Politics Does Not Stop At The Water's Edge

More than fifty years ago Republican senator and one-time isolationist, Arthur Vandenberg, allegedly stated in support of his bipartisan support of the Truman Doctrine, "Politics stops at the water's edge."  Either the senator was being economical with the truth or was caught in a moment of self-delusion.  Politics does not--indeed, cannot--halt at the beach.  Foreign policy is the export version of domestic politics.  It can be nothing else.

A truism well understood by diplomatic historians is that a country's foreign policy must be compatible with the values and norms of a society--particularly when that society has a democratic polity.  It is this organic rooting of US foreign policy and diplomacy in national norms, values, and worldview which gives foreign relations, American style, its uniquely schizophrenic nature.  It is also the reason that persuasive diplomacy--that is the diplomacy of identifying and building upon coinciding national interests--is most readily accomplished between states of common values, norms, and worldviews.  An example: The US and the UK can easily practice persuasive diplomacy particularly when compared with, say, Russia or China or any Muslim majority country.

The schizophrenic nature of US foreign policy--the dynamic and shifting tension between realpolitik and idealism predicated upon common American values and norms--came into sharp focus in a little noticed exchange between Secretary of State Hilary Clinton and Republican representative Ron Paul the other day.  Dr Paul, who is today's equivalent of isolationist leader Arthur Vandenberg in the years prior to Pearl Harbor, excoriated Ms Clinton concerning American support for dictators such as Hosni Mubarak almost until the crowds in Cairo pulled the switch on the aging authoritarian.  Secretary Clinton offered the realist justification to Representative Paul's idealist critique.  She noted thirty years of cold peace between Egypt and Israel as well as the Egyptian opposition to the forces of violent political Islam.  She did allow that sometimes the US got the balance between the ideal of promoting democracy and the real world needs for stability and predictability wrong but maintained that the various administrations had gotten it right far more often than the opposite.

The bifurcate nature of American foreign policy has bedeviled one administration after another ever since the first Roosevelt dragged the US kicking and screaming onto the global stage over a century ago.  Woodrow Wilson practiced the diplomacy of idealism with a vigor no other president has matched.  We entered World War I purely for the idealistic notion of fighting a "war to end wars."  The end goal of Wilson for the war was the establishment of a permanent global organization with the chief mission of preventing aggressive war by punishing those states which embarked on aggression.  To the cynical and resolutely realistic leaders of the major European states, the American president was hopelessly naive about the ways of the world, and they worked in concert to so arrange the peace that regardless of the existence of Wilson's League of Nations, the nature of the peace treaty virtually assured another war.

By failing to take the political sensitivities of critical senators into account, by disregarding the privileges of the Senate, and by neglecting to focus public opinion correctly, Mr Wilson brought about the defeat of his own creation in the Senate.  The American public was too new, too unused to playing the part of a Great Power to turn its collective back on the previous generations of disengagement from the affairs of Europe or the rest of the world.  It took the massive shock of Pearl Harbor and the globe wide bloodletting of World War II to convince We the People that playing the Game of Nations as a Great Power was an inescapable reality.  The threats presented by the Soviet Union and China reinforced that view with the result that the American public monolithically rejected the old idea of being a symbol to the world, the "shining city on a hill," which had been our ideal during most of our national existence.

For a few years the tension between "realism" and "idealism" faded to nothing.  The Cold War allowed both realists and idealists to agree on methods and means.  Idealists, for example, did not carp at our support of authoritarian regimes against the much greater "evil" of international Communism.  Nor did realists cavil with the promotion of "democracy" and free enterprise even though many of our clients and allies were neither "democratic" nor given to unfettered free enterprise and capitalism.

The tension reemerged during and in the wake of the Vietnam debacle.  This reemergence came with a wrinkle, the idea that the US should withdraw from the affairs of the world because it was too "evil" and polluted the rest of the world with its purported greed, exploitative nature, and imperialistic goals.  The foreign policy realists became an endangered species caught between two varieties of predatory idealists.

President Jimmy Carter was an idealist.  He was not in the muscular Wilson school,  ready and willing to use coercion to achieve a goal of moral perfection.  Quite the contrary, Carter was almost of the blame-America-first variety of idealist given to feeling the US was much more the sinner than either a leader or a country much sinned against.  His contraction of the American military and intelligence services as well as his elevation of the vague and ambiguous subject human rights to the center of the diplomatic pantheon shows this tendency.  The lack of an effective response to either the Iranian two stage revolution or the unprovoked Soviet invasion of Afghanistan makes his position absolutely clear.

The American national character, the aggregate perception of historical experience by Americans generally, did not take kindly to the notion of a pathetically weak response to two direct, high profile provocations.  While We the People might have been willing to let the Soviets have a pass on the invasion of a country most could not locate on a map, such was not the case with respect to the capture of the American embassy and the kidnapping of US personnel.  The insult given to the American public by the Iranian "students" was not as great as that administered by Japan at Pearl Harbor but ran in the same direction.

As a result idealism was shunted aside in favor of realism.  Specifically, it was set aside in favor of the Reagan version of realism which centered upon a reinvigorated US military and the increased use of coercive diplomacy.  In the view of key members of the Reagan administration, a country needed not only a military capacity which was impressive on paper but one which was demonstrated to be both useful and used.  Only by demonstrating a political will as well as a military capacity would US foreign policy be seen and taken seriously by allies and adverse powers alike.  This is what made the unilateral actions such as the attack on Libya in 1986 and the sledgehammer invasion of Grenada important.

Cold, calculated, and unilateral use of military power provided an important context for the ongoing nuclear limitation talks with the Soviet Union.  The same applied to all American diplomatic initiatives.  When night fell, the minor uses of force proved sufficient to offset the potential debacle of sending troops to Lebanon only to withdraw them precipitously after a pair of high casualty terror bomber attacks.

George H.W. Bush broadened the definition of realist.  He launched the American military in the largest SWAT type operation ever with the invasion and consequent regime change in Panama.  This was unilateralism as last resort after lesser means of coercion failed.  But, only two years later H.W. catered to the strong American idealistic strain of multi-lateralism by the patient building of a coalition of very strange partners as well as creatively using the UN as a fig leaf covering American policy genitalia with Operation Desert Storm.  His approach seamlessly melded realism and idealism with good consequences which were very beneficial to US national and strategic interests.

Unlike the case with George W. Bush, no critic ever accused the US under H.W. of acting unilaterally or arrogantly or imperialistically.  Nor could any aver that H.W. was some sort of neo-Wilsonian.  He was coldly realistic in appraising American interests in play in the wake of the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait, but he was equally attuned to the music of idealism so important to so many in the American (and European) elites.  Even though the US in 1990-91 could have abated the Iraqi nuisance without the aid of any other country beyond Saudi Arabia and the assorted Gulf states, he correctly chose to take the time needed to deploy forces to the theater of operations and build a coalition and gain UN approval.

When Bill Clinton came along, the realism once more vanished.  Clinton was both uninterested in foreign affairs and indifferent to the concept of national interest.  One consequence was he viewed genuine threats to American national security and interests not as foreign policy challenges or military contingencies but rather as matters of law and its enforcement.  Another result of the Clinton idealist view was the belief that American good intentions, particularly when backed by UN sanction, would be obvious to all.

These two beliefs (not conclusions rooted in an accurate appreciation of real facts but rather beliefs rooted in values, emotions, and worldview) resulted in both the Somali debacle and the inept, limp wrist responses to terror attacks mounted by advocates of violent political Islam, most notably al-Qaeda.  It was as certain as day following night that countries generally would perceive the US as lacking both a realistic perception of the Game of Nations and the political will to use force when force was the only correct response.

Unfortunately for the US and the world, George W. Bush was not a realist any more than was Bill Clinton.  Pace the conventional wisdom, George W. Bush and his administration were Wilsonian idealists. This means they were quite willing to use military coercion to accomplish idealistic goals.

A realist would have seized the universal support given the US in the wake of 9/11 to mount a punitive expedition against Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.

A realist would have told the government of Pakistan to take a hike rather than to agree to allow most of Taliban and al-Qaeda along with their Pakistani mentors to hot foot it across the border into the safety of the FATA.

A realist would have let a secular regime no matter how odious and loathsome to remain in power in Iraq as a bulwark against both Iran and the advocates of violent political Islam.  (Admittedly, there was one realistic but unanticipated good result from the invasion of Iraq and that was the sudden conversion of Gaddafi to the side of denuclearization and anti-jihadism, but that result was not worth the costs.)

George W. Bush, Wilsonian idealist, chose instead to embark upon the impossible--building Western style nation-states in both Afghanistan and Iraq.  This was identical to Wilson's landing the Marines at Vera Cruz in order to "teach the Mexicans to elect good men."  It has worked as well as that landing, which is to say not at all, but at infinitely greater cost to the US and the target countries.

Bush was supported at least at the outset because his approach, his goal of nation-building, fit perfectly with the crusading aspect of defining American mythology.  It was organic to the widely held feeling that if only other countries were like us the world would be a much better place.  It arose from the companion feeling that everyone everywhere wanted to live just as we did in all respects and regardless of cultural context.  This, bucko, is idealism.

The current incumbent is also an idealist.  His understanding of foreign affairs, insofar as he has one, comports well with the deeply held American belief in the rule of law and the primacy of democracy.  Again this belief is applied without respect to the specific context of other countries.  In his idealism Obama veers strongly to the Carter as opposed to the Wilsonian approach.  Arguably Obama is even more loath than Carter or Clinton to practice coercive diplomacy let alone use American military power.

This may be due to Mr Obama having accepted without reservation the blame-America-first form of idealism.  He appears to be sincerely convinced the world would be better if the US were weaker, less central to the affairs of the globe and less able to use its power (defined broadly) to seek its goals.  He seems to be firmly of the view that national and strategic interest is a very bad, even evil concept.

Mr Obama has put the realists very much in the shadows and has done so with a high degree of political impunity.  Americans, at least if some polls are to be believed, have resigned themselves to the idea that the years ahead belong to China and not the US.  At the same time it appears from all metrics of public opinion that the American public has lost the most important single component of its past worldview--optimism.  It is this factor which means the current, Obama orchestrated contraction of US influence may be irreversible.

In the past decade the pendulum has swung much too far under two presidents from two different parties in the direction of idealism.  In doing so the pendulum has swung not in spite of domestic politics but because of domestic politics.  The question which can--must--be answered in two years is simply whether domestic politics will shift sufficiently to allow a resurrection of realism in US foreign policy.  Arguably, the US cannot survive as a Great Power unless that happens.  And, unless the pendulum swings back hard and fast, there will not be any need for the sort of exchange typified by the Paul-Clinton dialogue.

The US will be too irrelevant for that.  A not particularly pleasant thought.