To the Editor:

In his September cover essay “The Meltdown,” Bret Stephens forgets to mention two pieces of ice that did not melt. The nuclear freeze in Iran is significant. Iran has diluted its enriched uranium, agreed to video surveillance and in-person inspection, and stopped work on its heavy-water plutonium reactor.

The other piece is the removal of all of Syria’s chemical weapons. Imagine a country giving up its stockpile of poison gas. Both of these exceptional feats were done using diplomacy and economic sanctions.

Marv Willerman
Lincolnwood, Illinois

To the Editor:

While I agree with Bret Stephens that America is moving toward assuming a more isolationist stance, I would ask, Precisely what is it that activist hawks would wish us to do? Complaining that we are not doing something is fine, but the “action” these folks seem to advocate usually involves the projection of force. As a country, we (both left and right) are tired of our kids dying overseas. We are also tired of paying for these wars.

The projection of force to “prove” to our foes that we are serious about sacrificing our kids for any of our global interests is a useless effort that will keep us in a constant state of war. This boneheaded policy will serve only to teach our enemies that at their slightest yip we will scamper across the globe and flush billions of taxpayer money and thousands of our citizens’ lives to “prove” that we won’t take crap from anyone. Just how long will that “strategy” last?

Mr. Stephens’s article is full of carping about a “lack of leadership.” Yet he offers precisely zero ideas as to what is to be done other than create a larger and more profoundly expensive military. So just how will America pay for this macho posturing that Stephens advocates, even assuming that it would have any effect (Bush’s adventurism being a perfect example of expensive American swagger for scant payoff)?

Is every foreign issue a nail for the military hammer?

Conservatives don’t want to pay taxes, and yet they want the most expensive thing that the government buys and they want unlimited amounts of it. When young Americans no longer want to sign up to be fodder for macho posturing, will Mr. Stephens suggest we reinstate the draft? Note that the policies of defunding education are already being felt in the military, with large numbers of prospective enlistees being unfit for service because they lack sufficient education.

The truth is that Mr. Stephens lacks the creativity and historical perspective to see that America is limited in what it can do in the world. This is just a fact.

Mark Davidson
Palm Springs, California

To the Editor:

“The Meltdown” is spot-on accurate in its description of a man who was no more prepared for—or temperamentally suited to—the presidency than was Jimmy Carter or George W. Bush. As a liberal, I agree with virtually all of Bret Stephens’s points about Obama’s foreign-policy failures and disasters, but it rankles me to see him so blithely include Ronald Reagan in the company of Harry Truman, Dean Acheson, and Winston Churchill.

By all accounts, Reagan was a far more disengaged president than Obama. It was, after all, Ronald Reagan, that Great Defender of Freedom, who said nothing and did nothing when Saddam Hussein gassed the Kurds in 1988, because he didn’t want to offend a dictator who was then our buddy. It was Ronald Reagan who secretly sold military weapons to Iran—a terrorist nation—in violation of U.S. policy and numerous international agreements. Imagine the outrage in your article if Obama had done either of those things.

And let’s not forget that it was Ronald Reagan who seriously proposed and advocated—during his second-term Iceland summit meeting with Gorbachev—total nuclear disarmament for the United States, provided the Soviet Union agreed to do likewise.

A man of vision, you say? Reagan never did explain—nor apparently did it ever occur to him to explain—how he would persuade China, Israel, Britain, France, and India to do the same. Nor did it ever occur to him that even if those countries did destroy their nuclear arsenals, only rogue nations such as North Korea and Iran would one day have nuclear weapons. Why does Reagan get a free pass for publicly advocating U.S. nuclear disarmament while Obama is savaged for doing so?

If Reagan had actually committed the U.S. to a program of total nuclear disarmament, he would have been tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail—and rightfully so. Many Democrats, this reader included, agree that Obama has been a bitter disappointment, exactly as described in the article. But please let’s stop making Ronald Reagan into such a sainted hero. The facts of his presidency and policies belie his hero status.

David Henson
Stow, Ohio

To the Editor:

After the end of the Obama presidency, the United States may not find itself, in the words of Bret Stephens, in a state of “inexorable decline,” but it will be under crushing pressure to prove that it is not. On the economic front, which Mr. Stephens only briefly mentions, it is entirely possible that the dollar may be removed from its position as international reserve currency, thereby attaining more or less parity with toilet paper. Then comes a global depression and probably a lot of little wars or a big one. Mighty Casey, if he appears, is not going to have an easy turn at bat, to say the least.

Yehoshua Friedman
Kokhav HaShahar, Israel

To the Editor:

Bret Stephens’s article detailing the problems and flaws in President Obama’s plans and programs is reasoned and articulate. The difficulties are defined as partly a lack of attention to detail and lack of a consistent and measured program. There is, however, a major deficiency in the analysis, a sort of third rail that is not to be approached or discussed. That is, what if the president and his intimate advisers really do have a broad agenda that is not to be exposed, and are executing it?

Harold B. Reisman
Carlsbad, California

To the Editor:

One shutters to think what lasting damage will come of having such a profoundly unfit man in the White House for eight years. In truth, we might have to wait until he leaves office before we know the whole story of what he and his incompetent and overly ideological administration have done to the country.

It once seemed to me improbable, if not impossible, to think that Obama was bent on pursuing a course that weakened America permanently. Now, that doesn’t seem so farfetched. His serial blunders, lies, abuses of power, and indifference to democratic principles are beginning to reveal a purpose that can only be thought of as malign.

Mark Alessi
Kittery Point, Maine

To the Editor:

Bret Stephens’s very disturbing yet trenchant article clearly portrays the mess the United States and the West is in under the Obama administration. Militarily, as he points out, we are weaker than at any time in the past 70 to 100 years. The cure for that is obvious: Drastically increase military expenditures; rebuild the Navy, Army, and our nuclear forces; and accelerate military research and development of new weapons systems. All that is easier said than done, but even assuming those things were to be done, some very vexing truths must be faced. First, as Mr. Stephens points out, there is at present no potential presidential candidate who possesses the charisma, force of personality, or persuasive power to reverse the course of our current decline in influence around the world. No Truman, no FDR, no Reagan. The current crop of would-be presidents seems depressingly diminutive beside those giants, albeit with the advantages of hindsight.

Second, Obama is the first president in my lifetime who affirmatively desires to reduce America’s strength and influence in the world. He has firmly rejected the idea of American exceptionalism and hegemony. Like it or not, we elected and reelected him, and we are stuck with him for two more years. We can only hope that we can stagger through to the next president with a minimum of irreparable harm to our security and that of the West. With the current daily unfolding of destructive events, one cannot help but be dubious.

But I am troubled by a deeper question raised by Mr. Stephens’s article. The fact is that we are not the same country we were 50 or even 20 years ago. I wonder whether we have reached a tipping point culturally and demographically that reflects the American people’s fundamental retreat from greatness, whether we have at last reached a turning point, when we will no longer be distracted from our rock concerts, our “twerking” exhibitions, and our Twitter accounts by external threats to our own security and even our existence. The great leader for whom Mr. Stephens vainly scans the horizon must not only appear, he or she must also be elected by a people willing to shoulder the burdens, sacrifices, and risks that will be required to reverse the present perilous challenges to our country and our culture. Does the dream of American greatness, power for good, and resilience still survive in most American hearts, or is it already behind us?

Gary R. Gober
Nashville, Tennessee

To the Editor:

I have been reading about the Eisenhower presidency lately, particularly his organization of the decision-making process in the White House—his regular Cabinet meetings, his reliance on experienced and competent subordinates, his refusal to play politics on important issues, his utter confidence in dealing with experienced members of Congress and business people. The contrast with the current president is astounding. We have elected a man—twice!—who never had the maturity or experience to be president, who has no management or negotiating skills, and who, I suspect, cannot deal with grown men and women as emotional equals. Eisenhower once referred to Lyndon Johnson as a small, petty man. I can only guess at what his opinion of Obama would be.

J. Castle
Pawtucket, Rhode Island

Bret Stephens writes:

One of the pleasures of writing for Commentary is the opportunity for authors to have some give-and-take with the magazine’s readers. So let me begin by reminding Marv Willerman, who says I “forgot to mention” what he calls “the nuclear freeze” with Iran along with “the removal of all of Syria’s chemical weapons” that, in fact, my article discusses both. To wit:

As for Syria, perhaps the most devastating assessment was offered by Robert Ford, who had been Obama’s man in Damascus in the days when Bashar al-Assad was dining with John Kerry and being touted by Hillary Clinton as a “reformer.”

“I was no longer in a position where I felt I could defend the American policy,” Ford told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour in June, explaining his decision to resign from government. “There really is nothing we can point to that’s been very successful in our policy except the removal of about 93 percent of some of Assad’s chemical materials. But now he’s using chlorine gas against his opponents.”

And:

It is too soon to tell what kind of nuclear deal the West will strike with Iran—assuming it strikes any deal at all. But after years of prevarication on one side and self-deceit on the other, the likeliest outcomes are that a) Iran will get a bomb; b) Iran will be allowed to remain within a screw’s twist of a bomb; or c) Israel will be forced, at great risk to itself, to go to war to prevent a) or b) because the United States would not do the job.

Mr. Willerman may object that these are just brief asides, but my article was intended as an overview of the Obama foreign-policy record, and there’s a lot of ground to cover. If he wants a more in-depth analysis, let me refer him to my lengthy March 2009 Commentary article, “The Syria Temptation—And Why Obama Must Resist It,” which warned of the perils of doing business with Bashar al-Assad, and my July 2010 essay, also in Commentary, “Iran Cannot Be Contained.”

Let me also note that in October, CNN and other news sources reported that Syria failed to disclose at least four of its chemical-weapons sites. As for Iran, it continues to stonewall UN inspectors when it comes to detailing its nuclear-weapons programs.

Next up is Mark Davidson. His complaint is that I don’t offer a blueprint for a better foreign policy, that not every problem is “a nail for the military hammer,” and that I “lack the creativity and historical perspective to see that America is limited in what it can do in the world.”

Well, I have good news for him. I did write precisely that book: America in Retreat: The New Isolationism and the Coming Global Disorder, published on November 18 by Sentinel. I won’t rehash the analysis here, though Mr. Davidson can rest assured it provides plenty of historical context.

I would also note that “the most expensive thing that the government buys” is not, as Mr. Davidson claims, military hardware. The real money is in entitlements: In 2013, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 19 percent of the federal budget went to “defense and international security assistance.” By contrast, 24 percent went to Social Security, 22 percent to medical programs such as Medicaid, 12 percent to various safety-net programs, and 8 percent to veterans’ and federal retirees’ benefits.

David Henson’s focus is Ronald Reagan. If he wants me to say that Reagan should never have sold arms to Iran, or that he should have been outspoken in his denunciation of Saddam Hussein’s gassing of the Kurds, or that his advocacy of U.S. nuclear disarmament was misguided—well, he’ll get no argument from me.

I would only point out that while Reagan called for nuclear disarmament in theory, in practice he built the MX missile, fielded the Pershing II missile, deployed the Trident missile, built a 600-ship Navy, and persuaded Mikhail Gorbachev that the Soviet Union could never win an arms race against the United States. By contrast, Obama seems to mean what he says: The U.S. nuclear arsenal is shrinking precipitously even as the number of nuclear challengers (and therefore of countries that depend on the U.S. nuclear umbrella) is growing.

That said, I thank Mr. Henson for describing President Obama as “a bitter disappointment, exactly as described in the article.”

Writing from Israel, Yehoshua Friedman worries that by the time Obama leaves office, the dollar may fall from its perch as the world’s reserve currency. Also, there might be another Depression. Sorry to sound like an advertisement for myself, but my book offers an entire chapter imagining the world in 2019, and the crises that will confront the next president. So I urge Mr. Friedman to read it. My fear is that a sharp rise in U.S. interest rates will create economic shockwaves from China to Russia to the Persian Gulf, creating political incentives for aggressive behavior. Then again, predicting the future is a lucrative business with a lousy track record.

Harold B. Reisman gives voice to a suspicion one often hears, which is that the serial failures of Obama’s foreign policy are, in fact, not failures at all but part of a cunning design.

As I note, incompetence alone cannot explain the failures of a policy that is driven by an overarching desire to shrink America’s geopolitical footprint. This, as I wrote, is what Obama’s brand of “progressivism” is all about:

Above all, progressivism believes that the United States is a country that, in nearly every respect, treads too heavily on the Earth: environmentally, ideologically, militarily, and geopolitically. The goal, therefore, is to reduce America’s footprint; to “retrench,” as the administration would like to think of it, or to retreat, as it might more accurately be called.

To what end? “We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America,” Obama said on the eve of his election in 2008. If ObamaCare is anything to go by, that fundamental transformation involves a vast expansion of the entitlement state; the growth of federal administrative power at the expense of Congress and the states; the further subordination of private enterprise to government regulation—and, crucially, the end of Pax Americana in favor of some new global dispensation, perhaps UN-led, in which America would cease to be the natural leader and would become instead the largest net contributor. The phrase “nation-building at home” captures the totality of the progressive ambition. Not only does it mean an end to nation-building exercises abroad, but it suggests that an exercise typically attempted on failed states must be put to use on what progressives sometimes see as the biggest failed state of all: the United States.

Then again, the notion that Obama aims to transform America’s role in the world does not exclude the possibility that he is also incompetent. After all, if he really were as devilishly clever as some of his detractors imagine, then he would have to carry public opinion along with him. And yet broad margins of Americans now take a dim view of his foreign policy, which in turn will spell trouble for any future “progressive” president seeking to duplicate his foreign policy. Hillary Clinton, for one, seems to get at least that much.

I thank Mark Alessi and J. Castle for their thoughtful letters. I also thank Gary Gober and offer one consoling thought. The late 1970s, too, were an era of American retreat and weakness, of major cultural shifts, economic pressures, and serious doubts about the prospects of liberal democracy. And yet those were also the years in which the great companies of the future—Apple, Microsoft, Oracle, Home Depot, News Corp., among others—were being born; in which conservatives seized the intellectual high ground; and in which Ronald Reagan became the central figure of the Republican Party.

America’s troubles today are many and grave. But our capacity for self-renewal remains unmatched. We’ve survived worse. We’ll survive again. The outcome is not in doubt. The only question is the price we’ll have to pay.

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