In his column in the Washington Post today, Jackson Diehl lurches uncontrollably into one of the great truths of American foreign policy:
Barack Obama’s foreign policy strategy in this election year might be best summed up by William F. Buckley’s famous promise: to “stand athwart history, yelling stop.†Wherever war rages, crisis looms, or a truculent strongman glowers, the message from the White House has been the same: “Give me space.â€
To the extent that there is an American foreign policy, that policy is extremely conservative. That has been true, with few lapses, over a very long period of time. That reflexive conservatism, along with its character as an emergent phenomenon of the frequently conflicting interests of the American people, has been what has promoted American foreign policy’s remarkable consistency over time and regardless of the party holding the White House or the Congress.
That’s completely rational: when events break as much in your favor as they have for the last couple of centuries it’s natural to want them to keep on doing so. Hence, conservatism.
Although defense is easier than attack, the attacker dictates the terms of the engagement. Yielding the initiative, whether you call it “patience”, “leading from behind” or “waiting until after the election”, assumes that your luck will continue to hold out and that adversaries or even notional allies are incompetent or will not work against your interests.
The greatest strength of the Libya campaign, that it required no U. S. boots on the ground, was also its greatest weakness: no boots on the ground limits what little control you may have over how events unfold. As we found in Iraq boots on the ground do not necessarily mean you can dictate the outcome. But little is not none and without them there is even less control over unfolding events.
Sometimes you gets the bear, sometimes the bear gets you.
Of course with more boots come greater vulnerabilities, too, which may actually mean even less control.
I’m very interested in this, especially as it relates to technological changes. The tech of war — drones and soon-to-come smarter weapons — now inclines us toward war by decapitation and punitive raid. In the days when we had to move massive armies to the location the inclination would be to seize, hold and garrison a place. The logistics alone would argue for it.
But we no longer need to ship 50,000 men off to battle, we can sit at some Air Force base in the US and strike at will with zero risk to our soldiers and at negligible cost.
Let’s say, for example, that we are unhappy with Uzbekistan.* We can target Mr. Karimov and a dozen members of the leadership and simply remove them. If the results are not to our liking, we can remove the next crew as well. And the crew after that, until we get a more malleable regime. (Until someone we like can be elected, as Tom Lehrer used to sing.)
We could invade Uzbekistan and spend decades trying to fix all that’s wrong. Or we could just subtract governments until we get the right one.
*Just an example. Not proposing war with Uzbekistan.
That’s completely rational: when events break as much in your favor as they have for the last couple of centuries it’s natural to want them to keep on doing so. Hence, conservatism.
As frequent readers will know, I generally try not to step into areas in which I have no formal training or real experience, but this phrase caught my attention. I wonder how things really have broken in our favor or were influenced. Whether it be the Revolution, WWI, II or the Cold War it seams that we have (successfully) created our own good fortune.
I do think that Michael makes a very interesting point about war-as-video game. It has obvious advantages wrt “our guys,” logistics, costs etc. It has obvious disadvantages to the degree it makes war falsely appear less costly.
I’ve always agreed with Dave on as much as I know about his philosophy about war or war-like intervention: only as a last resort and with the vital interests of the country truly at stake. I have a flip side view that I’m not sure I know how Dave or any commenters here think. Which is, once you cross the Rubicon and you are in, you are in. Overwealming force, get it done. Now. You can’t conduct war with an eye towards the media. If you have they view, don’t go to war.
That’s always been my view as well, in the past. It’s one of the reasons I turned on Mr. Bush’s handling of Iraq. I assumed — mistakenly as it turned out — that we were going there to prevail, period, full stop.
But the new technology changes my thinking on that. I sense danger associated with video game warfare (Danger Will Robinson) but isn’t it shiny and seductive?
I don’t believe in wars of limited objectives or, indeed, limited war. I think that if the cause isn’t serious enough for total war, that war can and should be avoided.
My take on both Iraq and Afghanistan was that the political climate would only support wars of limited objectives.
Michael
I’m not sure, now in hindsight, what “prevailing” would have entailed. But that is now rehashing ancient history.
Separately, shiny and seductive indeed. I suppose that since we are generally at war not with the people of a country, but their political leaders and their actions, a case can be made for minimizing inevitable so-called “collateral damage.”. However, much like my worldview on government intervention in our economic realm, if it’s made too clean and neat, the costs deflected to third parties (especially those third parties that can be villified) then you have created a monster.
I used to spar with a guy at OTB named Bernard Finel. He knew nothing about economics and business. But I had a lot of time for his views on foreign policy. One wonders what he might have to say about this emerging issue.
In other words, when Bush didn’t use a half-million troops in Afghanistan or Iraq, that was BAD. When Obama didn’t use one troop in Libya, that was GOOD. Anybody that doesn’t realize that must be living in Timbuktu.
The only thing that matters is the letter in the parentheses behind the name.
We discovered in the mountains of Korea that push-button warfare has serious limitations. That was over 60 years ago.
I’m not particularly a fan of the use of the term “conservative” here, and even less so of the Buckley quote, the full version of which is “It stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no other is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.” I agree with Dave’s points, but think the term “status quo” power might be better suited.
Russia and China generally adhere to a more conservative foreign policy, though not necessarily in furtherance of the status quo, or perhaps they are troubled by the status quo, but don’t wish to challenge it directly.
I think the U.S. is rather active in promoting or perfecting the status quo.
Actually, Ice, I strongly supported Iraq 1 (R), and going into Afghanistan (R), supported Iraq 2 (R) with caveats, and never said I supported Libya (D), though I argued with Doug Mataconis at OTB about the politics, the ins-and-outs of tactics, and the likely sequelae.
But carry on.
PD:
The term I tend to use and favor is status quo power as well. We’re THE superpower, we want to keep on being THE superpower. We back transformation in some situations in part out of a natural American preference for freedom, but also because we believe democracy is a more stable system, more status quo over the long term.
Every single post here demonstrates what is wrong with our foreign policy strategy: We don’t have one. Can anyone lay out a single achievable political objective toward which we are working? Or can we finally acknowledge that we do little more than react with military power as challenges present themselves? That we flip from page to page in an endless book of tactics, never stopping to think what strategy those tactics are intended to serve.
We’re a tired, washed up old empire desperately trying to retain control of events by lashing out, not a deliberative great power working toward its interests in the most effective manner possible. And we’ve become so unimaginative that we no longer appear capable of finding accomodation with those who do not share our worldview, but capable only of threats, intimidation, sanction and force.
Once upon a time the word “conservative” meant something quite a bit different from what it means now which I think would be better thought of as “Right Bolsheviks”.
I think that sugar-coats the missionary impulse in American foreign policy a bit. As I’ve said before, I don’t have a Wilsonian bone in my body. I’m highly skeptical of trying to promote democracy beyond our borders (“well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all, champion and vindicator only of our own).
Quite to the contrary I think what our foreign policy should be promoting is freedom of commerce on the seas and in the air, freedom in the transmission and spreading of information. Democracy, as it is practiced in much of the world, is no more stable than autocracy. Freedom on the other hand furthers American interests.
Democracy, when it is mobocracy without liberal values, does not further American interests.
Dave:
I agree on democracy — usually interpreted in our FP as voting on something or someone at least once. I think we miss the point that it’s not just about the voting, it’s also about the values in place preceding the voting. “Yay! We voted for a new dictator!” isn’t quite what we’re going for is it? To be honest about it, in a lot of countries the people are better off with a non-depraved dictator. Or a king, for that matter. (Brits nodding their heads and thinking, well, it only took them two centuries to figure that out . . .)
I don’t know how to quantify the balance between messianism and the search for stability. I’m not sure even the major players know. Is there a space in American government for cool contemplation of long-term strategies? Are the major players capable of separating the plan from the propaganda, or the act from the impulse?
I supported Iraq 2 (barely, calling it a 51/49 proposition,) on the strength of the belief that Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney were playing a harsh but potentially-effective game — removing an aggressive, oil-fueled bad guy with dreams of being a regional power, and replacing him with a more docile and less aggressive (maybe even democratic) regime. I assumed we meant to ram democracy down their throats and then sit on them for 20 years until it stuck. I was surprised when they lost control of the situation and then actually began transferring power to people who were not exactly Washington, Jefferson and Adams.
Ben:
Have we had a plan since the end of the Cold War? Even containment was reactive. I suspect it’s part and parcel of having a free and open society. It’s hard to be Bismarck in a very open democracy. I think “maintain” has been the plan since 1989. Contain led to maintain. Next up? Entertain. At least we’re good at that.
Can anyone lay out a single achievable political objective toward which we are working?
Pissing off the Canadians and the Mexicans.
Quite to the contrary I think what our foreign policy should be promoting is freedom of commerce on the seas and in the air, freedom in the transmission and spreading of information.
Why should we have freedom of commerce and transmission of information abroad if we’re trying to stop it within our borders?
We have strategies for certain situations.
For example, our plan in sub-Saharan Africa is to ignore it. We will throw a little bit of money at it just because that’s what we do, but largely it will be completely ignored. Corporations will be allowed to extract what resources they can, and we will occassionally smack someone down if they get to be irritating. (Hey, who doesn’t like killing a Somali war lord from time to time? Somali war lords like it so much they never really stop.)
@Michael Reynolds
The end of the Cold War was the last time we had coherent strategy, you’re correct. We determined a political objective, to contain Soviet influence, and then selected the tactics to achieve that objective. The Bush Administration’s strategy of “transforming” the Arab world was ridiculously arrogant and doomed to failure; it fell apart in 2006 when Iraq exploded and our foreign policy has been adrift ever since.
Now our “strategy” is a tactic known as targeted assassination. The problem with adopting a tactic as an objective is it will never get us to a point where we can say the objective has been accomplished. We have no exit strategy from permanent war against Islam.
We have no exit strategy from permanent war against Islam.
What makes you think that that is even possible?
Meaty thread!
Just as a FYI, I spent about three years supporting drone operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. They are a great tool, properly utilized, but I think they’ve been over-hyped by the press and pundits. They are more an evolution in capability than a revolution. They appear more powerful than they actually are because we currently operate in a completely permissive environment for drones. And even in that environment we make mistakes and still have difficulty finding the bad guys we want to attack. Just look at UBL. The hard part was finding him.
Theoretically that’s possible, but practically it isn’t. If Mr. Karimov knows he’s being targeted he will take measures to make killing him difficult. Firepower is not the issue, “smart” weapons are not the issue – the US has both in spades. So it becomes an problem of timely, accurate and precise intelligence – the intel has to be timely, accurate and precise enough that you can actually engage the target. For example, even if you know where Mr. Karimov is RIGHT NOW, that intelligence may not be timely enough because one has to account for however long it takes to get ordinance to that location to actually kill him. This isn’t a minor problem and is something the military has spent billions on over the past couple of decades. It was the reason the CIA armed drones in the hunt for UBL to begin with.
@Icepick
We could have come to an arrangement with al-Qaeda. We could come to an arrangement with the Taliban who, far from being the mindless terrorists our media portray them as, have political objectives. We can come to an accomodation with Iran, the leadership of which is entirely rational. War is unnecessary.
I believe we still have a law against assassinating leaders of other countries, or was that overturned? If we start assassinating, with drones, the leaders of other countries, I think we throw soft power right out the door.
The use of overwhelming force, basically the Powell doctrine, has some appeal, but I think we are better off tailoring our mission to our needs. If we predictably react with maximum forces, we are too easily manipulated in asymmetrical encounters, what we are likely to see for the foreseeable future.
Steve
Dave,
How do you define limited vs total war? I don’t think it’s possible to avoid limited wars, even if one tried. How do you, for example, deal with something like the threat posed by the Barbary States, or French privateers, or Spain after the Maine?
Michael, Icepick,
Personally, I think the fundamental problem with US foreign policy is the lack of a clear strategy since the end of the Cold War besides remaining the biggest, baddest, mofo on the block. I think Mark Safranski described the problem well by calling it a strategy of tactical geopolitics.
Ben,
An arrangement with AQ? I’m not sure how that’s possible since their political objectives are in almost complete opposition to ours.
As for the Taliban we tried for almost five years to come to an arrange with them and they consistently lied to us and reneged on promises made.
Drew,
Bernard Finel has a blog – I comment there occasionally.
Andy
I know. but thanks.
Heh
Wilsoniansism
Who would disagree? I, too, don’t have an inherent interventionist bone in my body. I also don’t have a naive bone in my body. We don’t get to conduct foreign policy based upon our own personal (and laudable) personal preferences. As lmuch as the left would like us to believe otherwise, there ar really really evil guys out there.
Gotta deal with them before we get back to ping pong. Sorry.
We could have come to an arrangement with al-Qaeda.
Before they killed three thousand people during one morning or after?
Andy, what would you have that strategy be? Would you advertize it if you had one?
The US has been consistently pushing more and more trade alliances, the WTO, more trade (period), increased security ties, etc. The IMF and the World Bank count too. The US has been working consistently for more and more of the ties that bind. The US has been working to make international finance more and more transparent, at least to the prying eyes of government. The US has resisted some internationalization efforts, namely those that would infringe on its rights to act freely. (So no World Court BS for us.)
But the strategy is actually there, it is happening at an almost sub-conscious level (or at least, the nominal leaders don’t always seem to notice) and it has been consistent since about 1944 (Bretton Woods) or so. Nations are being assimilated a little at a time, or sometimes whole blocks get swallowed up in one fell swoop.
The question is, what now? We have had a crisis of a level not seen since the 1930s. So far the can kickers are successfully keeping all the cans in motion, but what’s happens when Spain fails, as it almost certainly must? Then the cans stop moving, and who knows if this project will continue.
But just because the big part of the strategy isn’t getting talked about, just because it doesn’t get noticed, doesn’t mean it isn’t there. Stuff like nation building (in the former Yugoslavia (which was extra-special funny), Haiti, Iraq or Afghanistan) is just stuff done on the side along the way, with an eye towards seeing if it will work as a tactic in the larger scheme. Survey SEZ: Not so much.
Well, the current president and the last one, just to name two.
Ice:
I think of all that as a separate category of economic policy. But maybe in the absence of a serious old-school physical threats — Commies, Nazis, the British — that’s all we have left.
Andy:
I did not know that about you. Fascinating.
I’m not saying hi-tech drone war would necessarily be effective. But zero-casualty war is going to be crack to political leaders who want to do something without risking much.
The big strategy had two big challenges in the early days, the struggle against Communism, and the End of Empires. The challenges were comparable in scope, though both served a purpose. Truthfully, the European nations were better off without the added problems of colonies. Either the subjects could stand on their own feet, in which case why colonize, or they couldn’t, in which case why colonize? The Communists provided a viable external enemy (and it really was an enemy) to distract people from the other stuff going on. Really, who knows what the GATT/WTO is doing? But it is really easy to look at the Communists and know that THEY are an enemy that needs to be watched and guarded against.
But neither communism nor colonialism were going to last, because of economic and demographic realities. This Bretton Woods thing, though, and what it has morphed into? Well, that probably can’t last either. Peoples want to be free of the ties that bind, and they will struggle against them. And there is always the problem of having too many chiefs and not enough indigenous funny-head-gear-wearing people. Not to mention economies (or rather, those aggregated masses of humanity that we call economies) act in ways that are irrational because, well, people are not always rational. (See Tulip Mania, the recent housing bubble in various countries, or the pet rock craze for examples.*)
Essentially, they believe that by tying everyone together in a tight web of finance and trade they can greatly reduce the chances of war, along with some other problems. They can manage us all. It’s the technocrat’s wet dream, and they really believe they’ve almost solved the problem of government.
* That comment is extremely unfair to the pet rock craze, which was basically harmless.
But zero-casualty war is going to be crack to political leaders who want to do something without risking much.
It’s already bullshit. Azawad is showing that. See the Fehrenbach quote above for what is required.
Ice,
Maybe it’s a strategy, but it doesn’t seem very coherent or sustainable to me. Beyond maintaining the status quo, it doesn’t seem to have much in the way of goals. The new NSS (national security strategy) supposedly has us “pivoting” toward Asia, but that new priority isn’t reflected in the White House budget and Congress will do what it usually does anyway, which is justify whatever they want to justify. A good title for our strategy might be, “muddle along.”
Michael,
I’m a reservist intel analyst for the air force and I split my time between doing that and raising the kids as an at home Dad. I do a lot more time than the typical one weekend a month that most reservists do, but the military isn’t a full-time job for me. It’s a juggling act, but it keeps me doing two things I really enjoy.
I plan to take a full-time position soon since 2 out of three kids are in school now and I was offered a good opportunity. Who knows when that’ll start though – it’s been almost six months and the job isn’t even advertised yet. Gotta love the Federal red tape.
Anyway, I agree with you regarding political leaders and think drones attacks will be a way for them to “do something” that appears safe and low cost. The technology still has a long way to go though and comes with some significant operational and political downsides.
Dave
I think that is oversimplified. I’d love to take a shot at Obama, but we have to live in t he real world.
Maybe it’s a strategy, but it doesn’t seem very coherent or sustainable to me. Beyond maintaining the status quo, it doesn’t seem to have much in the way of goals.
They’ve been sustaining this strategy since July of 1944, just a few weeks after the D-Day invasion. The groundwork for it must have been started at least a few months before the conference began. The framework for IMF, the World Bank and the GATT was initially established at that conference. The GATT morphed into the WTO back in the 1990s. A large number of the people responsible for keeping this going NOW weren’t even born THEN. Most, in fact, if you look at all the junior staffers and such.
Really, they’ve sustained this for more than two decades LONGER than the Cold War lasted. They’re not up to “four score and seven years ago” but they’re getting close.
Free easy trade, managed exchange rates designed to keep trade free and easy, always seeking to expand the range of its influence, etc, etc. On the one hand it might not seem all that ambitious, on the other look what they’ve achieved. And on the third hand (this is about economics, after all) almost no one seems to ever notice what’s going on. And its only status quo if you look at it from the inside and only look at it from the present point of view. In 1944, when they hadn’t even beaten the Nazis and other Axis Powers?
It has been sustained, coherent and simple. Just because no one notices, and just because it isn’t what most people think of when they think foreign policy (everyone wants to think of wars and borders and personalities) doesn’t mean that it isn’t happening.
…
As for its sustainability, I have already expressed doubts. They’re dancing on the edge of a cliff in Europe right now, and I don’t think they can avoid falling over. Perhaps the whole thing won’t come crashing down but I think significant parts of it are going to have to be reworked. We’ll see.
Very interesting. Thanks.
Drew:
For a guy who knows nothing about business and economics, it is interesting that I was more right than wrong about precisely what we we sparring about, namely the causes, course, consequences, and policy responses to the economic slump in 2008. But be that as it may.
I’ve written extensively about this issue, and suggested at least in terms of uses of force that we focus on short operations with limited goals because that is the best way to leverage American power. This essay, I think, captures many of my views on this issue: http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2010/02/4387134/
–BF
Hell, Bernard
I have a decidedly different recollection, and the current state of our national finances I believe makes me correct. But as you say, be that as it may…
Thanks for the link.
Regards
Note too that most of the work I mentioned is being done by technocrats and (for lack of a better term) egg-heads working behind the scenes. The only real exposure most of this work gets is when free-trade agreements get noticed, and that’s usually the only time the pols talk about it. The work is too hard and too important to trust to the pols. In my lifetime I’m guessing only Nixon and Clinton among the Presidents had the chops to even attempt to get directly involved in this stuff.
Heh
The iPad strikes again.
HELLO, Bernard
The iPad strikes again.
This is going to play hell with business communications. Stick to “Hi.”
Drew, does the iPad have a spell check feature? Do you use it? If so, see if you can alter the dictionary – remove words like “hell” so that if they get typed in they will show up as wrong. If you want to leave a “hell” in a message, no big deal. But it might prevent a few “Hell Bernards” too.