U.S. leadership failure post WWI?

**Bill Moore** · 11-11-2018

A century later, America must remember the lessons of one of its biggest blunders

We need a national security consensus to maintain the world order.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlo...=.8d217f420259

1918 was the year that the United States became what it has been ever since: the greatest of the great powers. But it was also the year that failures in American leadership, combined with a partisan media, undermined Washington’s international position, paving the way for World War II.

Newer analyses of the Treaty of Versailles make the point that the peace was not nearly as hard on Germany as critics ranging from Adolf Hitler to John Maynard Keynes contended. . . Absent Hitler, Germany would have recovered to dominate and prosper in this space no less than it does today.

And it was the reckless American retreat from global responsibility after 1918 that propelled Hitler into power. A century ago — no less than today — Washington wrestled with a president convinced that he had a knack for disrupting global power relations. This grandiose conceit produced executive grandstanding exacerbated by partisan politics and an impassioned media.

The author goes on to draw parallels to today's political and media environment, and the risk it poses to our national security. History may not repeat itself, but it does have a tendency to rhyme.

**Bill Moore** · 11-11-2018

https://www.defenseone.com/politics/...t-lost/152659/

America’s Place in the World Was on the Ballot. It Lost.

Not one. Not one reporter from the main White House press corps asked President Donald Trump during his day-after-midterm-elections press conference a single hard question about national security or the state of global affairs. Tens of thousands of U.S. troops are at war or involved in violent conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Somalia, Yemen, Niger, Mali, and beyond. Russian warplanes are nearly kissing the wings of American aircraft. Iranian vessels are harassing U.S. warships. Special operators are killing impoverished terrorists across North Africa. North Korea still has nuclear weapons.

Why? This country couldn’t care less.

You have to wonder if after 17 plus years of war, that is it so normal, it doesn't resonate with the majority of Americans not immediately affected by it. All they need to do is say they support the troops and then go about their lives.

The good news for national security watchers is that the incoming House freshmen include record numbers of veterans and a few built-in national security leaders, perhaps most notably in Rep.-elect Elissa Slotkin, who flipped a conservative Michigan district to blue.

If America’s divisiveness is the easy issue, what will it take for anyone to get down the list to the harder ones like the security of the border, or even harder, what lies beyond it: America’s global leadership for the next 100 years?