Hope that Ambassador Wendt will behave like a General

Alfred Lela

From the Ambassador of the conservative Trump Administration in Tirana, the left expects little, while the right expects a great deal. The latter are somewhat dismayed because he is from California, America's most liberal state. They forget that some of America's greatest conservatives came precisely from that state: Reagan, Nixon, and Schwarzenegger.

In any case, these details can be seen as nothing more than that—details—or as consolation.

Eric Wendt—and this is perhaps good news for the right (or for the Albanian opposition in general)—is a military man. A retired lieutenant general, he appears to be a political appointee of the Trump Administration (career appointments are those in which ambassadors come from within the State Department, having previous experience in embassies or within the Department's hierarchy).

In this sense, he has the backing and the ear of someone close to Trump. And in this sense, the opposition should feel somewhat relieved. Having been burned so many times over the past decade, it now blows even on yogurt.

Still, for the first time in a decade, the opposition at least WILL NOT BE OPENLY ATTACKED by an American ambassador.

Nor, presumably, will it be told to eat grass.

On this delicate edge along which relations between the Albanian opposition and American ambassadors in Tirana have walked, much will change... by returning to normality.

The opposition neither expects nor hopes for anything more than normality. It wants to be treated as a partner, as part of the democratic spectrum—which it is—a key factor in an open system based on competition and ideas.

As the author of these lines, as someone politically engaged with the right, and as an American citizen, what would I expect from Mr. Wendt?

Knowing that I will sound misogynistic, but not being particularly troubled by it, I would prefer the General to wear his office with manliness.

By manliness, I mean those qualities that Harvard professor Harvey Mansfield attributes to both men and women in politics in his book Manliness: leadership that goes beyond the headlines and fashions of the day.

That would be a qualitative and long-awaited change.

Second, I would expect him, in his role as Ambassador, to bring into the office—not outwardly, but from within—those qualities that made him a military man and that run through the various branches of the United States Armed Forces, whether Navy, Marines, Army, and so on.

That code of conduct which seems to stem from both strength and manliness and which, certainly, does not seek to use strength and manliness to impose itself, but rather to distinguish good from evil, right from wrong, the straight from the crooked, and so on.

Third, to put an end to the woke maternity ward at the American Embassy, ​​​​which sees Albania as a laboratory for multiplying ultra-left ideas that are, first and foremost, a threat to an Albanian identity already being eroded—an identity that already has enough to contend with in depopulation, the relativization of values, and a government that contractualizes everything, from pubic intimacies to public assets.

Fourth, to understand and lead an Embassy that recognizes that the threats facing Americans and Albanians are shared. These include all forms of terrorism, all forms of anti-tradition, and all forms of political and social laissez-faire.

Fifth, the Ambassador, as representative of the President, the Flag, and the American Constitution, should support those parties, organizations, individuals, and ideas that have no instinct or intention other than a clearly Euro-Atlantic, unmistakably Western Albania.

A small country can be shattered by experiments, as happened when Albania fell into communism.

In many of my "requests," I seem to be treating the Ambassador as if he were a representative of Albania rather than America—as if he should have in mind the interests of the country to which he has been assigned.

But this, apparently, comes instinctively from what I mentioned at the outset: an expected dimension of manliness, one that is needed to set right a few things in the broken clockwork of things.

In any case: Welcome, General!

*The views expressed in this article are personal.