The Brooklyn Rail

“When the tongue or the pen is let loose in a frenzy of passion, it is the man, and not the subject, that becomes exhausted.”

—Thomas Paine

“There is a boundary to men’s passions when they act from feelings; none when they are under the influence of imagination.”

—Edmund Burke

 

Many of us remember the famous exchange between Lee Kuan Yew (the legendary statesman of Asia) and Xi Jinping during Xi’s visit to Singapore on November 14, 2010, when Xi expressed how China, drawing from such a deep pool of talent among its population of 1.3 billion, would soon win in global competition. Lee, in his response, acknowledged Xi’s assertion but said the US can draw on a talent pool of seven billion and recombine them in a diverse culture in a way that ethnic Han nationalism cannot. It’s worth reminding ourselves that when the US succeeded the British Empire as its reluctant successor between 1940 and 1960, America accounted for 40% of global GDP and nearly 50% of global manufacturing. This was in good measure the result of the widespread destruction that had taken place in Europe and East Asia, coupled with the advantage of our having the nuclear monopoly. The world has changed since then, which leads us to admit that such an anomalous situation was not going to last forever. And it is now that we must rethink and reexamine what were considered the pros and cons of the US-led post-WWII order.

Without cohesive political and social engineering from a strong centralized administration; along with military superiority, economic integration, and infrastructure; and cultural mobilization through diplomacy as a means of deterrence or strengthening global alliances, the US would not have maintained its superpower status. But by the mid-1990s, we realized that our global GDP had dropped from 40% to roughly 25%. At the same time, our former adversaries, Hitler’s Germany and Hirohito’s Japan, became our most significant allies—Japan beginning with the 1952 peace treaty, while West Germany joined NATO in 1955, followed by German reunification in the 1990s. In fact, after WWII the US decided to undertake the monumental responsibility of inspiring most of Europe and Asia to become our allies, as both peace and prosperity were guaranteed aspirations. Yet, we now realize that we were not fully mindful of the degree to which the expense of our efforts for lifting those nations from ruins to prosperity consequently led to the rest of the world’s economy growing faster than our own.

Having myself grown up during the war in Vietnam, I was aware of the term “détente” (created by the partnership between President Nixon and Henry Kissinger as a means to ease the Cold War tensions between the US and the Soviet Union from 1967 to 1969), which was deployed to confront the crisis of the 1973 oil shock caused by Arab members of OPEC declaring an oil embargo on the US and other nations in retaliation against US military support for Israel during the Yom Kippur War. A similar way of thinking is being applied to the current US/Israel conflict with Iran and the Strait of Hormuz blockage. Upon reflection, we see that détente meant then, as it means now, mostly buying time, which proved detrimental to US power then as it does now. If we look back at how Cold War I effectively ended between 1989 and 1991, with the presidential baton passed from Ronald Reagan, to George H.W. Bush, to Bill Clinton; and then to George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump, we wonder how and what we have done to rebalance American power in the world, or if we should continue to perpetuate self-sabotage. The timing is imminent, as we must rebalance American power in the world in relation to the rising power of China.

Here, we should remember how Shigeru Yoshida formulated the “Yoshida Doctrine,” which prioritized Japan’s domestic economic recovery based on the West’s free-market policies while relying on the US for military security. And Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore also astutely observed what transpired in Japan from the ashes at the end of WWII to surpassing West Germany to become the world’s third-largest economy and then turning into the second-largest global economy, trailing only the US by 1988. Under his leadership, Singapore created a zero-tolerance policy on corruption, adopted English as a unifying national language, built multinational corporations abroad, and strengthened education and mass public housing at home. In other words, by 1971, when America delinked the dollar from the gold standard, Lee quickly grasped the opportunity and established Singapore as a regional center for foreign exchange. It’s astonishing to observe how both small nations transformed themselves from tremendous human hardship to legitimate global powers. Which leads us to consider that if we are to rethink and reimagine what we need to rebalance our free society so it can thrive in ensuring the freedom of our fellow human beings, we must trust the power of our own strength and our own ingenuity, and do our best “not to be like them.” This is to say that although China is a great civilization which we admire, the “Them” in this case is directly applied to the Chinese Communist Party—a political regime willfully dedicated to unfreedom and to fostering its ideological belief in an unfree society. The CCP has never embraced free and fair elections. It seems to be aware of its own illegitimacy—having murdered between forty and eighty million Chinese people, not to mention its severe and systematic discrimination against Uyghurs and Tibetans. So we can conclude that the CCP is afraid of its own people, no more and no less than the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran is afraid of his fellow Iranians.

Given the inevitable rise of China was facilitated by the US-led order, including our diversion after the Cold War Soviet capitulation that prompted the creation of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade in 1986 and the World Trade Organization in 2001, we must recognize that our strength is profoundly embedded in our values, and our values are firmly instilled in our constitution. We must admit that MAGA is mere 20% of the US population. While it has legitimate grievances—which have always been among us, but not so visible they have become since the arrival of Twitter and other forms of social media—we must activate and inspire the great but sometimes passive majority of our people with social solidarity, trust, and compassion. We must repair epic corruptions within our system. And lastly, we must recalibrate our mojo as we epically celebrate our 250th anniversary. Here, I leave y’all with these iconic words from the United States Declaration of Independence, adopted on July 4, 1776:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.

Happy Fourth of July to us all with love, courage, and cosmic optimism,

Phong H. Bui

P.S. This issue celebrates the monumental lives and works of our friends and mentors Carlo Ginzburg (1939–2026), Charles Dennis (1949–2026), David Hockney (1937–2026), Duane Michals (1932–2026), and Alan Saret (1944–2026), all of whom have made profound contributions to our culture. While Carlo taught us how to see history without excluding the voices of the marginalized, the overlooked and the ignored, Charles, in addition to being an extraordinary performance artist, dancer, choreographer, videographer, filmmaker, and curator, founded the legendary P.S. 122. As for David, we’re grateful for his relentless technological experimentation, radical explorations of perspective, and joyous depictions of queer life and nature; painting was never the same. The same can be said of Duane, whose photography revolutionized the medium by rejecting photojournalism in favor of staged, narrative, and conceptual storytelling. Finally, Alan’s insistence on his work as being the product of “ensoulment” has in fact changed the course of how we think of Post-Minimalism forever. We’d like to send our deep condolences to their respective members of the immediate families, friends, and admirers here and across the world. Lastly, we send our huge gratitude to Betsy (Elizabeth) Broun who has dutifully served in the last four years as an essential member of the Rail’s board of directors. We send our best wishes to Betsy in the next chapter of her journey. We’re thrilled to welcome Andrew Woolbright as a new editor of our indispensable ArtSeen section.