America Right or Wrong

by Lieven, Anatol;

  As a result, the United States got itself into a position where U.S. administrations were seriously proposing to risk war with Russia for a Georgian South Ossetia and a Ukrainian Sevastopol, without the wisdom of this ever being seriously debated in the mainstream U.S. media, let alone its more extreme elements. In particular, there was no serious attempt to assess relative U.S. interests and ask if it made sense to pick a fight with Russia over these countries at a time when China’s rapid rise relative to America was already apparent.

  Nor was sufficient attention paid to the internal nature of Georgia and Ukraine. The wishes of ordinary Ukrainians themselves regarding NATO membership were ignored and the internal state of Georgia was either ignored or absurdly characterized in the U.S. media—all in the name of supporting “democracy.”74 In the end, when Georgia and Russia went to war in August 2008, the Bush administration backed away from defending Georgia—but it would not have been nearly so easy to do so if the United States had already entered into a formal alliance with that country.

  The various territorial disputes between China and some of its neighbors make the idea of an American military alliance with them a very serious matter, which the American public needs to be aware of and to think clearly about. Such clarity will not occur if the Vietnamese and Filipino claims to the Paracel and Spratly Islands and India’s claims to the McMahon Line in the Himalayas have become bound up in American minds with America’s mission to defend freedom and spread democracy in the world.

  This is not to say that such a development is certain. If American civic nationalism contains strong impulses to messianism, it is also true that both the American people and the American establishment contain strong tendencies toward pragmatism. Indeed, it might almost be said that while thanks to the dominant civic nationalist discourse, nationalist idealism has generally won the public arguments, in private it is pragmatism that has actually shaped policy.

  One central reason why this is so comes from an unlikely source: the U.S. military, and the military–industrial complex to which it is linked. At least since Vietnam, it is not the uniformed military that has driven American military adventures abroad. For example, I have been told by former Bush administration officials that Vice President Dick Cheney’s desire to send U.S. troops to Georgia in August 2008 was blocked by Admiral Mullen and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. If the U.S. population and some of its representatives harbor strong traditions of instinctive bellicosity, but are not imperialists, much of the American military and officials close to them might, in contrast, be described as imperialist but not bellicose.

  Under Bush, leading generals were notoriously lukewarm about the Iraq adventure, for the U.S. uniformed military remains more profoundly influenced by the debacle of Vietnam than perhaps any other portion of American society.75 It was not the uniformed military that pressed for war with Iraq in 2002, but a small group of politically appointed and harshly ideological civilian officials in the Pentagon. Indeed, the Army chief of staff, General Eric Shinseki, warned publicly, and numerous other officers privately, of exactly the bloody and troop-consuming war of occupation that followed—with the result that he was publicly humiliated by Paul Wolfowitz and other Rumsfeld allies.76

  But when it comes to the real possibility of conflict with the major powers, it is also worth remembering that Rumsfeld’s own plans when he took office called for a smaller, lighter U.S. military with a more expeditionary focus and capability. This was seemingly predicated on the belief that there would be no land war with another serious military power for a generation at least.77 Beneath all the talk of Russian and Chinese threats, very few Americans indeed have wished for actual conflict with these states. The desire, and need, are for tension, not conflict; for large-scale military spending, not full-scale war. Of course, the issue of Taiwanese independence may all too easily bring America and China into conflict, but this will almost certainly be the result of a combination of actions by a third party, with miscalculations in Beijing and Washington, rather than a conscious decision for war by an American administration.78

  Thus in the case of China, Bush personally recommitted America very strongly to oppose Taiwanese independence.79 Despite continuing bursts of unilateralist rhetoric from hawks like John Bolton, on the issue of preventing North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons, the U.S. administration tacitly recognized the bankruptcy of its previous unilateralist strategy, and the practical impossibility of following the “Bush Doctrine” of preventive war in East Asia.

  In consequence, while still refusing to negotiate with Pyongyang directly, it was forced willy-nilly toward a strategy of relying heavily on China to help in restraining and influencing Pyongyang. This recognized not only the impossibility of waging war against North Korea, but also the power of the other regional states—South Korea, Japan, and above all China—all of them vastly more formidable countries in their different ways than the feeble dictatorships of the Middle East.

  Perhaps partly because of shame at having failed to stand up to the Bush administration over Iraq, during Bush’s last year in office, two senior U.S. officers, Admiral William Fallon, commander of CENTCOM (U.S. Central Command), and Admiral Mick Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, played a key part in blocking moves by neoconservatives and others within the administration for a U.S. or Israeli strike against Iran’s nuclear program. Admiral Fallon was forced to resign for publicizing his opposition to an attack.

  Thanks to military opposition and the sheer impact of what was happening in Iraq, by the end of 2003 the Bush administration had in effect abandoned some more extreme elements of the neoconservative program. Some commentators were writing of a neoconservative moment that had really only lasted from September 11, 2001, to late 2003, or barely two years—though this judgment may be premature given their continued power within the Republican Party.80

  This more pragmatic approach adopted toward a number of issues in the last months of 2003 was seen as a limited victory for the vision and strategy of Secretary of State Colin Powell and the State Department. However, it also reflected the “realism” of Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and the institutions and traditions they represent. For if this brand of realism suffers from the faults described above, it nonetheless operates on the basis of rational calculations about power, interests, and risks, and derives from ways of looking at the world characteristic of diplomats and strategists since the seventeenth century.

  The policy toward China adopted by the Bush administration after 9/11 fits admirably into this tradition. At bottom, it remained strongly distrustful of China’s motives and plans. Equally, it recognized that it was not in the interest of the United States to seek confrontation, and that to risk war with China would be catastrophic. Washington therefore sought good, cooperative relations, without itself giving too much away.81

  Such realists can, of course, make terrible mistakes, like the occupation of Iraq. They are also hopelessly at sea when faced with challenges that fall outside traditional realist frames of reference: Metternich when faced with rising ideological nationalism, Cheney and Rumsfeld when confronted with the threat of global warming. Nonetheless, they can be rather clearly distinguished from ideologues of the neoconservative type, let alone the Christian Right, and because their views also reflect the views and interests of the complex of institutions and corporations they represent, they have a tremendous weight in the U.S. establishment that the neoconservatives lack. The triumph of the realist approach in later 2003 caused deep anguish in hard-line neoconservative circles, and the hysteria of some of their language reflected the depth of their sense of defeat.82

  This relative caution reflects in part the nature and interests of the U.S. military–industrial and security elites. These elites are obviously interested in the maintenance and expansion of U.S. global military power, if only because their own jobs and profits depend on it. Jobs and patronage also ensure the support of much of the U.S. Congress, which often lards defense spending bills wi
th weapons systems the Pentagon does not want and has not even asked for, so as to help some group of senators and congressmen whose states produce these systems.83 And as already noted, to maintain a measure of wider support in the U.S. media and public, it is also necessary to maintain the perception of certain foreign nations as threats to the United States, and a certain minimum and permanent level of international tension.

  But a desire for permanent international tension is a different matter from a desire for war, and least of all a major international war that might bring ruin to the international economy. The American generals of the Clinton era have been described as “aggressive only about their budgets.”84 The American ruling system therefore is not a Napoleonic or Moghul one. It does not actively desire major wars, because it does not depend on major victorious wars for its own survival, and would indeed be threatened by them even if they were victorious.

  Since the experiences of Iraq and Afghanistan, the military has also become much more cautious about supposedly “small” wars. When Secretary of Defense Robert Gates told West Point cadets in February 2011 that “any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should have his head examined,” he was undoubtedly speaking for most of the High Command in general. There was no protest from senior officers against President Obama’s decision to keep U.S. military involvement in the NATO campaign against Colonel Gadhafi of Libya to an absolute minimum.

  For that matter, even in the last decades of the cold war, under the roiling waves of public anxiety, continually whipped into spray by the winds of political propaganda, the feelings of the security establishment were often actually relatively complacent. As the U.S. National Security Strategy of 2002 admits, “in the Cold War, and especially following the Cuban Missile Crisis, we faced a generally status-quo, risk-averse adversary. Deterrence was an effective defense.”85 As Chalmers Johnson remarks bitterly, it is a pity we were not told this by U.S. official analysts while the cold war was still on.86 Indeed, George Kennan’s famous telegram and essay of 1947–1948, which formulated the intellectual basis for America’s cold war stance against Soviet expansionism, also stated clearly that a direct military challenge to the West was unlikely.87

  Of course, the military are absolutely committed to maintain America’s superpower status, and the global network of bases that underpin it. They will certainly resist any overt attempt by China or any other power to overthrow American hegemony. If the military find themselves in a war like Iraq or Afghanistan, they are determined to win it—or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that they are determined not to be seen to lose it. This may well be a mistaken approach in the case of Afghanistan, but it is a natural one for soldiers, and should not be seen as the same as a desire to embroil the country in any more wars.

  In the past, the military was also committed to high military spending, at whatever cost to the American economy. This may be changing, however, as far as more intelligent U.S. soldiers are concerned. Mr. Gates and Admiral Mullen have both echoed Eisenhower in speaking of America’s fiscal stability as of equal or greater importance to its security than its military power, and in calling for a downgrading of the role of the military in U.S. external relations in favor of diplomacy and aid. Admiral Mullen also encouraged a rather visionary essay on a national strategic narrative, written by Captain Wayne Porter (USN) and Colonel Mark Mykleby (USMC) in 2011 under the name “Mr. Y”—a reference to George Kennan’s famous “X” essay of 1947. Part of this essay reads as follows:

  In this strategic environment, it is competition that will determine how we evolve, and Americans must have the tools and confidence required to successfully compete. This begins at home with quality health care and education, with a vital economy and low rates of unemployment, with thriving urban centers and carefully planned rural communities, with low crime, and a sense of common purpose underwritten by personal responsibility. We often hear the term “smart power” applied to the tools of development and diplomacy abroad empowering people all over the world to improve their own lives and to help establish the stability needed to sustain security and prosperity on a global scale. But we can not export “smart power” until we practice “smart growth” at home.88

  The authors call for a National Prosperity and Security Act that would “integrate policy across agencies and departments of the Federal government and provide for more effective public/private partnerships; increase the capacity of appropriate government departments and agencies; align Federal policies, taxation, research and development expenditures and regulations to coincide with the goals of sustainability; and converge domestic and foreign policies toward a common purpose.”89

  All this makes a rather striking contrast with the prevailing mood in the Republican Party leadership, especially since the officers concerned emphasize climate change as a threat—something that most Republicans deny is even happening.

  This raises a future possibility with roots in the past that go back to George Washington: namely, that if the Republican Party has become radicalized to the point where it cannot provide rational government, and that the U.S. Constitution allows the Republicans to block effective government by a Democratic administration, it may be that only a successful retired general will have the mixture of rationality, patriotism, independence, and prestige to lead the Republicans back to rationality and lead an effective and sensible Republican administration. This happened under Eisenhower in 1951. Ike is now an almost forgotten figure in the Republican Party—but he may not remain so forever. Such a new approach would also be able to draw on the basic pragmatism that continues to govern most areas of U.S. foreign policy, despite the irrational impulses examined in this book.

  However, there is one great exception to this rule of the ultimate realist domination of U.S. policy: namely U.S. attitudes to Israel. Here, U.S. behavior is colored by nationalist and religious passion to a degree that is not remotely the case in East Asia, for example. Here, the terrible memory of the Holocaust has combined with the long struggle with the Palestinians and Arab states to produce an inflamed nationalism not only among Jewish Americans, but in much wider segments of the U.S. population. The resulting influences on American thinking and policy often stand quite outside any realist—or indeed rational—framework of thought. The role of these influences in shaping U.S. foreign policy and American nationalism is the subject of the next and last chapter.

  Six

  American Nationalism, Israel, and the Middle East

  When we look at you from a distance, maybe a little sketchily, we see in you a dangerous threat to what is dear and sacred to us…you threaten to boot Israel out of the union between Jewish tradition and western humanism. As far as I am concerned, you threaten to push Judaism back through history, back to the Book of Joshua, to the days of the Judges, to the extreme of tribal fanaticism, brutal and closed.

  —Amos Oz1

  In the fall of 2003 there were two votes in the United Nations (UN) General Assembly concerning Israel’s policy toward the Palestinians. The resolution of September 19, 2003, demanded that Israel not deport or harm Yasser Arafat. The resolution of October 27, 2003, while condemning Palestinian suicide bombings and calling on both parties to implement the U.S.-designed “Road Map,” demanded that Israel cease construction of its “security fence” within the West Bank. The first vote was 133–4; the second was 141–4. The minority view, rejecting the resolutions, was represented by Israel itself, the United States, and two tiny Pacific island states and dependencies of the United States, Micronesia and the Marshall Islands.2

  The countries that voted for the resolutions criticizing Israel included some of America’s oldest and closest allies, like Britain; countries that have recently begun to seek close relations with both the United States and Israel, like India; and of course the whole of the Arab and Muslim worlds. In their absolutely overwhelming nature, these votes find their mirror in resoluti
ons of the U.S. Congress pledging unconditional support for Israel—with the difference that whereas these UN votes condemning Israeli behavior also denounced Palestinian terrorism, votes in the U.S. Congress are almost always completely one-sided.

  This was true, for example, of the U.S. Senate resolution of May 6, 2002, at the height of Israeli–Palestinian violence, which attacked Palestinian terrorism and declared that “the Senate stands in solidarity with Israel, a frontline state in the war against terrorism, as it takes necessary steps to provide security to its people by dismantling the terrorist infrastructure in the Palestinian areas.” Not one clause of the resolution contained even the slightest hint of criticism of any Israeli action. The resolution passed the Senate by a vote of 92–2.3 Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in July 2006 was backed unanimously by the U.S. Senate, once again in the face of criticism from the overwhelming majority of the international community.

  In the face of all evidence to the contrary, and reports by U.S. and international human rights groups, the House resolution supporting the invasion recognized “Israel’s longstanding commitment to minimizing civilian loss and welcomes Israel’s continued efforts to prevent civilian casualties.” On January 9, 2009, during the Israeli intervention in Gaza, the House of Representatives voted 390–5 to “reaffirm the United States’ strong support for Israel in its battle with Hamas.” And so on, and on.

  These votes were overwhelmingly bipartisan. Strikingly, while Republicans in Congress under George Bush were supporting the unconditionally pro-Israel stance of a Republican administration, support by Democrats in Congress has not changed even when the Democratic administration of Barack Obama has sought to bring some pressure to bear on Israel to compromise. Especially emblematic in this regard were the 29 standing ovations that members of both houses of Congress, from both parties, gave to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on May 24, 2011, when he gave an address explicitly opposing the stance of the Obama administration that a peace settlement between Israel and the Palestinians should be based on the borders of 1967.4