Carrick Ryan

Moral authority may seem like a nebulous and entirely subjective construct, but its geopolitical utility is real, even for a military superpower.

Hard power compels, soft power attracts, moral authority legitimises. Without legitimacy, even overwhelming power starts to look like force without consent. This is historically where empires begin to fail
The Roman Empire, the British Empire, and the USSR, did not disintegrate as the result of military weakness, but because the cost of maintaining their empire without consent became unsustainable.

While the US has used used force disingenuously throughout history, it has gone to great lengths to market these actions to the world as morally legitimate, and to hide, as best they could, the acts that most would recognise as immoral.

For all its ethical failings throughout the Cold War, the US at least presented itself as a necessary bulwark against the threat of authoritarian communist communist expansion.

The bombing of Belgrade was an act to prevent genocide, the support of militants in Syria and Libya could be accepted as the support of domestic resistance against unforgivable tyrants.

Even its greatest crime, the 2003 invasion of Iraq, was unquestionably illegal, yet still morally legitimised to some extent by the murderous barbarity of Saddam Hussein and the irrefutable danger he posed to the international community.

This moral authority of the US created a clear line in the minds of most people of the world. Though nothing close to perfect, the side that America stood behind tended to support the values of freedom over tyranny, pluralism over totalitarianism, and choice over coercion. This may not have been a universal perception, but it has been the prevailing consensus more often than not.

This meant that for much of recent history, compliance with a US led world order was voluntary for most of the world. “Rogue states” would come and go, but there was never any confusion as to where the “international community” stood… it was with with the USA.

It’s not that the abduction of Nicola Maduro is inherently immoral, it’s that no attempt has been made to assert its morality. Maduro is unquestionably an illegitimate despot, but he is no Saddam Hussein.

He has not murdered US journalists like the Saudi Crown Prince. He has not threatened war against the US like the North Korean despot he “fell in love” with. His military regime is not nearly as corrupt as that operated by the Egyptian President who was welcomed into the White House and receives billions in military aid. From Erdogan, to Orban, to Putin… Trump embraces dictators and shows disdain for democratically elected leaders. This was not about democracy.

This also has nothing to do with drugs. Almost none of Venezuela’s drugs end up in the USA, and Trump’s recent pardon of a convicted Honduran President who ran a far more overt Narco-State makes a mockery of the argument.

This was an assertion of power within its claimed “sphere of influence”. It was a command to obedience and demonstration of the new rules by which it plays. As Trump’s recent National Security Strategy lays out: “After years of neglect, the United States will reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American pre-eminence in the Western Hemisphere.”

This isn’t about oil, it’s about power. This is “Great Power Politics”, where Great Powers only respect other Great Powers, and all others must pay their respect. But this is where Trump has greatly misunderstood the true source of hegemonic US power.

Take Australia as an example; historically, the US’ closest military and diplomatic ally, and an incredibly important strategic partner in the Pacific.

But as the moral difference between the US and China narrows in the public consciousness, in particular, how they use their power against others, at some stage the alliance with the US will be judged almost exclusively on geostrategic rather than ideological terms. It would be naive of the US to presume the Australian public would not consider a strategic shift towards China if the only variable is self-interest.

Similarly, throughout Europe, Asia, and the democracies of North and South America, Trump appears to be convinced that Hard Power alone can be used to compell allegiance. He might be right… for a while… but empires held together by fear tend to fracture faster than those held together by shared values.

The free people of the world are now looking at the White House and wondering exactly what values they actually share any more.