How do you build nations without friends? Why even try?
The US has been the world policeman and hegemon for seventy years and counting, and our run is reaching its end, for both domestic reasons of political & intellectual breakdown, and foreign competition by China and the rise of authoritarian power globally. We have helped keep the peace in Europe, and have had stunning successes fostering prosperity and freedom in places such as South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan. We have had generally friendly relations with all developed nations and with many developing nations, especially those of Eastern Europe. But we have had rather sour relations with post-colonial nations like those of the Islamic world, South America, and Africa. The US inherited the mind-set, and sometimes more concrete policies and roles from the former colonial powers, failed to break from that past, and made frequent and disastrous errors in those parts of the world. Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan each fit into this mold and stand as horrible failures of nation-building. (Incidentally, we had a foretaste of this imperial dilemma in the Philippines, among other formerly Spanish possessions.)
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| George Washington as Roman emperor, US Capitol. |
For the fact is that we are not Rome. For all our early emulation of Rome- the place names, the Senate, the heroic busts and portraits- our hearts are not into imperialism. The US hegemony has been built on cooperation, not on tyranny. Rome devastated those who rebelled, leaving traumatic scars in, for example, Christian and Jewish cultures that smart to this day. While some in our military may have the stomach for harsh oppression, (see the Iraq occupation), most do not, and far less so in the broader society. So when we invade a country like, say, Afghanistan, we are not pursuing a scorched earth policy, except inadvertantly by way of our technological and intelligence blundering. Instead, we were looking for hearts and minds, for nation-building, and for prosperous development. We are looking for allies.
But security comes first. Even a relatively small militant minority, tolerated by a sullen majority, can make an occupation into hell for the US and everyone else. (Or a cross-border insurgency such as the Viet Cong, or the Taliban from Pakistan.) We have been faced with impossible choices- either fully invade and ravage the occupied country to bring it to heal, or muddle along through civil war, corruption, bad allies, and ultimately, defeat. It seems, at a very far remove, that the missing ingredient in these failures, beyond lack of cultural understanding and foresight, has been sufficiently large friendly coalitions with which to work. If one thinks back to the occupations of Europe after world war 2, the Soviets were willing to tyrannize the Eastern European countries, which was effective, and harsh. The Western countries were given much more lenient treatment, with cooperative administrations that had broad support from populations that were, even in belligerant Germany, sick of war and sick of the shattered and psychopathic dreams of the Nazis, not to mention tempered by the fate of their brethren across the iron curtain.
The lesson ultimately is that we can not consider invading or occupying countries where we do not already have a large coalition of political support (or for some reason have dropped nuclear bombs on them). While Germany and Japan were sufficiently cowed by their military defeats to accept and capitalize on sympathetic occupying administrations, the situation in countries like Iraq has been fundamentally different. Iraq may have had a large latent desire to be rid of their ruler. But the US invasion was clearly unjust, not due to significant belligerance on Iraq's part, and devolved into a culturally tone-deaf dis-establishment of their government with no serious provision for a new one. Our friends were clowns like Ahmed Chalabi, and we failed to realize that Hussein was not just a rogue dictator, but the representative of large tribal interests and a fair proportion of Iraqi society. In the end, not even the Shia fully supported the US occupation, so the dysfunctions of friendless and weak governance turned into civil war. So, far from being saviors, we became agents of chaos. It is a template of what to avoid in the future- invasions that assume any outpouring of political support that is not already present.
This points to a larger theme in US foreign policy, which is that we need friends. Occupations of other countries will not work on our terms without a friendly attitude from most of the population. But our foreign policy more broadly will also not work without friends. The last adminstration did incalculable damage by futilely toadying to our enemies and alienating friends. But true power for the US accrues from having positive and deep friendships all over the world which lead to coalitions of partners with sympathetic understanding and common interests. The battle with China will take place mostly on the level, not of aircraft carriers and standing armies, but of soft power- cultivating friendships that stand up to bullying and authoritarianism.
China is taking its own soft-power initiatives with its belt-and-road push to aid developing nations. This is the major competition we face, to show that the US is a functional democracy internally and externally, capable of leading the community of developed and democratic nations against a rising tide of authoritarianism. An authoritarianism which has understandable attractions to developing nations with unstable political systems and poor economic performance- which is often directly attributable to the unfair resource extraction and other imperial or quasi-imperial trade practices of the dominant capitalist powers. So, can we foster better development in small countries without forcing first world-driven rules of governance and trade? Can we be a positive influence against the scourges of drugs and corruption? Can we fund a fair share of vaccine distribution to underdeveloped countries? Can we set an example in the fight against climate change and aid other countries to do their share? We must find better and more generous ways to truly aid less developed countries and grow our coalition so that bullies do not win the game of global hegemony.
