Second in a three-part series.
When Alameda Vice Mayor Tony Daysog delivered his two minute opening statement at the Alameda City Democratic Club Congressional candidate forum on September 13th, he could barely brush on how his sense of history underpins his devout anti-war stance and his call to significantly reduce the U.S. military budget and America’s global military reach .
Two minutes does not give much of a chance to explain a complex topic steeped in history, so Daysog took the time to get into the weeds regarding his views in a three-part story set for ANN. (Read Part One here).
In several interviews, Daysog went far beyond the family history component detailed in story one , and provided much deeper, historical rationales for his call that “we, as the United States can no longer be the global cop. We can no longer have the expanding footprint that we have had in Europe.”
But even a stance as principled and stringent as that is nuanced in the face of the realpolitik of the world today, and Daysog is not oblivious.
The “global cop” metaphor invoked by Daysog has a long standing and entrenched history of its own, and it encapsulates more than America’s mission to be a global peacekeeper through use of military and other means.
The enduring phrase derives from Teddy Roosevelt’s 1904 statement that “chronic wrongdoing” by other nations that jeopardize the security interests of the U.S. could force us, “however reluctantly, to the exercise of an international police power.”
Of course, the U.S.’ expanded role of the “global cop” into that of our quasi-global police department infrastructure of today has grown far beyond what TR ever envisioned in his time.
In a way, Daysog’s view hearkens back to the limits TR had in mind when it comes to being the “global cop.”
TR spoke about “reluctance” in implementing a U.S. duty to “take action” only in exceptional cases, and engaging “only in the last resort.”
More importantly, and in line with Daysog’s view of siphoning military dollars back to domestic needs, is TR’s statement that, “ordinarily it is very much wiser and more useful for us to concern ourselves with striving for our own moral and material betterment here at home than to concern ourselves with trying to better the condition of things in other nations.”
America’s propensity to do just that has been lessened ever since the attack on Pearl Harbor, launching the U.S. into World War II, leaving Daysog to swim against the tide of history.
Since then, our nation has been largely interventionist, and attempts of various past administrations in the post WW II era to steer us back to the days of isolationism of the 1920’s and 30’s have gotten insufficient traction.
Even if the trends of history and contemporary political beliefs are against him, Daysog remains determined to try and pull us back to a more limited policy of what U.S. military intervention and aid mean today, starting with America’s relationship with NATO.
Daysog points out that the genesis of NATO, just as with the “police power” conceived by TR, was never intended to create a perpetual dependency on the U.S. for NATO’s effectiveness and self reliance.
Its architects did not envision that “formation of things like NATO and any other East Asian alliances would become geo-political/ military poles unto themselves,” said Daysog.
“The world was not necessarily always going to be a bi-polar world” as in the case of past US/Soviet relations or that of US/Russia relations today, he said.
“The whole notion was to bring back Germany in the aftermath of World War II definitely into the NATO/ Western Alliance and we succeeded in doing that, in his view.
The influence and tensions that led to NATO and other U.S. military alliances trace back to Cold War geopolitics and may not provide a valid template for today, according to Daysog.
“The Cold War has now been over for almost 30 years. But we are still orienting ourselves geo-strategiclally and budgetarily as though the Cold War was still on.”
He pointed to the post World War II policy dicta of George Kennan, a key architect of President Truman’s Containment policy to stop the spread of Communism in 1947, who asserted that The U.S. needed to form coalitions with other nations initially with the US as the lead partner.
“It was granted that the US was going to lead the coalition, and understandably so, but once they were on their own, economically on their feet and that they were militarily robust enough,” they were to assume increasing responsibility for their own independence and sovereignty.
Ironically, Containment and Cold War tenets were what led Daysog’s dad to serve in Vietnam, which will be detailed in part three of this story.
In his view NATO and other nations have become too dependent on US prowess and dollars , and the U.S. ought to throttle back and press them to take greater responsibility for and control of their regional affairs.
“They’re big enough now. Let Macron or Germany be the global leader of NATO. “
Daysog does not take as axiomatic that the US still needs to be in the driver’s seat, despite fissures, indecisiveness and reluctance on the part of European members of NATO members.
It is, in a way, a perspective change that Daysog envisions, namely to catalyze European nations to assert more sovereignty over their own regional affairs, even if they don’t truly seek it and still want the major sums and influence of the U.S. stake in NATO.
“I think that we have fulfilled our objective. They are for the most part democratic republics that have strong constitutions in place, and that their governments are able to work well with each other to determine their own fates. They do it through the EU already, so let’s let them.”
As evidence of that capability, Daysog cited the position of NATO’ Secretary General since 2014, Jens Stoltenberg a Norwegian and the first European to head the military alliance.
Daysog draws a line between his view of former President Trump and the isolationist sentiments he inconsistently, if not, at times, incoherently, proffered. “Many within the Democratic party have long talked about lessening it before Trump. It’s not just a Trump policy. The fact of the matter is that Trump was all too happy to expand the military anywhere else, and more too happy to saber rattle,” said Daysog.
