Our So-Called Foreign Policy: The Globalists’ Dangerous Tantrums over Syria and Ukraine

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America First, Cold War, Eastern Europe, FDR, Franklin D. Roosevelt, globalism, globalists, Harry S Truman, ISIS, jihadis, Middle East, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Russia, Soviet Union, spheres of influence, Syria, terrorism, Trump, Turkey, Ukraine, Vietnam, World War II, Yalta

If you know more than a little something about contemporary American history, you’ve no doubt been struck (or you should be struck if you haven’t been already) by the close resemblance in one key respect between the firestorms around the two big foreign policy-related uproars of the day these days, and the big foreign policy uproar of the late 1940s and early 1950s: The cries of “Betrayal” and “Backstabbing!” generated by President Trump’s withdrawal of the small American troop deployment in Syria, and his lack of interest in keeping Ukraine fully independent of Russian designs, fully recall similar charges that followed Washington’s early Cold War acquiescence in the Soviet Union’s establishment of control over Eastern Europe.

And there’s a very good reason for the similarities among these over-the-top reactions in all three cases – today’s version of which is all too capable of pushing the nation into repeating catastrophic foreign policy mistakes. In all of them, a combination of immutable geography and irrefutable common sense has established ironclad limits on American power. In all of them, America’s existential security and prosperity rendered these limits entirely acceptable. And in all, crusading globalists have reacted not with gratitude for the nation’s favored circumstances, but with tantrums that have slandered any support for the prudence logically suggested by these circumstances as evidence of treason and/or degeneracy. It’s the policy equivalent of refusing to take “Yes” for an answer.  (See this 2018 article of mine for the fullest statement of these views.) 

The Cold War event mainly responsible for the McCarthyite claims of spies and traitors shot through the U.S. government was Yalta conference of 1945 held by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his British and Soviet counterparts Winston S. Churchill and Josef V. Stalin,  At that late-World War II meeting in Crimea, FDR agreed to accept Moscow’s clam to the countries located between German and Soviet territory as a sphere of influence.

Roosevelt’s decision reflected his awareness that the enormous Red Army had planted stakes in Eastern Europe after having fought it way through the region on its way to Berlin, that it had no intention of leaving, and that dislodging these forces militarily at remotely acceptable cost was impossible. Interestingly, his successor Harry S Truman fully agreed, even though by the time he became President, the United States enjoyed a monopoly on nuclear weapons.

“Yalta,” however, became a synonym for treason for many Americans, and the next few years (including under the Democrats) became an time of loyalty oaths, persecution, and show trials, Although many of the charges that the U.S. government had become a nest of spies turned out to be true, “McCarthyism” nonetheless ruined numerous innocent lives as well, and for more than a decade stifled badly needed dissent within the national security bureaucracy.

But guess what? Despite Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, and the mass, multi-generation human tragedy that unfolded behind the Iron Curtain, the United States not only survived but generally prospered. Further, the serious problems it did experience had absolutely nothing to do with the fates of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, or even the former East Germany etc.

Self-interest and restraint in foreign policy go hand-in-hand just as neatly these days when it comes to Ukraine and Syria. As I’ve written, even more than Eastern Europe, Ukraine’s independence has never been considered a vital American interest because it’s never been a significant determinant of the nation’s safety or well-being; because it’s located even closer to the center of Russian military might than Eastern Europe; because as a result the United States is militarily incapable of mounting a sane challenge with conventional forces; and because on top of these assets, Moscow has long possessed nuclear forces that can obliterate the United States many times over.

As for Syria, Mr. Trump’s critics are caught in one or both intellectual time warps. The first has hurled them back to the era when the United States was thoroughly addicted to Middle East oil. However long it lasted, though, it’s now unmistakably over, thanks to the fossil fuels production revolution of the last decade or so.

It’s true that this oil still matters a great deal to Europe and East Asia, huge chunks of a global economy whose health still matters in turn to the United States (though less lately, since both regions seem chronically incapable of or unwilling to generate acceptable growth other than by amassing enormous – and unsustainable trade surpluses with America). But both regions are eminently capable of fielding the military forces needed to preserve the oil flow. P.S. So do the Middle East’s two biggest powers, Saudi Arabia and Iran. Their deadly struggle for geopolitical supremacy notwithstanding, both would collapse economically without the revenue brought in by their oil exports. Just ask Iran, which is being bankrupted by President Trump’s – unilateral – sanctions.

The second time warp has the foreign policy Never Trump-ers trapped in the early post-September 11 period, when the nation discovered its shocking vulnerability to Middle East-borne terrorism. Yet as I’ve repeatedly written, and experience can not have made clearer, the best way by far to protect the American homeland from this deadly threat is not continuing to chase jihadist groups around an uncontrollable region whose terminal dysfunction will keep them appearing and reconstituting, but securing America’s far more controllable borders.

Additionally, though less important, terrorist organizations like ISIS and Al Qaeda have been blessed with the unique gift of antagonizing every other significant actor in the Middle East, for either ethnic (Arab versus Persian versus Turk) or religious (Sunni versus Shia Muslims) reasons. And the Russians, who are now supposedly the new kingpins in the Middle East, have no interest in seeing a serious jihadist revival on their borders. So an American exit from the region will leave it full of countries with every reason to sit on Islamic lunatics, not to mention rife with their own mutual antagonisms and historic rivalries. A chaotic balance of power to be sure, but an entirely durable one. (These arguments have just been made powerfully here.)

During the Cold War, it took debacle in Vietnam, with all the devastation it brought to America’s economy, society, and domestic and national security institutions (some of which still haven’t fully recovered), to teach globalists and the public they led, that geography and common sense mustn’t be completely ignored. Let’s all hope that their America First-oriented opponents, including a critical mass of the body politic, can keep them away from the levers of power before they produce a similar disaster.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Why the Venezuela Crisis is Getting Really Scary

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Austria, Baltics, Cuban Missile Crisis, Monroe Doctrine, NATO, NATO expansion, neutralization, North Atlantic treaty Organization, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Russia, South America, Soviet Union, spheres of influence, Trump, Venezuela, Vladimir Putin, Western Hemisphere

No one who lived through it or knows about it (me in both cases) would ever say lightly, “The X situation reminds me of the Cuban Missile Crisis.” So that’s at least one reason to be very worried about the largely under-the-radar situation that’s been unfolding in Venezuela lately. It shows signs of turning into the kind of Western Hemisphere incursion by Moscow that put the world on the brink of superpower nuclear war in October, 1962. What’s worse – there are major reasons for assigning (pre-Trump) U.S. globalist leaders much and even most of the blame.

Normally, I wouldn’t be too concerned about what happens inside any South American country, at least from the standpoint of U.S. national interests. And you shouldn’t be, either. None of the continent’s countries is strong or rich enough to endanger the United States militarily or economically. Further, although chronic misrule is always a threat to generate refugee crises, even the South American countries closest to the United States are too far away to send many to these shores.

The last few weeks in Venezuela, however, have been anything but normal. It’s not just that the country is descending into the kind of economic and political chaos that makes President Trump’s term “a big fat mess” look like happy talk. It’s that Russia – a long time ally of the leftist dictators whose corruption and incompetence have turned this oil-rich country into a bona fide failed state – looks to be establishing a military presence inside Venezuela’s borders.

Moscow’s forces so far are tiny. But there’s no guarantee that they’ll stay small – at least as long as the current Venezuelan regime remains in power. And P.S.: They include specialists assisting with the operation of a battery of anti-aircraft missiles – although in fairness, the Venezuelans bought the system back in 2009. That’s why President Trump has stated that “Russia has to get out.” At the same time, that’s going to be easier said than done without the United States using armed force. Which is scary because Russia is a full-fledged nuclear power. As a result, the President could well be faced with a genuinely agonizing dilemma: Either back down, and open the doors to a big, conspicuous, dangerous violation of one of longest-standing and most crucial pillars of U.S. national security doctrine; or challenge Russian leader Vladimir Putin militarily, and risk a conflict that could quickly escalate to the nuclear level.

I use the word “dangerous” because that national security doctrine, the 1823 “Monroe Doctrine,” correctly assumes that the stationing of foreign military forces in the Western Hemisphere would pose an intolerable threat to America. The missiles the Soviet Union planned to place in Cuba in 1962 raised the prospect of a devastating attack on the U.S. homeland delivered with almost no warning – and thus no way to stop them. Even a Russian deployment in Venezuela falling well short of this scale could bring alarmingly close to U.S. borders significant Russian intelligence capabilities along with military units. The latter could carry out missions ranging from interfering with shipping in the Caribbean and all along America’s Atlantic coast to protecting other anti-U.S. strongmen and interfering in civil conflicts throughout Central and South America whose consequences could well spill across U.S. borders.

Moreover, if the Russians succeeded in creating these kinds of footprints, what would stop the Chinese – who also boast an impressive nuclear arsenal? Even strong opponents of America’s numerous foreign military ventures should worry about these developments.

It’s tempting to look at the Cuban Missile Crisis and conclude that America’s major nuclear edge over the Soviet Union enabled the naval blockade of Cuba to succeed and ultimately force Moscow to back down – and that similar measures could kick Russia out of Venezuela today and keep it out of the hemisphere.

But this temptation needs to be resisted. Declassified documents have thoroughly debunked the reassuring accounts and interpretations that followed the Missile Crisis’ resolution – colorfully summarized by then Secretary of Dean Rusk’s claim that “We’re eyeball to eyeball and I think the other fellow just blinked.” In fact, the crisis ended because President John F. Kennedy secretly agreed to dismantle American missile deployments in Soviet neighbor Turkey, and to pledge to stop seeking to overthrow Cuba’s Communist dictator Fidel Castro. And since the United States has long since lost any nuclear superiority over forces controlled by Moscow, Washington would have even less leverage today to achieve an acceptable compromise.

Fortunately, the basis of such a deal exists – and ironically, because of a reckless American policy that surely prompted Russian leader Vladimir Putin to show his flag in Venezuela (and elsewhere, as in Crimea and Ukraine). That policy entailed the decision following the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union to expand the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) right up to Russia’s borders.

As I’ve argued previously, the United States should publicly offer to declare NATO expansion a mistake and to promise not to add further members in return for Russia’s agreement not to threaten the security of new members already admitted. In addition, Moscow would keep military forces out of the Western Hemisphere.

Washington could sweeten the offer by proposing to neutralize the new NATO countries whose membership has most rankled the Russians – the three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, which had been forcibly annexed into the old Soviet Union in 1940. If Austria could be successfully neutralized during the height of the Cold War (1955), a Baltic deal should be eminently achievable today.

Many if not most American globalists would condemn this arrangement as a modern version of spheres of influence diplomacy that they contend have long carved up regions for the benefit of large powers and needlessly ran roughshod over the interests of smaller countries that were denied the fully internationally recognized right to determine their own destinies – including their own security arrangements. What the globalists consistently ignore is that such hard-hearted realism can be an effective way to prevent great power conflicts – many of whose worst victims tend to be those same smaller countries.

Ultimately, however, the strongest argument for offering this deal to Putin is that it creates the optimal realistic net benefits for the United States. As a result, it’s an opportunity that a President elected in large part on an “America First” platform should eagerly seize.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: The Russia – and Broader – Reset That’s Urgently Needed

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China, Cold War, Europe, interest-based thinking, national interests, NATO, NATO expansion, nuclear war, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Putin, Russia, Soviet Union, spheres of influence, third world, threat-based thinking, Vietnam

Even though American policy could take a significantly different turn after Donald Trump becomes president, it’s all too likely that U.S.-Russia relations will continue heating up to worrisome temperatures for the foreseeable future. And although much American rhetoric on the subject has veered into hysteria, there’s no shortage of real-world obstacles to any new White House hopes for a cool-off – mainly Moscow’s undeniable determination to expand its influence along in Europe, where it now directly borders the U.S.-led NATO alliance. There’s also abundant (though not yet conclusive) evidence that Russia’s government tried to interfere with the 2016 American presidential election.

Russian president Vladimir Putin is by no means solely to blame for rising bilateral tensions. As I’ve written previously, much and possibly most of the problem stems from the American decision – supported by presidents and Congresses of both parties – to expand NATO right up to Russia’s doorstep after the end of the Cold War. And facing up to this wholly unnecessary, gratuitous effort to capitalize on Russia’s post-1990 weakness looks to me like the key to a genuinely successful reset of bilateral ties.

But ultimately, just as important for the United States as dealing with this urgent short-term problem is learning a lesson about how to think about its national interests that sadly was missed after the decades-long superpower struggle ended. The lesson: The key to foreign policy success is basing actions on identifying overseas interests of intrinsic, material importance, rather than on assumptions about actual or potential adversaries.

During the Cold War, American foreign policymakers across the board used both sets of criteria as lodestars – and created big, unnecessary trouble for the nation as a result. Washington reasonably treated the security of, for example, Western Europe and Japan as vital interests of the United States – because these regions were reasonably judged to be centers of critical economic and therefore military capability and potential. Losing them to Soviet influence could indeed have tilted the balance of global power against the United States in genuinely damaging ways. Moreover, an equally reasonable determination was made that Western Europe and Japan could be defended at acceptable cost and risk to America.

Tragically, however, this form of “interest-based” thinking was not applied to much of the developing world. In these regions of Latin America, Asia, and Africa, major defense commitments were taken on even though the countries in question were typically of little or no intrinsic interest to the United States – in terms of their actual or (realistically potential) wealth or military power, their raw materials, or even their location.

Instead, Washington based policy on the type of threat it concluded was posed by these countries, by ascendant forces within them, or by Soviet or Chinese designs on them or activity within their borders. Therefore, as I’ve written, Americans consumed themselves with debates over subjects like:

>whether rival superpowers’ activity in these areas was fundamentally offensive in nature or defensive;

>whether the relationships between these rival superpowers and local forces were simply alliances of convenience that meant little in the long run and could be easily broken up with appropriate U.S. overtures, or whether they were strongly ideological ties with real staying power; and similarly

>whether the local forces themselves should be seen simply as Soviet of Chinese pawns (and therefore needed to be fought on some level), or whether they were fundamentally nationalistic and on “the right side of history” (and therefore needed to be accepted and cooperated with).

These are all fascinating questions, and the resulting debate made fascinating reading – at least from an academicky or purely rhetorical standpoint. But they were dangerously off-base as fundamental determinants of American policy. The main reason: They all presented supposed answers to questions that are virtually unknowable – unless we imagine that certain foreign policy-makers and analysts are mind-readers or have highly reliable crystal balls. Disaster in Vietnam – a war never consistently, or even often, justified for intrinsically important reasons – reveals the price America can pay for indulging in these fantasies.

Defining specific, concrete U.S. interests is no science, either. But answers here are relatively knowable. Sure, subjectivity can’t be avoided. But Americans depend on our government to make judgments like this all the time. If the nation has decided otherwise, then it’s hard to make the case for any government at all.

How should this argument affect how Americans think about the new Russia challenges in Europe? Principally, they should stop focusing on whether Putin is a new version of the Soviet leaders who many thought aimed at worldwide dominion, or simply a nationalist feeling besieged by the West and seeking greater security along Russia’s frontiers. And they should start focusing on the intrinsic importance of the countries that Putin seems to be threatening.

In other words, how has Washington viewed Ukraine or Georgia or Moldova? What about new NATO members such as Poland or Hungary or the Baltic countries? Have they ever been placed in the category of vital interests, either from a national security or economic standpoint? Have U.S. leaders ever been willing to risk war on their behalf, even when the United States enjoyed a nuclear monopoly or overwhelming superiority? If the answers here are “No” (Spoiler alert: It is.), then has anything about these countries and their concrete and even perceived value changed since the end of the Cold War? In fact, has anything about them economically or strategically changed other than new NATO membership in some cases?

In my view, history makes obvious that the answer to those latter questions is “No” as well. Further, nothing has happened either in these parts of Europe, or in the American or Russian militaries, that has made them more easily defended by the West with conventional weapons alone than during the Cold War.

So it’s easy to see how more threat-based thinking can too easily lead Washington into a corner in which its only choice to defend all of its new treaty allies from some new form of Russian hegemony is to threaten nuclear war more loudly; and how interest-based thinking can lead to the alternative of offering to recognize how geography inevitably (however sadly) relegates these countries to a Russian sphere of influence, and seeking the best possible arrangement for them. And it’s even easier to see which alternative, however imperfect, is vastly superior.