Americans have gotten rather used to running the world. Whenever news arrives about some horror or injustice, action is expected. No matter how distant the crisis, we now have interests, and assets, close-by. It is a mindset we inherited from the Greatest Generation, who build a post-war order out of constant vigilence and activity- first to reform the perpetrators of the war, and then to forestall the spread of communism. After the Soviet Union imploded, we were left free, with a vast whirring mechanism of diplomatic and military machinery. For those raised on Lone Ranger episodes and Superman comics, which may describe a good portion of the foreign policy community over the last few decades, the answer was obvious- do good.
Stephen Walt takes direct aim at this mindset, which in his telling is borne as much from laziness and stupidity as from good intentions and US interests. We have committed terrible blunders in our rush to save people from predatory states- the prime examples being Vietnam and Iraq, which cost roughly 1.3 million and 0.5 million lives respectively, though the latter remains open-ended, due to our responsibility for creating ISIS. The people responsible for these comprehensive, mind-boggling disasters should have been tried as war criminals. But instead, our system barely batted an eye, and most of the architects of both horrors went on to continued participation in the US foreign policy commmunity, often at high levels.
This is because foreign policy is a strongly political field, at least as practiced in the US. Who would have hired Jared Kushner to run US Middle East policy? No one in their right minds, that's who. But the rot runs much deeper. Foreign policy is not science, and is difficult to evaluate, especially considering our problems with prophecy. So standards are virtually absent, replaced with a go-along-get-along ethic within a tight zone of conventional ideas. A big change since the Reagan era has been the intrusion of neoconservatives into this community, via right-wing administrations and their partisan think tanks like the Cato institute, American Enterprise Insitute, and Heritage Foundation. These were the minions who pushed the Iraq war, and they keep pushing the zone of mainstream thought rightward. Their current project is to demonize Iran. Which is odd, because Iran is a more functional democracy than Saudi Arabia, and intellectually far richer and more dynamic as well. The motivation for all this comes mostly from Israel, which has tacitly allied itself with Saudi Arabia and Egypt in a new cynical status quo ... just so long as no one says anything about the Palestinians.
The checkered career of Elliott Abrams is if anything more disturbing for those who believe that officials should be accountalbe and advancement should be based on merit. Abrams pleaded guilty to withholding information from Congress in the 1980's, after giving flase testimony about the infamous Iran-Contra affair. He received a pardon from President George H. W. Bush in December 1992, and his earlier misconduct did not stop George W. Bush from appointing him to a senior position on the National Security Council, focusing on the Middle East.
Then, after failing to anticipate Hamas's victory in the Palestinian legislative elections in 2006, Abrams helped foment an abortive armed coup in Gaza by Mohammed Dahlan, a member of the rival Palestinian faction Fatah. This harebrained ploy backfired completely: Hamas soon learned of the scheme and struck first, easily routing Dahlan's forces and expelling Fatah from Gaza. INsted of crippling Hamas, Abrams's machinations left it in full control of the area.
Despite this dubious resume, Abrams subsequently landed a plum job as a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, where his questional conduct continues. In 2013, he tried to derail the appointment of the decorated Vienam veteran and former senator Chuch Hagel as secretary of defense by declaring that Hagel had "some kind of problem with Jews". This baseless smear led the CFR president Richard Haass to distance the council from Abrams's action, but Haass took no other steps to reprimand him. Yet, apparently, the only thing that stopped the neophyter secretary of state Rex Tillerson from appointing Abrams as deputy secretary of state in 2017 was President Donald Trump's irritation at some critica comments Abrams had voiced during the 2016 campaign.
Naturally, Abrams has recently been appointed as the Trump Administration's envoy for the crisis in Venezuela, which should inspire confidence. The most that the mainstream press can manage as a description is that he is "controversial".
What is worse, not only are egregious blunderers and arguable criminals never held to account, (Bush, Cheney, Kissinger), but truth-tellers and whistle-blowers are routinely side-lined. Remember Eric Shinseki? He was quickly sidelined from the military in the Bush administration, after giving an accurate estimate of the number of troops needed to stabilize Iraq. He was later rescued from exile by Barack Obama, but did he re-enter the military? No, he was put in charge of the VA, safely out of the way, and in an impossible job to boot.
In September 2002, for example, thirty-three international security scholars paid for a quarter-page advertisement in the New York Times' op-ed page, declaring 'War with Iraq Is Not in the U.S. National Interest.' Published at a moment when most of the inside-the-Beltway establishment strongly favored warm the ad warned that invading Iraq would divert resources from defeating Al Qaeda and pointed out that the Unites States had no plausible exit strategy and might be stuck in Iraq for years. In the sixteen-pus years since the ad was printed, none of its signatories have been asked to serve in government or advise a presidential campaign. None are members of elite foreign policy groups such as the Aspen Strategy Group, and none have spoken at the annual meetings of the Council on Foreign Relations or the Aspen Security Forum. Many of these individuals hold prominent academic positions and continue to participate in public discourse on international affairs, but their prescience in 2002 went largely unnoticed.
One interesting point that Walt makes along the way is that one capability that has atrophed due to all this dysfunction is true diplomacy. The Iran nuclear deal was one of the few recent episodes where we actually sat down with friends and enemies and hammered out a peaceful deal, agreed to by all sides. It is far more frequent these days to make big pronoucements, whether bland or insulting, then threaten punitive action like sanctions or drone strikes. Granted, the Al Qaedas and ISISs of the world are not likely to come to any Geneva tea parties, but there is a lot of good we could be doing by diplomacy, such as in Latin America and Africa, which is being left on the table. Instead, we have very secretive military activities in about 20 African countries. Militarization has colored our foreign policy to an excessive degree. And how has our "Peace Process" been going in the Middle East? This one was not a casualty of militarization, but of Israelization. Because of our failure to bring sufficient pressure to get to a Palestinian state solution, Israel continues to be an Apartheid state, and our reputation in the region is a shambles, shown to be the lapdog of Israeli interests.
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| The Lone Ranger brings in the bad guy to close a successful episode. |
Walt's solution to these dysfunctions is to reel back our ambitions, from what he describes currently as a policy of "liberal hegemony" to one of "off-shore balancing". Liberal hegemony is the idea, which is sort of a hat-tip to Karl Marx, really, that liberal prosperous democracy is the desirable endpoint for all peoples everywhere, so we should not mind giving history a shove every now and then to get everyone there faster. The benefit for the US is clear as well- the more democracies there are, especially as encouraged by us, the more friends we have and the more stable the world in general.
Off-shore balancing, in contrast, is more hands-off, and regards US interests involved only where some region of the world is being taken over by a large hegemon, (like China), which could create such a global imbalance that we in the Western Hemisphere may be threatened. The Middle East should be left to its devices, especially as long as the Iran and Saudi axes are reasonably closely matched. Likewise, Europe is not a problem, even with Russia glowering from the east, since power is heavily diffused, and Europe even without US help is well able to take care of itself. While seemingly cynical and isolationist, this is really a very traditional approach to foreign policy, steeped in centuries of experience with Metternich-ian balance-of-power practices in Europe.
While Walt offers some very accurate and telling critiques of the state of the US foreign policy establishment, I think the prescription does not quite fit the problem and he tends to soft-pedal its implications. While the Middle East would obviously be better off with a little less US meddling, would it be better off with more Russian meddling? I have previously advocated for prompt, decisive involvement in Syria, which might have led to a better outcome than what is happening now, for both the people of Syria, and our own strategic position. But it may have been just another costly fiasco- that is what makes this field so treacherous. (Incidentally, Walt mentions the US Holocaust Museum's extensive research on Syria, especially on the prospects of US involvement. It casts a rather dubious light overall, but does suggest that early intervention can be far more effective than late intervention.) Turning to China, Walt does not mention the fate of Taiwan, of the South China sea, of the Philippines, or Japan. Would keeping Australia out of Chinese domination be a vital interest of the US? How many interests would he be willing to give up before things get truly serious?
But the deeper issue is one of stupidity. Doing less will not make us smarter. Walt gives some very positive reviews to the various anti-establishment views of Donald Trump and the demographic that he connected with in winning the presidency. Trump was all about throwing the bums out, and retrenching US foreign policy with fewer entanglements and a more modest approach. How has that turned out? Walt decries what is quite evident- our policy, which seemingly couldn't get any worse, now has gotten much worse, with a dotard and his various short-lived protectors and yes-men running things. US interests and influence throughout the world are shriveling by the hour.
A second observation is that the Iraq was not brought to us by idealism. It originated in the psychology of unfinished business on the part of Bush, Cheney, and their extended right-wing establishment. Their idealism was, as anyone could see, paper-thin pablum, matched by their total disinterest in the actual country, its people, and what was to become of them in the aftermath. Stupidity reigned supreme, and hundreds of thousands were killed, and countless more lives destroyed and ravaged for that stupidity.
The case of Vietnam was different. We had recently half-won the Korean war, and saved its Southern half from bondage- a fate that becomes more shocking every year as we view what goes on in Chinese-backed North Korea. Due to our loss of the Vietnam war, all of Vietnam remains a totalitarian state- the South would have been much better off had we/they won the war. Our involvement there was heavily idealistic. But it was stupid. The smart people knew the lay of the land, knew the experience of the French, and knew that it was a civil war that the North had a huge head start on, in comparison with the corrupt, illigitimate Southern government. It was a triumph of hope over experience.
So what we need is more experience and smarts. The US needs a better foreign policy system, not different ideals. We need to rigorously insulate our intelligence and analysis system, of which the State Department is a prominent part, from politics. That means stopping the revolving doors of personnel coming from think tanks, lobbying organizations, corporations, and political appointments. Country and region experts need to have long-term relations with their areas, not short posts. Analyses need to be given something like five-year reviews, with promotion dependent on success. Those let go should never be let back in. Accountability needs to replace hackery, corruption, and amateurism. This community needs to be de-militarized as well, which has been a rising problem for decades. These analyses should have public and secret components, with as much as possible made public so that the country can see the work that is being done, and learn what the basis of our foreign policy is. Like militarization, excessive secrecy has also degraded discourse and accountability.
Lastly, we need a more mature media discourse about foreign policy, less reactive to the news of the day, (let lone the twitter-minute), and more analytic and historically aware. Off-shore balancing is a very credible view in this discussion, but so are more idealistic approaches. Helping abused populations in foreign lands is a good thing, if it succeeds. The point is to succeeed rather than fail in our foreign policy projects, which requires deep experience, accountability, good information, and mature discussion. Perhaps we will find out that we should be doing less, once we filter out the bad ideas. Or perhaps we will find out that to do the things we might want to do (think of the second Iraq war) would be, if done properly, unrealistically expensive and unfeasible for that reason.
- Faux-ocracies are a rising challenge.
- The Taliban is weary of gaining ground in Afghanistan.
- New Taliban, same as the old Taliban.
- Yes, we are dealing with a fascist.
- Medical insurance should be left to the private sector?
- We need a wealth tax.
- And a bigger inheritance tax.
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