I was reading over Michael Lind’s response to James Lindsay’s review of his book and it just made me depressed. Here I was witnessing Lind defend the foreign policies espoused by FDR, Truman, Kennedy, and LBJ, in contrast to the foreign policies of Clinton and George W. Bush. Yes, Clinton and Bush’s foreign policies are of a type, and in contrast to the earlier era. Essentially, the difference between the Truman/Kennedy era and the Clinton/Bush era can be summed up by reference to the fact that the USSR no longer existed in the Clinton/Bush era.
Clinton’s policies were focused on democratizing eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union (expanding NATO eastward), and Latin America, and enacting a neo-liberal vision of free trade among free peoples. Obviously, the end of the Cold War did not change everything over night. For example, we were left with our unsavory allies in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Egpyt. Democracy proved difficult or impossible in the Balkans and many of the former Soviet Socialist Republics. Clinton’s strategy was to leave the Middle East as it was but put all his effort into the peace process with Israel. He intervened in the Balkans to stop the bloodletting, and he pursued a realpolitik in the former Soviet Union, basically doing diplomacy through Exxon/Mobil and Chevron. It was a mixed bag that let certain problems fester, while generally working to keep the peace and expand U.S. access to new markets and resources.
The Bush team came into office and got almost everything immediatlely wrong. Although forewarned that the biggest threat we faced was asymmetic and rooted in our Middle Eastern policies, they chose to see China as the real menace and pursue missile defense. They tore up the anti-ballistic missile treaty in December 2001. Then, once we were attacked, they developed the Bush Doctrine:
The Bush Doctrine is a set of foreign policy guidelines first unveiled by President George W. Bush in his commencement speech to the graduating class of West Point given on June 1, 2002. The policies, taken together, outlined a broad new phase in US policy that would place greater emphasis on military pre-emption, military superiority (“strength beyond challenge”), unilateral action, and a commitment to “extending democracy, liberty, and security to all regions”. The policy was formalized in a document titled The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, published on September 20, 2002. The Bush Doctrine is a marked departure from the policies of deterrence and containment that generally characterized American foreign policy during the Cold War and the decade between the collapse of the Soviet Union and 9/11.
Here is how Lind lays out his vision of the traditional foreign policy of Truman/Kennedy:
In The American Way of Strategy, I reject the profoundly un-American idea of an American global “empire” of any kind in favor of Franklin Roosevelt’s realistic vision of a post-imperial system of sovereign states policed not by a hegemonic U.S. but by a concert of great powers, whose members do not have to be democratic as long as they share a commitment to peace, including peace from terrorism.
Rejecting the sensible Rooseveltian tradition, Lindsay sides with neoconservatives who want an “alliance of democracies” including India, Brazil, and South Africa that ostracizes China, Russia, and most of the states of the Middle East and Central Asia (including U.S. allies like Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan). But on many international issues, new democracies, like our traditional European and Asian allies, agree with Beijing and Moscow, not us.
Neoliberals and neocons alike claim implausibly that there cannot be world peace until all countries are “market democracies,” to use the fashionable term of the 1990s. Realistic Rooseveltian liberals considered earlier versions of this argument to be, in the words of Dean Acheson, “messianic globaloney.”
What we are witnessing here is a false debate premised on false histories. The neoconservatives speak a good game about promoting democracy and pursuing peace through the aggressive confrontation with China, Russia, and the Middle East. But this is all about access to energy supplies and everyone knows it.
And in many respects, this is nothing new. The same considerations drove American foreign policy under Truman, Kennedy, and LBJ. The only real difference now is that the game is being fought under the mask of combatting terrorism instead of godless communism. That, and the fact that we have almost no allies in this fight, largely because the Bush administration has pursued the principles laid out in the Bush Doctrine: pre-emption, military superiority (“strength beyond challenge”), and unilateral action.
The Bush administration’s hostility to the United Nations, the Geneva Conventions, the Kyoto Accords, international law, the missile defense treaty, diplomacy with our adversaries, and multilateral common defense principles all serve to undermine any consensus for following U.S. hegemony.
It upsets the paradigm that allowed Europe, Japan, South Korea, and our Muslim allies to tolerate and even embrace U.S. dominance. The Bush Doctrine effectively killed the logic and legitimacy of U.S. hegemony, to the extent that that logic and legitimacy ever existed.
But, it is still a mistake to think, like Lind, that we can set things right by merely returning to an earlier paradigm. That’s because that paradigm never truly existed. Truman and Eisenhower pursued a tough foreign policy at a very difficult time, that mainly served our interests well. But it was not without its own extreme cynicism. It was certainly not post-imperial. Rather, we just took over the major parts of the British Empire, and the responsibility for running it. This led to one blunder after another: first in Iran, then in Guatemala, then in Indonesia, then in Cuba, then in Vietnam, then in South America, then in Nicaragua, then in Panama, then in Iraq, and then in Iraq again.
Even our greatest success, in Afghanistan, has turned out badly and contributed directly to 9/11 and the current security problems that menace us.
All of these shortcomings of our foreign policy have been disguised to one degree or another. The main event was the peaceful collapse of the Soviet Union. Since the overall policy had a favorable outcome, the individual failures were glossed over and the lessons went unlearned.
The real lesson could have been summed up when George W. Bush said he need to have a more humble foreign policy. But, Bush was being disingenuous.
The War in Iraq is a clarifying moment. It’s costs are being incurred exclusively by our children, who will pay the price with a lower standard of living as well as a perpetual threat of retaliation. Millions continue to go without health care, while both it and education get too expensive for most people to afford.
Our society pays a high price for the delusions of the internationalists and empire builders. There is no longer any reason for the United States to pay the cost of being the sole superpower. The more we engage in this behavior, the more our security is threatened, and the more we have to spend protecting ourselves (or pre-emptively rushing off to invade other oil-rich countries).
The real debate is not between the foreign policy of Truman vs. Bush. The real debate is one that Eisenhower put better than anyone before or since.
A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction.
Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.
Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.
In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present
* and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientifictechnological elite.
It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system — ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.
Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society’s future, we — you and I, and our government — must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.
Down the long lane of the history yet to be written America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.
Such a confederation must be one of equals. The weakest must come to the conference table with the same confidence as do we, protected as we are by our moral, economic, and military strength. That table, though scarred by many past frustrations, cannot be abandoned for the certain agony of the battlefield.
Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war — as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years — I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight.
Happily, I can say that war has been avoided. Steady progress toward our ultimate goal has been made. But, so much remains to be done. As a private citizen, I shall never cease to do what little I can to help the world advance along that road.
So — in this my last good night to you as your President — I thank you for the many opportunities you have given me for public service in war and peace. I trust that in that service you find some things worthy; as for the rest of it, I know you will find ways to improve performance in the future.
You and I — my fellow citizens — need to be strong in our faith that all nations, under God, will reach the goal of peace with justice. May we be ever unswerving in devotion to principle, confident but humble with power, diligent in pursuit of the Nation’s great goals.
To all the peoples of the world, I once more give expression to America’s prayerful and continuing aspiration:
We pray that peoples of all faiths, all races, all nations, may have their great human needs satisfied; that those now denied opportunity shall come to enjoy it to the full; that all who yearn for freedom may experience its spiritual blessings; that those who have freedom will understand, also, its heavy responsibilities; that all who are insensitive to the needs of others will learn charity; that the scourges of poverty, disease and ignorance will be made to disappear from the earth, and that, in the goodness of time, all peoples will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love.
And what are PNAC and the Carlyle Group and Richard Perle and William Kristol, if not the hub of the modern day military-industrial complex?
What are Exxon/Mobil, and Chevron, and Halliburton, if not the main drivers of our foreign policy?
The real debate is over whether the American people would ever knowingly consent to making these sacrifices if they really understood the beneficiaries and the cost.