Our So-Called Foreign Policy: The Democrats Embrace (Disastrously Failed) Nation-Building

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Afghanistan, America First, Democratic Party, Democratic platform, Democrats, forever wars, globalism, Immigration, Iraq, Middle East, nation-building, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, p, terrorism, Vietnam War

Longstanding conventional wisdom holds that political party platforms are usually either meaningless, just for show, or exercises in pandering various constituencies. And when I finished reading the Democrats’ latest version, I thought to myself, “Let’s hope so!”

My main concerns don’t revolve around those planks that have received the most attention – notably surrounding the treatment of Medicare for All and healthcare for illegal aliens and violent crime/police defunding) and climate change and the Green New Deal. (Actually, as I read it, the document generally was less far Left on these issues than presidential nominee Joe Biden and his running mate, Kamala Harris, were during the primary campaign.) To be sure, they’re still concerns. My main concern, though, has to do with a lower profile, but still crucial issue, and one that was widely ignored both during the primaries and at last week’s convention: foreign policy.

Specifically, in contrast to the tightrope walking evident when it came to the hot button topics, the platform went all-in on nation-building.

To some extent, this was no surprise. For whether they belong to the party’s center or its progressive wing, nearly all Democrats are globalists. They have, and will continue, to disagree strongly about specific ways to conduct globalist foreign policies – e.g., whether to intervene militarily or not in certain foreign conflicts or crises, or the related issue of whether generally to rely more on the military or on diplomacy or on foreign aid as the tool of first resort. But nearly all accept the central tenet of globalism, which is the belief that the United States can never be acceptably free, secure and prosperous unless the rest of the world is acceptably free, secure, and prosperous. And this approach inevitably involves nation-building – trying to turn unsuccessful countries and even entire regions into something they have never been, or have not been for centuries: successful countries and regions..

So what, you might ask? Here’s what. As logical as nation-building sounds, it’s been responsible for three of the most damaging foreign policy disasters in recent American history – the Vietnam War, the second Iraq War, and an Afghanistan operation that began as a needed anti-terrorism campaign and steadily expanded into a sweeping effort not only to build a nation but to create one where none had ever existed. And let’s not forget minor blunders like ill-starred peace-keeping efforts in Haiti and Somalia.

In fact, nation-building has been so discredited that even many globalists have been pouring cold water on it lately. (See, e.g., here and here.) 

But not the Democrats this year – at least judging from their platform. The phrase isn’t used – a sign that the term has become toxic. But it’s there, all the same – and in spades. For example:

p. 64: “Democrats will address the root causes of [international] migration—violence and insecurity, poverty, pervasive corruption, lack of educational and economic opportunity, and the impacts of climate change. Disciplined American leadership and well-designed assistance programs can help prevent and mitigate the effects of migration crises around the world, from Southeast Asia to Sub-Saharan Africa to Central America.”

p. 76: “Rather than occupy countries and overthrow regimes to prevent terrorist attacks, Democrats will prioritize more effective and less costly diplomatic, intelligence, and law enforcement tools….And we will mobilize our partners to make sustained investments that can prevent conflict and help extinguish the flames on which extremists feed.”

p. 82: “Democrats will sustain the global effort to defeat ISIS, al-Qaeda, and their affiliates. We will ensure that the world is equally committed to the difficult task that follows military success: dealing with the underlying conditions that allowed violent extremism to flourish in the first place.”

p. 87: “Rather than coerce our neighbors into supporting cruel migration policies, we will work with our regional and international partners to address the root causes of migration—violence and insecurity, weak rule of law, lack of educational and economic opportunity, pervasive corruption, and environmental degradation.”

p. 90: “Turning the page on two decades of large-scale military deployments and open-ended wars in the Middle East does not mean the United States will abandon a region where we and our partners still have enduring interests. Democrats believe it’s past time, however, to rebalance our tools, engagement, and relationships in the Middle East away from military intervention—leading with pragmatic diplomacy to lay the groundwork for a more peaceful, stable, and free region.”

p. 90: “Democrats…believe we need to reset our relations with our Gulf partners to better advance our interests and values. The United States has an interest in helping our partners contend with legitimate security threats; we will support their political and economic modernization and encourage efforts to reduce regional tensions.”

Especially striking about this Democratic faith in nation-building is its strength as a viable strategy for the Middle East, and the confidence that it can substitute effectively for the “forever wars” they have pledged to end (p. 72).  As has usually been the case with believers that ploughshares always work better than swords in protecting national security, they have focused on means rather than the overarching matter of ends, and defined out of existence the challenge of promoting or defending interests that they, too, view as vital when their preferred tactics prove inadequate.   

There’s really only one way out of this dilemma – adopting the kind of priority-setting America First foreign policies that not even President Trump has fully embraced (as I described at length in the National Interest piece linked above).  What a tragedy that the Democrats’ party-wide case of Trump Derangement Syndrome will surely prevent them from even considering this recipe for pragmatism, either.         

Im-Politic: On Sports, Politics, and Boundaries

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boycotts, China, culture, entertainment, First Amendment, free speech, Hong Kong protests, Im-Politic, national anthem, National Basketball Association, National Invitational Tournament, NBA, politics, Princeton University, protests, social media, sports, Vietnam War

One my my funnest (indulge me) memories of college was driving round trip between central New Jersey and New York City’s Madison Square Garden four times one week in the spring of 1975 to see the Princeton men’s basketball team play in – and win! – the National Invitational Tournament (which was a reasonably big deal back then).

During one of the games, a friend and I unfurled a dorm-made sign protesting something or other about the rapidly ending Vietnam War. We considered it an important message to send, and given the conflict’s damage to America’s economy, politics, society, and culture, and given the destruction wreaked throughout Southeast Asia, I have no problem all these decades later with the content.

In retrospect, though, I wish we’d left the banner back on campus, because I’m now convinced that injecting political and policy debates into a college basketball game wasn’t the right decision. I’m bringing it up today because I wish those well-meaning basketball fans supporting the Hong Kong protesters and China’s other repressive policies inside the arena would recognize that these actions are mistaken, too.

Don’t get me wrong: As I’ve written, I have no problem with athletes and other figures from the sports world expressing political and policy views. I don’t find them to be of any special interest, and way too often they’re the epitomes of ignorance, virtue signaling, or both. But all of them – along with celebrities and others from entertainment circles – unmistakably enjoy the same First Amendment rights of all other Americans. (Complications do arise, however, when their free speech rights clash with their obligations as employees of companies concerned that such words and actions will be bad for business.)

In fact, I’ve also urged National Basketball Association officials, players, owners, and other employees to think much more seriously about their partnership with China (and, by extension, other repressive countries), and even consider a boycott.

But just as I’ve urged athletes to keep their political views (e.g, taking a knee during the playing of the national anthem before pro football games) off the court and playing field (because their fame gives them so many other high-profile opportunities to speak out – and to big audiences), I’d urge fans to keep home their own beliefs, however heartfelt and morally compelling. The same, by the way, should apply to entertainers turning awards shows into political fora.

For even though spectators lack the renown and followings of athletes and entertainers, they’re hardly devoid of influence. They can choose to stay away from arenas, cinemas, theaters, and other venues showcasing performers, franchises, or entertainment businesses whose actions or statements they dislike. They can also organize boycotts of these individuals and organizations if they wish – and social media gives them a more powerful megaphone than ever. (For the record, I’m anything but enthusiastic about such politicization, especially regarding prominent individuals and organizations who fail to take desired stances.)

And I can’t imagine how any court could legitimately decide that such protesters aren’t allowed to make their views known verbally and/or visually on public transportation corridors and systems leading to and servicing sports or entertainment venues (subject of course to any level of government’s right to regulate protest activity in such a way as to permit travel and other everyday activity from proceeding).

But even if businesses and organizations that stage sports or entertainment events lacked the legal authority to ban activity at events that has nothing intrinsically to do with the sporting or entertainment angle of these events (the current legal consensus is pretty unclear, at least judging from this article), would anyone this side of rational and sane really want to go to, say, a Los Angeles Lakers pro basketball game and be forced to listen to some attendees heckle star LeBron James all contest long for his failure to condemn China’s human rights practices? Or to need to see “Free Hong Kong” banners throughout the Staples Center or any other NBA court?

The law plainly prevents such heckling or chants or other disruptive behavior at entertainment events where it’s crucial to listen to the performers. But even when speaking and listening aren’t important, who would really want to visit an art museum whose every gallery contains a protester or two or ten holding up Pro-Life or Pro-Choice signs? Who would really want to walk around a Central Park blanketed with Dump Trump or MAGA posters?

The sports, entertainment, and cultural worlds shouldn’t be shielded from politics and policy, and indeed can’t be – unless we want to make them completely irrelevant to our lives and to our posterity. But given all the opportunities available to all Americans nowadays to express political and policy views, it seems not only entirely reasonable to treat actual performances as refuges – including as escapist opportunities, from these other spheres, but essential to the health and vibrancy of both individuals and the nation as a whole. And these are boundaries that a genuinely wise society should be respected regardless of whether, and to what extent, they’re legally enforceable or not.

Im-Politic: The Mainstream Media’s Latest Immigration Fakery

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criminal aliens, Im-Politic, immigrants, Immigration, Mainstream Media, The Atlantic, Trump, Vietnam, Vietnam War

Just when I thought that it had become impossible for the Mainstream Media’s pro-Open Borders bias and Trump Derangement Syndrome to make me genuinely angry, along came The Atlantic‘s article yesterday on Trump administration policy toward refugees from Vietnam – including those who arrived in the Vietnam War’s tragic aftermath.

The piece – loudly advertised as an “exclusive” – clearly sought to convey the impression that the Trump administration has decided to start deporting certain groups within this population simply because it’s determined to rid America of as many foreign-born residents as possible, along with preventing the entry of as many newcomers as possible. In the case of the Vietnamese, of course, this policy would be morally outrageous both because so many refugees aided the U.S. military effort and (along with their descendants) face grim fates if they return; and because the United States inflicted so much damage on the country during its decade-plus of massive armed involvement. (I’m not trumpeting a position on the war – which I opposed – here. Just stating a fact.) When I saw the headline, I was up in arms myself.

Imagine my surprise, then, to discover (in the fourth paragraph) what’s really changing:

“The administration last year began pursuing the deportation of many long-term immigrants from Vietnam, Cambodia, and other countries who the administration alleges are ‘violent criminal aliens.’”

Why is that a change? Because, in the authors’ view, this decision violates

“a unique 2008 agreement  [between Washington and Hanoi] that specifically bars the deportation of Vietnamese people who arrived in the United States before July 12, 1995—the date the two former foes reestablished diplomatic relations following the Vietnam War.”

But Trump administration officials have concluded, and told The Atlantic on the record, that the agreement “does not explicitly preclude the removal of pre-1995 cases.”

Which seems eminently reasonable when the article finally makes clear that the U.S. intent now is not indiscriminately to round up Vietnamese-Americans and kick them out of the country in order to advance (circle one or both) nativist or racist goals. Instead, the intent was to treat as exempt from the 2008 deal “people convicted of crimes.”

Indeed, these folks were not only convicted of crimes. According to the Department of Homeland Security’s Katie Waldman, “these are non-citizens who during previous administrations were arrested, convicted, and ultimately ordered removed by a federal immigration judge.”

But how did the Atlantic authors describe a U.S. government effort finally to get rid of convicted criminals who clearly have been using delaying tactics to put off removal orders by the American judicial system? As

>”the latest move in the president’s long record of prioritizing harsh immigration and asylum restrictions….”

>a ”new stance [that] mirrors White House efforts to clamp down on immigration writ large, a frequent complaint of the president’s on the campaign trail and one he links to a litany of ills in the United States.”

>a “shift” that “leaves the fate of a larger number of Vietnamese immigrants in doubt.”

>a betrayal of many “refugees from the Vietnam War. Some are the children of those who once allied with American and South Vietnamese forces, an attribute that renders them undesirable to the current regime in Hanoi, which imputes anti-regime beliefs to the children of those who opposed North Vietnam.”

In fact, if anything, the new Trump policy changes a 2017 administration decision that makes no sense at all for anyone who believes that criminal aliens have no business remaining in the United States one minute longer than necessary: exempting these criminals from deportation if they arrived in the country before 1995. What on earth was that about? And why does The Atlantic, by posting this “scoop” seem to object so strongly – especially since nowhere does this piece challenge the convictions?

Im-Politic: The Politics of Kavanaugh

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1968 election, 1972 election, 2018 elections, Democrats, George S. McGovern, Im-Politic, Kavanaugh, midterm elections, protesters, Republicans, Richard M. Nixon, Supreme Court, Trump, Vietnam War

Although Brett Kavanaugh has now won confirmation to the Supreme Court, the fallout will resonate for months – and likely longer (even if he does follow my advice and withdraw between now and his swearing in). So some final (for now) thoughts on this debacle:

Principally, at this point it looks like President Trump’s instincts on the politics of the Kavanaugh nomination were better than mine. I feared that sticking with Kavanaugh would accomplish less in firing up the Trump-Republican base (by now, they’re almost identical) than it would harm the GOP’s chances in numerous upcoming midterm elections by alienating and downright antagonizing moderate Republicans (especially upper middle-class women) and independents (of all genders).

The main evidence that Trump – and Kavanaugh stalwarts – were right politically? Polls showing a closing of the so-called enthusiasm gap for these midterms, between Republicans and Democrats – widely seen as a good predictor of voter turnout –  has narrowed in favor of the Republicans. But there’s a twist here: as stated by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell this afternoon, the gap closing was mainly a gift from the Democrats, and the die-hard Kavanaugh opponents comprising a big part of their base. That their hysteria and extreme tactics have undoubtedly turned off many voters in the center looks clear from the recent shift in public opinion in support of the Kavanaugh bid. In fact, I have no doubt that videos of the anti-Kavanaugh protests will be a gift that keeps on giving to Republican candidates from now through election day, in the form of countless campaign ads that will feature them.

Come to think of it, I suspect that the Kavanaugh protests have backfired in the way that comparably angry protests unwittingly sabotaged the anti-Vietnam War movement decades ago. This journal article does an excellent job of showing that the polling data from the late-1960s and early 1970s – when U.S. military involvement in Southeast Asia expanded dramatically, and dissent became more strident and sometimes violent – can support several different interpretations, no doubt because public opinion was understandably confused by this then-unprecedented type of conflict.

But one legitimate interpretation of the findings is that public opinion would have turned against the war much faster had so many Americans, rightly or wrongly, not found the protests and the protesters themselves to be so offensive in so many ways. Surely that’s why the winner of the 1968 presidential election was not a dove, but Richard M. Nixon. His emphasis of his unhappiness with the Johnson Administration’s supposedly muddled approach to the war and strong suggestion that he would break the emerging stalemate in various (often not mutually consistent) ways closely approximated the views of a critical mass of the public.

And just as surely that’s why (along with dramatically declining casualty rates) Nixon was reelected in a landslide over Democrat George S. McGovern, who Republicans portrayed as the champion of “acid, amnesty [for draft-dodgers], and abortion.”

A “Blue Wave” could still wash over Congress this November, but at this point, it’s also entirely possible that on “the morning after,” the big questions dominating American politics will concern whether the Democrats will recognize their Kavanaugh overreach, and whether they can (or want to) start presenting a more appealing face to the electorate over the next two years.

At the same time, the big qualifier remains fully in tact – whether, between now and then, President Trump will finally cross a line that will convince voters that he and his Republican Congressional and gubernatorial supporters truly are unfit for office, and must be thrown out at the next possible opportunity. But if the President’s many disruptive words and even deeds haven’t produced these results so far, this hope looks like an increasingly slim reed on which to hang political success.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: The Hollowing Out of Globalism

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balance of power, Fareed Zakaria, foreign policy establishment, globalism, interventionism, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Trump, Vietnam War, Washington Post, William Whitworth

Nearly fifty years ago, then-New Yorker columnist William Whitworth authored one of the strongest critiques of America’s disastrous war in Vietnam. In a book based on lengthy interviews with one of the war’s prime architects, Whitworth showed clearly that America’s Vietnam intervention had become its own justification – “a tiger eating its tail.” The “best and brightest” American leaders had decided, in the words of this review, that the United States needed a balance of power in Asia to protect its interests, and it needed to protect its interests to protect the balance.  

I couldn’t help but think of Whitworth’s book when I read the latest Washington Post column by Fareed Zakaria. For this supposed strategic guru has (unwittingly, of course) indicated that he and the the rest of America’s bipartisan foreign policy establishment no longer support far-reaching U.S. global engagement and assertive leadership against perceived Trump-ian assault because they’re considered essential to achieve vital national goals. Instead, Zakaria made clear that in his own mind, this engagement and leadership has become nothing more than a good in and of itself, devoid of a concrete rationale. And because he has his finger on the establishment’s pulse, it’s likely that his colleagues’ justifications for America’s basic post-World War II diplomatic blueprint are dissolving into this form of strategic incoherence as well.

According to Zakaria, there’s strong evidence that, due to Mr. Trump’s “bizarre candidacy” and “chaotic presidency,” the world is undergoing a “bout of anti-Americanism” that “feels very different” from previous versions. Based on a recent poll, he writes that “people around the world increasingly believe that they can make do without America. Trump’s presidency is making the United States something worse than just feared or derided. It is becoming irrelevant.”

What’s most fascinating and revealing about this judgment is that Zakaria is not making the standard case that any Trump-ian or other form of retreat from the American globalism of the past 75 years or so will damage the United States directly. (It’s true that foreigners either “fearing” or especially “deriding” America could have damaging results, but the fact that Zakaria seems to regard both – strikingly different – possibilities as equally likely reveals that even he doesn’t take them especially seriously.)

Nor does Zakaria make the equally important globalist contention that such a U.S. retreat will be disastrous for the many countries that have benefited from this worldwide American engagement and leadership – and that their misfortunes will eventually harm the United States.

In fact, he’s making exactly the opposite argument – that these beneficiaries are now confident that they can stand on their own two feet.

Now there are any number of reasons to view this development with alarm – but Zakaria doesn’t make these either. And it can’t be entirely coincidental that none of them jibe well with the “enlightened” part of the “enlightened self-interest” globalists constantly insist their approach exemplifies.

For example, Zakaria and his establishment colleagues could be worried that the rest of the world is profoundly and dangerously wrong, and that globalism’s foreign beneficiaries cannot in fact “make do without America.” And the globalists could be right. But does anyone really expect Zakaria et al to start arguing that the United States and especially its globalist leaders know better what’s in those countries’ interests than foreign leaders themselves?

The Zakarias of the world could also argue that, without American leadership and engagement, the rest of the world will miss few opportunities to oppose or threaten U.S. interests. But would those countries that have been depicted for so long by the globalists as such staunch allies, which so thoroughly share American values, really change their stripes so suddenly? Could six months of a Trump presidency possibly spur such a dramatic turnabout? And why would it loom so much larger in foreign minds than the three quarters of a century of such enlightened American globalism?

Indeed, as just suggested, why isn’t Zakaria drawing from the foreign sentiments he describes a much more encouraging conclusion? That his brand of globalism has (finally!) achieved its intended goal by fostering at least in crucial centers of wealth and power like Europe and Japan both the capabilities to defend themselves when needed and the cooperative beliefs required to sustain a rules-based global political and economic order.

As I see it, the real message of Zakaria’s column is that America’s globalists have turned engagement and leadership into ends in and of themselves, like their Vietnam-era forerunners came to value the act of intervening itself higher than their eventually empty definition of victory.

But I wouldn’t exclude another possibility – which isn’t inconsistent at all with the above: That the globalists want America to keep playing international leader (or value this leadership whether it’s still real or not) simply because they find this role emotionally and psychologically gratifying, and because shilling for this position has created so many careers that have been so lavishly rewarded in so many ways.

And in this respect, the rest of us could be lucky that the Mainstream Media gives the globalists such free reign to express their unvarnished, unedited views. Because as their complaints about Trump-ian foreign policies get louder and more forceful, their fundamental irrationality could become more apparent as well.

Im-Politic: Insidious New Frontiers in Media Bias

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2016 elections, Bryan Caplan, chattering class, China, currency manipulation, Donald Trump, echo chamber, Financial Crisis, Global Imbalances, Im-Politic, Immigration, Jeffrey Sachs, Joseph E. Stiglitz, Mainstream Media, Open Borders, Project Syndicate, The Atlantic, TIME, Trade, Vanity Fair, Vietnam War, Walter Cronkite

I’ve always found the role played by the Mainstream Media in setting the national policy agenda fascinating, important – and sorely neglected. As suggested in recent posts about establishment figures and organs expressing formerly taboo perspectives about U.S. involvement in the Middle East, the nation’s leading publications and news shows in particular not only actively campaign for favored policies through legitimate (e.g., their own editorials) or not-so-legitimate (biased reporting) means.

In addition, especially with opinion articles they publish and post, they exert influence more subtly – by deciding which subjects and positions are acceptable for their often highly educated and politically active readers, and of course for politicians, to raise. And as others in the media or the nation’s political classes and other elites start getting and repeating the message, powerful momentum for chosen views can be generated through what many observers have called the “echo chamber effect.”

In my lifetime, one of the clearest examples was the late CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite’s famous 1968 broadcast portraying victory in the Vietnam War had become a futile ambition for the United States. Until then, respectable opinion was split, but along the relatively narrowly drawn lines of calls for escalating America’s military involvement, and calls for (some kind of) negotiated solution to the conflict. But Cronkite’s pessimism was so complete and unexpected, and his judgment and integrity so highly regarded, that even though he endorsed more energetic diplomacy, the idea of cutting losses and simply pulling up stakes inevitably moved from the wings toward center stage.

So that’s why it’s important to spotlight examples of this agenda-setting and momentum-creation on top of those already discussed in these digital pages – especially since the two latest exemplify some troubling contemporary twists. Authors have  been permitted to air path-breaking versions of preferred points of view without being required to contend with screamingly obvious objections. And these missives are appearing practically – and suspiciously – back to back. Even worse, there appears to be a blatantly political, Campaign 2016-focused objective being sought as well.

The first example concerns immigration, and my conviction that it can’t be completely coincidental that both TIME magazine and The Atlantic presented readers with articles making the case for completely open borders within three days of each other!

I’m not saying that this is not a perfectly valid opinion to hold. But in addition to the timing, what’s revealing – and in fact outrageous – is that evidently none of the editors at either publication asked the authors to deal seriously with the potential problems that relatively wealthy countries would run into if they started sending “Come one, come all” messages around the world. After all, it’s not like the chaos that’s resulted in part from the European Union’s welcoming stance regarding refugees has not been screamingly obvious for months. And imagine the possible magnet effect on Mexico if the United States explicitly dropped its immigration limits and border enforcement. (Not to mention the national security threats that could arise.)

To his credit, the author of the TIME column, George Mason University economist Bryan Caplan, did acknowledge such challenges. But although his answer – restrict welfare benefits for immigrants – is defensible logically, it’s absurd politically. What makes him believe that most of the pro-amnesty forces would accept this kind of compromise?

The second example of such sophisticated propagandizing concerns international trade. In this case, two other economists (and indeed, much bigger names than the above open borders champions) have argued for coddling China’s brazen violations of market-oriented commercial norms, including its currency manipulation. Again, although I strongly disagree, there’s a defensible argument for the United States to accommodate China’s rise. Ditto for believing that with enough supposed smarts in Washington, the opportunities for mutual gain should and will outweigh the temptation in both Washington and Beijing to view bilateral relations as an exclusively zero-sum proposition.

But both authors – Nobel economics laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz and superstar Columbia University professor Jeffrey Sachs – have ignored what happened when the United States pursued just this strategy on the economic front just a short decade ago. The resulting trade and investment imbalances arguably helped trigger the global financial crisis. It’s infuriating that neither author – both of whom are surely familiar with this contention and the impressive evidence for it – referred to this danger. And it’s appalling that none of the editors of even Vanity Fair magazine and the Project Syndicate website that showcased their work brought up the question.

Either these staffs weren’t aware of this objection, or they shunted it to the side in order to portray these theses in the best possible light. Neither explanation would reflect well on media platforms that claim to value educating the public. And let’s not forget that Stiglitz’ Vanity Fair article was posted barely a week after Sachs’ Project Syndicate column.

So it seems entirely reasonable to conclude that these four articles were published and posted specifically to start convincing the public not only to support today’s watered down versions of open borders-type immigration and trade policies. They also sought to demonstrate that the logical extremes of these policies are eminently feasible as well as desirable. And son of a gun – which front-running presidential hopeful this year has made more restrictive immigration and trade proposals his core issues?

The First Amendment properly protects the media’s right to engage in such subliminal political advertising. If only the Constitution could protect the public’s right to know when it’s being manipulated.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Desperately Seeking Real Retrenchment

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Afghanistan, American exceptionalism, Asia-Pacific, Baltic states, Bashir Al-Assad, boots on the ground, Charles Lanes, chemical weapons, defense budget, defense spending, Earl Ravenal, George W. Bush, international law, Iraq, ISIS, isolationism, Middle East, multilateralism, national interests, NATO, Nixon Doctrine, Obama, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, pivot, Poland, Richard Nixon, Russia, sequestration, Soviet Union, Stephen Sestanovich, Syria, Ukraine, Vietnam War, vital interests, Vladimir Putin, Washington Post

Washington Post columnist Charles Lane has just done an excellent job of demonstrating how powerfully universalist America’s bipartisan foreign policy establishment remains – even as powerful reasons keep multiplying for climbing down from this wildly ambitious approach.

According to Lane, a new book by former American diplomat and Columbia University political scientist Stephen Sestanovich bears out President Obama’s claim to be a kindred spirit with Richard M. Nixon as a “retrenchment” president – one of the chief executives who has sought to “correct the perceived overreaching of their predecessors and free up U.S. resources for domestic concerns.” In fact, says Lane, Sestanovich has written that post-World War II U.S. foreign policy has been marked by a “constant pendulum-swing between administrations that aggressively pursued U.S. goals abroad” (who the author calls “maximalists”) and those Nixon- and Obama-style retrenchers.

I hate to comment on books I haven’t yet read. But Lane’s description of Mr. Nixon and Mr. Obama both qualify as retrenchers reveals a mindset so enthusiastic about massive and potentially open-ended U.S. involvement in literally every corner of the world if necessary that it sees even talk about a more discriminating approach as a major departure.

Judging by the record, it hasn’t been. In fact, both the Nixon talk and the Obama talk about retrenchment have been overwhelmingly that – talk. Just as important, and closely related, what have arguably looked at least superficially like exercises in retrenchment have in fact been exercises in wishful thinking. Both presidents have actually agreed that the security, stability, and even prosperity of the entire world are U.S. vital interests. They’ve simply differed with the maximalists in insisting that these interests can be defended through means that are less dangerous and violent, and more globally popular, than the unilateral U.S. use of military force.

To cite the leading historical example, the ballyhooed Nixon Doctrine of 1970 was never a decision to cross Vietnam or any part of Asia off the list of vital U.S. interests – those whose defense was thought essential for maintaining America’s own security and prosperity. As explained initially by Earl C. Ravenal shortly after the Doctrine’s declaration, Mr. Nixon had decided, in the absence of any evidence, that this vital set of objectives could be defended without an early resort to U.S. military involvement – chiefly, by the militaries of America’s regional allies.

Therefore, Ravenal wrote:

“the Administration’s new policies and decision processes do not bring about the proposed balance [between the country’s foreign policy ends and the means to be used to attain them]; in fact, they create a more serious imbalance. Essentially we are to support the same level of potential involvement with smaller conventional forces. The specter of intervention will remain, but the risk of defeat or stalemate will be greater; or the nuclear threshold will be lower.”

President Obama has given us a different version of such dangerous wishful thinking. More accurately, he’s given us several different versions. His original 2008 candidacy for the White House was largely motivated by a conviction that the overly unilateralist and militaristic tendencies of George W. Bush had produced disaster in Iraq, and were actually undermining U.S. security by damaging America’s international image.

That’s why Mr. Obama focused so much attention on repairing that image. He never indicated that he would scale back that list of U.S. vital interests. He simply suggested that they could be better defended if need be by acting multilaterally, with international approval, rather than by going it alone. And he conveyed the clear impression that challenges could be prevented in the first place if only America became more popular in regions like the Middle East.

Once in office, Mr. Obama did try to establish a hierarchy of U.S. worldwide interests that would have operational impact. He decided that the nation had been so preoccupied with Middle East wars that it had been neglected the Asia-Pacific region, which he considered at least as important. So he launched a “pivot” that would transfer some American forces from the former to the latter.

But the president never apparently judged the Middle East to be less important to America’s fate. He simply concluded that, with the Afghanistan and Iraq wars supposedly winding down, it had become less dangerous. Having been proven wrong by the rise of ISIS. in Afghanistan, he’s (gradually) boosting the American military presence in region again. The president is claiming, moreover – based on as little evidence as Mr. Nixon required – that any remaining capabilities gap can be filled by the armed forces of regional countries. Worse, many of his Republican critics, who are just as reluctant to deploy many more U.S. “boots on the ground,” agree with Mr. Obama’s fundamental assessment.

Further, the president has actually expanded the list of circumstances in the Middle East (and presumably elsewhere) that should justify American military responses – the kinds of chemical weapons attacks launched by Bashir Al-Assad against Syrians revolting against his dictatorship, along with similar major violations of international law.  (This effort, so far, has not yet won over the public.)

Nor does that exhaust Mr. Obama’s efforts to lengthen the list of U.S. vital interests. He has understandably responded to Russia’s recent provocations against allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) by strengthening U.S. forces and deploying them more conspicuously in new NATO members like Poland and the Baltic states, former Soviet satellites clearly in Moscow’s line of fire. Less understandable have been the Obama administration’s numerous suggestions that the security of Ukraine, too, is a matter of urgent American concern – even though this country was actually part of the old Soviet Union for decades with no apparent effects on U.S. safety or well-being.

Yet like the debate over countering ISIS, that over dealing with Vladimir Putin spotlights one major difference between President Obama and his (mainly) Republican foreign policy critics: Many of them have strongly backed big boosts in the U.S. military budget (if not always using these forces), including aggressive moves to circumvent spending caps established by the sequestration process. Mr. Obama has not sought comparable increases.

The president unquestionably has often spoken in terms that seem to support a smaller U.S. role in the world – e.g., his remarks suggesting that America’s exceptionalism isn’t all that exceptional, and reminding that much of the world has legitimate historical grievances against the West, and in some cases against the United States specifically. But his strategic walk has never matched this talk, and the continuing flood of contentions to the contrary in the punditocracy and even academe (if Lane’s Post column is accurate) plainly are serving their (partly) intended purpose of preventing searching debate on foreign policy fundamentals.

Given the nation’s resulting over-extension militarily, therefore, when the chattering class powers-that-be start labeling presidents or most other politicians as retrenchers or minimalists (an improvement to be sure over the hackneyed charge of “isolatonism”), the only legitimate reaction is a thoroughly exasperated, “If only.”

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: One U.S. Apology Worth Considering

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apologies, Korean War, morality and foreign policy, North Korea, Obama, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, strategic bombing, Vietnam, Vietnam War, war crimes

Ever since I grew up, and actually learned things, I’ve had little patience with those who have based their views on U.S. foreign policy largely on pointing to the dark side of America’s diplomatic record. Not that this record doesn’t exist. But what realistic policy conclusions can be drawn from this focus? That American adversaries both then and now are ipso facto virtuous? Or harmless? That the United States has no right to defend its interests internationally? That making hard choices and taking morally challenged actions are never necessary in foreign policy?

Nonetheless, when spotlighting lapses – necessary and unnecessary – can curb hubris, the exercise is well worth considering. So that’s why former Washington Post reporter Blaine Harden’s column today on one American military campaign during the Korean War deserves a read.

As Harden notes, during that conflict, the U.S. Air Force engaged in a carpet-bombing of North Korea that even American political and military leaders at that time eventually acknowledged was appalling in its indiscrimination. I’ve never harbored any moral qualms about the U.S. strategic bombing of Germany and Japan in World War II – which included many civilian targets. And I have never found convincing academic claims that Washington bears significant responsibility for the outbreak of hostilities in Korea.

But what I find especially contemptible about the Korea bombing is that, unlike Germany and Japan, North Korea had no defense industry worth destroying. Moreover, by the time the war started, U.S. leaders were already aware that allied air attacks on German war production in particular were largely ineffective. (Strikes against German oil supplies, by contrast, clearly crippled the Nazi war machine.) And whereas Hitler and his Japanese counterparts were strongly – even enthusiastically supported – by their populations, it’s doubtful that North Koreans back then were avid converts to aggression and totalitarianism.

Harden calls the American bombing a war crime, and suggests that an U.S. apology might play a useful role in moderating the North Korean regime’s political extremism and dangerous behavior. He might be right on the first count, but I’m much less sure about the second point. One reason for my skepticism – Vietnam and the rest of Indochina experienced a comparable bombardment during the 1960s and 1970s. Yet when that war ended, Hanoi never allowed war-time memories to interfere with postwar normalization with the United States. And although Vietnam is ruled by a Communist dictatorship that deals harshly with dissent, it has never perpetrated the atrocities of which Pyongyang is accused.

It’s true that the Korea and Vietnam situations differ in significant ways. The Korean War ended in a stalemate that persists to this day. The Indochina wars ended in clear Communist victory. Moreover, relations between Vietnam and neighboring China have always been worse than those between China and North Korea, and Hanoi has long recognized the value of enabling American power to balance Beijing’s in the region – as long as its dominion over its own country was accepted. But it’s not at all clear that these contrasts can fully account for the extreme – and bizarre – anti-Americanism of three generations of North Korean leaders, not to mention the horrors they have inflicted on their own people.

Still, I’m sympathetic to Harden’s call for an apology. I do agree that President Obama has gone overboard in this regard. And as implied above, I don’t expect any gains abroad. But in this case, I suspect that a mea culpa would bring greater self-awareness. And with the proper perspective, that can only strengthen America’s democracy in the long run.