It's Not Just The Economist Anymore: The Global Elite Is Writing Off American Integrity

When Even the Financial Times Says American Honor Is for Sale

Hi Readers,

So one of the things I like about academia is our library access to great international journalism. It really helps with a lot of my research, especially the older newspapers and magazines that have quality archives going back decades or over a century. The Economist is a prize in this sense. Another newspaper that I really enjoy reading for fun and my research is The Financial Times, founded in 1888. Which gets to the problem I want to bring to your attention, following up on my Friday post about The Economist warning of the problems that come from a corrupt transactional America. When even the pro-business, establishment Financial Times says America has hung up an “open for business” sign and abandoned its principles for cash, we’ve crossed a threshold. This is not partisan criticism anymore. This is the global elite—the people who have benefited from American power—concluding that the system is corrupted beyond plausible deniability. There is an emerging consensus that the shining city on a hill has gone dark.

As the college kids say these days, America is “sus.” Sus = Suspect/Suspicious for those who may not be up on the slang used by the youth today.

The Financial Times walks the reader through two scenes and why they matter. In the first, President Donald John Trump hosts Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) at the partially demolished White House and turns the Khashoggi murder into a non-factor while celebrating a claimed trillion dollars’ worth of deals. In the second scene they go through last week’s proposed “peace plan” for Ukraine, a document so cynically pro-Russia that Secretary of State Marco Antonio Rubio embarrassed himself trying first to defend it then to walk it back in a confusing - for him - mix of communications with Congress. In addition to granting Russia concessions it has failed to win on the field of battle, the proposed reconstruction setup would have become a scheme for profiteers. Europe and Ukraine have so far been able to force a rewrite, but what happens next will depend on the same concern I have mentioned before: Ukraine must be willing to fight alone and hurt Russia if it wants to end the war on more favorable terms. And frankly after nearly four years of war, Ukraine should have much less dependence on the US for arms and ammo. That the US still has such leverage over them is a serious mark against Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government and a reason to call for new elections.

But my focus here is what this all means for the United States of America.

There is a rising embarrassment among old-right conservatives who believe in ideas of national honor, integrity and the American creed. They believed America First meant restoring American dignity. They wanted America to stand for something again. They are seeing American power used to extract profit from countries in crisis facing the Russians. The Russians. This is not what they signed up for, they might want to stay out of the Russo-Ukraine War because the USA is $38 Trillion in debt, but that does not mean they wanted to help Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin achieve his ambitions. The shame is not just that the world sees the US is untrustworthy and unworthy of Western leadership, rather many American conservatives now think that assessment is accurate.

When people assume you are dishonorable, they charge you a “corruption tax” on every interaction. The International Monetary Fund has described corruption as a ‘hidden tax on growth and investment.’¹ Trade deals require more concessions because partners assume you will cheat. Security partnerships demand upfront action or deployments. Everyone has to work harder. For example, diplomatic negotiations take longer because every clause needs strict enforcement mechanisms because you cannot be trusted to be sensible, fair, or charitable regarding any ambiguity. You spend more money and political capital to achieve less, because you are suspect.

Then there is the final issue, one I end my World War Two courses with: dishonorable countries make stupid decisions because corruption distorts information. In the communist and fascist countries, truth was a liability. Because loyalty to the party or the leader overrode loyalty to reality and the people, facts were distorted to appease and flatter the ones in charge. The 20th century honorless states were based on thuggery and force, the leader could never back down or appear weak, which meant information and data that contradicted them could never be promoted or acted on until catastrophe struck. Leaders surrounded themselves with yes-men who were hired for loyalty, not competence. Critical intelligence gets ignored if it contradicts what the boss wants to hear. Think of Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, aka Stalin dismissing the signs that Adolf Hitler was planning to attack the Soviet Union as disinformation. One of my mentors once described the Soviet Union as “nothing so like the economy and government of Satan on earth” by which he meant the whole system was built on lies and deception. As a result Stalin could not trust the alarm. Warnings are suppressed if they threaten profitable relationships and Stalin was profiting from Hitler’s wars, selling the Nazis the resources for their war machine. And then they bit them, killing 27 million Soviet citizens from 1941-45. Act like Stalin and eventually, you stumble into a crisis you did not see coming because your system selected for the wrong qualities. American liberal democracy was stronger because legitimacy and authority were based on law and the Constitution, not a particular leader’s image. Telling the truth was not a threat to Uncle Sam’s order, it was a critical advantage.

The USA is throwing away the qualities that made it number one.

Nations are made, defended, and preserved, not by the illusionists, but by the men and women who practice the homely virtues in time of peace, and who in time of righteous war are ready to die, or to send those they love best to die, for a shining ideal. — Theodore Roosevelt “Sound Nationalism and Sound Internationalism” in The Great Adventure

1. See IMF Direct, ‘Corruption: A Hidden Tax on Growth’ (November 5, 2015). https://www.imf.org/en/blogs/articles/2015/11/05/corruption-a-hidden-tax-on-growth