The Dispensable Nation: American Foreign Policy in Retreat

by Vali Nasr

  Historically, American leadership in the world has been a force for good. Without it, writes Robert Kagan, the world could be led “by some other kind of order, reflecting the desires and the qualities of other world powers,” which may be illiberal and destructive; or, he writes, “perhaps [the world order could] simply collapse.”6 That is why we think of America as the indispensable nation.

  It was only after what America did in Bosnia—compelling a confused and recalcitrant Europe to follow America’s lead to end genocide in the Balkans—that it earned that sobriquet. The people of the Middle East heard President Obama say in his much-anticipated speech on the Arab Spring, “Our support for these principles [human rights and democratic, peaceful demands for political freedom and economic opportunity, and legitimate aspirations of people] is a top priority and central to the pursuit of other interests in the region. The U.S. will marshal all our diplomatic, economic, and strategic tools to support these principles.”7 What they understood was that the nation that had transformed other parts of the world for the better was now poised to help change theirs.

  The Arab Spring was a ray of hope in a troubled region. But a brave call for freedom cannot alone change the reality of economic stagnation, social misery, and political frustration. Not without outside support. We don’t have to look too closely to realize that the Middle East is going through a historical transformation. Islamism is rising, sectarianism exploding, and regional balances of power collapsing, and flash points in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and Bahrain are threatening conflagration on a regional scale. The last time change of this magnitude happened was in 1979, when the Iranian revolution inspired Islamic radicalism and upended regional stability. What is happening in the Middle East today is both more complex and potentially bigger, and demands greater American engagement.8

  Solving the problems of the Middle East and the threat they pose to the world requires a fundamental change in the region’s economic profile.9 The international community would have to make a sizable investment—a Marshall Plan in scale—to bring about change of that magnitude. And that requires American leadership. Even if we cannot afford that right now, we still need a clear economic strategy for the region—a plan for using development aid, trade, and investment to help the region and also serve our interests.

  That is familiar territory for the United States; it has secured stability, promoted prosperity, and built democracy in region after region of the world since the end of World War II. But when it comes to the Middle East, America has forgotten this legacy. It has relied more on war (and nowadays on drones) than on trade. The Bush administration contemplated a free-trade deal with Egypt but then shelved the idea when President Mubarak jailed dissidents. We have signed preliminary free-trade agreements with Jordan and Morocco, but they remain limited in scope and there have been no plans for deepening them. Pakistan has been clamoring for more trade instead of aid, but our response has been yes to aid but no to trade. American leadership of the kind that would transform the Middle East has to be anchored in economic interdependence that would promote growth in the region and make it a part of the burgeoning global economy. Change in the Middle East needs BRIC-like development, and that requires American investment.

  In turn, growth relieves social pressure and creates upwardly mobile middle classes that tend to champion democracy and engagement with the world. America could help make all this happen. It could rally the international community, mobilize resources, and provide the kind of influence in the region’s capitals that would persuade them to commit to (sometimes painful) economic change.

  Economic engagement should go hand in hand with serious diplomatic engagement in the region. Our generals are prominent across the Middle East and should remain so, but so should our diplomats. We should be a participant in the flow of regional politics and not just a military arbiter. Our engagement should be directed at ensuring regional stability and promoting regional harmony. Seeing the region through the narrow lens of counterterrorism does not serve those goals.

  Zbigniew Brzezinski writes that America has played a critical balancing role in East Asia, fostering peace and prosperity by maintaining a delicate balance between China and its neighbors.10 But it is not just in Asia that America has kept the balance. In the Middle East, too, America has played a balancing role, between Iran and its neighbors on one side of the region, and Israel and its neighbors on the other. Without American engagement the region would have to arrive at its own balance, and that will be a violent and destabilizing process. Without American leadership in the Middle East, the region’s future, left to China and Russia to figure out, or to Turkey, Iran, and Saudi Arabia to fight over, will not be hopeful.

  The political scientist John Ikenberry lauds the liberal international order America has built.11 The global order is today durable and stable thanks to the many multilateral mechanisms America helped build and continues to support: institutions such as the UN, the World Bank, and NATO that have fostered security and development, or the EU and NAFTA, which have promoted prosperity and lured the likes of Mexico and Turkey to embrace capitalism and democracy.12

  America has lost some of its own authority to international institutions it created and sustained. But that is a good thing. It means that the liberal international order has legs; it will last longer and continue to define the world order around values and practices that will foster peace, freedom, and prosperity. As Ikenberry notes, “The underlying foundations of the liberal international order will survive and thrive” without America’s guiding hand.13 In the Middle East, though, where simmering instability threatens global security and prosperity, America has done very little institution building of the kind Ikenberry writes about. There is no equivalent to ASEAN or APEC (the Asia Pacific Economic Council), or rival to the SCO, which is backed by China, Russia, and Iran. Perhaps America should help create those kinds of institutions, which could foster order but also make the region’s security and prosperity less dependent on the exercise of American authority. Only then should America think about pivoting somewhere else.

  Whatever our new commitments, it is not likely that America can easily and quickly wash its hands of the Middle East. We cannot escape the blowback from trouble in this region. Even Asian leaders who are now the object of our greater attention are incredulous: “Are you sure you can do this with all that is happening in the Middle East?”

  The answer should be yes. We have done it in the past and we can do it again. We can have a vision of the world that encompasses our interests in Asia and in the Middle East. That is the essence of global leadership.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This book would not have been but for the generosity of many colleagues in Washington, Europe, China, the Middle East, Afghanistan, and Pakistan; senior and junior officials, journalists, and scholars. They shared their views of the past and the present, and provided essential information that helped my thinking and sharpened my arguments, and narrated telltale vignettes and backstories that have enriched this book.

  No one was more instrumental in shaping the idea for this book than Richard Holbrooke. He was a source of inspiration and fount of ideas large and small about America’s place in the world and how it ought to conduct its foreign policy. I owe to him the core ideas of this book and the details of many of the events narrated within it. He exhorted me to focus on the challenges facing American foreign policy, especially in the Muslim world, and I hope the result is true to his vision and legacy.

  Thanks also to Rina Amiri, Peter Bergen, Ashley Bommer, Stephen Bosworth, Nicholas Burns, Kent Calder, Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Shamila Chaudhry, Alexander Evans, Leila Fawaz, Leslie Gelb, Fiona Hill, Ibrahim Kalin, Bijan Khajepour, John Lipsky, Maleeha Lodhi, Kati Marton, Sean Misko, Afshin Molavi, Nader Mousavizadeh, Meghan O’Sullivan, Tom Pickering, Joel Rayburn, Barnett Rubin, Jamie Rubin, David Sanger, Arthur Sculley, Emma Sky, James Walsh, Frank Wisner, and Emirhan Yorulmazlar for their wisdom and insights. There are many others to whom I owe a
debt of gratitude but who shall remain anonymous.

  Liaqat Ahamed, Ray Takeyh, Randa Slim, and Bilal Baloch read all or parts of the early drafts of this book and made valuable comments that have improved the narrative in important ways. I am grateful to them. Philip Costopolous read all of what I wrote with his customary care and attention to detail, and spared no effort to hone my arguments.

  My talented research assistants, Artin Afkhami, Maliheh Birjandi Feriz, and Tara Sepehrifar, were immensely helpful in locating sources and finding relevant facts large and small that have enriched the pages of this book.

  Throughout the time I worked on this book I benefited from the support of colleagues at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy of Tufts University, where I taught when I first embarked on this endeavor, and the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University, where I served as dean when I finally finished the manuscript. I also benefited from the support of colleagues at Brookings Institution, where I was senior fellow in foreign policy through most of the time I worked on this book. I would like to thank in particular Brookings’s president, Strobe Talbot, and the institution’s vice president and director of its foreign policy program, Martin Indyk. They were generous with their support and also with their insight. I am grateful for their friendship and interest in my work.

  My literary agent, Susan Rabiner, was instrumental in giving this book direction. She gave this project the full measure of her attention from our very first conversation about it to when the final draft went to press. Her insights and suggestions were invaluable, and the book owes much to her caring interest. My brilliant editor at Doubleday, Kris Puopolo, took a deep interest in this book, and read everything I wrote carefully, and then took her pen to the entire manuscript, time and again improving each chapter, page, and paragraph. I am deeply grateful for her work on this book. Thanks also to Kris’s assistant editor, Daniel Meyer, my publicists, Alison Rich and Todd Doughty, and the entire team at Doubleday for their professionalism and wonderful work.

  My deepest appreciation is reserved for my wife, Darya, sons, Amir and Hossein, and daughter, Donia. Without their love and encouragement, not to mention patience and good humor, this book would not have been possible. I hope they will find the book worthy of that indulgence.

  NOTES

  INTRODUCTION

  1. “Pakistan, China Have Shared Interests in Peace Promotion: PM,” Nation, May 15, 2012, www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/islamabad/15-May-2012/pakistan-china-have-shared-interests-in-peace-promotion-pm.

  PROLOGUE: “A WEEK IN SEPTEMBER”

  1. Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Little America: The War Within the War for Afghanistan (New York: Knopf, 2012), pp. 261–69.

  2. On the history of how this idea has been used by Democratic Party leaders see James Mann, The Obamians: The Struggle Inside the White House to Redefine American Power (New York: Viking, 2012), pp. 37–38.

  3. This theme is most clearly examined in Robert Kagan, The World America Made (New York: Knopf, 2012).

  CHAPTER 1: AFGHANISTAN: THE GOOD WAR GONE BAD

  1. James Risen, “U.S. Identifies Vast Mineral Riches in Afghanistan,” New York Times, June 13, 2010, www.nytimes.com/2010/06/14/world/asia/14minerals.html?pagewanted=all.

  2. This concept is best elaborated in Richard Haass, War of Necessity, War of Choice: A Memoir of Two Iraq Wars (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009).

  3. Judy Hevrdejs, “Hamid Karzai: The World’s Most Stylish Man?” Chicago Tribune, January 31, 2002, http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2002-01-31/features/0201310025_l_hamid-karzai-glenn-o-brien-hats.

  4. A critical event in this retreat was the successful effort by Taliban leaders, but also Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar, to slip out of the December 2001 U.S. and NATO dragnet at the Tora Bora cave complex about six miles north of the FATA line. In a bad sign for the future, the failure to nab bin Laden at Tora Bora was ascribed not only to U.S. command failures and NATO irresolution but also to Pakistan’s failure to watch the border, as well as unreliability or perhaps even deliberate treachery on the part of native Afghan troops who were supposed to be acting as U.S. allies but instead created opportunities for bin Laden to escape. See Sean Naylor, Not a Good Day to Die: The Untold Story of Operation Anaconda (New York: Berkley, 2005).

  5. Naylor, Not a Good Day to Die.

  6. Angela Balakrishnan, “Afghanistan Troop Deaths Outnumber Those Killed in Iraq,” Guardian, July 1, 2008, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jul/01/afghanistan.iraq; Ahmed Rashid, Pakistan on the Brink: The Future of America, Pakistan, and Afghanistan (New York: Viking, 2012), p. 74.

  7. Antonio Giustozzi, Koran, Kalashnikov, and Laptop: The Neo-Taliban Insurgency in Afghanistan 2002–2007 (New York: New York University Press, 2009).

  8. Steve Coll, Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 (New York: Penguin, 2004), p. 134.

  9. Ian S. Livingston and Michael O’Hanlon, Afghanistan Index: Tracking Variables of Reconstruction and Security in Post-9/11 Afghanistan (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, January 30, 2012), p. 18, http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Files/Programs/FP/afghanistan%20index/index.pdf.

  10. Bob Woodward, Obama’s Wars (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010), pp. 88–90.

  11. Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Little America: The War Within the War in Afghanistan (New York: Knopf, 2012).

  12. Chandrasekaran provides a devastating account of Karzai’s corruption and misrule in Little America.

  13. Ibid.

  14. Sheri Berman, “From Sun King to Karzai: Lessons for State Building in Afghanistan,” Foreign Affairs, March/April 2010, http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/65984/sheri-berman/from-the-sun-king-to-karzai. For a broader discussion of this theme see Francis Fukuyama, The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011), pp. xi–xiii.

  15. Thomas Barfield, “Afghanistan’s Ethnic Puzzle,” Foreign Affairs, September/October 2011, www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/68204/thomas-barfield/afghanistans-ethnic-puzzle.

  16. Gretchen Peters, Seeds of Terror: How Drugs, Thugs, and Crime Are Reshaping the Afghan War (New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2009); Alissa Rubin, “War on Afghan Opium Yields Few Victories,” New York Times, May 28, 2012, p. A6.

  17. Antonio Giustozzi, Decoding the Taliban: Insights from the Afghan Field (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009).

  18. For a fuller discussion, see Kimberly Kagan, “The Anbar Awakening: Displacing al-Qaeda from Its Stronghold in Western Iraq,” Iraq Report, Institute for the Study of War and WeeklyStandard.com, August 21 2006–March 30 2007, www.understandingwar.org/sites/default/files/reports/IraqReport03.pdf.

  19. How this strategy worked is best described in Michael O’Hanlon and Hassina Sherjan, Toughing It Out in Afghanistan (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2010).

  20. “President Obama’s Secret: Only 100 al Qaeda Now in Afghanistan,” ABC News, abcnews.go.com/Blotter/president-obamas-secret-100-al-Qaeda-now-afghanistan/story?id=9227861#.TyypheNWqf8.

  21. “Ambassador Eikenberry’s Cables on U.S. Strategy in Afghanistan,” New York Times, documents.nytimes.com/eikenberry-s-memos-on-the-strategy-in-afghanistan#p=1.

  22. James Dobbins, “Your COIN Is No Good Here,” Foreign Affairs, October 26, 2010, http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/66949/james-dobbins/your-coin-is-no-good-here?page=2.

  23. Chandrasekaran, Little America, pp. 68–81.

  24. Rashid, Pakistan on the Brink, p. 76.

  25. Ibid., pp. 19–20.

  26. Geir Lundestad, The United States and Western Europe since 1945: From “Empire” by Invitation to Transatlantic Drift (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 160, cited in Robert Kagan, The World America Made (New York: Knopf, 2012), p. 63.

  27. Fotini Christia and Michael Sempel, “Flipping the Taliban,” Foreign Affairs, July/August 2009, http://www.foreignaffairs.co
m/articles/65151/fotini-christia-and-michael-semple/flipping-the-taliban.

  CHAPTER 2: AFGHANISTAN: RECONCILIATION?

  1. Strobe Talbott first referred to Holbrooke as the “unquiet American” in an obituary: “Remembering Richard Holbrooke,” Washington Post, December 15, 2010, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/14/AR2010121406366.html. Later a biography of Holbrooke carried the same title: Derek Chollet and Samantha Power, eds., The Unquiet American: Richard Holbrooke in the World (New York: Public Affairs, 2011).

  2. Mark Landler, “Afghan Shift Puts Top U.S. Civilians in Tricky Spot,” New York Times, July 1, 2010, p. A14.

  3. Author interview with Mark Landler, August 2010.

  4. Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Little America: The War Within the War for Afghanistan (New York: Knopf, 2012), p. 230.

  5. Les Gelb, “Richard Holbrooke’s Lonely Mission,” Daily Beast, January 16, 2011, www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/01/16/richard-holbrooke-s-lonely-mission.html.

  6. Cited in William H. Luers and Thomas R. Pickering, “Envisioning a Deal with Iran,” New York Times, February 2, 2012, www.nytimes.com/2012/02/03/opinion/envisioning-a-deal-with-iran.html?_r=1&ref=opinion.

  7. Matthew Rosenberg, “When Afghans Look to the Border with Pakistan, They Don’t See a Fixed Line,” New York Times, October 29, 2012, p. A9.

  8. Robert D. Hormats, remarks at conference titled “The United States’ ‘New Silk Road’ Strategy: What Is It? Where Is It Headed?” September 29, 2011, School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, available at www.state.gOv/e/rls/rmk/2011/174800.htm.

  9. Obama even discussed the idea with journalists in August 2010. David Ignatius, “The U.S. Should Test Iran’s Resolve to Stabilize Afghanistan,” Washington Post, September 17, 2010, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/16/AR2010091606067.html.