By Richard N. Haass

Project Syndicate

March 24-2016

NEW YORK – The US presidential election  is still more than half a year away, and it is impossible to know with any certainty who will be nominated to represent the major parties, much less who will be the 45th occupant of the White House. But it is not too soon to assess the mood of the country's more than 320 million inhabitants and what it will mean for the man or woman who ultimately prevails in what must seem to most people around the world to be an endless political soap opera.

The dominant mood in the United States today is one of considerable anxiety, if not outright anger. The Washington Post recently published a four-part series of articles revealing popular fury aimed at Wall Street, Muslims, trade deals, Washington, police shootings, President Barack Obama, Republicans, immigrants, and other targets.

One of the worst descriptions to be applied to a person nowadays is “professional politician.” The beneficiaries of this state of mind are anti-establishment candidates who espouse policies in opposition to free trade and immigration reform and who call for a radical overhaul of current tax and spending policies. The details of what they advocate may well differ, but their platforms share a promise of radical departure from the status quo.

The basis of this mood is hardly self-evident, as the country is better off economically than it was a half-dozen years ago, in the immediate aftermath of the 2007-2008 economic crisis. Over nine million jobs have been created since then, interest rates are low (making loans for homes and cars more affordable), and the fall in the price of gasoline is the equivalent of a $700 tax cut for the average American family. Moreover, the stock market has risen some 200% since its low of seven years ago, and millions of people who were without health insurance are now covered.

Yet this good economic news is offset in many cases by weak growth in household incomes, which have stagnated in real (inflation-adjusted) terms for some 15 years. The percentage of Americans working full time has still not reached the level it was at seven years ago. And many fear that their jobs will disappear because of foreign competition, new technologies, or outsourcing.

A large number of Americans are living longer, but are anxious, as they have failed to set aside the funds needed to ensure that their retirement will allow them to live comfortably into old age. Some are paying health-insurance premiums that they previously had avoided because of mandates in the reform enacted under Obama.

There is also the issue of inequality. This causes real anger, but the problem is not so much inequality (which, though worse, is nothing inherently new) as it is the decline in opportunity. The American Dream is giving way to class consciousness – a profound change for a country founded on the ideal that anyone can improve his or her lot through hard work.

But the reasons for anxiety and anger transcend economic realities and worries. There is also physical insecurity, whether because of crime or the fear of terrorism. In many communities, there is concern, too, about where the culture and the society are heading.

Modern media tend to make things worse. Ours is an age of “narrowcasting,” not broadcasting. People increasingly tune in to cable channels or websites that reinforce their views and ideologies.

Little of this is reassuring. The national mood transcends the election campaign and will pose a real challenge to the new president and Congress. The divisions within and between the Democratic and Republican parties will make compromise and the formation of coalitions that are essential for governing all but impossible.

Concerns over retirement and health-care affordability will make it that much more difficult to reform entitlements, even though their expansion will drive up the national debt to record levels. Free trade is blamed for job losses and is losing support, even though it has also been a source of new jobs and greater consumer choice – and has strengthened America’s strategic position around the world. Immigration, long part of the country’s heritage and a source of valuable talent, is now the object of so much controversy that prospects for reform are dim.

The mood of the US may also intensify officials’ domestic focus. Already turned off by foreign involvement in the wake of the Iraq and Afghanistan interventions, which cost much more than they achieved, many Americans are skeptical of what the US can accomplish abroad. They are frustrated with allies seen as not carrying their fair share of common burdens, and they are increasingly convinced that the government needs to focus less on the world and more on fixing what is wrong with the US.

Some in other countries will no doubt read all of this with satisfaction; but, overall, it is bad news for much of the world. An America that is distracted and divided is less likely to be willing and able to take the lead in promoting stability in the Middle East, Europe, or Asia, or in meeting global challenges. And, without US leadership, these challenges are likely to go unmet, turning into problems or, worse, crises.

Richard N. Haass

Richard N. Haass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations, previously served as Director of Policy Planning for the US State Department (2001-2003), and was President George W. Bush's special envoy to Northern Ireland and Coordinator for the Future of Afghanistan. His forthcoming book is A World in Disarray.

Richard Nathan Haass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations, previously served as Director of Policy Planning for the US State Department (2001-2003), and was President George W. Bush's special envoy to Northern Ireland and Coordinator for the Future of Afghanistan. His most recent book is Foreign Policy Begins at Home: The Case for Putting America's House in Order. (From Project Syndicate)

Richard Nathan Haass (born July 28, 1951) is an American diplomat. He has been president of the Council on Foreign Relations since July 2003, prior to which he was Director of Policy Planning for the United States Department of State and a close advisor to Secretary of State Colin Powell. The Senate approved Haass as a candidate for the position of ambassador and he has been U.S. Coordinator for the Future of Afghanistan. He succeeded George J. Mitchell as the United States Special Envoy for Northern Ireland to help the peace process in Northern Ireland, for which he received the State Department's Distinguished Service Award. At the end of 2003, Mitchell Reiss succeeded him as special envoy. In late 2013, Haass returned to Northern Ireland to chair inter-party talks aimed at addressing some of the unresolved issues from the peace process such as parades, flags and "the past".

Life and career:

Haass was born in Brooklyn, to Jewish parents, the son of Marcella (née Rosenthal) and Irving B. Haass. From 1989 to 1993, Haass was Special Assistant to United States President George H. W. Bush and National Security Council Senior Director for Near East and South Asian Affairs. In 1991, Haass received the Presidential Citizens Medal for helping to develop and explain U.S. policy during Operation Desert Shield and Operation Desert Storm. Previously, he served in various posts in the Department of State (1981–85) and the Department of Defense (1979–80).

Haass's other postings include Vice President and Director of Foreign Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution, the Sol M. Linowitz Visiting Professor of International Studies at Hamilton College, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, and a research associate at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. A Rhodes Scholar, Haass obtained a B.A. from Oberlin College in 1973 and went on to earn both a Master of Philosophy and Doctor of Philosophy from Oxford University.

Throughout the 2008 Presidential campaign, Haass advised several members of both the Republican Party and Democratic Party on issues regarding foreign policy, but did not publicly endorse a candidate due to the Council on Foreign Relations' non-partisan stance.

In September 2013, Haass returned to Northern Ireland, with Professor Meghan O'Sullivan, to chair all party talks on flags, parades and the legacy of the Troubles, after violence flared over the removal of the union flag at Belfast City Hall. The talks broke up without reaching an agreement on December 31, 2013.

Haass is the author of 12 books, of which 11 deal with matters of foreign policy and one with management. He lives in New York City with his wife, Susan Mercandetti, and two children.

Foreign policy views:

In a May 2015 interview with BBC's HARDtalk, speaking as President of the Council on Foreign Relations, Haass predicted that we are entering a new era in world history, in part due to the muting of U.S. dominance by the more diffuse power wielded by states and non-state entities as a result of the proliferation of nuclear arms and cyberterrorism, and several policy failures, which may bring about an "era of disorder" in the absence of any clear superpower. The failures in policy he points to are many of the rationales leading up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, including the notion that the Iraqi regime had any involvement with the September 11 attacks or terrorism in general, but excluding the prominent intelligence of the time which indicated that Saddam Hussein's regime did most likely possess weapons of mass destruction, a point which he now concedes he along with many of his colleagues and the international intelligence community "got wrong". He explained that he believes the existing problems of the region which were exacerbated by the "ill-advised" invasion of Iraq were compounded by subsequent errors, including the withdrawal of U.S. troops carried out under the Obama administration. Another major error, according to Haas, was the failure of the United States and the United Kingdom to intervene after it became clear that chemical weapons had been used during the Syrian civil war, leaving room for the Islamic State to gain a foothold. He has also stated he was against U.S. involvement in the Libyan Civil War, but said that if becoming involved was unavoidable, better follow up was an absolute necessity not fulfilled, resulting in a situation in which the people of Libya are "arguably worse off now than they were under the deeply flawed leadership of Muammar Gaddafi." These seemingly incongruous positions, he argues, demonstrate that consistency, when it comes to foreign relations, "is a bad idea", and that each situation requires a custom-fit approach. Maintaining a consistent interventionist or conversely non-interventionist foreign policy, for example, would be a mistake.

Bibliography:

- Beyond the INF Treaty (1988, ISBN 0-8191-6942-0)

- The Power to Persuade: How to Be Effective in Any Unruly Organization (1995, ISBN 0-395-73525-4)

- updated in 1999 as The Bureaucratic Entrepreneur: How to Be Effective in Any Unruly Organization (1999, ISBN 0-8157-3353-4)

- Economic Sanctions and American Diplomacy (1998, ISBN 0-87609-212-1)

- The Reluctant Sheriff: The United States After the Cold War (1997, ISBN 0-87609-198-2)

- After the Tests: U.S. Policy Toward India and Pakistan (1999, ISBN 0-87609-236-9)

- Transatlantic Tensions: The United States, Europe, and Problem Countries (editor, 1999, ISBN 0-8157-3351-8)

- Intervention: The Use of American Military Force in the Post-Cold War World (1999, ISBN 0-87003-135-X)

- Honey and Vinegar: Incentives, Sanctions, and Foreign Policy (2000, ISBN 0-8157-3355-0)

- The Opportunity: America's Moment to Alter History's Course (2006, ISBN 1-58648-453-2)

- War of Necessity, War of Choice (2009, ISBN 978-1-4165-4902-4)

- Foreign Policy Begins at Home: The Case for Putting America's House in Order (2013, ISBN 0-4650-5798-5)

(From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

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