Steyn: 'We Are Entering a Post-American World'

On Hugh Hewitt’s Thursday radio show, conservative columnist Mark Steyn gave a sobering assessment of American power in the world as nation’s celebration of Independence Day was about to begin.

Steyn explained that other nations are looking at ways to fill the void the lack of U.S. power left and he pinned the blame on President Barack Obama.

Partial transcript as follows (courtesy of “The Hugh Hewitt Show”):

HEWITT: I’m going to borrow some of the power that I need. Now that does bring me, though, to one development that my guests have been split on. Michael O’Hanlon thought it was a good idea. It makes VDH a little bit nervous, which is that our friends in Japan have reinterpreted their constitution vis-à-vis the amount of military power that they can deploy, use in support of other allies, et cetera, abroad, away from Japan. Mike O’Hanlon said this is common sense. Victor Davis Hanson said this reflects the evaporation of American power in the world, and it’s not going to be just Japan. It’s going to be everybody running to get their own guns. What do you think, Mark Steyn?

STEYN: Yes, I tend to agree with that, and Victor is a believer in the American umbrella, which is the situation that’s prevailed since the Second World War, where some of the wealthiest countries in the world like Japan or like Germany were able to not, in a sense, put up the money for their own defense, because America, the American umbrella was over them. Obama, if you learn anything from the last six years, it’s that we are entering the post-American world. And whether you’re an enemy of the United States or an ally of the United States, you’ve got to adjust to that. And I entirely understand why the Japanese would conclude, as the Polish foreign minister concluded a couple of weeks ago, that when it comes to it, the Americans are not going to be there for them. The Royal Australian Navy a couple of years ago held exercises with the Chinese, joint exercises. And I said to a naval officer down there that I know, I said well, didn’t you guys all find that a bit odd? And he said well, this is the reality. When America withdraws from the Pacific, Japan and Indonesia and Australia and China are all still going to be there, and we’re going to have to deal with the new reality as best we can. Japan is dealing with the post-American world. Poland is. Australia is. Singapore is. That is simply a reality of five years of Obama foreign policy.

HEWITT: Well then, Dinesh D’Souza’s new movie, America: Imagine The World Without It, is not so much a dire projection, it’s reality. I don’t know if you’ve seen it, yet, by the way. It’s a terrific movie, and it’s not really apocalyptic. It simply presents what the left has been about, believes, and what Hillary’s about. I think it’s going to do very well as the box office, but I don’t know if the great turn is upon us. We’ll know in five months, Mark Steyn. What do you think?

STEYN: Well, again, I think that’s the great question. You know, when you go back and look at some of the things Mitt Romney was saying, for example, about the economy in 2012, it made a lot of sense. The economy’s a disaster, the economy’s a bust, Obama hasn’t been able to jump start the economy. And I think the response of a big sliver of the American people was that’s all the more reason to vote for more permanent, multigenerational government dependency, which is a very sad thought for the eve of Independence Day. But a lot of Americans, particularly the ones who supplied his margin of victory, voted for a kind of big government nanny, because Obama has so flat-lined the economy, that they don’t want to take their risks out there in the new normal, and they’ll cling to nanny’s apron strings in the service of government dependence, a very sad thought.

HEWITT: But Mark, we’ve seen that. We saw that in Great Britain in the 50s and the 60s. Do people not remember that?

MS: Well, I think that’s what’s so interesting. There’s nothing new. There’s nothing new about Obama, what Obama’s doing. It’s ancient stuff that was applied in the rest of the Western world between the 1940s and the 1970s, in which they all gradually pulled away from, not just in Britain, not just in New Zealand, but even Sweden. And he has not, and so there’s nothing new about it. All that’s different is nobody’s ever tried to do it to a nation of 300 million people on the scale that this guy’s doing it.

HEWITT: What a sobering thought on the eve of the 4th of July. Have a great Independence Day tomorrow anyway, Mark Steyn.

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