, if U.S. and Western cultural arrogance didn’t give them the air of truth.
Back in the 2016 campaign season, Democrat Hillary Clinton famously denounced cultural conservatives, especially working-class ones, as “deplorables”—people worthy of contempt. Since then, many on the American Right have worn that description as a badge of honor. They knew then, and they know now, that ruling-class liberal elites not only disagree with them (which is normal), but they actually hate them. They return the sentiment.
This week I met a conservative friend visiting Budapest from a major Western European country. We talked about geopolitics. He told me that it was a bitter red pill for him to swallow to realize that as much as he dislikes the governments of Russia and China, the fact is that the forces destroying the things he values most—the Christian faith, the traditional family, and the sense of nationhood—all start in America. It’s hard to disagree.
On Monday, Gallup released a poll showing that fewer Americans these days consider China and Russia to be their nation’s enemies. What’s more:
They have a point. Long gone are the days when America was the uncontested global hyperpower. Washington has squandered its material power on wars that made the world more dangerous, and also exposed the U.S. to accusations of hypocrisy. To many outside the U.S., American claims to defend democracy and advance human rights are little more than moralization justifying American cultural, economic, and military hegemony.
And now, with the ideological virus of wokeness having thoroughly infected American institutions, even the Pentagon, Washington grows ever more alienated from the world—even as the moralistic fervor that fuels wokeness intensifies the U.S. government’s eagerness to wage culture war on deplorables near and far.
Conservatives from Deplorable-American ranks can only say to the world: We feel your pain. They do it to U.S. too, on the home front.
And there is evidence that deplorables are noticing. A retired U.S. military source close to the data confirmed recently what I had only been told anecdotally by armed forces veterans: that military families, long a main source of recruits for the all-volunteer army, have been so alienated by the Pentagon’s woke contempt for traditional American values that they have discouraged their sons and daughters from serving.
Can Washington wake up to what its solipsistic moralism is doing to American interests abroad? Not only are woke elite policymakers turning American allies, and potential allies, against the US, but they are also earning the contempt of the most loyal and patriotic class of Americans—precisely the ones they will depend on to fight America’s battles.
You can’t wage culture war on conservatives at home and in foreign lands, and expect those same people to show up for you when the shooting starts. This, it appears, is a lesson Washington is going to have to learn the hard way. And so too will Europe, should Vladimir Putin use his new Niger allies to direct more African migrants northward into the continent, for purposes of destabilization.
Again, it is perhaps a small thing that African strongmen felt condescended to by visiting female U.S. diplomats. But little gestures like these can convey big sentiments. American diplomats used to know this, before U.S. elites came to think of the entire world as a liberal college campus.
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