Defending the Western System Against Funding Cuts, Unraveling

The September PAW was resplendently ripe with an array of arresting articles highlighting the unconventional careers of some fascinating alumni. One of these was Michael Holl ’03, a former lieutenant colonel F-15 fighter pilot, retired from the U.S. Air Force. PAW senior writer Mark F. Bernstein ’83 reported Mr. Holl’s belief that close U.S ties with Qatar benefit both nations.

Mr. Holl was quoted as seeing the value, in that Middle Eastern region, of representing “America, the U.S. military, and the general Western System ...” But what went irresponsibly unaddressed in Mr. Holl’s comments, and in that article, is the current administration’s rapidly rampant unraveling of that vaunted Western system.

Two notable examples alone (among many) of that unraveling include Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s boast of funding cuts totaling 83% of USAID programs; and the enigmatic evisceration by this administration of the incalculably valuable and longstanding Voice of America broadcasting.

In what perhaps is entirely only a coincidence, earlier this year a Kremlin spokesman went on record saying that “the new administration is rapidly changing all foreign policy configurations. This largely aligns with our vision.” Vladimir Putin (treated deferentially by this administration recently in Alaska) and his Kremlin have repeatedly made their anti-Western ideology consistently clear. Perhaps there is nothing here. Perhaps these are nothing but random unrelated developments.     

I served six years in the Naval Reserves (1980-86), and as one veteran to another, I ask Mr. Holl to join me (and all of our fellow service-member alumni) in being ever mindful of, and attentive, to current events. You and I both made an oath without expiration to uphold and defend our U.S. Constitution, against all enemies foreign and domestic. As Mr. Bernstein’s article cautiously concluded, correctly, “... the world can change quickly, and with little warning.”