Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Afghanistan and the Credibility Crock

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Afghanistan, Bay of Pigs, Biden, Central America, Cold War, communism, credibility, Cuba, Cuban Missile Crisis, Gideon Rachman, Grenada, John F. Kennedy, Laos, Lebanon, Lyndon B. Johnson, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Reagan Doctrine, Richard M. Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Samuel Johnson, Southeast Asia, Soviet Union, Vietnam

Forgive me if this header makes it sound like I’m unusually ticked off. But I sort of am. Because I’ve been dealing for decades with the claim that the United States can’t set meaningful foreign policy priorities because tolerating any international setbacks of any kind would destroy its global credibility forever.

I haven’t heard this argument lately, no doubt because it’s rooted in the Cold War era, and the absence of a superpower adversary determined to engage in a full-fledged contest for global supremacy (and no, the Chinese aren’t there yet, especially when it comes to fighting proxy wars) drained it of lots of its…well…credibility as a rationale for sweeping American global activism.

Now, however, the seeming certainty of a Taliban takeover following the nearly completed U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan has brought it back (see, e.g., here and here), and it’s even less convincing than during its Cold War heyday.

As a review of U.S. Cold War history makes clear, there were actually several varieties of the credibility theory. For example, John F. Kennedy’s effort to halt the spread of Communism in Vietnam clearly was influenced by the acute need he felt to bolster his own credibility after the Bay of Pigs debacle, a performance at a summit with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev that he himself viewed as a dangerous flop, and a widely criticized diplomatic settlement to a conflict in neighboring Laos. In other words, Kennedy perceived an urgent need to salvage a reputation for simple foreign policy competence.

Credibility throughout the early Cold War decades in particular had an ideological dimension, too. As this study handily summarizes, U.S. leaders strongly believed that prevailing against the Soviets and Chinese required that Americans help threatened countries demonstrate to the world at large that non-Communist systems had the vigor to repel subversion and outright revolt by adherents of that creed. So establishing credibility during that period was also an exercise in global morale building. (Interestingly, echoes of this idea permeate the rhetoric of the Biden administration and other globalists on the subject of China.)

But the main version of Cold War credibility theory held any U.S. failure to resist Communist expansionism the world over would convince friend and foe alike that American declarations of resolve were shams and that American security commitments were worthless whenever push came to shove. The resulting shift in the global balance of power and influence, as U.S. allies and neutrals alike scrambled to accommodate ascendant Communist forces as best they could, would leave an internationally isolated America much weaker and poorer.

Such fears were behind Lyndon B. Johnson’s declaration that America would not “cut and run” from Vietnam because “We must meet our commitments in the world….”

They were behind Richard M. Nixon’s Vietnam-induced fear that “If, when the chips are down, the world’s most powerful nation, the United States of America, acts like a pitiful, helpless giant, the forces of totalitarianism and anarchy will threaten free nations and free institutions throughout the world.”

And they were explicitly behind Ronald Reagan’s case for his doctrine of resisting Moscow’s efforts to expand its influence in Central America, sub-Saharan Africa – and Afghanistan: “The U.S. must rebuild the credibility of its commitment to resist Soviet encroachment on U.S. interests and those of its Allies and friends, and to support effectively those Third World states that are willing to resist Soviet pressures or oppose Soviet initiatives hostile to the United States, or are special targets of Soviet policy.”

Thankfully, today’s credibility-mongers are outside of power in Washington, not inside. But these members of the globalist foreign policy Blob concentrated in the Mainstream Media, the think tank world, and some factions in Congress, are hardly devoid of influence, especially if the optics coming out of Afghanistan are ugly, as can be counted on. So it’s worth reviewing the main reasons that this form of obsessing about U.S. credibility has no claim to be taken seriously both for that reason, and because their fatal flaws remain the same, too.

In the first place, credibility-mongering falls on its face because its main animating fears have simply not materialized over any stretch of time. The fall of Vietnam, most prominently, clearly led to Communist takeovers in Laos and Cambodia, too. But in the immediate aftermath of Vietnam, no U.S. treaty allies defected into the Communist camp, or turned neutral. Even in Southeast Asia, no more dominoes topped – despite the clear lack of any American appetite to help with any resistance.

In fact, as (globalist) Financial Times columnist Gideon Rachman just noted, “within fourteen years of the fall of Saigon, the cold war was over, and the west had won.”

A least as interesting, as I noted way back in 1985, successful American demonstrations of credibility have displayed little long-term value. For example, Reagan’s 1983 invasion of Grenada was a clear-cut win for the United States. But for years afterwards, Soviet- and Cuban-backed leaders and insurgents in nearby Central America continued defying his administration’s will for years afterward. Outside the Western Hemisphere, the Grenada victory did nothing to stop deadly attacks on U.S. Marines stationed in civil war-torn Lebanon. Meanwhile, many American allies viewed Grenada as more evidence that Reagan was a dangerous cowboy. Even staunch Reagan ally and close personal friend Margaret Thatcher, the British Prime Minister, was unnerved.

More important, though, as I argued in that 1985 article, given inevitable limits on American power and will, the real measure of U.S. credibility isn’t a stated determination to respond strongly to every single foreign challenge that arises, or even to try doing so. In fact, because its post-Vietnam circumstances and behavior have made those limits obvious globally, such pretensions are likeliest to have the opposite effect – to fuel doubts about American judgment and wisdom.

Rather than depending on “convincing the rest of the world that the United States will respond to all instances of aggression,” I continued, building and preserving American credibility “must depend on convincing the world that the United States will respond to some instances of aggression” based on the identification of specific interests that are regarded as important enough to defend (or to advance, for that matter, when such opportunities appear). And operationally, “this translates into an ability to use finite assets efficiently and rationally – to convey a clear sense of priorities.”

Of course, adversaries might as a result view countries or regions left off an American definition of crucial interests as tempting targets. But precisely because these would be low priorities, by definition any adversary wins in these areas would pose few if any risks to the United States.

The 18^th century British literary giant Samuel Johnson famously proclaimed that false, cynical expressions of patriotism are “the last refuge of a scoundrel.” I wouldn’t go so far as to attach that label to the credibility-mongers. But resort to  this ploy too often has been the last refuge of globalists who are completely out of any other reasons to insist on dubious forms of international activism, and the current hysteria over Afghanistan is clearly the latest example.

Im-Politic: Dumping on Trump by Trashing History

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arts, culture, Francisco Franco, Im-Politic, John F. Kennedy, Kennedy Center, Mainstream Media, Pablo Casals, Philip Kennecott, Spain, Trump, Washington Post

Since Philip Kennicott has won a Pulitzer Prize, and has been writing on architecture and music and culture for the Washington Post since 1999, I’m sure he knows a lot about these subjects. What he doesn’t seem to know anything about is American diplomatic history, but neither he nor his editors let that failing prevent him from writing about the intersection of the arts, politics, and foreign policy as long as the objective was dumping on President Trump.

These biases could not have been clearer in Kennicott’s article yesterday dealing with the President’s recent decision to pass up attending this year’s Kennedy Center Honors ceremony for fear of distracting from the upcoming December awards to “five artists whose talent and ingenuity have enriched and shaped cultural life in America.” As the author noted, Mr. Trump is slated to become only the third chief executive in the ceremony’s 39-year history to sit the event out.

Kennicott rightly observes that this Kennedy Center controversy – which also featured three of the five honorees declaring their refusal to attend a traditional pre-ceremony White House reception – demonstrates that ‘”the rift between the administration and the larger arts world is now total” in large part because major arts figures believe that the President has “embodied a leadership style antithetical to values that have become sacred within most contemporary arts communities, including tolerance, service and egalitarianism.”

The author also makes clear his own view that Mr. Trump is largely to blame for this rupture because he won the White House “based on divisive and racist rhetoric” and has largely continued down this dangerous road – as so many Americans believe.

Although Kennicott can be faulted for overlooking the big racism and sexism and political tolerance problems that the American entertainment community itself has failed to deal with – at least judging by critics in its own ranks – he’s also made some compelling points about the President’s leadership failings so far. In particular, as revealed just this month by his various remarks since the Charlottesville demonstrations and violence (and as I’ve also suggested), he has fallen short when it comes to “sustaining social bonds” and “dramatizing the presidency as service to the nation, not a perk of electoral victory.”

But Kennicott is deeply wrong in assuming that the arts community’s views on these subjects always or even often deserve to be taken seriously, and totally off base in viewing an episode from the days of John F. Kennedy’s presidency as an example of how well artists judge matters of public life.

The author began his article with a description of an evening in November, 1961, when the President and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy hosted a White House performance by renowned Spanish cellist Pablo Casals. In Kennicott’s words:

“For years, Casals had boycotted performing in the United States in protest of the nation’s support for the brutal right-wing Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, but he was heartened by Kennedy’s election campaign and finally accepted an invitation to the White House.” For Kennicott, his appearance before the First Couple and “a glittering crowd of political and cultural leaders” would “become a defining moment in the administration’s embrace of both the arts and the image of elegant cosmopolitanism.”

Certainly the Camelot image fostered so successfully by the Kennedys and their cheerleaders proves that Kennicott is right about the visual message sent by that star-studded evening – about a political world and a cultural world jointly prodding the nation and humanity overall toward greater enlightenment. But Casals’ judgment about Kennedy’s Spain intentions and policy turned out to be as pathetically wrongheaded as Kennicott’s myopic Kennedy worship.

It would have been great had Kennicott mentioned at least in passing Kennedy’s gaping flaws, which ranged from out-of-control womanizing that might have presented national security risks to anti-communist hawkishness that verged on the catastrophically reckless (Google “Missile Crisis, Cuban”). But he could counter that this dimension of the Kennedy record is well known. For his article to stand as journalism, however, or even opinion journalism, Kennicott needed to tell readers at least something about the former President’s dealings with the Spanish fascist leader. Because it would have revealed that Kennedy was a Franco-phile before his truncated term in office, and as President continued the exactly same U.S. policies that Casals considered so unacceptable.

As a Congressman in the 1950s, he supported military aid to Franco. As President, he maintained tight security ties and the only concerns he expressed about the country’s internal affairs focused on the increasing the odds of a smooth transition of power once the then-septuagenarian caudillo passed from the scene. During his years in office, his top foreign policy aides often actually emphasized in meetings with Franco’s representatives how pleased the Kennedy administration was that relations had im. (See here and here for examples.) Indeed, in a May 3, 1963 meeting with the Spanish ambassador, Kennedy himself asked the envoy “to convey his best wishes to” the dictator and emphasized “the interest of the United States in maintaining and promoting close, friendly and cooperative relations with Spain.”

This history is so easy to look up that it’s hard to escape three conclusions. First, like most of the Mainstream Media, Kennicott loathes President Trump fundamentally for an intertwined combination of stylistic and anti-populist prejudices. Second, he reveres Kennedy because, like most of the bipartisan national political and cultural establishment for decades, he’s mistaken glamour and sophistication for decency and accomplishment. And third, as soon as someone clued him in on the Casals performance, he jumped to blurt out his preconceived conclusions – without caring whether they were remotely accurate or not.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: So JFK on Cuba Should be Trump’s North Korea Model?

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Bay of Pigs, Cold War, Cuba, Cuban Missile Crisis, Fidel Castro, John F. Kennedy, Kim Jong Un, Michael Dobbs, Nikita Khrushchev, North Korea, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Robert E. Kelly, Soviet Union, The National Interest, Trump, Turkey, Vienna summit

The race for this year’s foreign policy chutzpah award couldn’t be tighter. Just when I thought political scientist Robert E. Kelly had grabbed an insurmountable lead with his new National Interest article downplaying the horror of a possible North Korean nuclear strike on the United States, along came Michael Dobbs with a jaw-dropping venture into fake history-land masquerading as an op-ed in yesterday’s Washington Post.

Dobbs’ achievement? An article comparing President Trump’s performance in the North Korea crisis so far with former President John F. Kennedy’s in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis that failed to mention either the April, 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion: the June, 1961 U.S.-Soviet summit in Vienna: or the way in which the October, 1962 U.S.-Soviet showdown in the Caribbean actually ended.

According to Dobbs, a former Post correspondent turned historian (chiefly of the Cuban crisis), Kennedy was a model of reasonableness and restraint whose unique, “overarching sense of history” led him “to consider the interests of future generations of Americans, and ultimately all of humanity” and thus deserves much credit for preventing the showdown from turning into an apocalyptic nuclear war.

As Dobbs put it (employing terminology used in a contemporary letter from Kennedy’s wife, Jackie), the former president acted like a “big man” who knows “the needs for self-control and restraint.” Mr. Trump, however, has “indulgently” decided to “play chicken” and respond in kind to North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un’s “explosive rhetoric” – a dangerous effort to “out-crazy” Pyongyang that reflects a “little man” outlook “moved more by fear and pride.”

But the Bay of Pigs invasion is kind of important because Kennedy’s support for this disastrously failed attempt by CIA-supported Cuban exiles to overthrow Fidel Castro persuaded Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to reach a secret deal with Havana to deploy medium-range missiles in Cuba in the first place – in part to deter another attack either by Cubans or by the United States. So the former President’s actions (which, to be sure, continued a policy of his predecessor, Dwight D. Eisenhower) were largely responsible for creating the Soviet gambit in the first place.

Just as bad, as Kennedy admitted, his failure to order nearby American forces to come to the overwhelmed exile army’s rescue “no doubt” convinced “his superpower rival…that ‘I’m inexperienced. Probably thinks I’m stupid. Maybe most important, he thinks that I had no guts.'” The source for this passage? Dobbs’ own missile crisis history.

Has President Trump approved any similarly reckless blunders that sent such dangerous messages? No.

The Vienna conference is kind of important because this first meeting between the American and Soviet leaders reinforced Khrushchev’s impression of his Cold War counterpart as a weakling. According to one account of the summit and its aftermath:

“‘Roughest thing in my life,’ Kennedy had told James Reston of The New York Times, after it was all over. ‘He just beat the hell out of me.’ Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson was contemptuous of his boss’s performance. ‘Khrushchev scared the poor little fellow dead,’ he told his cronies. British prime minister Harold Macmillan, who met with Kennedy shortly after he left Vienna, was only slightly more sympathetic. He thought that the president had been ‘completely overwhelmed by the ruthlessness and barbarity of the Russian Chairman.'”

The source for this passage? That same Dobbs missile crisis history.

Have any of President Trump’s exercise in personal diplomacy failed so utterly? No.

Finally, the Cuban crisis’ resolution is kind of important because Kennedy had a relatively easy out: an offer to remove U.S. missiles stationed in neighboring Turkey that Moscow (understandably) viewed as too close for comfort. This central element of crisis-ending deal struck by Kennedy and Khrushchev was kept secret (at Washington’s insistence), but it’s importance is now recognized by the historical community – including Dobbs.

Does President Trump have a comparable option? Evidently not – unless you count my proposal to pull American troops out of South Korea, which would remove any remotely plausible reason for North Korea to threaten U.S. territory, and turn the problem of handling North Korea’s nuclear forces over to its powerful and wealthy neighbors. Yet no American political leaders on any point on the political spectrum have expressed any support.

Dobbs of course has every right to idolize Kennedy and slight Trump. What he has no right to do after this piece of propaganda is to present himself as anything but a hack.

Im-Politic: On That Trump Inaugural Address

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American First, foreign policy, geopolitics, Immigration, inaugural address, inauguration, internationalism, John F. Kennedy, national interests, national security, Trade, Trump

Wow! That was some inauguration address from President Trump! We’ve literally never heard anything like it either from an incoming president or a new president or a long-sitting president or a former president. In fact, it is so no-less-than revolutionary that I almost hesitate to comment so soon.

But this is the blogosphere, so here’s the biggest takeaway I see so far: If Mr. Trump is as serious as he sounded about taking an “America First” approach to U.S. foreign policy, and trade and other international economic policies, he will not only turn the country upside down. He will turn the world upside down.

The main reasons are that literally since the Pearl Harbor attack, American leaders have defined this concept out of existence. That is, they have not believed that America’s interests can be separated in any meaningful and especially ongoing way from those of the rest of the world and its well-being. As I’ve written, this idea by no means reflects iron realities of America’s own situation, world politics, or America’s relations with other countries.

Instead, it springs from a distinctive ideology – best termed “internationalism” – that is as inherently subjective and imperfectly reflective of reality as any other ideology. And it’s fundamental assumption is that because the United States can’t be adequately secure or free or prosperous unless the rest of the world has achieved the same goals, the nation should assume whatever risks and expenses are necessary at least to generate progress regardless of the impact on America’s own circumstances. If you doubt this, recall (or take a look at) President John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than half a century ago.

The way I see it, Kennedy’s ringing rhetoric about America’s supposedly infinite resolve and ability to defend freedom – especially in its Cold War context – pushed the United States much faster toward disaster in Vietnam, and produced similar fiascoes for decades afterwards. It’s also led Democratic and Republican presidents alike to sacrifice big and highly productive chunks of America’s domestic economy (notably manufacturing) on behalf of liberalizing global trade, fostering third world economic development, and buying and keeping allies.

So I’ve long argued for the imperative of a completely different grand strategy. It rejects as both delusional and dangerous – because unnecessary – the practice of indefinitely striving for a more stable and/or more secure world. And it concentrates on capitalizing on America’s considerable, matchless, and geographically and geologically based potential for more-than-adequate levels of security and prosperity. As a result, I’ve contended that any U.S. initiative in world affairs meet a strict, national interest test: It must strengthen or protect or enrich the United States in direct, concrete ways. And it must do so within a finite period.

This is essentially Trump’s stated approach – which internationalist critics on both the left and the right, at home and abroad, have denigrated as small-mindedly “transactional.” Of course, they also believe that it will destroy arrangements that have prevented great power war and global depression since 1945. My main point here is not repeating that the president and I are right and the naysayers are wrong, but to emphasize just how radical this possible change would be.

At the same time, I stuck “possible” into that previous sentence for good reasons. First, even if this is Mr. Trump’s plan, it’s not going to be put into effect right away. Barring existential crises, like major wars or the Great Depression or Watergate-like scandals, changes this big rarely take place quickly. Second, powerful forces remain aligned firmly against President Trump – in Big Business and on Wall Street, in the two major parties, and in the mainstream media and the rest of the national chattering classes. Don’t think they’ll give in easily. Indeed, from their backgrounds, it’s quite possible that several members of the president’s cabinet and leading advisory circles could be opposed, too.

Third, because events so often call the tune, especially in national security, it’s entirely conceivable that a series of real or apparent crises will result in a Trump foreign policy that’s mainly reactive – and continues along the same strategic lines. And fourth, some of the president’s ongoing rhetoric itself – i.e., on exercising global leadership, or on escalating the war on ISIS in the Middle East, or especially on “reinforcing old alliances” (as promised in the inaugural address) – don’t mesh easily (to say the least) with the idea of America First.

More optimistically (from my standpoint), the chances of changing America’s course on trade and immigration issues sooner rather than later seem higher. The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal, brought to you by former Presidents Bush (the 43d) and Obama, has now been scrapped. Mexico has announced that negotiations to transform the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and to deal with other bilateral issues, will start next week. Presidents also have impressive authority to impose various types of tariffs unilaterally, as well as to overhaul American approaches on other economic fronts – for example, on further curbing investments in the U.S. economy from China. And don’t forget how that Mr. Trump can repeal the controversial Obama executive orders on immigration with the stroke of a pen.

Finally, it’s important to note that any big change, even necessary big change, rarely comes without tumult. In addition, you can count on the mainstream media to exaggerate its severity whenever possible, as well as to blame Mr. Trump for much domestic and foreign turmoil even when he’s not remotely responsible. Even an alpha dog personality like the new president might find the visuals unnerving. I just hope that he remembers his own view that the alternative – allowing festering problems to become genuine calamities (including foreign military quagmires) – is likeliest to be far worse.

Im-Politic: Is Jeb Bush Now Singing His Swan Song?

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2016 elections, Animal House, Christians, Donald Trump, foreign policy, Im-Politic, Israel, Jeb Bush, John F. Kennedy, Middle East, national interests, national security

If you (rightly) think that Donald Trump has made some bizarro remarks during this bizarro – and still young – presidential campaign – get a load of what his Republican rival Jeb Bush has just said:

“If this election is about how we’re going to fight to get nothing done, then … I don’t want any part of it. I don’t want to be elected president to sit around and see gridlock just become so dominant that people literally are in decline in their lives. That is not my motivation….I’ve got a lot of really cool things I could do other than sit around, being miserable, listening to people demonize me and me feeling compelled to demonize them. That is a joke. Elect Trump if you want that.”

Talk about pissy! This kind of “I’m taking my ball and going home” bellyaching sounds an awful lot like a prelude to a withdrawal – not that you’ll see Big Media journalists trying to suggest Bush’s imminent demise the way they’ve continued to talk up this scenario for (the front-running) Trump. (Check out the panel discussion on yesterday’s edition of Meet the Press for the latest instance.)

Yet even the former Florida governor has acknowledged his fall from inevitability status, and the need to raise his game dramatically to avoid a truly historic implosion. Hence his decision to scrap the national juggernaut model – in favor of a leaner, more focused (and, necessarily, more affordable) campaign apparatus. And of course, this course change has attracted the expected coverage. What’s been neglected, however, is how the message transformation Bush is also counting on seems spectacularly tone – & substance – deaf.

As the Washington Post has reported, “Bush plans to subtly adjust his message by presenting himself as someone who can ‘fix’ a broken Washington and by focusing on national security….” Americans definitely want to see the nation’s dysfunctional governing system repaired.

But a foreign policy-focused presidential run? Please. And not just because, as the conventional wisdom holds, “zeroing in on national security, however, Bush invites a discussion about the Iraq legacy of his brother, former president George W. Bush.” Instead, the main obstacle faced by Jeb! is that his evident international strategy has much less to do with preserving national strategy than with pursuing elitist visions of an American national mission – whose relation to the safety and well-being of the nation’s citizenry is far from obvious.  Here’s a new Bush TV ad on the subject: 

“America has led the world, and it is a more peaceful world when we’re engaged the right way. We do not have to be the world’s policeman. We have to be the world’s leader. We have to stand for the values of freedom. Who’s going to take care of the Christians that are being eliminated in the Middle East? But for the United States, who? Who’s going to stand up for the dissidents inside of Iran that are brutalized each and every day? But for the United States, who? Who’s gonna take care of Israel, and support them, our greatest ally in the Middle East? But for the United States, no one. No one is capable of doing this. The United States has the capability of doing this, and it’s in our economic and national security interest that we do it. I will be that kind of president and I hope you want that kind of president for our country going forward.”

No one listening to this clarion call can reasonably doubt Bush’s sincerity – even if the “world leader/world policeman” reference suggests some punch-pulling. It’s also hard to deny its emotional appeal, invoking nothing so much as former President John F. Kennedy’s declaration that Americans should and would “pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”

But that’s what Bush doesn’t seem to get. This isn’t 1961. The folly of that hubris has now been tragically exposed. Although they clearly don’t like regular reminders on the nightly news of vast regions of the planet disintegrating into chaos or exploding into anti-Americanism – or both – they’re also now sophisticated enough to understand that overseas disorder isn’t necessarily a harbinger of disaster for this fortunately insulated country. At a minimum, they’re no longer willing simply to trust leaders who describe various interventions, humanitarian and otherwise, as serving the nation’s interests. They’ve learned to say, “Show me.”

Perhaps more important, I’m skeptical that Bush’s big donors regard this pitch as a winning message. If they have the slightest feel for public opinion, they may well conclude instead that it’s what Otter in Animal House memorably called “a really futile and stupid gesture.” And although Jeb Bush may indeed be “just the guy to do it,” that doesn’t sound like an investment they’ll want to keep funding.