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10/19/2006
An Examination of U.S. Foreign Policy
Following are a few tidbits from foreign policy experts you may
be familiar with, courtesy of the Sept. / Oct. issue of The
National Interest.
Weapons expert and former assistant secretary of defense
Graham Allison and Russian strategist Dmitri Simes (publisher
of The National Interest) opine on the view of the current global
environment as put out by the White House.
“President Bush has identified the nexus of terrorism and nuclear
weapons as ‘the single largest threat to American national
security.’ Indeed, he has said that the United States is currently
engaged in World War III and put a bust of Winston Churchill in
his office.
“The question he should ask himself is: What would Churchill do
facing a grave threat to his society and way of life? How closely
do the president’s actions mirror his model? An American
Churchill confronting a threat of such monumental proportions
would make defeating this challenge the organizing principle of
U.S. foreign policy.
“Churchill was a life-long anti-communist, and had few illusions
about the Stalin regime. To defeat Nazi Germany, however,
Churchill was prepared to enter into an alliance with the Soviet
Union and to accept that the USSR would incorporate some
additional territories. In fact, Britain even declared war against
democratic Finland because the country cooperated with Berlin,
even though Finland entered the war against the Soviet Union
only in an attempt to reclaim territory occupied by Moscow.
“No Churchillian willingness to establish a hierarchy of priorities
is evident in the Bush Administration’s current foreign policy,
particularly once democracy promotion officially replaced the
fight against terror as the number one U.S. objective in the
world.”
Allison and Simes do praise Bush for his performance at the G-8
Summit in St. Petersburg last summer, specifically with some of
the initiatives Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed
to in the realms of combating nuclear terrorism and cooperation
on nuclear power. But .
“Commendable as these steps are, they represent largely a
declaration of intent whose implementation will depend on
cooperation between the two governments, including their
security services. Taking into account that many sensitive
matters are involved for both sides – particularly for Russia,
which would need to open further its nuclear facilities – it is next
to impossible to hermetically insulate cooperation on nuclear
terrorism from trends in the overall U.S.-Russia relationship, and
these trends lately have been far from encouraging. The
administration claims that there is no contradiction between the
need to cooperate on nuclear terrorism with Russia and
aggressive attempts at democracy promotion in the former Soviet
space and even in Russia itself. It is possible to argue that
democracy promotion in cases like Belarus, which essentially
amount to regime change, should be a paramount foreign policy
objective. But it is hard to take seriously the argument that the
United States can realistically expect to try to undermine Putin’s
role in Russia and Russia’s influence on its periphery on the one
hand and receive whole-hearted Russian cooperation on matters
nuclear, such as putting pressure on Iran, on the other. Growing
U.S. military assistance to Georgia is specifically mentioned in
Moscow as a reason why Russia should be entitled to sell
weapons to Venezuela. This could lead to a pattern of escalation
and further bitter disputes between Washington and Moscow.
Thus, America’s ability to limit the risk of WMD attacks has
been weakened by efforts to bring transformational change in the
post-Soviet space, which the Russian government considers
dangerous to its vital interests ..
“Some argue that even if the United States had been able to
prioritize and to display more sensitivity to the interests of other
major powers, it still would not have received much in return.
Russia is frequently mentioned in this regard, and there is an
element of truth in this argument. Clearly Moscow has been
much less than a perfect partner for the United States, and in its
current resurgent mood Russia would probably refuse to work in
lock-step with American foreign policy no matter what. Then
again, foreign policy is rarely about absolutes: There is a
spectrum between total defiance and total submission, and
moving Moscow along the spectrum can make quite a difference
to the United States ..
“Yet, notwithstanding President Bush’s misplaced praise for
President Putin’s soul, the United States sided with Russia’s new
neighbors in almost every single dispute they had with Moscow,
treating Russian influence in the post-Soviet space as
unacceptable neo-imperialism .
“We are suggesting that in dealing with Russia, the Bush
Administration think first about what matters most to America’s
interests and well-being. The likelihood of terrorists exploding
nuclear bombs in American cities is significantly affected by the
depths of Russian cooperation with the United States in securing
nuclear weapons and materials not only in Russia, but
worldwide. The likelihood of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons is
significantly affected by the depth of Russian cooperation with
the United States in a joint strategy to prevent this outcome .
“As Churchill observed in the dark days of World War II, when
confronting mortal danger, ‘It is not enough to do one’s best.
What is required is that one does what is necessary for success.’”
Personally, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 I wrote in my
“Week in Review” column of the necessity of fighting a ‘dirty
war,’ as Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld put it. But whereas the
White House focused on fighting terrorism, I took the phrase
‘dirty war’ to mean we needed to cut some back room deals with
the likes of France and Russia with regards to both Iran and Iraq.
Both France and Russia had large commercial interests there and
the United States should have in essence guaranteed them in
return for stability. In light of what has transpired on the ground,
I’m more of a believer in this strategy than ever before, though
it’s too late in the case of Iraq and it’s 11:59 pm in Iran.
---
Michael Scheuer, the former senior CIA officer who tracked
Osama bin Laden, also has an essay in The National Interest.
“Courting Catastrophe: America Five Years After 9/11”
“America will be attacked by Al-Qaeda again, and more
destructively than on 9/11. Why? Simple. Our bipartisan
governing elites willfully refuse to recognize the severity of the
Islamist threat. They are waging a feckless war that
misrepresents the enemies’ motivation, keeps borders open,
applies insufficient force, and pursues status quo foreign polices,
ensuring the next Islamist generation is more anti-American and
numerous – and still has the opportunity to strike the American
homeland.
“Time is short. America faces an existential threat the Catholic
historian Hilaire Belloc foresaw long ago. Belloc had great
respect for Islam’s vitality, mobilizing skill, latent military
power, patience and endurance. He wrote the following in 1938
but, in Munich’s aftermath, it went unnoticed. ‘The future
always comes as a surprise,’ Belloc said.
‘ but political wisdom consists in attempting at least some
partial judgment of what that surprise might be. And for my part
I cannot but believe that a main unexpected thing of the future is
the return of Islam .It is, as a fact, the most formidable and
persistent enemy our civilization has had, and may at any
moment become as large a menace in the future as it was in the
past .It has always seemed to me possible, and even probable,
that there would be a resurrection of Islam and that our sons or
our grandsons would see the renewal of the tremendous struggle
between Christian culture and for what has been for more than a
thousand years its greatest opponent.’
Michael Scheuer:
“(U.S.) leaders have failed to understand their enemies’
motivations. Ignoring Sun Tzu’s advice, they have not prepared
citizens for the price they will pay in blood, treasure and lifestyle
to defeat the Islamists – if indeed there is time to understand and
prevail.
“An essay by Rami Khouri, editor-at-large for Beirut’s Daily
Star, is pertinent. In it he wrote,
‘Sensible middle class Americans get on with making a living in
challenging times, while their federal government in Washington
conducts a fantasy foreign policy based on make-believe
perceptions and imagined realities .Washington’s policy is a
mishmash of faulty analysis, historical confusions, emotional
anger, foreign policy frustrations, worldly ignorance, and
political deception all rolled into one. President Bush completely
ignores the impact of American, Israeli and other foreign policies
on the mindset of hundreds of millions of people in the Arab-
Asian region .This is willful political blindness that makes the
analytic basis of American foreign policy a laughingstock around
the world.’
“Khouri’s words must be taken with a grain of salt; he detests
Mr. Bush. But his diagnosis accurately reflects the endemic
shortcomings of the U.S. approach .
“The Islamists are not fighting America because they hate
freedom; because we hold regular elections; because women are
in school; or because Budweiser flows.
“U.S. national security is threatened by the Islamists because of
what America does in the Muslim world, not because of its
beliefs or lifestyle. In claiming the present war is based on the
foe’s hatred of freedom, U.S. leaders prove themselves either
unschooled fools or liars.
“Indeed, Osama bin Laden has been quite helpful in detailing the
U.S. policies that inspire jihad, which include our military and
civilian presence on the Arabian Peninsula; our unqualified
support for Israel; our military presence in Iraq, Afghanistan,
Saudi Arabia, and other Muslim countries; our ability to keep oil
prices acceptable to U.S. and Western voters; our support for
Chinese, Russian, and Indian oppression of Muslims; and our
support of and protection of the world’s Muslim tyrannies.
“These policies make regular appearances in Bin Laden’s post-
1996 rhetoric; a decade of Western polling shows nearly
unanimous Muslim hatred for the same policies. Thus, our elites
need not digest arcane data to know the enemy. We are at war
for what we do- period. We will be defeated if we do not
abandon comfortable fantasies, face facts and shape strategy,
policy and action accordingly.”
Scheuer argues that the three presidents after Ronald Reagan
(whom Scheuer worships), saw themselves as “world president.”
“Each acted on this believe, and so neglected his constitutional
obligation to protect Americans. Presidents now routinely cite
ludicrous propositions as foreign-policy bedrocks. Indeed, the
media-political-think-tank ‘Washington consensus’ consists of
the following ‘Articles of Faith’: American freedom depends on
all peoples having that freedom. As a result, America must
install democracy abroad, even at the point of a bayonet (and
elections alone measure progress toward democracy). Every
war, crisis and genocide threatens U.S. national security. Nation-
states have a right to exist independent of whether they are
sustainable and, in conjunction with the previous precepts, the
United States must be prepared to intervene to ensure their
existence .
“(These) delusions leave America vulnerable by involving us in
wars, disputes and conflicts around the world and by focusing
even more rage and anger at us. Moreover, our elites’ lust to
enter every trumped-up crisis that gets coverage on CNN while
failing to take the boring but absolutely necessary steps to
increase our security marks their deplorable lack of the
Founders’ common sense. Note their readiness to intervene in
Darfur, while not finding the money, personnel and will to secure
Russia’s nuclear arsenal.”
Scheuer concludes by calling for the U.S. to recognize the
following basic truths in order to reduce the sources of anti-
Americanism in the world.
“First, American freedom does not depend on that of others. Our
freedom survived civil war, world wars, racial strife and Cold
War. Only now, by trying to impose our version of freedom
abroad, do we risk it at home.
“Second, it is ahistorical to claim America must install
democracy abroad. The Founders were explicit: Our duty to the
world is the example of effective self-rule. By trying to impose
our version of self-rule abroad, we forfeit the soul of the
republic.
“Third, no nation has a right to exist – not America, not Belgium,
not Israel, not Bolivia, not Saudi Arabia. Nations survive if they
can defend themselves, limit societal rot, and do not cultivate too
many mortal enemies.
“This is why, in a world of nation-states, it is not always true that
all men are equal. In war, our leaders’ constitutional obligation
is to protect Americans. Claiming an American life is not worth
greatly more than any foreigner’s is absurd, lethal heresy.
America wins wars by using overwhelming force to inflict
catastrophic damage that quickly ends fighting .The world is
littered with half-fought wars because U.S. presidents ignore
history and listen to just-war theorists, whose philosophy shelters
moral cowardice and contributes to the proliferation of never-
defeated, always-resurgent enemies .
“U.S. policy right now – its foreign policy and its domestic
policy – is deservedly a laughingstock to Islamists. We and our
NATO allies – about half the world – are not laughing. Indeed,
our absurd national circumstance has become reduced to those
prescient words of bumper-sticker fame: ‘Keep smiling, the boss
loves idiots.’ But God may not always favor fools and the
United States.”
Well, the above gives you something to chew on.
I’m off on a long driving tour of the American West and the
Great Plains and am going to treat myself to a little break from
this column. Next one Nov. 9, or a few days before.
Brian Trumbore
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