Foreign Policy For Today--But Not Tomorrow

If there was an Olympic event in short-sighted foreign policy, the US would win the Gold, and the Silver, and the Bronze. Pretty darn good, if you're not an American.

Perhaps it was in recognition of this ineptitude that prompted Senator Obama to announce his status as global citizen to the enthralled multitude in Berlin. Perhaps it was his personal way of announcing that, should he become president, the world could expect a continuation of business as usual in Foggy Bottom.

As a historian and as an American the Geek has been and continues to be overwhelmed by the sheer asininity of most US foreign policy initiatives and stances over the past half-century at the least. There is a simple reason for his total disenchantment with the efforts of most presidents and virtually all Secretaries of State since Theodore Roosevelt.

Most of the worthies We the People have sent to the White House from Woodrow Wilson to George W. Bush have either forgotten or never known the foundation principle of foreign and national security policy. It's not that the basis is hard to understand or difficult to remember.

Heck. It's simple and easy,

Here it is in one nice well-wrapped little package. The purpose of foreign policy of which national security policy is a major subset is to effectively counter and defeat threats to the existence and core interests of the United States.

Forgetting this fundamental has inexorably assured that one Administration after another, one Congress after another, has engaged in a series of fatal confusions. Time after bloody time existential matters have been confused with gee-wouldn't-that-be-nice issues. Time after bloody time the purpose of alliances has been misunderstood or blurred into meaninglessness.

And, most importantly, time after bloody time the exigencies of today have been given pride of place over the requirements of the future. Political feel-good has trumped national interest think-well.

To survive and prosper, a country must take a rather cold-hearted stance. The governing question must be, "What's in it for me?"

Sounds utterly selfish, doesn't it?

That's because it is. Nation-states are inherently self-centered to the max. That's why they exist. That's why they will continue to exist. The security and continuation of a nation-state is its prime concern. The nation-state (which appears to be the largest assemblage of human beings that can inspire a sense of identification and loyalty among its inhabitants bound together as they are by a shared language, a common history and a defining mythology) exists in order to exist. Period.

As a result the nation-state defines subjectively what its national interests might be and what constitutes a threat to those or to its physical existence.

Come along with your friendly tour guide, the Geek, as we walk down the trails of time and look at some examples of good and bad American foreign policy in their natural habitat.

The first exhibit is Woodrow Wilson. Wilson, not unlike Theodore Roosevelt, was a Progressive Internationalist. Unlike TR, Woodrow Wilson acted from a base of Christian (Presbyterian) morality as opposed to a clear sense of what was necessary to protect and advance American national interests in a world filled with large and dangerous animals.

By "enlightened" moral standards TR was a lout. He stole Panama from Columbia so a large ditch might be dug. Then he effectively clamped the American occupation on the necks of the Filipinos simply to prevent some other country from doing so.

Now, consider WW. He authorised two military interventions in Mexico. One had the purpose of "teaching the Mexicans to elect good men." The other was a punitive expedition having the goal of killing or capturing a terrorist named Pancho Villa.

Wilson entered World War I with the moral goals of "making the world safe for democracy," and fighting a "war to end wars." He had a grand vision of a world body dedicated to preventing or punishing aggressive war (at least amongst the "civilised" states.)

Arguably the United States had a national interest and long range national security interests in play when TR went after the real estate needed to build the Panama Canal. Arguably the same might be said concerning the Philippine occupation or even the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine.

There were no definable US national security or national interests involved in the Wilsonian efforts in Mexico. It must be pointed out that the only hypothetical interest, compensation for property seized from Americans by the revolutionary Mexican government(s), was not brought forward in the context of either military (mis)adventure.

No less a self-interested British observer than Winston Churchill maintained during the 1930s that the US had made a major blunder by entering WW I. In Churchill's view the war would have ended in a truce of exhaustion in the summer or fall of 1917 had it not been for the prospect of US troops arriving in force during 1918 and beyond.

A close look at the aftermath of the mutinies in the French Army during 1916 and the state of the German civilian population in 1917 shows that both nations were a spent force with the French holding on only because the Yanks were coming.

Churchill also observed that the US could have exploited the truce of exhaustion by dictating any sort of peace it wanted to see. More, the US could have enforced its vision of peace by using its agricultural abundance as a weapon far more effective than any employed on the battlefield.

Of course, Wilson the moralist could not even use our food as a weapon when he encountered resistance to his ideas of a Peace Without Victors. Apparently in his mind Wilson thought the killing of human beings by bomb and bullet was more moral than causing hunger cramps in the bellies of civilians.

In any event it is virtually impossible to discern any national security or national interest imperative worth the US entry into World War I. Yes, the Kaiser was a dunderheaded loudmouth with delusions of adequacy and U-boats were scary, but neither represented an actual or even distant potential threat to the US surviving and flourishing.

The same could not be said regarding the Germany of Adolph Hitler. While Imperial Japan did not and could not represent an existential threat to the US, Nazi Germany could. Given the resources of Europe, Germany would have developed into an existential threat of the highest order.

Even though this reality was well understood by the Administration of Franklin Roosevelt, this master of political legerdemain tacked, bobbed and weaved until the decision to go to war was made for him on 11 December 1941 when the rubber stamp parliament of Germany declared war on the US.

World War II was an exercise in naked self-interest by the US. Not only was one of the three enemies a near-term potential existential menace, the war had been thrust upon us. We fought it hard, dirty and smart. The Soviets were too close to the truth to be humorous when the Foreign Minister of the USSR suggested that the US wanted to see, "The last Russian kill the last German with the last bullet of the war."

Only the combination of inefficiency, narrow self-interest and a claque of American supporters prevented the US from using the Nationalist Chinese in the role of bullet catchers. As it was we hammered, kicked, cajoled and bribed Chaing to fight enough to pin down the vast bulk of the Imperial Japanese Army so we wouldn't have to fight it.

Then, to the never ending dismay of the Blame America First school, we dropped firebombs on civilian population centers, (to say nothing of the concentrated essence of firebomb raids delivered to Hiroshima and Nagasaki), engaged in unrestricted submarine warfare on Japan and employed devastating levels of firepower on the Germans. We fought in order to win as quickly and at the lowest possible cost in American lives as humanly possible.

We won. Decisively. At the lowest cost in lives of the major combatants.

But, even as we won, we found ourselves in another war. The Cold War. FDR and his senior advisers as well as US military commanders discovered that another enemy was approaching us through the ruins of Berlin.

Wars of national survival can and do make for strange alliances. World War II in Europe was no exception. The Soviet Union and the US had no coinciding national interests beyond defeating Nazi Germany. Absent the common threat there were no points of agreement between the Kremlin and Washington (or London, or Paris for that matter.)

This reality, unpleasant as it might have been, was apparent in the intelligence and diplomatic reporting of the war years and before. The realities were ignored by an Administration and a We the People who saw war or even political confrontation as an anomaly.

The Truman Administration was quick to see and adjust to the new realities of the post-War world and laid out the basic architecture which, refined by the Eisenhower Administration, would give the world nearly a half-century of tense but ultimately relatively peaceful existence until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990-91.

Whereas the American entry into World War I was both unnecessary and ultimately unjustifiable, the fighting of its follow-on was necessary and justifiable. Thus, the waging of the Second World War by the US is an excellent example of "policy for today." In so far as it was considered by the FDR Administration as "policy for the future," it was a failure. A failure brought about by the inability of the Administration to recognise that the Great Alliance was an unnatural occurrence.

The Cold War Doctrine of Containment and its Eisenhower manifestation Mutually Assured Destruction were good examples of "policy for the future." While the Blame America Firsters may gnash their teeth over some of the techniques and tactics used during the long glacial years of the confrontation between US and USSR, and in particular may bemoan the Vietnam involvement or the robust rhetoric and actions of the Reagan Administration, the end result proves the validity of the policy.

The USSR is no more.

Woodrow Wilson, Democrat, and Harry Truman, Democrat, give two conflicting examples of how to formulate and execute policy. Wilson's was based on fuzzy morality and an inability to properly appreciate realities on the ground. Truman's was based on coolly calculated appraisals of US national security needs and national interest requirements with little, if any, genuflections to the political feel-good needs of the moment. Tough and realistic choices were made in Europe, in Asia and regarding nuclear weapons. Sentiment was ignored. Facts on the ground were faced.

Alliances were made by Truman's Administration on the only basis which is valid. How can an alliance with any particular country benefit the United States. If an agreement with a nation or collection of nations aid the US, then it was entered into. Even the controversial decision to recognise the new state of Israel was finally predicated, not on sentiment but on the acceptance that not to do so would benefit the Soviets who, it was known, were ready to do so.

The Eisenhower Administration was quite realistic regarding the development of Mutually Assured Destruction. That doctrine would have, Ike recognised, the greatest potential for making certain that nuclear weapons might be built and stockpiled and deployed--but never used. The Eisenhower Administration was not so realistic regarding alliances. The (in)famous "pactomania" of the period tied us to a number of countries which had little if anything to offer and represented net drains on our ability and freedom to pursue national interest.

So far, so good. By 1960 the world was frozen in a tense but stable balance of terror. Wars could be fought on the margins for limited goals and with the utmost care to decouple these peripheral nibblings from the potential of vertical escalation.

Then the wheels started to come off. The Administrations of Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon lost sight of the cool calculation of national interest and security, lost a grip on the idea that the best policy was one which focused on the future not on today.

The reason was Israel.

The results were disastrous.

Stay tuned.