Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Why Kissinger is Wrong About the CCP Virus and Geopolitics

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America First, Carl von Clausewitz, CCP Virus, coronavirus, COVID 19, export bans, globalism, globalization, health security, Henry Kissinger, international organizations, liberal global order, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, realism, The Wall Street Journal, travel ban, Wuhan virus

As I’ve written previously on RealityChek, I’m a big Henry Kissinger fan. Not that I haven’t strongly, and even vehemently disagreed with the former Secretary of State and White House national security adviser on numerous issues. But I’ve considered his experience making foreign policy and studying its history to be orders of magnitude more impressive than anyone else on the national and worldwide diplomatic scenes for decades, and so believe that everything he writes deserves to be taken seriously.

And that’s why I found his recent Wall Street Journal article on the implications of the CCP Virus outbreak for U.S. foreign policy and global geopolitics so disappointing. For it differs little from the standard globalist drivel that’s been regurgitated lately about how the pandemic once again shows the need for more international cooperation and stronger international institutions because it’s one of those threats that “doesn’t respect borders.”

To be sure, Kissinger has always been quite the globalist himself in many ways, differing mainly with this foreign policy approach by insisting that American leaders can never forget the realities or power and other globally divisive forces responsible for how conflict has dominated world history. But the Journal essay is completely devoid of Kissinger’s characteristic efforts to integrate the kind of foreign policy “realism” with which, on the one hand, he’s been (simplistically) associated, and what genuine realists (and America Firsters like me) regard as the kumbaya-saturated means and ends of globalism on the other.

The author’s goal of transitioning to a global “post-coronavirus order” is quintessential Kissinger – who has long believed much more than other globalists that creating and preserving a substantial degree of international stability is essential to what all supporters of this school of thought have recognized as the imperative of preventing war between the great powers – especially in a nuclear age. (For a fuller explanation of the differences among these various foreign policy approaches, see this 2018 article of mine.)

But Kissinger’s essay is devoid of his characteristic attempts to integrate even his highly qualified brand of realism (let alone a more – in my opinion – hardheaded America First strategy) with the globalist insistence that major conflict is best prevented by addressing its supposedly underlying economic and social causes.

As a result, Kissinger emphasizes that “No country, not even the U.S., can in a purely national effort overcome the virus.” And that the current crisis “must ultimately be coupled with a global collaborative vision and program.” And that the “principles of the liberal world order” must be “safeguarded.” And that, in particular, nations must resist the temptation to revive the ambition of retreating behind walls because nowadays, prosperity depends on global trade and movement of people.

The problem, as I’ve pointed out in the article linked above, is that even a strategy focused on such global cooperation and other goals needs to understand that, because there remain great differences among countries on how best to achieve them, and in some important instances on the goals themselves, only power (in both military and economic forms) ultimately can guarantee any country that its preferred approaches and ambitions will prevail. And that even goes for working within international institutions. To paraphrase the great 19^th century Prussian strategist Carl von Clausewitz, working with international organizations is nothing but the continuation of power politics with other means.

Nor is there any acknowledgement in Kissinger’s piece of the United States’ unique capacity for self-sufficiency in both producing heathcare-related goods and developing vaccines and cures for diseases, or for the unmistakable need greatly to strengthen this capacity given the literally dozens of export bans imposed on drugs and drug ingredients and medical devices and protective equipment by countries that do normally sell them overseas. And as for Kissinger’s reference to the importance of global travel, yes…but look at all the countries that have imposed restrictions on travel from China alone.

Kissinger ends his article by citing U.S. policy after World War II as an example of the kind of enlightened course Washington should pursue because of its clear success in “growing prosperity and [enhancing] human dignity.” But as that postwar era dawned, the United States was so globally predominant in terms of material power that it could afford to finance for decades most of the effort needed to achieve these goals without undercutting its own position. And of course more than half that postwar world wound up organizing itself in opposition. In other words, it seems that Kissinger has forgotten one of the main lessons learned by all truly great historians – that the past rarely repeats itself exactly, or even very close.

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Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Why Kissinger Comes Up Short on North Korea

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alliances, China, East Asia-Pacific, foreign policy establishment, Henry Kissinger, Japan, missiles, North Korea, nuclear war, nuclear weapons, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, realism, South Korea, The Wall Street Journal

Henry Kissinger’s plan – or at least outline of a plan – to resolve the North Korea crisis is out. And even though the 94 (94!)-year old former Secretary of State and presidential national security adviser has not held public office in decades, you should pay attention because you can bet American leaders in the Executive Branch and Congress are. So are foreign governments (many of which, including China, Kissinger has made millions – at least – “consulting”for).

Kissinger’s approach, laid out in a Wall Street Journal op-ed last Friday, is definitely a cut above the usual (often dangerously misleading) drivel that most commentators have been issuing since North Korea recently demonstrated dramatic and unexpected progress toward being able to hit the U.S. homeland with a nuclear-armed missile. But since Kissinger is a creature of the foreign policy establishment that keeps clinging to an obsolete Korea strategy that is now needlessly exposing the United States to nuclear attack, his proposals ultimately fail to promote and defend America’s interests first, or even to acknowledge the deep splits that must no longer be papered over between U.S. needs and South Korean needs.

The strongest argument Kissinger makes, as I see it, is the suggestion that there’s only one way of persuading China to exert enough pressure on North Korea to achieve Pyongyang’s de-nuclearization, or to start its regime down that road. It’s emphasizing to Beijing that an increasingly powerful nuclear North Korea will inevitably lead other countries to follow suit, and place China in the middle of a ring of nuclear-armed neighbors – many of which are hardly friendly. In other words, Kissinger is identifying an especially compelling reason for China to conclude (finally) that its Korea bottom line must include defanging the North – and quickly, not one of these days.

A public statement of this reasoning also matters because it signals Kissinger’s agreement that preventing nuclear proliferation in Asia may need to take a back seat in U.S. Korea policy to the status quo/establishment position that the United States must bear the main costs and risks (including nuclear risks) of handling North Korea. Not that I doubt the dangers of a regional nuclear arms race. But if that’s the price to be paid for minimizing and possibly eliminating a nuclear to the United States itself, it’s a price that’s a clear bargain. So it’s gratifying to read that Kissinger looks to be in agreement. 

But Kissinger never explains why North Korea would relent absent the kinds of truly comprehensive and strictly enforced economic sanctions whose importance he appears to belittle or dismiss altogether. Instead, he appears to believe that a joint Sino-American statement conveying strong bilateral agreement on the peninsula’s future “would bring home to Pyongyang its isolation and provide a basis for the international guarantee essential to safeguard its outcome.” Unfortunately, nothing publicly known about the North Korean regime indicates that it’s prepared to substitute paper guarantees of its survival for the protection provided by a nuclear arsenal.

Similarly, Kissinger signals support for a solution that would leave Korea divided as at present, but that would trade off de-nuclearization in the North for a permanent ban on reintroducing American nuclear weapons to South Korea (which were removed by former President George H.W. Bush in 1991) and an international agreement prohibiting Seoul from developing its own nuclear arms. But in addition to the “paper promises” problem, Kissinger’s proposal appears to forget that nuclear weapons from anywhere have been included in strategies to defend South Korea in the first place stem from the need to offset the belligerent North’s conventional superiority – which it presumably would still enjoy. So a dangerous military imbalance would be left on the peninsula.

But my biggest complaint about Kissinger’s ideas is the apparent refusal to consider my own favored option – a U.S. military pullout from South Korea (and possibly Japan) that would deny the North any plausible reason to attack the American homeland, and that would force the powerful and wealthy countries of Northeast Asia, which have the greatest stakes by far in a viable North Korea strategy, to take on this responsibility themselves.

The risk? An entire East Asia-Pacific region that’s profoundly destabilized, and even plunged into conflict. The benefit? A dramatic reduction in the odds that a North Korean nuclear weapon would decimate an American city. Or two. Or three. This is even a close call?

Moreover, a U.S. pullout seems to be taboo to Kissinger because he, along with most of the rest of the foreign policy establishment, perversely appears to view protecting allies as being just as important as protecting the United States. What else could be mean when he warns that certain American policies “may be perceived as concentrating on protecting its own territory, while leaving the rest of Asia exposed to nuclear blackmail….”?

Not to put to fine a point on it, but when the stakes involve preventing nuclear warheads from killing possibly tens of millions of Americans, why on earth shouldn’t the United States be “perceived as concentrating on protecting its own territory”? In fact, any American leader with different priorities should be immediately removed from office and banned for life.

So I continue to admire the force of Henry Kissinger’s intellect, his mastery of a wide range of international issues (except economics), and his command of history. Yet I also continue to view him as a paragon of a peculiarly American species: a so-called diplomatic realist who is anything but.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: The Uses and Mis-Uses of Thucydides

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balance of power, China, Destined for War, East Asia, foreign policy, geopolitics, globalism, Graham Allison, international order, internationalism, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, realism, strategy, The History of the Peloponnesian Wae, Thucydides, Thucydides Trap

It’s always great to learn that U.S. leaders are working hard to use history to inform their policy decisions – unless they’re completely misreading the relevance of lessons of the past to America’s current circumstances, as could well be the case with senior Trump administration officials and their fascination with Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War.

Don’t get me wrong: This chronicle of conflicts between ancient Athens and Sparta is a genuine classic both of military history and international relations theory. I hold it in particularly high regard because it contains a seminal argument for viewing the latter through a “realist” lens, emphasizing that countries act, in the words of one recent description, “out of pragmatic self-interest, with little regard for ideology, values or morality.”

But according to an account that came out last week (and that hasn’t been denied), top Trump foreign policy and national security aides are viewing Thucydides as a valuable guide to answering the question of whether war between the United States and China is inevitable. And their interest in the History has been encouraged by the work of a leading modern scholar, Harvard University’s Graham Allison. Allison has applied what’s widely regarded as Thucydides’ main conclusion – that established powers find it intrinsically and understandably difficult to deal with rising powers peacefully – to the U.S.-China situation, and in the process, he’s drawn a lot of attention in Beijing as well as Washington.

But there’s a major problem with focusing on whether the United States and China are stuck in a “Thucydides Trap” that makes war just about inevitable (Allison is not nearly so pessimistic), and examining past international rivalries for insights (his major contribution to the debate). As with so many mainstream analyses of American foreign policy for decades, Allison – and the Trump-ers apparently paying him heed – have completely forgotten the distinctive geopolitical and economic advantages the United States brings to international relations.

As I’ve written previously, the United States enjoys the kind of geographic isolation, military power, and capacity for economic self-sufficiency that enables it to view most overseas developments with relative indifference – provided that it maintains these strengths. And for all the important nuance he brings to his treatment of U.S.-China relations, it’s clear that Allison has overlooked what’s genuinely special about the American position, too.

Although I haven’t read Allison’s full Thucydides Trap book yet, I have read this lengthy magazine version. And it shows unmistakably that his warning that “Based on the current trajectory, war between the United States and China in the decades ahead is not just possible, but much more likely than recognized at the moment” accepts the same longstanding American globalist assumptions that have led to so many costly U.S. foreign policy mistakes since the end of World War II.

For example, Allison has a great deal to teach if it’s true that the United States has an intrinsic need to worry greatly about developments or questions like

>”a rising power…threatening to displace a ruling power”:

>”a rapid shift in the balance of power between two rivals”:

>”the rising power’s growing entitlement, sense of its importance, and demand for greater say and sway”;

>the fact that “Never before in history has a nation risen so far, so fast, on so many dimensions of power”:

>whether China is “restored to its rightful place, where its power commands recognition of and respect for China’s core interests”;

>whether “the growing trend toward a multipolar [as opposed to a U.S.-led] world will not change”;

But nowhere has he made this case for these concerns. Indeed, by and large, like other mainstream analysts and leaders, he simply assumes their crucial importance, without explaining how they could affect the nation’s safety, independence, and well-being directly and decisively.

Allison (along with the rest of the foreign policy mainstream, whose dominance is as complete on the conventional American Left as on the Right) gets more specific, and his analysis becomes more useful, when he raises questions like: ”Could China become #1? In what year could China overtake the United States to become, say, the largest economy in the world, or primary engine of global growth, or biggest market for luxury goods?”

And he identifies and expresses even more concrete core mainstream worries:

>First, whether China’s “current leaders [are] serious about displacing the U.S. as the predominant power in Asia?”’

>Second, both more broadly and more centrally “the impact that China’s ascendance will have on the U.S.-led international order, which has provided unprecedented great-power peace and prosperity for the past 70 years.”

But like the first set of worries, even these concerns should be treated as first-order issues by Americans only if they assume that, as with much less secure and inherently wealthy powers, either their security, prosperity, and independence are crucially reliant on the international environment, or that these aims are much more safely and efficiently achieved through international activism than through enhancing their abilities to deal with challenges and withstand crises acceptably in a turbulent international environment.

If the long-held globalist views stressing America’s relative vulnerability or dependence are accepted, then all of Allison’s questions remain vital – from the least tangible (like whether China wins more influence overall) to the most (whether China wants to replace the United States as Asia’s kingpin). And the fate of that “U.S.-led international order” (including preserving American primacy in Asia) ultimately matters most of all because it’s seen to be the only acceptable or only feasible guarantor of a satisfactory national future.

If, however, that assumption about the present international order is fatally flawed, then even subjects like the relative overall balance of power between the United States and China become secondary. They would logically cede pride of place to the issue of whether America’s power (in any dimension) is adequate to achieve specific national objectives or maintain valued national advantages. For even though relative power will of course influence success or failure, in the final analysis, the decisive consideration is whether that power is sufficient to achieve those particular successes and maintain those particular advantages, not whether America in some general sense “matches up” with other countries.

As always with these posts on overall foreign policy strategy, the main takeaway here isn’t that Allison and the other globalists are wrong and that I’m right. The main point is that the globalist school has – wittingly or not – long not only opposed, but defined out of existence, alternative approaches to security and prosperity that dovetail well with many of the nation’s most conspicuous strengths.

Here’s another way to put it: In his article, Allison expressly states that his detailed look at “16 cases over the last 500 years in which there was a rapid shift in the relative power of a rising nation that threatened to displace a ruling state….” But all entailed “the struggle for mastery in Europe and Asia over the past half millennium….” When globalists like him can explain why the geopolitical and economic similarities between the United States and these historic powers – or between ancient Athens and Sparta – count much more than the differences, they’ll be entitled to claim victory in their on-again-off-again debate with those favoring less ambitious over America’s foreign policy strategy. Until then, however, their opponents will be entitled to claim that they’ve managed to avoid the biggest questions.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: The Wisdom and Blind Spots of Henry Kissinger

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China, economics, Henry Kissinger, idealism, international order, interventionism, Iran deal, Jacob Heilbrunn, Obama, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, power, Putin, realism, Russia, strategy, The National Interest, Ukraine, World War II

When I was helping to edit FOREIGN POLICY magazine, I used to say that the only authors whose articles I would ever accept sight unseen were those by U.S. and other present and former heads of major national governments, and Henry Kissinger. I never had the pleasure and honor of working with this former Secretary of State and presidential national security advisor, and disagreed with him strongly on major issues then and now. But I still haven’t seen any reason to doubt that Kissinger boasts a combination of hands-on policy experience (in what a well known Chinese curse understatedly calls “interesting times”) and deep historical knowledge that’s been unique.

So I would strongly urge everyone interested in U.S. foreign policy or world affairs to read the interview with Kissinger just published in The National Interest. I was, to be sure, disappointed that Editor Jacob Heilbrunn didn’t ask his subject about the Iran deal – especially since Kissinger and one of his successors, George Shultz, wrote an op-ed in April highly critical of President Obama’s efforts to deny Tehran nuclear weapons, but not flatly dismissing the possibility that the president could conclude an acceptable agreement. Now we have a final deal. What does Kissinger think? Maybe he’s still holding his cards close to his vest, and ruled the topic out of bounds in advance?

In fact, the only headline issue on which Kissinger comments is Russia’s grab for more power in Ukraine and elsewhere along its European borders. If you think Vladimir Putin is the devil incarnate, or the second coming of Stalin, you need to learn about Kissinger’s notably evenhanded interpretation of how this crisis emerged – with which I broadly agree. His ideas for easing East-West tensions deserve much more attention, too.

Ultimately, however, what I found most interesting about the interview has to do with what I have always found most disappointing about Kissinger – his failure to help develop a distinctly American version of “realist” diplomatic thinking.

At the start of the interview, Kissinger does a good job of defining the debate between realists (supposedly like himself) and “idealists” that has shaped much of American foreign policy since the end of World War II: “The way the debate is conventionally presented pits a group that believes in power as the determining element of international politics against idealists who believe that the values of society are decisive.” As this statement suggests, he (correctly) views the dichotomy as “simplistic” and “artificial,” but does (also correctly) acknowledge that these terms can influence how leaders order their priorities and strike balances among competing objectives.

Yet however important these concepts to American strategists, as I’ve pointed out, even avowed realists like Kissinger have consistently overlooked the single most important ingredient for successfully pursuing this approach – understanding geography and its implications. In fact, wherever they’ve stood on the realist-idealist spectrum, U.S. leaders have for decades followed a strategy that’s almost willfully defined geography out of existence. Both Democrats and Republicans alike, during and after the Cold War, have carried out policies of military intervention, alliance building, and economic integration, that are much more appropriate for a small, highly vulnerable country than for a continent-spanning power protected by two wide oceans.

From a geopolitical perspective, even Kissinger’s well known preoccupation with creating and preserving “international order” is a sign of diplomatic hubris rather than a hallmark of prudence and pragmatism. Why, after all, would such a serious and knowledgeable student of the past believe that disorder, including widespread chaos, is a natural – much less achievable – goal for a world lacking consensus on fundamental values and norms of behavior? And as a result, why has Kissinger been so thoroughly convinced – along with so many other political friends and foes – that for a country with the advantages enjoyed by the United States, surviving and prospering amid this tumult is a much more feasible aim than bringing it to an end, or even significantly moderating it?

Finally, the National Interest interview also confirms another big weakness of both Kissinger’s version of realism and post-World War II foreign policy – a refusal to think seriously about economics. The word isn’t even mentioned. In principle, anyway, neglecting wealth and its creation was understandable for America for most of the Cold War. The United States was predominant, it had no challengers on this front, and the chief threats Americans faced seemed overwhelmingly military. Since the early 1970s, however – not so so coincidentally, when Kissinger was most prominent – keeping this spot blind has been inexcusable. For in this material world, from where does Kissinger think power in all of its tangible forms ultimately springs?

Still, with the exception of China policy (where his consulting business has compromised his analysis, in my view), I’m glad Kissinger remains active on policy issues and continues advising politicians. He may be 92, but he’s orders of magnitude wiser, deeper, and sharper than virtually anyone else in America’s foreign policy establishment.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: The Real Lesson of Vietnam

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Baby Boomers, economics, energy, foreign policy establishment, geopolitics, internationalism, interventionism, isolationism, Middle East, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Persian Gulf, public opinion, realism, terrorism, Vietnam War

No one who lived through it in 40 years ago, and was following the news even sporadically (far from everyone in the dazed and confused mid-1970s!), will ever forget the TV footage of U.S. military helicopters evacuating the last Americans and at least some of their local allies from Saigon in a humiliating denouement to the Vietnam War.

Even for many Americans who had lost much of their faith in the country’s virtues (all too easy in that stagflationary aftermath of the turbulent 1960s and the Watergate scandals), and who had watched disaster in Southeast Asia unfold slowly for years, this final act was surely harrowing emotionally. After all, however ugly Americans might have become to however many foreign populations, anything smacking of lasting military defeat had never been experienced in U.S. history.

The simple uncertainty of life without Vietnam-related news at least in the backdrop must have been unnerving as well, even if not consciously. Those who had actively or passively defined themselves as opponents, supporters, or bewildered spectators of the war faced even greater questions. Four decades later, it’s anything but clear if many of them have been answered among Baby Boomers and their surviving elders.

Failure in Vietnam shook up the nation’s leadership classes and foreign policy establishment, too. But what’s most striking four decades later is how few fundamental challenges to the policy status quo have emerged in these circles. The public is clearly more skeptical of foreign intervention and international engagement, although televised Middle East horrors in particular have interrupted that trend for the time being.

In addition, throughout the post-Vietnam decades, a handful of analysts has cogently explained how the Indochina debacle stemmed directly from the foreign policy strategies pursued by the United States since Pearl Harbor, and how this approach would undermine prosperity as well as needlessly court risk. (I’ve made my own small contributions, on this blog and elsewhere.  If you’re interested in others, I wholeheartedly recommend Googling – and reading! – the following “realists” in particular: Earl C. Ravenal, Robert W. Tucker, David C. Calleo, and Christopher Layne. For powerful indictments of U.S. interventionism on an issue-by-issue basis, see the many writings of Ted Galen Carpenter.)

But as I’ve argued, the left, right, and centrist wings of the foreign policy mainstream clung determinedly to an ideology called internationalism.  It’s characterized by the bizarre conviction that a geopolitically secure continental power with an immense potential for economic self-sufficiency can not be acceptably safe or prosperous unless literally every corner of the world becomes safe and prosperous, too. As a result, liberals, moderates, and conservatives alike defined American vital interests in breathtakingly sweeping terms, differing only on which combination or ratio of tactics (mainly the “hard power” versus “soft power” debate) were likeliest to pacify, stabilize, and enrich the entire planet.

In the process, all these leaders and analysts have neglected opportunities to reduce the country’s vulnerabilities to disrupted supplies of foreign goods, like energy, and to terrorist attack. Indeed, in defiance of the defining feature of economics itself, all have assumed that all the material resources to pursue this limitless agenda would somehow always be available, or could be created as needed.

That’s why, in the forty years since the fall of Saigon, American leaders from all over the political spectrum have:

>obsessed over fighting leftist forces in miniscule El Salvador and Nicaragua;

>fought two wars in Iraq, largely to protect the flow of Persian Gulf oil;

>permitted the worst attack on American territory in 70 years to take place;

>allowed the nation’s armed forces to become dangerously dependent on imports from a prospective Chinese adversary;

>kept the nation locked into defending allies against nuclear-armed adversaries increasingly able to retaliate powerfully against the United States;  

>remained committed to a futile policy of safeguarding U.S. energy and anti-terror interests by fostering stability and reform in a Middle East so thoroughly dysfunctional that it’s very state structure is falling apart;

>become addicted to preserving the semblance of growth and well-being by falling ever deeper into debt even though this blueprint triggered one financial calamity less than a decade ago;  and

>devoted oceans of rhetoric, and real and digital ink, to sliming any genuine dissenters as ostrich-headed isolationists, xenophobes, appeasers, or all of the above.  

As a result, all the commentary I’ve read that’s been occasioned by 40^th anniversary of Saigon’s fall has missed the main point. The most important lesson Vietnam is that American leaders have learned no important lessons at all.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Obama’s Anti-Terror Strategy is Crackpot Realism

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border security, Iraq, ISIS, Middle East, Obama, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, realism, Syria, terrorism, Yemen

At a press conference this morning in India (Yesterday morning? Tonight? I still can’t keep that international dateline straight!), President Obama performed a major public service in presenting concisely the fundamental rationale for his anti-terrorism strategy. In the process, he unwittingly performed another major public service in making clear why this strategy – whose essence is supported across the spectrum of mainstream American politics – is loony.

Here’s Mr. Obama’s statement in full:

“…Yemen has never been a perfect democracy or an island of stability.  What I’ve said is, is that our efforts to go after terrorist networks inside of Yemen without a occupying U.S. army, but rather by partnering and intelligence-sharing with that local government, is the approach that we’re going to need to take.  And that continues to be the case.  The alternative would be for us to play whack-a-mole every time there is a terrorist actor inside of any given country, to deploy U.S. troops.  And that’s not a sustainable strategy.

“So we’ll continue to try to refine and fine-tune this model, but it is the model that we’re going to have to work with, because the alternative would be massive U.S. deployments in perpetuity, which would create its own blowback and cause probably more problems than it would potentially solve.

“And we’re going to have to recognize that there are going to be a number of the countries where terrorists have located that are not strong countries.  That’s the nature of the problem that we confront.  Terrorists typically are not going to be locating and maintaining bases and having broad networks inside of countries that have strong central governments, strong militaries and strong law enforcement.  By definition, we’re going to be operating in places where oftentimes there’s a vacuum or capabilities are somewhat low.  And we’ve got to just continually apply patience, training, resources, and we then have to help in some cases broker political agreements as well.”

The problem here is not per se that President Obama is counseling patience. Easy, quick, effective fixes for difficult public policy challenges are rare. Instead, the problem is two-fold. First, despite the need for realistic expectations, time is not America’s friend in the Middle East if you assign importance, as you should, to the aim of protecting the U.S. homeland from a terrorist attack originating in the region. For the longer it takes for the Obama strategy to achieve any significant degree of success, the likelier that some terrorist group will either establish and consolidate a haven for planning and training for such strikes by militarily conquering territory (a la ISIS in Iraq and Syria) or gain one by prevailing in civil conflict in any of the many failed states in the Middle East as well as in North Africa (as could be happening in Yemen now).

Second, the president remains pathetically unaware (like the rest of the nation’s foreign policy establishment and the Mainstream Media that worships it) that the United States has much better options. As I’ve written numerous times (e.g., this post), because of simple geography, the United States is much better advised to protect against terror attacks not by trying to manipulate events in the highly dysfunctional and deeply anti-American and anti-western Middle East, but by securing its own borders and ensuring (or at least dramatically cutting the odds) that terrorists can get from those foreign sanctuaries to here. As difficult as that might be, it’s surely much easier than trying to create even minimal stability – and therefore minimally reliable partners – in a region that clearly lacks the wherewithal to produce either. And by the way, this homeland-focused strategy is much likelier to avoid blowback than the current approach.

Until Washington can put adequate border security arrangements in place, the nation will need to act militarily to prevent the creation or at least consolidation of terrorist havens. No question, the lighter the touch the better, but contrary to Mr. Obama’s apparent belief, the bottom line is not ruling out a set of tactics (like the “boots on the ground” to which the president again alluded). The bottom line is keeping the foe off balance long enough for the United States to establish effective domestic defenses.

Unless this strategic sea change takes place, Mr. Obama himself will keep playing whack-a-mole in the Middle East – with diminishing returns fostering mounting dangers. So could many of his successors.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: The Faux Realism of Hillary Clinton and Henry Kissinger

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21st century rules, Arnold Wolfers, Barack Obama, foreign policy, Henry Kissinger, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, milieu goals, national interests, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, realism, Vladimir Putin

Secretary of State John Kerry – rightly – caught lots of flak for whining about Vladimir Putin’s refusal to recognize that world politics is now conducted according to what have disparagingly come to be called “21st century rules”. As pointed out by his Republican and conservative critics in particular, the ideas that most of the world’s major powers actually do agree, are on the verge of agreeing, or should agree that armed conflict is now passé and counterproductive are hopelessly naïve.

All the more reason to be grateful for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s review of a new book by one of her most respected predecessors, Henry Kissinger. Her essay in the Washington Post on World Order (unwittingly, to be sure) shows that Mr. Kerry’s views and expectations (which by all accounts are shared by President Obama) are anything but unique to him, or even to liberal Democrats. They’ve long been a mainstay of mainstream, and official, American foreign policy thinking for decades. As a result, don’t expect U.S. actions in international affairs to be motivated any time soon by the pragmatic objective of promoting or securing specific, concrete interests for decades.

Aiming foreign policy at responding to specific problems or specific opportunities in specific places might seem the height of common sense. But as observed by the late political scientist Arnold Wolfers back in the 1960s, it’s only one conceivable approach to an international strategy. Another is the pursuit of what he called “milieu goals” – efforts to transform the entire international environment in advantageous ways – and as Wolfers noted, this objective has been unusually prominent not only in American thinking on international affairs, but in the English diplomatic tradition in which it originated.

The appeal of milieu goals is clear enough: Success could relieve a country of the need to both with foreign policy at all, since the world it faced presumably would become devoid of any significant threats. The problems with this strategy, however, should be even clearer: It’s much harder to transform and indeed pacify the entire world – or enough of it to count – than to deal with it challenge by challenge or opportunity by opportunity.

With world politics now filled with menacing non-state as well as state actors, and the U.S. economy conspicuously weak and saddled with debt, pursuing milieu goals looks like the height of dangerous folly. Even worse, it looks like needlessly dangerous folly, given America’s highly secure geopolitical position (protected from any major potential adversaries by two broad oceans) and its great potential for economic self-sufficiency.

Yet as Secretary Clinton’s review of Secretary Kissinger’s book shows, a figure usually considered the personification of European-style realism in international affairs – and even ruthlessness – is now as supportive of the milieu goals strategy as the allegedly more idealistic and more numerous Woodrow Wilson acolytes that have long dominated the U.S. foreign policy establishment’s ranks.

As Mrs. Clinton notes, Dr. Kissinger’s over-arching theme is how, in today’s still-dangerous and especially confusing world, America can duplicate and expand on its ostensible Cold War success in creating “an inexorably expanding cooperative order of states observing common rules and norms, embracing liberal economic systems, forswearing territorial conquest, respecting national sovereignty, and adopting participatory and democratic systems of governance.”

More specifically, she writes, Although she and her predecessor “have often seen the world and some of our challenges quite differently, and advocated different responses now and in the past, what comes through clearly in this new book is a conviction that we, and President Obama, share: a belief in the indispensability of continued American leadership in service of a just and liberal order.”

Secretary Clinton recognizes how surprising this conclusion will sound given Secretary Kissinger’s realist reputation. She explains the seeming contradiction by contending that Dr. Kissinger understands “how much the world has changed since his time in office, especially the diffusion of power and the growing influence of forces beyond national governments.” Therefore, he has presumably learned that what once seemed like head-in-the-clouds thinking has its feet firmly on the ground.

But however convenient for Mrs. Clinton and her fellow Wilsonians, this poratrayal overlooks how Wilsonian Kissinger – and his supposedly equally realist boss, Richard Nixon – always were. However cold-blooded the means they often used, their foreign policy ends were always to create what Mr. Nixon called “a structure of peace in the world in which the weak are as safe as the strong–in which each respects the right of the other to live by a different system–in which those who would influence others will do so by the strength of their ideas, and not by the force of their arms.”

Nor was this mere boilerplate. In his second Inaugural Address, Mr. Nixon – accurately – depicted this goal as a continuation of America’s strategy since the end of World War II. “By continuing to revitalize our traditional friendships, and by our missions to Peking and to Moscow, we were able to establish the base for a new and more durable pattern of relationships among the nations of the world. Because of America’s bold initiatives, 1972 will be long remembered as the year of the greatest progress since the end of World War II toward a lasting peace in the world.”

Just as important, Mr. Nixon made clear that his purpose was to seek not simply “the flimsy peace which is merely an interlude between wars, but a peace which can endure for generations to come.” In other words, he was seeking lasting global transformation.

Messrs. Kissinger and Nixon were viewed as realists no doubt because they soft-pedaled talk of promoting human rights and democracy, and because, as implied above, they admitted more forthrightly than many of their predecessors in office that achieving noble goals would inevitably entail acting in decidedly ignoble ways from time to time.

But Kissinger’s reputation for realism also benefitted from his academic works, which focused on efforts to create international order in previous eras – especially the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars. But what he never seemed to realize was that, promoting order was at least a conceivable objective when all the major international actors had so much in common with each other culturally. Even in his years in office, a stabilization of great power relationships could plausibly hope to have global consequences – although the increasing importance of developing countries with completely different cultures and historical experiences was a growing complication that Messrs Nixon and Kissinger never fully appreciated.

In Secretary Clinton’s view, the new importance on the world stage of “Nongovernmental organizations, businesses and individual citizens” simply means that American statesmen need to figure out ways of giving them ownership in global stability and prosperity as well as national governments. And according to her review, Mr. Kissinger now agrees.
Mrs. Clinton insists that “There really is no viable alternative.”

As I’ve long been writing, there had better be, if America is to avoid a future of bankruptcy, exhaustion, and defeat. More encouragingly, thanks to the nation’s unique combination of strengths and advantages, there is. All the United States and its people need are leaders perceptive enough to see this.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: The Limits to Morality

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China, morality, national interests, Obama, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Putin, realism, Russia, U.S. foreign policy, Ukraine

One reason for starting this blog was my desire to resume analyzing U.S. foreign policy – a career hat I wore for many years.   The timing is great for me, if not for the country, because the confusion surrounding this realm at least rivals that created by trade and other aspects of U.S. economic policy. So in this first post on this subject, I’ll tackle an issue with which Americans from President Obama on down are struggling unproductively – the extent to which moral questions should influence the nation’s diplomacy.  

A short, and surprisingly helpful answer is “As much as the American people feel like.”  After all, the Unied States is a sovereign state, meaning that it is legally and politically accountable to no authority other than its own government (even when it signs treaties).  And however imperfect our representative form of government is, its main purpose remains carrying out the public’s wishes.  So if the American people want more moral considerations injected into foreign policymaking, they have every right to do so, and numerous means of making these wishes known to their leaders.  

Of course, this conclusion raises its own important moral questions.  For example, doesn’t morality dictate that this foreign policy be financed in a financially moral way — that is, by paying for at least much of it in the here and now, rather than by foisting heavy costs onto future generations lacking any say in the original decision?  And shouldn’t financial and military sacrifices be shared throughout the body politic?  Former President George W. Bush sure flunked those tests, when he paid for the Iraq war (which I still broadly endorse) by borrowing (and worse, cutting taxes in the process), and fought it with a volunteer military.

But there are two even more fundamental, and related, reasons to be wary of morality as a guide to American foreign policy.  First, the nation needs to answer the question, “Whose morality?”  The easy answers are “The President’s,” or “The President’s and Congress'” (depending on your views on war powers issues in particular).  But those answers are anything but conclusive.  The Constitution, for example, clearly places some checks on the President’s ability to send U.S. military forces into combat and to expend resources on foreign policy.  As for Congress, the Constitution denies it operational control over the military, and any authority to carry out the laws it passes (except for the rules by which it governs and regulates itself).  

These obstacles throw the question back to the public, which only makes deciding “Whose Morality?” infinitely more vexing.  Further compounding these difficulties is figuring out how to decide which version of morality should be selected, and when it applies.  Unless the morality camp’s position is that there’s a single variety and a single set of rules for translating it into concrete policy steps in every circumstance?  

Often when debating policy, Americans reasonably rely at least in part on expertise – on certain individuals or groups they reasonably believe possess some combination of special knowledge and experience that merits special respect.  But who are the morality experts?  Clerics?  From which religion?  And from which sect or denomination of that religion?  And  when did priests, ministers, rabbis master the public policy side of the equation?  Does anyone suppose that elected politicians are morality experts?  Academic philosophers?  Any academics at all?  Media pundits or newspaper editorial writers?  Hollywood stars?          

Those last few categories understandably invite snickering, but too often, opinions from those quarters are taken with the utmost seriousness in our foreign policy debate.  This prominence should be a clear warning:  No one’s a widely recognized expert on morality.  And therefore everyone is (arguably except for convicted criminals).  In other words, it’s certainly interesting that, say, President Obama, or UN Ambassador Power, or Congress’ leaders, or the Pope, or the Washington Post editorial board, or Bill O’Reilly, or George Clooney believe that the United States has or doesn’t have certain obligations to address some particular outrage on the world stage.  But their views are intrinsically no more interesting – and certainly no more important – than my views, or my wife’s views.  Or your views.  

The second reason for doubting morality’s use flows from the first.  Since no one has any special expertise on moral questions, it seems impossible to think that enough of a national consensus on morality can emerge to create a useful guide for foreign policymakers.  Of course, it will always be difficult to create a national consensus on defining U.S. foreign policy interests – and especially those interests that warrant costs and risks.  Just as obvious, those generally considered experts often disagree strongly among themselves on courses of action.  But can anyone doubt that it’s ultimately going to be easier to reach consensus on interests than on morality?

After all, calculating interests depends on evaluating information that is reasonably uncontroversial – e.g., about geography, about resource endowments, about size of markets, about the relative strength of different national militaries.  These facts rarely speak for themselves to policymakers or the public, largely because actions usually involve tradeoffs among interests, and therefore judgment calls can rarely be avoided.  But using the prism of interests at least requires thinking of information that can be mastered and measured with considerable precision.  That simply isn’t the case with the prism of morality.

I hope that this kind of thinking on morality and foreign policy strikes you the way it strikes me – as the height of common sense.  I also hope that, when you read about current international crises in places like Russia’s neighborhood, East Asia, or South Sudan, you start asking why our political leaders and our supposed opinion leaders either seem so unaware of it, or so determined to wish it away.