Don Draper diplomacy: How the U.S. could move forward by going backwards

It's probably always a little dangerous to apply principles from interactions at a personal level and apply them to nation-states. For example, drawing lessons from the economies of individual families and suggesting countries should do similar things is usually an imperfect analogy, because debt means different things to nations and families. When I was an evangelical, most believers I knew would twist themselves into knots trying to show why "turn the other cheek" was an individual principle, not one for countries to apply to their militaries. Whether their hermeneutics were sound, I can't say, but it's clear they knew somehow that this had to be the way to read it, because reading it the other way would have meant the end of the American way of life they enjoyed. 

While respecting that what applies at an individual level may not make sense at a macroscopic, national level, we can still use metaphors and similes from everyday life if we're just using them the way metaphors and similes are meant to be used: figures of speech of limited value, meant only to illustrate one particular ground (point of the comparison) through a specific vehicle and tenor (thing and other thing it's being compared to). 

Mad Men and America

I have a fondness for reading the show Mad Men as an allegory of America, or at least a fairly extended metaphor for America. Don Draper especially seems to me like a microcosm of the United States in many ways. His past is poor farm life, but he pretends the real him is flash and dazzle and top-of-the-line new products and Madison Avenue. He tells himself his past doesn't matter, and that through thinking only of the promise of the future, he will find salvation. In the clip from the show that Netflix used over and over for its preview segment, Don waxes rhapsodic about happiness, which he seems to understand well when he needs to use happiness in a cynical way to sell something, but doesn't understand at all when it comes to finding his own happiness. 

One important characteristic to Don Draper's America is that every generation has its war. It's just assumed you have one, and admission to the grown-up table in America means you have to be able to talk about the war you were in. Roger Sterling has World War II, and is, therefore, the one who feels most entitled to his creature comforts, because World War II was obviously America's greatest moment. Don had Korea, the "forgotten war," but even forgotten wars mean you get to consider yourself a man in America with all the benefits that brings. The show takes us from the end of the fifties to the end of the sixties, and Don's identity crisis that becomes progressively more difficult for him to manage mirrors the identity crisis of America. Part of that identity crisis is a country asking itself the question of whether every generation really needs to have a war. 

(Like a lot that Don Draper says, I tend to think this speech sounds more profound than it actually is. A lot of his dazzle is bullshit with a high production value.)

The firm loses the cigarette business

For a long time, the firm Don works for has Lucky Strike as its biggest client. The company does some humiliating and even immoral things to keep the horrible client and the business he brings, but eventually, Lucky Strike abandons them. The firm is worried about losing the income from the account, but even more worried about how they will be perceived. If they're seen as a smaller firm that just lost its biggest account, they'll have a hard time getting other accounts to take Lucky Strike's place, because other clients will assume they're on life support. 

Don comes up with a unique strategy, one he doesn't clear with the other partners in his firm. He puts a full-sized ad in the Times, one that says, "Our company is never going to work for another cigarette company. Cigarettes are bad for you. It's a poisonous product. Our company will be happy to work for companies that don't sell cigarettes." 

His other partners are furious. Over the course of the show, the strategy does backfire a few times, as some clients are leery of working for the company that bad-mouthed a former client in the press, but overall, Don's gambit does what it's supposed to: it changes the narrative of how his company and Lucky Strike parted ways. As Don's future wife puts it: "I get it. She didn't dump you. You dumped her." (Applying yet another metaphor from personal life to something on a larger scale.) 

America might be losing Lucky Strike soon

America has been a great world power my entire life. They've been a great world power for the entirety of my parents' lives. We're so used to being a great world power, we've forgotten the country could get along just fine without being one, but we likely could. We might even be better off. 

It's already been a long time since America has been THE world power, if there ever even was such a time. The term "post-hegemonic world" has been around for decades, and if anything, it's a truer phrase now than it once was. Perhaps the only thing making it less true is that China is stronger now than when the phrase was originally introduced, and China also seems to have achieved something of an alliance with Russia, making both stronger. Meanwhile, the U.S. has temporarily, at least, weakened some of its own alliances, although probably not irreversibly so. Nonetheless, the U.S. holds even less of a share of total power than it once did, and long-term, may keep losing ground.

Presidents promise different paths to regaining some of this lost power in the world: either through strength (military, economic) obtained after a competitive struggle, or through cooperation, a cooperation in which America is always the lead partner. 

But why this obsession with being seen as a world power? Will it really be the end of us if we aren't in the same position of solitary strength we are accustomed to? Aren't there plenty of countries in the world that have a great standard of living without being world powers? In fact, isn't the lack of burden of being a world power part of what helps them achieve that standard?  

Artificially extending the era of America as a world power isn't buying us time for us to weather the storm of the latest challengers, after which we'll come out back on top. If anything, it's just going to make the landing harder. It's driving up our debt on things that won't make us better in the long run, which robs us of the improvements in infrastructure, education, health care, and public-funded science and technology research that could improve our long-term outlook. 

We could also include soft power projects in the list of things that could help re-shape the new America and its role in the world. Increasing the amount of foreign aid we give could be one way to offset Chinese influence in parts of the world. U.S. companies do partner with those in the developing world, but not in a strategic way designed to increase U.S. influence the way Chinese state-owned companies do. The only way for the U.S. government to offset the coordinated Chinese effort is to launch one of its own. We can't tell a U.S. company to build roads and power in Zimbabwe, but we can pay for these kinds of projects directly, giving countries an alternative to giving the Chinese footholds all over the world. 

The point here isn't to shift competition from the military arena to soft power, but to change America's basic outlook on the world from a sphere of militaristic competition to one where we seek to share the benefits of an essentially non-militaristic people. For most of America's history, we have actively sought to stay out of world affairs. We became a country strong enough to alter world history precisely by not seeking this strength until we had to. 

I'm not talking about naivete. China wants power. Russia wants power. They're willing to push the boundaries of what's acceptable to get them. They both have ways of life that involve invasions of personal liberty we consider unacceptable. We need a strong enough deterrent to be taken seriously, but we don't necessarily need to match one-for-one every strength China has. 

Much of America dreads the moment when we are no longer a great world power. I actually kind of look forward to it. Obsession with world power is a distraction for us. The Constitution shows no trace of a desire for world power. It's not in our political DNA, and the only way we've been able to sustain our quest to keep our power has been to continue to ignore the spirit of the Constitution, giving the president far more power than anyone ever dreamed of in 1776. 

If we start this shift from preservation of our clout world-wide to concern for our own character and prosperity now, while we still have enough power to be taken seriously, we can claim we did this on our own because of an awakening on our part. We will be seen as a country that willingly changed its interactions with the world in order to be more consistent with the better angels of our nature. In a future world looking for alternatives to whatever the dominant power to come may be, America is more likely to be seen as genuine and good, a partner countries would want to have, if we start this exit from world power status now. 

We can spend the next decade or two in a quixotic but futile fight to preserve our status as a world power, for reasons that have to do with little more than our pride, or we can try to navigate an exit from that precarious position strategically, so we end up, ironically, stronger precisely because we have stopped worrying so obsessively about our strength. There is a window, though, on when America can change its view of the meaning of power and world power on its own, and when the decision will be thrust upon it, willing or no.