Victor Davis Hanson explains for the Daily Signal why he believes the rest of the world is warming up to the United States.
The world that we’re looking at today is radically different than that of just five years ago, radically different in the sense that it is much more in the interest of the United States. And I know that seems controversial because [President Donald] Trump is written off as someone who is too fluid and volatile.
His tweets, his verbiage, can put people off, but that’s the art-of-the-deal unpredictability of his nature. Some of it can be a drawback, some of it an advantage, but overall, it doesn’t help analysis to just look at what he says. It’s more important to see what he’s done.
Let’s go through the world abroad as it is today systematically.
Look at Latin America. Five years ago, the Chinese were controlling, through their surrogate companies, the entry and exit to Panama. Russia and China were the de facto rulers of Venezuela, with the second-largest oil reserves in the world. A slew of communist governments had taken over South America. Cuba was still defiant.
What’s happened now? There are no Chinese influencers in Panama. We have said that John Kerry was wrong. The Monroe Doctrine is not anachronistic. It’s very much alive.
There have been pro-U.S. changes in government in Venezuela, maybe not immediately yet, but there will be, as well as in Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, and Argentina. That’s just a radical change.
In other words, the Western Hemisphere is now staunchly pro-U.S. and copying many of the protocols that we are, such as being tough on crime, free-market economics, secure borders, and ending illegal immigration. They’re not sending people out of insane asylums or mental hospitals or prisons into the United States.
It’s a radically different world.
