With CHARLIE HARPER
THERE’S been a lot of talk since the beginning of this year about American resolve. Mostly, it’s been in the context of the war in Ukraine, soon entering its second year. US allies in Europe, who have emphatically joined the Americans in sending money, materiel and weaponry to support Ukraine’s effort to repel the Russian invaders, are said to be feeling a bit queasy about American determination to continue the supply of billions of dollars’ worth of assistance to Volodymyr Zelensky and his embattled Kyiv government.
As President Vladimir Putin moves to full mobilisation of the reeling Russian economy to support his territorial revanchist ambitions in Ukraine, numerous reports tell of his conviction that American and Western European voters will soon enough tire of the real or perceived economic drain on their lifestyle and prosperity. Experts opine on TV that Putin can afford to play the “long waiting game” until Western resolve sags and Ukraine crumbles at last.
There is some basis for this. From far-left progressives in the Democratic Party to right-wing libertarians and other isolationists in Republican ranks, there is indeed restlessness about the amount of aid Washington is providing to Ukraine.
Maverick libertarian GOP Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky has said that “opposing big government spending is not isolationism, it’s common sense. Our country faces an inflation crisis and adding more debt now is a mistake”. Paul has voted against aid to Ukraine. So far, he remains in the minority.
Paul’s Kentucky colleague, Senate Minority Leader McConnell, was clearly embarrassed by Paul’s votes. McConnell told Fox News that “my colleague, Senator Paul, has always been basically an isolationist. He’s proud of it and believes that’s where America ought to be. He represents a tiny percentage of the Senate Republican Conference”.
“There’s always been a strand of isolationism in our party, but it’s not anywhere near the dominant view, which was expressed in the vote that we had today and again when we vote on the admission of Finland and Sweden into NATO,” McConnell added.
Scholar Robert Kagan, a historian at the well-regarded Brookings Institution in Washington, told the New York Times this week that “whatever isolationist twitches Americans may have, the fact is that, for the last century-plus, a majority of them have supported using US power to shape a liberal world order that kept the world tilted toward open political systems and open markets in more places in more ways on more days — enough to keep the world from becoming a Hobbesian jungle”.
Kagan elaborated. “This is an order in which autocratic great powers like Nazi Germany, imperial Japan or modern Russia and China are not free to simply devour their neighbours. And this is an order where more democracies than ever have been able to flourish, and where free markets and open trade have lifted more people out of poverty than at any time in the history of the world. It’s not always perfect — but in a world where perfect is never on the menu, this order has produced almost 80 years without a Great Power war, the kind of war that can destabilise the whole.”
At his State of the Union address to Congress on Tuesday night, US President Joe Biden pointed out the Ukrainian ambassador in the VIP gallery of the House chamber. “We will stand with you until the battle is won,” he exclaimed, to loud, bipartisan applause. Republicans who had sat in stony silence or heckled the president at other points in his long address almost all rose in support of Ukraine. Zelensky must have been smiling.
Still, nagging doubts remain. In December, the Congressional Progressive Caucus rather incautiously released a proposed letter urging President Biden to “engage in direct talks with Russia” to help bring an end to the war in Ukraine. Although the letter placed the blame for the war on Putin and applauded American support for the war effort, other Democrats in Congress were critical of the progressives. The letter was quickly rescinded. But the isolationist sentiment will linger.
Kagan tried to put into historical perspective America’s growing dilemma about increasing engagement with Ukraine.
“Americans continually struggle to reconcile contradictory interpretations of their interests — one focused on security of the homeland and one focused on defense of the liberal world beyond America’s shores. The first conforms to Americans’ preference to be left alone and avoid the costs, responsibilities and moral burdens of exercising power abroad. The second reflects their anxieties as a liberal people about becoming what FDR called a “lone island” in a sea of militarist dictatorships. The oscillation between these two perspectives has produced the recurring whiplash in US foreign policy over the past century.
“That the United States is flawed and uses its power foolishly at times is not debatable. But if you cannot face squarely the question of what would happen in the world if the United States kept to itself, then you are not engaging these difficult questions seriously.”
Super Bowl 57 is almost here – will you be watching?
SUPER Bowl 57 is nearly upon us. Will you watch it on Sunday? And if you do, will you be at least as interested in the half-time show and advertisements as in the game? It’s been said that on the day after the game, most people who watched it can’t recall the score or even who won. But most of them remember their favorite couple of commercials, and most can recall special moments from the halftime extravaganza.
According to surveys, over 99 million people watched the Super Bowl last year; the record of over 114 million viewers was set eight years ago. The Nielsen ratings company figures that 90 percent of Americans watching television during the time when the big game was on TV one year ago were watching it, and not anything else. The NFL championship game is annually the biggest TV event of the year in the US.
This year’s Super Bowl will be played at the stadium in suburban Phoenix where the Arizona Cardinals normally play their games. The Cardinals, incidentally, are one of only four of the NFL’s 32 teams never to have played in the Super Bowl. The others are the relatively new Houston Texans and two teams who dominated the league in the 1950s and early 1960s – the Cleveland Browns and the Detroit Lions.
The Philadelphia Eagles and Kansas City Chiefs are this season’s finalists. While the Chiefs were immediately installed as slight betting favorites after the conference championship games two weeks ago, the betting line shifted quickly to favour the Eagles by one or two points. There are all sorts of “prop bets” available, ranging from who will score the most points in the first half of the game to with which colour of Gatorade the winning coach will be doused.
Both teams won their conference titles with identical 14-3 records, so they have each only had to play two home games to reach this point. The Eagles had a significantly easier path in the postseason, comfortably dispatching the San Francisco 49ers and New York Giants by a combined 69-14 score. The 49ers lost almost all their quarterbacks before or during the game against the Eagles, and the Giants finally appeared to be stunned by their surprising success this year.
The Chiefs, on the other hand, squeezed by Cincinnati and Jacksonville teams led by two of the most talented young quarterbacks in the league. Many observers felt that Kansas City was lucky to have defeated the Bengals, who lost to the Rams in last season’s Super Bowl. Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes, a postseason veteran at the age of 27, may play in the big game hindered by an ankle injury that could affect his lethal mobility.
Many prognosticators are forecasting a high-scoring game. But both teams, most especially the Eagles, have defenses that can dominate games. And the Eagles have a healthier offense led by young gunslinger Jalen Hurts. Much is being made of the fact that this is the first Super Bowl in which both starting QBs are African-American. It’s worth noting that the Eagles’ NFC East division has won by far the most Super Bowls.
The betting preference here is the “under”, which would pay off if the teams combine for less than 51 points. And for Philadelphia to win its second championship in the past five years.
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