You Can’t Just Give Something Away and Instantly Get It Back if You Change Your Mind
Much of the advantages our nation has that the Trump administration is undermining will not come fully back even if the next administration reverses policies. To understand why, consider the history of how we achieved some of the good things and advantages we’ve had which are being lost.
After World War II much of the world was not up to excelling at many of the things that make a country great. Academic institutions, scientific and technological development, national economies, and industry were in most cases hardly at their best. Europe was recovering, Germany was defeated and just starting to change course toward being a cooperative country again. Japan was defeated, China was nothing like the world power it would later become, Russia/U.S.S.R. had not been as advanced a country as some to start with and it had a lot of recovering to do as well, and it was going through political changes.
That left the U.S. in relatively good shape and poised to leap in economic capacity, scientific and technological development, industry, and world leadership. From that foundation the U.S. gained all sorts of special status in the world. It was U.S. companies, with and without government involvement and support, that made scientific discoveries and technological advances. It was U.S. universities that the “best and brightest” young minds around the world wanted to come to to get their degrees. And with their degrees, then either stay and work in the U.S. or at least have a network of contacts here they would later collaborate with. It was the U.S. dollar that became the standard currency to rely on, the global “reserve” currency. It was the massive U.S. military that was looked to as the anchor of maintaining international order. It was the U.S. generally that was looked to for world leadership. And this is only a partial list.
Much of those advantages we have managed to maintain. Partly by continuing to be the biggest or most advanced in many of these things, but not with as much difference as was true shortly after the war. Europe recovered, Germany turned into an industrial powerhouse, so did Japan. China’s role in the world has greatly expanded, Russia has advanced in some ways and also evolved its desire to affect the world and evolved its methods of doing so. We are still the leader but not as much heads and shoulders above others. So, some of those advantages we’ve maintained we’ve done so partly just out of legacy.
Take where the bright young minds of the world go for education. If there was no legacy of our leading that, if it was starting from scratch, we would still be one leader, but many other countries would get more of their share of that. We’ve maintained the degree of advantage we’ve had in some of these areas by being good at husbanding them and encouraging them. The field of education and therefore of science is one. The degree of economic leadership for instance among developing countries is another. The degree of military leadership, and therefore getting more of our say of how that goes, for good or ill, is another.
When we interrupt our leadership on those areas, even temporarily, we can recover by reversing course but it won’t come back as much because we will have given up the legacy hold we had. We will just get our proportionate part of each of these, but now in a world where we are ahead of others but not nearly so much as we were after the war.
When students look more to other countries for their education and to develop their collaborations because we’ve scared off even some of the best aspects of immigration, when developing countries look more to China or others for big economic partners because we have overly focused on ourselves and not on our footing around the world, when military decisions are being made by a collaboration of European countries rather than the Pentagon because we stepped back from NATO and from global influence, then even if we reverse course and open those doors again we do so with a reduced advantage, reduced reason for the world to turn to us.
Our position after World War II gave us many birds in the hand, many of which we’ve continued to hold onto. When you open the hand, the bird flies. You don’t get that back just because you close the hand again. Current policies are letting many birds fly.
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