Victor Davis Hanson writes about how Harry Truman had to be a quick study when it came to foreign policy, upon the sudden death of Roosevelt. He described how Truman learned from his early mistakes and gradually developed a non-Wilsonian doctrine for foreign affairs. Some interesting history.
Truman's no-nonsense Secretary of State Dean Acheson summed up the president's doctrines: "Released from the acceptance of a dogma that builders and wreckers of a new world order could and should work happily and successfully together, he was free to combine our power and coordinate our action with those who did have a common purpose."
Ever since, most Democrats have embraced Truman's "common purpose." That means containing rival anti-Western ideologies, establishing alliances of similarly-minded democratic allies, and periodically standing up to regional thugs.
But not Jimmy Carter. Hanson describes some of the similarities between Carter's foreign policy actions and those, so far, of President Obama.
Will an inexperienced Barack Obama, in the fashion of Harry Truman, learn quickly that the world is chaotic and unstable — best dealt with through strength and unabashed confidence in America's historic role galvanizing democratic allies to confront illiberal aggressors?
Or will a sermonizing Mr. Obama follow the aberrant Democratic path of the sanctimonious Jimmy Carter: finger-wagging at allies, appeasing enemies, publicly faulting his less than perfect predecessors, and hectoring the American people to evolve beyond their supposed prejudices?
America awaits the president's choice. The world's safety hinges upon it.
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