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Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Beyond Blaming the Victim

06 Monday Mar 2023

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Our So-Called Foreign Policy

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CCP Virus, China, coronavirus, COVID 19, Edward G. Luce, Financial Times, George W. Bush, global terrorism, Iraq war, lab leak, Mario del Poro, Melvyn Leffler, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, September 11, The Washington Post, weapons of mass destruction, Wuhan lab, Wuhan virus

When a line of argument appears twice in Mainstream Media publications on consecutive days, it’s hard not to conclude that a trend might be forming – or has been well underway. And when it comes to the particular line of argument I’m posting about, that’s disturbing news, since it’s an especially repugnant form of blaming the victim that could become dangerously influential. For these views can all too easily become rationales for official paralysis in the face of major threats, or excessively feeble responses, because the media organizations spreading these views are still taken so seriously by so many U.S. policymakers.

The first example of such blaming the victim comes from Edward G. Luce, a columnist for the Financial Times. Now before you go objecting that both this pundit and his newspaper are British, keep in mind that the author is based in Washington, D.C. and that the Times has long published a U.S. edition that’s must reading in high level American policy circles that are by no means confined to business and economics.

In his March 1 offering on how some revised American intelligence assessments of the CCP Virus lab leak theory might impact U.S.-China relations, Luce worries that “America’s growing tendency to demonise China — and the fact that China keeps supplying it with material — poses a threat to global health” and could poison the entire spectrum of bilateral ties because “The world’s superpower and its rising great power are both now working from home and nourishing paranoia about each other.”

It’s the first half of this analysis that especially caught my eye. According to Luce, practically the entire U.S. political system is increasingly “demonising” China – phrasing that, along with the follow-on reference to “paranoia,” can only mean that U.S. positions on the entire range of Sino-American relations have become unjustifiably harsh.

But at the same time, he notes that “China keeps supplying [Americans] with material.” That sounds like a confession that China’s record actually does warrant more confrontational stances in Washington. Luce’s contention of mutual paranoia stoking, however, indicates that this isn’t what he believes at all.

Practically identical is Luce’s observation that “Beijing’s reluctance to play global citizen on pandemic warning systems — on top of climate change and other common threats — means we are hearing far less from Washington about co-operating with China and far more about confronting it.”

Yet how is Luce advising the United States to deal with a country that he himself believes isn’t buying the argument about the need for cooperation on issues of common concern? Simply, it seems, by talking as much as ever or even more about “co-operating with China” – which appears to reflect the hope that some particularly inspiring official U.S. verbiage can bring Beijing around and of course a clear triumph over experience.

The second example of such victim blaming came in a book review published the following day in the Washington Post. Writing about American historian Melvyn Leffler’s new study of the 2003 U.S. Iraq War, French political scientist Mario del Pero describes Leffler as arguing that President George W. Bush and his top advisors

“were imbued with a ‘sense of exceptional goodness and greatness’ and believed in the superiority of ‘America’s system of democratic capitalism.’ This hubris encouraged a strategy that favored deploying America’s overwhelming power to protect the country and its way of life. The terrorist attacks fed this arrogance and blinded the administration to the moral and strategic issues it confronted.”

Leave aside the suggestion that belief in the superiority of “America’s system of democratic capitalism” is ipso facto a sign of “hubris” and “arrogance” (which strikes me as weird) and the contention that the Bush administration underestimated “the moral and strategic issues it confronted” (more persuasive IMO, especially the strategic part).

Concentrate instead on the final sentence about the September 11 attacks “feeding” the administration’s “arrogance.” This sounds just like Luce’s portrayal of over-the-top U.S. responses to Chinese provocations that he concedes in the next breath have been awfully provocative. Unless American leaders post-September 11 should have viewed that day’s strikes as a one-off?

Yet del Pero makes clear that Leffler makes no such argument. The author (in del Pero’s words) maintains that

>U.S. leaders “believed that America’s way of life was under threat”;

>”The shared assumption — within the administration as well as among allies and arms-control experts — was that Iraq still had secret weapons-of-mass-destruction (WMD) programs. The new global landscape made the possibility of a WMD-armed Iraq all the more ominous”; and

>“No threat [Leffler’s words] worried Bush and his advisers more than the prospect of terrorists getting their hands on weapons of mass destruction.”

Finally, (back to the reviewer’s words) “Intelligence was inconclusive and some of it, it was later realized, simply fabricated. But no risks could be taken.”

In other words, even though this second Iraq War turned out terribly, the idea that the dangers of global terrorism “fed” a Bush administration “arrogance” and “hubris” that presumably was already bloated is far too dismissive. Instead, the grievous damage already done by such terrorism, the genuinely frightful and plausible prospect of more to come – and possibly sooner rather than later – and the frustrating uncertainties policymakers always face in crises, mean that the 2003 invasion is best seen as an understandable and entirely rational response.

In fact, reviewer del Pero winds up substantially agreeing, calling Bush’s approach “coherent in theory.” Also worth keeping in mind. At least rhetorically, Bush didn’t start out as a chest-thumping foreign policy President.

In his October 11, 2000 debate with Democratic rival Al Gore during his first campaign for President, Bush stated:

“If we’re an arrogant nation [other countries will] resent us. If we’re a humble nation, but strong, they’ll welcome us. And our nation stands — stands alone right now in the world in terms of power. And that’s why we’ve got to be humble and yet project strength in a way that promotes freedom.”

Obviously, September 11 produced a change. But how could it not have, to at least some extent?

A famous bit of French snark memorably “complains” “This animal is dangerous. When attacked, it defends itself.” That’s a good way to think about both these charges that there’s something as fundamentally diseased about the overall American body politic’s reactions to the burgeoning threats posed by China as there was about the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq.

Of course, although some policies will always be rooted in real paranoia, and although their more reasoned counterparts can always go awry for any number of reasons, the failure of Luce, del Pero, and apparently Leffler (along with their Financial Times and Washington Post editors) to recognize a healthy sense of national self-preservation that’s vital in a dangerous world when they see it, is pretty diseased itself. Here’s hoping it doesn’t become epidemic.

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Our So-Called Foreign Policy: The U.S. Public Opinion Gap isn’t Only Partisan

29 Saturday Dec 2018

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Our So-Called Foreign Policy

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alliances, America First, climate change, Democrats, globalism, Immigration, Jobs, national security, nuclear deterrence, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Pew Research Center, Republicans, terrorism, Trump, weapons of mass destruction

A recent (November 29) Pew Research Center poll on public attitudes toward foreign policy issues was a classic good news/bad news story – at least if you believe that the top priority of American foreign policy should be to promote the security and well-being of the American people.

On the one hand, that’s pretty much what the results show – that’s the good news. On the other hand, these commonsense positions prevail overwhelmingly because adults viewing themselves as either Republicans or Republican leaners hold them. That’s the bad news.  In other words, the views of Democrats and those leaning Democratic reveal a marked disregard for their nation’s self-preservation and prosperity.

According to Pew, 72 percent of all Americans say that “taking measures to protect the U.S. from terrorism” should “be a top foreign policy priority,” 71 percent would assign the same priority to “protecting jobs of American workers,” and 66 percent regard “preventing the spread” of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) with similar urgency.

But now check out the partisan splits: On the terrorism issue, fully 84 percent of Republicans and their leaners regard it as a top foreign policy priority. Only 61 percent of Democrats and their leaners agree. So much, i.e., for the idea that Americans will never forget September 11. And remember – the question only described protection from terrorism as a top priority, not the top foreign policy priority.

On protecting American workers’ jobs, 81 percent of Republicans and their leaners would treat it as a priority, versus only 65 percent of Democrats and their leaners. I’m old enough to remember when the Democrat called themselves the party of working Americans.

The exception here is preventing the spread of WMD: Fewer (64 percent of Republicans and their leaners see it as a major priority than do Democrats and their leaners (68 percent), but these results are very close.

Many of the other Pew poll findings are not the slightest bit surprising. Principally, the biggest partisan divides on foreign policy issues come on “dealing with global climate change,” “reducing illegal immigration into the U.S.,” and “maintaining U.S. military advantage over all other countries.”

But here’s what’s more surprising. The Democrats, and especially their leaders, have enthusiastically assumed the mantle of globalism champions versus President Trump’s proclaimed America First approach. And a hallmark of globalism, whether on the right or the left ends of the national political spectrum, has been international activism. Liberals and conservatives generally disagree on where to place the emphasis (e.g., emerging transnational issues like climate change and migration versus more traditional security-oriented issues), but energetic engagement is favored by all.

Nonetheless, if you look carefully at the Pew results, Democrats and their leaners would place the “top priority” label on relatively few foreign policy issues. Indeed, only one such candidate for this status reaches the 70 percent mark with these groups – “improving relationships with allies.” And only four issues are seen as top priorities by 60 or more percent of Democrats and their leaners – as stated above, WMD (68 percent), protecting American jobs (65 percent), climate change (64 percent) and terrorism (61 percent). 

Overall, then, it’s easy to conclude from these and other findings in the Pew poll that Democrats and their leaners may be globalists, but they’re globalists who don’t seem to regard overseas-related challenges with overwhelming concern. Alternatively, they’re reluctant to support zeroing in on a limited (and arguably more manageable) set of goals. P.S., the relatively low score for climate change seems especially noteworthy given the importance progressive Democrats and others relatively far to the Left have attached to the idea of a “Green New Deal.”

It’s even easier to conclude that Republicans and their leaners are more committed to an America First-type approach. And it looks like this commitment is somewhat stronger. Their highest priority foreign policy issues are the aforementioned terrorism and job protection – where their priority scores are in the 80s percent. And their next three priorities are maintaining a national military edge (70 percent), reducing illegal immigration (68 percent), and preventing WMD spread (64 percent). For good measure, “getting other countries to assume more of the costs of maintaining world order” comes in at 56 percent.

However revealing these Pew results, they still left out two of the biggest questions for politicians and others trying to surmise which approaches to U.S. foreign policy, and what specific initiatives, would garner the most and least public support. The first is how genuine political independents view these issues. The second is how high a priority is assigned to preventing a nuclear attack on the U.S. homeland.

The importance attached to halting the spread of weapons of mass destruction points to great concern about this challenge. But the strong support expressed by Democrats and their leaners for shoring up America’s alliance relations indicates an especially serious lack of awareness on their part that indiscriminately extending nuclear umbrellas over U.S. allies has greatly increased the odds of such attack (principally from the newish NATO commitments to the highly vulnerable Baltic states, and the longstanding commitment to protect South Korea from North Korea and its new nuclear capabilities).

Of course, these Americans can’t entirely be blamed for this knowledge gap, as both U.S. leaders and the mainstream media continue to work overtime to mask the – growing – nuclear war risks inherent in the nation’s alliance system. (President Trump has been only a partial exception.) Hopefully 2019 will see some explicit, intellectually honest discussion of these dangers – and well before they reach critical mass.

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