The Worrisome Rise of Ultra-Globalism on the Left Wing

Extreme globalists on the left are a new brand of American Exceptionalism.

On April 6, 2017, President Trump fired 59 Tomahawk missiles at Syria’s Shayrat Airbase. It goes without saying that, upon first glance, I assumed that Americans all across the political spectrum — anti-war progressives, paleoconservatives rallying behind Trump’s quasi-non-interventionist, “America First” rhetoric, and everyone in between — would be outraged. But, to my disbelief, the exact opposite happened:

The majority of the American people — including 40% of Democrats — supported Trump’s missile strike. And even worse, the media was disturbingly uncritical.

The support among liberals for such an attack confirms something I’ve been theorizing about for some time: there is a new, ultra-globalist surge occurring in the left wing. And it’s dangerous.

I’ve always thought of the left wing’s default global policy stance as being in favor of immigration and humanitarian aid (humanitarian forms of globalism), but against militaristic regime change and new free trade deals (destructive forms of globalism).

Classically, progressives support

direct food and medical aid for people in impoverished and war-torn countries, and

acceptance of (vetted) refugees and amnesty for undocumented immigrants

but are strictly opposed to

military expansion,

nation building, and

deregulatory free trade deals such as NAFTA and the TPP

But in Syria (and other cases that I’ll lay out later) this rule is violated by the left — suddenly, nearly half the country’s liberals transform into warmongering neoliberals, falling head over heels for new wars and new free trade agreements, once overwhelmingly Republican positions. This all-of-the-above strategy for foreign affairs is an ideology I dub “left wing ultra-globalism.”

Unlike the traditional neoconservative rationale for ultra-globalism, which is founded upon blatant imperialism, nationalism, and American Exceptionalism, left wing ultra-globalism appears to derive its agenda from ethics, empathy, and a genuine desire to help those who are suffering. For instance, here are some (paraphrased) statements I’ve recently heard from my liberal friends:

“We must continue our drone strikes in north Pakistan to help the Pakistani people.” “The Syrian people are suffering, so America must militarily take out Assad.” “People who hate free trade are mostly racist white people who are against multiculturalism. We need more free trade for a more connected world.”

But these recommended policies, however well intended, fail to make the vital distinction between the progressive and regressive strands of globalism. In the end, enhanced free trade and war do not equate to humanitarian results in the real world — in fact, they objectively create the opposite.

While an ultra-globalist sees practically all world problems as being fixable by American action, nothing could be farther from the truth. The liberal ultra-globalist will call a military withdrawal from Yemen “immoral” or “careless”; in reality, it would divest from an authoritarian Wahhabi state in Saudi Arabia and halt the bombing of thousands of innocent Houthi women and children. The liberal ultra-globalist will call a withdrawal from NATO “isolationist” or “apathetic”; in reality, it would slow military proliferation, prevent additional unjustified wars from commencing, and calm the growing geopolitical polarization between the West and its nuclear-armed enemies.

The same story can be told when it comes to trade. The ultra-globalist will write off criticism of NAFTA as “apathetic towards the Mexican worker.” In reality, the exact opposite is true; NAFTA has exploited Mexican maquiladora workers for low wages and outsourced over 682,000 American jobs. The proposed Trans Pacific Partnership would be no better, involving Malaysia (a country which tolerates slave labor) and Brunei (which imposes Sharia law), putting the Asian-Pacific environment at risk, and creating an investor-state-dispute-settlement (ISDS), which would ultimately allow corporations to sue governments for “discriminating” against their profits by enforcing workers rights laws and environmental regulations.

An interview I conducted for Atlas Obscura in 2016 really opened my eyes to the horrors of the deregulation inherent in free trade deals. A local resident explained to me that NAFTA “worsened the amount of environmental damage” and “dug the tomb for traditional agriculture” in his hometown of El Salto, Mexico, where a layer of toxic foam ominously engulfs the local Lerma River. In El Salto, NAFTA and deregulation allow corporations to dump 215 gallons of lethal chemicals into the river every second, causing the town’s cancer rate to skyrocket by a factor of nine.

Deregulation kills.

NAFTA allowed American-run maquiladoras to pollute rivers like this one in El Salto, Mexico.

We should certainly have trade, no doubt, but it should be regulated fair trade coupled with protectionism, not free trade. Again, ultra-globalists fail to make this vital distinction.

Unlike harboring refugees and increasing humanitarian aid spending, regime change and free trade create no utilitarian benefit for the people of the world — in fact, they make the majority of situations radically worse. It’s vital that left wing ultra-globalists recognize that enhanced American presence abroad is not always what’s best for the people of the world.

The negative implications of ultra-globalism are exemplified when it comes to Trump’s Syrian bombing. The good intentions of Democrats fawning over Trump’s tomahawk strikes — “we have to do something to help the Syrian people!” — do not equate to tangible benefits in the real world.

At best, American intervention in Syria would be largely ineffective (as was the case with Thursday’s attacks). At worst, it could lead to nuclear war, an uptick in civilian casualties, and a government run by the likes of al-Baghdadi.

Here’s why intervening in Syria is a terrible idea — especially for those who, like me, are outraged by Assad’s war crimes and want the absolute best for the Syrian people.

Nuclear war — The world is currently experiencing a Cold War-esque geopolitical alignment, with Syria as its proxy war. The sides are clear: the U.S., NATO, Turkey, the Gulf States, and Israel on one side; Russia, China, Syria, Iran, and North Korea on the other.

With the Doomsday Clock just two and a half minutes from midnight, nuclear war between these world powers should be of utmost concern. In a joint statement released just three days after Trump’s strike, Russia and Iran announced that “from now on we will respond with force to any aggressor or any breach of red lines…and America knows our ability to respond well.” Escalating in Syria could lead to an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) crisis like the world has never seen, and with a man as unpredictable and impulsive as Trump in the Oval Office, Armageddon could be at the world’s doorstep at any second.

While the alleged ties between Trump and Putin are worthy of investigating, the biggest fear is that endless Russia-baiting from the Democratic Party will prompt Trump into escalating with Putin’s closest ally in Assad, initiating nuclear proliferation and, potentially, a third world war. Islamism — It’s amazing, given how much attention the media has given to Assad’s atrocities, that the proposed endgame in Syria is so rarely discussed. What does a successful post-war Syria look like? No one exactly knows.

If we were to take out Assad, the void would almost indefinitely be filled by two of the leading enemies of the United States — ISIS and Al Nusra (Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate). “Moderate” rebel groups such as the Free Syria Army (FSA) are now largely disbanded and have been predominantly replaced by Islamist extremists — so much so that militant jihadists, according to a recent study, constitute a whopping 60% of the rebel forces in Syria. Ironically, in the midst of conducting drone strikes against alleged Islamists in Libya, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, we are arming, training, and fighting alongside the same groups in Syria.

Taking out Assad and attempting regime change in Syria runs an inherent risk of putting ISIS or Al Nusra in charge of the country. These Islamists are the only forces in Syria that are more dangerous than Assad, as is evidenced by their brutal 2016 torching of six refugee buses. Allowing such extremists to take control of Syria is a risk that we simply cannot be willing to take. Casualties— War is never as peachy as it initially sounds. Whether intervening aerially or terrestrially, an invasion in Syria would involve a troubling slew of adverse effects.

If we want to stick with airstrikes, civilian casualties are inevitable, as our drone warfare has a preposterously high 90% civilian death rate. How could we claim to be helping the Syrian people if nine out of every ten people we kill are innocent? And the boons of such strikes would be largely minimal, as Syrian chemical weapons are notoriously difficult to locate, making our efforts costly and ineffective.

If we instead conduct a full scale invasion, the consequences would be even more dire. Putting boots on the ground would entail the same obstacles as before but would add American casualties into the mix, a fate that absolutely no one wants. History — Jeremy Scahill’s brilliant documentary, Dirty Wars, is a reason in itself to stay out of the Syrian conflict. As is evidenced by the case of Anwar al-Awlaki, a once non-violent imam who became radicalized by America’s War on Terror, heightened militarism in the Middle East can activate more terrorists than it kills.

Can you name a single American invasion in the Middle East — or any of our ruthless upheavals of democratically-elected Central American liberation theologists in the mid-20th Century — that turned out positively? Surely not. Each and every time that we’ve forcefully removed a dictator in the Middle East — be it Hussein in Iraq or Gaddafi in Libya — terrorism has risen. It would be historically inconsistent to assume that anything different would happen with Assad in Syria.

And although it appears increasingly likely that Assad was behind last week’s sarin gas attacks, we should learn from history — be it the Gulf of Tonkin incident that sparked the Vietnam War or Colin Powell’s definitive claim that Iraq possessed WMDs, both of which have been proven to be fictitious war propaganda — that the American government has a long history of taking military action based on unproven claims. At the very least, we should wait for an independent investigation to settle before waging war on another continent.

Any one of these four points on its own is reason enough to stay out of Syria militarily. But all four together make the case for non-intervention indisputable.

We aren’t non-interventionists because we don’t care about people in other countries — we resist war for the exact opposite reason: because we do care about people in other countries.

So, if we don’t involve ourselves militarily in Syria, what should we do? Easy: accept more (vetted) refugees and invest in humanitarian aid. These are both non-violent solutions, and they both actually work.