By Victor Davis Hanson
The old cultural imperialism was supposedly greedy corporatism like Disneyland, McDonald’s, and Starbucks sprouting up worldwide to supplant local competitors.
But these businesses spread because they appealed to free-will consumer demand abroad. They were not imposed top down.
The U.S. presence in Afghanistan collapsed in August 2021 amid the greatest American military humiliation in modern history. A billion-dollar new embassy was abandoned. Hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of new infrastructure at the huge Bagram Airbase was dumped.
We still do not know how many billions of dollars of sophisticated new weapons were left to the Taliban and now are making their way through global terrorists’ marts.
Yet, in our skedaddle, the LGBTQ flag still flew high from our new Kabul embassy.
A George Floyd mural was prominent on city streets.
And gender studies programs—to the tune of $787 million in American subsidies—were showcased at Kabul University, in one of the most conservative Islamic countries in the world
Rainbow flags and Black Lives Matter banners have hung from our embassy in South Korea.
Such partisan cultural activism is a diplomatic first.
The woke Left has now weaponized the country’s diplomatic missions abroad to advance highly partisan and controversial agendas that can offend their hosts, and do not represent the majority of American voters at home.
American foreign policy toward other nations seems now to hinge on their positions on the transgendered, LGBTQ acceptance, abortion, climate change, and an array of woke issues from using multiple pronouns on passports to showcasing transgendered ambassadors.
The Biden Administration in January 2022 stopped the EastMed pipeline. That joint effort of our allies Cyprus, Greece, and Israel sought to bring much needed clean-burning Mediterranean natural gas to southern Europe.
Apparently, our diplomats felt it violated our own New Green Deal orthodoxies. So we imperialists interfered to destroy a vital project of our closest allies.
The White House manifesto called the “National Strategy on Gender Equity and Equality” offers a blueprint for how to massage nations abroad to accept our values that are increasingly at odds with much of the world’s.
Do Americans really believe that embracing drag-queen shows at military bases, abortion to the moment of birth, transgendered men competing in women’s sports, and the promised effort to ban the internal combustion engine are effective ways to ensure good relations with the United States?
No wonder the Biden Administration’s new cultural imperialism is proving disastrous for a variety of reasons.
One, these imperialistic and chauvinistic agendas are pushed abroad at the very time the respect for the U.S. military is at an all-time low. It was humiliated in Afghanistan. It is now unable to recruit sufficient qualified soldiers. Its stocks of critical weapons are depleted.
The Pentagon leadership of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley, along with Joe Biden, do not radiate competence.
But they do exude woke pieties.
While we offend Middle East oil exporters and Central Europeans, China allies with Russia and Iran. India and Turkey triangulate away from the United States. Sanctimonious hectoring while appearing weak is a bad combination.
Two, these warped standards are incoherent. Is an abortion-on-demand, totalitarian China therefore an ally? How can we damn supposedly non-woke Saudi Arabia as we beg it pump more of its non-green oil before the 2022 midterms?
Remember that Hillary forced the Libyans to out themselves as gay or lesbian for being hired at the US Embassy in Benghazi just days before the attack on that Embassy!
That’s a Muslim country where it was illegal to even BE gay!
Whether John Christopher Stevens was out of the closet there, or not, they murdered him after a lot of cruel and crude torture involving sexual torture.
Really our lefties’ hypocrisy knows no bounds.
I met a “vegan” the other day. She has RICKETS! She doesn’t accept that her condition could be improved by a better diet. She is in such denial that she touts veganism as a good thing! Her doctors have given up on trying to help her because all their help involves animal-based supplements.
The 180′ twists of lefty thinking when it comes to abortion, child mutilation, paederasty and more is legendary.
Sure, America helped foreign lands in the past, but lefties use them for proxy wars.
Turns out joe is one of the planet’s biggest child traffickers ever!
Just remember that the very same who called the Vietnam Vets as Baby Killers are all probibly all Pro Choice Pro Abortion
Ding! Ding! Ding!
These aren’t values. These are character flaws. This isn’t tolerance; it is replacing traditional values with others that divide and erode. A nation takes these on as “values” at their peril. Do not expect any of our adversaries to weaken themselves internally with any of this tripe; they will grow stronger in comparison.