US Elections Don’t Matter — There Is a Bigger Cause for Concern

History is teaching us a lesson and we refuse to learn

In 1904–05, there was a war between the Empire of Russia and the Empire of Japan — also known as the Russo-Japanese War. The war ended with the 1905 Treaty of Portsmouth. The then-US President Theodore Roosevelt was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1906 for playing an instrumental part in the negotiations.

We then saw the First World War between 1914 to 1918 — the war between the Central Powers and the Allied Powers. The Central Powers were comprised of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire who fought against Great Britain, France, Russia, Italy, Romania, Japan, and the United States or the Allied Powers. The war is believed to have claimed about 16 million lives.

The US only officially entered the war in 1917 and Woodrow Wilson, the US President during the period of the war, won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1919. According to the Nobel Prize website:

President Woodrow Wilson of the United States won the Peace Prize for 1919 as the leading architect behind the League of Nations. It was to ensure world peace after the slaughter of millions of people in the First World War.

After the outbreak of war in 1914, it was Wilson’s policy to keep the United States out. But Germany’s unrestricted submarine offensive sank American ships, and in 1917 Wilson took the United States into the war. While severely critical of those at home who opposed the war, he presented his Fourteen Points program for peace. Wilson recommended national self-government for oppressed peoples, a conciliatory attitude to losers in the war, and a league of nations to ensure post-war peace.

Fast forward to September 11, 2001.

Probably the darkest day in living memory for a lot of us. As we saw the WTC Twin Towers collapse like a pack of cards. I was 13 then, and I remember that image so clearly as if it was yesterday.

President George W. Bush then launched a full-fledged offensive against Taliban and Al-Qaeda by deploying US troops in Afghanistan.

The Miller Center website when describing the President’s foreign policy describes this as the following:

Congress passed a joint resolution authorizing the use of force against those responsible for the September 11 attacks, and Bush signed it on September 18, 2001. On October 7, the United States began airstrikes against Taliban military installations and al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan.

From Operation “Enduring Freedom” to Operation “Anaconda”, by early 2002, Taliban was effectively driven out of Afghanistan.

But such efforts come at a cost. By 2006, the attacks in Afghanistan had increased — this time it was Al Qaeda and Taliban based in Pakistan, but the multilateral approach of international co-operation had failed. That led to President George W. Bush to increase the US Forces in Afghanistan.

The Bush Doctrine —a term used for President Bush’s National Security Strategy became popular around 2002. The Bush Doctrine refers to multiple interrelated foreign policy principles that include unilateralism and the use of preemptive war.

The approach meant the use of immense US force — also something that had mixed responses and reactions. What started in Afghanistan would eventually end in Iraq. Deploying US armed forces and loss of life to fight a war against world terrorism may be seen by history through two different lenses.

Neoconservatives within and outside his administration strongly supported the idea of the United States acting on its own to ensure the country’s security and to protect the American people — preemptively, if necessary. Some opponents believed the doctrine was overly bellicose and its emphasis on preemptive war was unjust. Others believed the emphasis on spreading democracy around the world was naïve and unrealistic. As the situation in Iraq became increasingly unstable, the ideas behind the Bush Doctrine receded in prominence, even within the Bush administration.

This was probably in some way the first we saw of MAGA — President George W. Bush’s equivalent of MAGA.

The goal was the same — to re-establish the US as the world superpower, that terrorists should fear, and the country that was responsible to restore order to the world.

Then after George W. Bush finished his 2nd term, having won the 2nd largely from the spike in approval ratings from the war against terror, the world saw the First Black American President — Barack Obama.

Barack Obama was unique — he brought with him hope — hope of a New America. Promises of the maturity that the US had been missing from a President, and the world put him on a pedestal — some of which was probably well-deserved.

Yet, within his first year as President, he was probably the fastest to be nominated for and to win a Nobel Peace Prize.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009 is to be awarded to President Barack Obama for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples. The Committee has attached special importance to Obama’s vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons.

Obama undid some of Bush’s wrongs and added his own legacy by tackling a variety of issues — he gradually retreated US forces from Iraq completing the full withdrawal in 2011, established the US as a thought leader in the war against climate change and the steps needed around it, among many other achievements.

Yet, one thing was common with all his predecessors I’ve mentioned.

What is that common problem? The problem of the human mind of short term memory bias and rewarding and even celebrating mean-reversion.

How Is This Relevant Now?

Whether it was Theodore Roosevelt, or Woodrow Wilson or Barack Obama — they were probably men worth celebrating, but they were celebrated for reasons that should have been the norm rather than the exception.

Roosevelt brought an end to a senseless conflict, Woodrow restored sanity from the biggest crisis the world had seen in terms of the WW-I at the time, and Obama showed the world what any true leader of supposedly the world’s greatest nation should have anyway.

These men were great leaders indeed, but nothing less should be expected of the POTUS.

These men were exceptional leaders but they should have been the rule, and not the exception.

Today we find us in the same position. In Donald Trump, people have seen a President that most people disapprove of and most intellectuals want nothing to do with him. Why did the people then elect him?

It is so claimed, that the alternate at the point, wasn’t as great either — and Trump was able to show the public the dream of MAGA — Make America Great Again.

But wait, weren’t we coming off two terms of the visionary President Obama who was supposed to be the solution to everything that was wrong with the US and the world? How then was the anti-incumbency view so strong that President Trump won a very unexpected election?

Well, we all know the answer to that, or do we?

We’re at yet another point. We head into an election with President Biden leading heavily with as much as a 90 % probability of a win, according to leading polling site fivethirtyeight.

Yet, is Joe Biden the answer to all problems? Or, are we yet again celebrating the “mean reversion” — the return to normal that should have always been the standard?

The answer, I worry, is Yes. We may have gotten so used to living in a disorderly world, that we’re conditioned to celebrate and reward a mere return to normalcy. This to me is a big cause for concern, isn’t it?