How to scan a highbrow left-of-center opinion piece for its real agenda

So, while looking at the lineup of columns, op-eds and articles offered this morning at Real Clear Politics, I saw this piece, entitled "America and the Great Abdication" by Council on Foreign Relations president Richard Haas. There's an element of click-bait-iness to that title. Is he going to accuse the US of becoming isolationist over the last year?

Fear not. He's actually quite equitable on that score:

Abdication is not isolationism. Donald Trump’s United States is not isolationist. He has authorized the use of limited military force against the Syrian government in a manner his predecessor rejected. U.S. military operations have gone a long way toward defeating ISIS in both Syria and Iraq. The Trump administration might employ force against Iran or North Korea, or both, and has pressed for and secured new international sanctions against the latter. It could well act (most likely unilaterally) in the economic realm, applying tariffs or sanctions as it sees fit against one or another trading partner. It is trying its hand (thus far without success) at mediating several disputes in the Middle East. The U.S. military effort in Afghanistan is to be extended and possibly augmented.

But then he eases into an explanation of what he means by abdication:

But abdication describes U.S. foreign policy all the same, as the United States is no longer taking the lead in maintaining alliances, or in building regional and global institutions that set the rules for how international relations are conducted. It is abdication from what has been a position of leadership in developing the rules and arrangements at the heart of any world order.

For three-quarters of a century, from World War II through the Cold War and well into the post–Cold War era, the United States was the principal architect and builder of global rules. This is not to say that the United States always got it right; it most certainly did not, at times because of what it did, at other times because of what it chose not to do. But more often than not, the United States played a large, mostly constructive, and frequently generous role in the world. 

Ah, yes, those "global institutions" and "rules for how international relations are to be conducted." They have stood us in such good stead, haven't they? Why, no one's been beset by rogue nations with nuclear ambitions, nonstate jihadists, or even endemic corruption within those institutions, right?

But in the next paragraphs you get where he really wants to take this argument:

Under Donald Trump, however, U.S. foreign policy shows clear signs of significant departure. Support for alliances, embrace of free trade, concern over climate change, championing of democracy and human rights, American leadership per se—these and other fundamentals of American foreign policy have been questioned and, more than once, rejected. Trump is the first post–World War II American president to view the burdens of world leadership as outweighing the benefits. As a result, the United States has changed from the principal preserver of order to a principal disrupter.

This change has major implications. It will make it far more difficult to deal with the challenges posed by globalization, including climate change and nuclear proliferation, to regulate cyberspace on terms compatible with American interests, or to help relieve the plight of refugees on terms consistent with American values. It will make it more difficult to build frameworks that promote trade and investment and to ensure that the United States benefits from them.  

The Carterist term "human rights," the focus on which during that president's term saw the spread of the Marxist-Leninist cancer in Central America, the theocratic revolution in Iran, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, is first mentioned among the wonderful things Haas wants to see pressed by a virtuous and engaged US. Perhaps he's heard that women are going to get to drive in Saudi Arabia this year. Or about the dismantling of the ISIS caliphate, a great relief to the Yazidi, Kurdish and Christian women of the area. (Granted, Haas does speak of that monstrous organization "losing its hold.")

But note how the term "climate change" makes two appearances. That's the true "bingo" here. When a technocratic administrative type talks about "American leadership," it inevitably means spending a bunch of US money on addressing a supposed problem with no basis in reality. Nothing brings the world's collectivist pointy-heads together quite like an opportunity to peddle this utter fiction. Expose the fiction, and the conferences (and jet travel to and from), book deals and tenure dry up.

His last two paragraphs contain a glaring contradiction:

The net result is a world of growing disarray. This trend is partly the result of what might be called structural factors—the rise of China, globalization, the emergence of a large number of entities (state and nonstate alike) with meaningful capacity and often dangerous intentions, and the failure of regional and international institutions (many created in the aftermath of World War II) to adjust sufficiently to new distributions of power and new challenges. In many cases, the gap between the challenge and the ability of the world to come together to manage or regulate it is not just large but growing. Rising disarray is, as well, the result of several poor policy choices made by the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama—and, increasingly, Donald Trump.

The good news is that the costs of promoting global order tend to be less than the costs of not; the bad news is that this truth does not seem to be recognized by many Americans, including 45th president. Abdication is as unwarranted as it is unwise. It is a basic fact of living in a global world that no country can insulate itself from much of what happens elsewhere. A foreign policy based on sovereignty alone will not provide security in a global, interconnected world. Or, to paraphrase the jargon of the day, America cannot be great at home in a world of disarray.

Which is it, sir? Is globalization a contributor to growing disarray or something to be prioritized in the crafting of foreign policy?

Anyway, the main point here is to provide an example in the art of honing your sense of smell so as to dig through the requisite number of paragraphs in a piece on any given subject to find out what the left-leaner is really pushing. For all the blather about an interconnected world and leadership, it comes down to the same thing it always does: spreading the notion that America ought to chase a dream of a nice, clean world in which bureaucrats get lauded for imposing a vision that has never been the way reality works anywhere.