What went wrong? We have asked ourselves that after countless foreign debacles, from Vietnam to Afghanistan and Iraq. Why does every intervention turn to ashes, and every good intention end in embarrassment and hatred? Ronan Farrow, celebrity diplomat and journalist, has an answer. Though he has been through a rough family life, Farrow is a smart cookie, and after starting with an absurdly puffy profile of Richard Holbrook, the book eventually settles down into sharp vignettes of American policy and institutions gone awry, and a case for rebuilding our diplomatic capabilities. Part of the war of the title is being waged on the State Department, conducted by the military and successive presidents ending up with our absurdly anti-State current executive. But it is facile to call that a "War on Peace", as though State is our Department of Peace. It is, rather, our reserve of strategic, long-range thought and professional experience in international affairs, and arm of American power, whether advancing that power dictates peace, war, or cold war.
"There are two types of military dispute, the one settled by negotiation and the other by force. Since the first is characteristic of human beings and the second of beasts, we must have recourse to the second only if we cannot exploit the first." - Cicero, as quoted in the book. Which is incidentally ironic, given the relentlessly bloodthirsty culture and methods of Rome.
The Pax Americana of the post-war era has served us very well, not to mention most other countries. It has been a time of dramatically improving living conditions, rising population, and governance. It has been built on overwhelming conventional power, combined with formal alliances with countless partners and soft leadership by a system both prosperous and just (more or less) which others can aspire to. The outstanding example of this is China, which in its emulation of our mode of production has lifted itself out of dire poverty over the last four decades, and done so very peacefully.
On the other hand, we have made countless blunders when trying to force conditions to our favor more actively. Iraq is a shining example. We destroyed a country only to belatedly realize we had no idea how to run it or whom to hire to do the job. Then we skidaddled prematurely, leaving behind chaos. We have stuck more persistently with Afghanistan, (up to the present moment, at least), but remain in a quagmire of epic proportions with a government that is hopelessly corrupt, filled with warlords. This is where Farrow's book starts to come into the picture. Why so many warlords? Why all the corruption, and why is the facade of democracy so thin?
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| Afghan president Ghani, trapped in a power structure full of warlords, armed militias, and corrupt elements. |
Going back to the start of the war in 2001, we used existing forces that were already arrayed against the Taliban, namely the warlords of the Northern Alliance. Integrated with a US air campaign, they quickly swept the field. But then, in the absence of other alternatives, we kept turning to them to run things, and kept arming them and turning to them again. The CIA and the military led the way, partnering with whoever could supposedly provide the goods- that is men and power, to use our guns and intelligence. But it was always a rotten deal, buying long-term dysfunction for short-term convenience. After World War 2, would we have turned to extremist militias to run Germany and Japan, just because they were most enthusiastic to kill their enemies? Funding and arming the most extreme elements of a society is certainly the best way to get those arms used, but not always the best way to rebuild that society.
Indeed much of our foreign policy over the last few decades has consisted of arming our motley friends. Pakistan is exemplary in this regard. We have been shipping them billions of dollars of military aid since 1955. And what do we have to show for it? A country that is one of the leading state sponsors of terrorism, which is in perpetual cold war if not armed conflict with both of its neighbors India and Afghanistan, whose clear policy is to destabilize Afghanistan, and which lies to us and the world without compunction. And which has blithely acquired nuclear weapons along the way, subjecting the whole world to the spectre of extreme Islamist takeover of a cataclysmic arsenal.
It has not been a very successful policy, whatever benefits the CIA may think it has gleaned over the years. The worst part is that all this aid has strengthened the military as the leading institution of Pakistan, leading to innumerable coups, overwhelming political power even when a general is not serving as president, as well as economic and media power, to the atrophy of civic life and democracy. The best that we could do at this point is to issue a heartfelt apology to the Pakistani people that we have contributed to the militarization of their society, cut all military aid, and focus on continuing constructive dialog with everyone in the region, especially India.
Similarly, in Central and South America, we have spent far too much time and money chasing leftist mirages with right-wing funding, helping to cause the chaos that is now driving so many migrants to our borders from El Salvador, Guatamala, and Honduras. Instead of dramatic stunts of cruelty at the border, we would be much better served setting up a region-wide peace and governance process to help these countries regain stability and democratic institutions. Where is that effort? Nowhere to be seen in this administration. Farrow describes a long-term trend by which the military and the intelligence/security complex in Washington has gained power and money, versus our organs of diplomacy and long-term intelligence, which have atrophied. Nation-building became a dirty word. So now we are now dealing with a series of unbuilt nations, several of which we have unbuilt ourselves. Fear has gained over reason, much to the detriment of our domestic institutions, not to mention our approach to world affairs.
One might even say that the US has become one of the greatest terrorist regimes in the world, engaging proxy wars and armies across the globe often to rather dubious ends and resulting in vast "collateral" damage. It is our lack of expertise and inability to understand other cultures and conditions that leads to the horrors/blunders of Vietnam and Iraq. And that can not be fixed with more know-nothing "strength" from dotards, or with ever higher military budgets and military "aid" packages to anyone willing to throw their own people under the bus of American interests. We are the policeman of the world, at least for the moment. The question is whether the model we pursue is one of SWAT-style military policing, or one of community policing. The former breeds problems on both the short and long terms, while the latter solves them.
And one can note that these practices and attitudes do not stay safely abroad, far from our own culture. The militarization and warlordism of our foreign policy sees its reflection in the growing domestic mania for guns, security, walls, and the installation of a would-be warlord in the White House. While the most grievous harms of this administration may be the diminishment of our network of international relationships and influence, US society is being corroded internally as well by the pessimistic, fearful, and ignorant tenor of the security state.
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