These pathologies would not be a problem if the United States had modest foreign policy goals. Instead, Washington has been trying to conduct a breathtakingly ambitious foreign policy with a combination of amateurs and short-timers and with many key positions unfilled. As Secretary of State John Kerry complained in 2016, “The United States is today more deeply engaged in more parts of the world on more consequential issues than ever before in history all at one time … And it just doesn’t make sense … to leave open for sometimes more than a year vacant, important positions for our nation.”28 No other major power has such vast ambitions yet staffs a vast and complicated foreign policy apparatus in such a haphazard way.
Reforms such as these would also reverse the creeping militarization of U.S. foreign policy that has been under way for many years, and they would restore politics and diplomacy to their rightful place. A wise nation uses all instruments of national power to promote desired political ends, but in recent years politics and diplomacy have frequently been subordinated to narrow military objectives, including the endless “war on terror.”
None of this is to deny the importance of military power. The diplomat and historian George F. Kennan was hardly a reflexive proponent of military solutions, but he once told an audience, “You have no idea how much it contributes to the general politeness and pleasantness of diplomacy when you have a little quiet armed force in the background.”29 Kennan’s reflection also reveals the right way to think about these instruments: military power is a tool that must be harnessed to broader diplomatic and political ends, not the other way around.
Needless to say, the approach just described is the exact opposite of the one Donald Trump has pursued as president. In addition to appointing military officers to positions normally reserved for civilians, Trump has increased the already bloated Pentagon budget while simultaneously gutting the State Department. But this approach makes sense only if one wants to go on fighting lots of protracted wars. Or as Secretary of Defense James Mattis warned, “If you don’t fully fund the State Department, then I need to buy more ammunition.”30
MAKE PEACE A PRIORITY
Returning to offshore balancing would also allow U.S. leaders to focus less on issuing threats, imposing change, or demonstrating credibility and to focus more on promoting peace. Not just for idealistic or moral reasons, but because promoting peace is in the U.S. national interest.
One could argue that the United States has done well from war in the past. Conquering North America involved considerable violence and a “war of choice” with Mexico, and conflicts elsewhere in the world weakened or distracted potential rivals and improved America’s relative position. But that was when the United States was a rising power and the European great powers still held sway in the rest of the world. Today, the United States is in exceptionally good shape: no other power is as strong, as far removed from potential enemies, as immune to violent internal upheaval, or as insulated from other dangers. Its position is not perfect, but it would be hard to ask for much more.
When a country sits atop the global pyramid, as the United States has for decades, the last thing it should do is embark on risky ventures that might dislodge it from its lofty perch. Instead of an exciting, thrill-a-minute foreign policy where glorious victory or shocking defeat may lurk around every corner, a dominant power like the United States should above all seek tranquility. For a power in America’s privileged position, fomenting conflicts overseas will rarely if ever be a good idea, as “the iron dice of war” are inherently unpredictable. The United States has little to gain and much to lose from war, and even campaigns that appear to be smashing successes can easily become costly quagmires. Unless war is forced upon them, Americans should seek peace.
Peace is also good for business. Lockheed Martin, Boeing, United Technologies, and Raytheon may have an obvious commercial interest in international insecurity, but such firms are actually a rather small and declining fraction of America’s $17 trillion-plus economy.31 More important, peace facilitates economic interdependence and thus fosters greater global growth. When peace prevails and security concerns are low, states worry less about being intertwined with potential rivals, and corporations won’t worry about building factories abroad or sending capital off to faraway destinations. By contrast, when rivals abound and war looms on the horizon, states and private investors will worry more about foreign exposure and be less inclined to put their wealth at risk.32
Peace also tends to elevate individuals who are committed to and skilled at promoting human welfare, whether in the form of cool new products, improved health care, better government services, inspiring books, art, and music, or any of the other things that promote broader human well-being. War, by contrast, privileges those who are good at inspiring or using violence and who stand to gain from the hatred of others: the very people who readily become warlords, terrorists, revolutionaries, xenophobes, and the like. Many people who take up arms are motivated by a larger sense of duty and eagerly lay down their swords as soon as they are able, but some of them have a genuine taste for violence and an interest in their own glory and gain. Enduring peace should be a central goal of U.S. foreign policy, with a premium put on leaders who are better at building things than blowing them up.
Lastly, peace is morally preferable. War inevitably creates an enormous amount of death, destruction, and human suffering, and alleviating it when we can is intrinsically desirable. Putting peace at the top of America’s foreign policy agenda is hardly something for which U.S. leaders need apologize.
From a selfish, hardheaded, flag-waving, red-white-and-blue perspective, therefore, peace is a goal to proclaim, to pursue, and to prize. Yet in the threat-driven, credibility-obsessed, overly militarized world of contemporary U.S. foreign policy, one is hard-pressed to find a prominent politician, pundit, or national security expert who will talk unapologetically about their passion for peace, their commitment to pursuing it in office, or the specific strategies they would pursue to further this goal.
This situation is surely odd, for some of America’s greatest foreign policy triumphs were won not by raw military power, but by the persistent, patient, and creative use of diplomatic and other nonmilitary tools. Furthermore, many of these success stories were explicitly guided by a desire to establish and enhance peace. Fear of communism may have inspired the Marshall Plan, for example, but this diplomatic and economic masterstroke did as much to preserve U.S. interests in Europe as the formation of NATO or the Berlin Airlift. It was diplomacy that produced the Egypt-Israeli peace treaty (1979), resolved the 1999 Kargil crisis between India and Pakistan, midwifed the democratic transitions in South Korea, the Philippines, and Myanmar, and made the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland happen. And lest we forget: the reunification of Germany and the peaceful conclusion to the Cold War was a diplomatic achievement, won not by soldiers on the battlefield, but by politicians and diplomats facing one another across a negotiating table.33
THE EMPIRE BUILDERS STRIKE BACK
Needless to say, the bulk of the foreign policy community will be dead set against the more restrained policy of offshore balancing. The interest groups, corporations, and lobbies that have long shaped U.S. foreign policy will oppose such a shift for fear that it would reduce the attention the United States devotes to their particular agendas. Most members of the foreign policy establishment will be similarly skeptical, in part because they hold benevolent views of U.S. leadership but also because their roles, status, and power would diminish were the United States to adopt a less interventionist foreign policy.34
Indeed, an active campaign to discredit offshore balancing is already under way, with a cottage industry of prominent pundits, former U.S. officials, and academics offering up spirited defenses of the status quo and attacking any suggestion that the United States might modify or reduce its global ambitions even slightly.35 Not surprisingly, they invoke all the familiar arguments about the indispensability of America’s current world role and the
adverse consequences that will supposedly occur should the United States try a different approach. And whenever Donald Trump even hinted that he might move toward a more restrained approach, a chorus of critics quickly attacked him for ignorantly abandoning America’s supposedly essential leadership role.36
Once again, Americans are being told that they face a world filled with threats both near and far, and that U.S. power must be deployed around the world in order to keep those dangers at bay. If the United States were to shift to offshore balancing, they warn, important allies would lose confidence in U.S. security guarantees, adversaries would be emboldened, and renewed great power competition would erupt, undermining today’s globalized world economy and threatening U.S. prosperity. States accustomed to U.S. protection would be tempted to acquire nuclear weapons, and curtailing active efforts to spread democracy and human rights would imperil freedom around the globe and eliminate hopes for a broader “democratic peace.”
At the same time, defenders of liberal hegemony believe that the United States can forestall these dangers and advance its ideals at little cost or risk. In their view, America’s $17 trillion economy can easily afford the defense and foreign affairs outlays that liberal hegemony requires and has the capacity to spend even more if needed. The risks of this policy are minuscule, they maintain, because spreading democracy and extending U.S. security guarantees around the world will prevent wars from occurring, thereby saving money in the long run. Despite its recent failures, they still see liberal hegemony as an affordable and risk-free insurance policy, and they portray offshore balancing as a dangerous leap in the dark. According to the blue-ribbon CNAS task force discussed in chapter 3, offshore balancing is “a recipe for uncertainty, miscalculation and ultimately more conflict and considerably more expense.”37
As discussed in chapter 4, none of these arguments stand up to close inspection. Deep U.S. engagement does not always produce peace, especially when the United States keeps trying to topple dictators and spread democracy. Policing the world is not as cheap as the defenders of liberal hegemony contend, either in terms of dollars spent or human lives lost. The Iraq and Afghan wars alone cost between four and six trillion dollars, along with nearly seven thousand U.S. soldiers killed and more than fifty thousand wounded. Returning veterans from these conflicts exhibit high rates of suicide and depression, and the United States has little to show for their sacrifices.
As for the problem of proliferation, no grand strategy is likely to be wholly successful at preventing the spread of nuclear weapons or other types of WMD, but offshore balancing would do a better job than liberal hegemony. After all, the latter strategy did not stop India and Pakistan from ramping up their nuclear capabilities, North Korea from testing the bomb in 2006, or Iran from becoming a nuclear threshold state. Countries usually seek nuclear weapons because they fear being attacked and want a powerful deterrent, and U.S. efforts at regime change heighten such fears. By eschewing regime change, limiting U.S. military commitments to three key regions, and reducing America’s military footprint, offshore balancing would give potential proliferators less reason to seek the bomb. The nuclear agreement with Iran shows that coordinated multilateral pressure and tough economic sanctions are a better way to discourage proliferation than preventive war or regime change. This approach, needless to say, is entirely consistent with offshore balancing.
To be sure, reducing U.S. security guarantees might lead a few vulnerable states to seek their own nuclear deterrent. Such a development is not desirable, but all-out efforts to prevent it would also be costly and may not succeed. Moreover, the negative consequences may not be as severe as pessimists fear. Getting the bomb does not transform weak countries into great powers or enable them to attack or blackmail rival states. Ten states have crossed the nuclear threshold since 1945, yet the world was not turned upside down every time some new member joined the nuclear club. Nuclear proliferation will remain a concern no matter what the United States does, but offshore balancing provides a better strategy for dealing with it.
Some foreign policy experts who are skeptical of liberal hegemony nonetheless still believe that the United States should keep large military forces deployed in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East in order to preserve peace. This approach—sometimes termed “selective engagement”—sounds appealing, but it will not work either.38
For starters, this strategy is likely to revert back to liberal hegemony. Once committed to preserving peace in key regions, U.S. leaders will be strongly inclined to spread democracy there too, based on the widespread belief that “democracies don’t fight each other.” NATO expansion illustrates this tendency perfectly, as it sought to create a Europe “whole and free” that would live in peace and harmony forever. When these efforts run into difficulties—as is likely to be the case—Washington will then be tempted to use its powerful military machine to rescue the situation, and all the more so given the importance U.S. leaders typically place on credibility. In the real world, the line between selective engagement and liberal hegemony is easily erased.
The problem with “selective engagement,” in short, is that it is not selective enough. Once Washington takes on full responsibility for preventing conflict all over the world, it invariably gets tempted to solve problems that are not vital to its security or prosperity, or it is drawn toward idealistic missions it does not know how to achieve. Nor does selective engagement solve the problem of free-riding, for as long as Washington continues to protect countries that are capable of defending themselves, the latter will go on letting Uncle Sam shoulder the burden and spend the money they save on themselves.
Lastly, what about the claim that the United States has both a strategic interest and a moral duty to spread democracy, protect human rights, and prevent genocide? In this view, spreading democracy—by force, if necessary—will eventually lead to a “democratic peace” where war is unlikely, human rights violations are rare, and large-scale atrocities are unknown. If Americans can just be convinced to stay the course, liberal hegemony will eventually deliver a world of tranquillity, peace, and prosperity.
In fact, no one knows if a world consisting solely of liberal democracies would be peaceful. We do know, however, that spreading democracy at the point of a gun rarely works and that fledgling democracies are prone to conflict.39 Instead of promoting peace, the United States ends up fighting war after war and gets trapped in open-ended occupations. These conflicts have led it to torture prisoners, conduct targeted killings, expand government secrecy, and undertake vast electronic surveillance of U.S. citizens. Ironically, the attempt to spread liberal values abroad has compromised them at home.
Encouraging the spread of liberal democracy and basic human rights should be a long-term U.S. objective, but the best way to do this is by setting a good example. Other societies are more likely to embrace U.S. values if they believe the United States is a just, prosperous, peaceful, and open society and they decide they want similar things for themselves. It follows that Americans who want to spread liberal values should do more to improve conditions here at home than to manipulate politics abroad. Offshore balancing fits this prescription to a T.
WHY REFORM WILL NOT BE EASY
Offshore balancing is a grand strategy born of confidence in America’s core traditions and recognition of its enduring advantages. It exploits America’s providential geographic position, recognizes the powerful incentives other states have to oppose potential hegemons in their own regions, and passes the buck to other countries whenever possible. It respects the power of nationalism, does not try to impose U.S. values on foreign societies, and focuses on setting an example that others will want to emulate. It would save U.S. taxpayers a significant amount of money, allow for long-term investments in America’s future wealth and power, and limit government incursions on Americans’ individual freedoms. For these reasons, offshore balancing was the right strategy for most of U.S. history and would be the best grand strategy today.
Yet the fo
reign policy community does not see it this way, thereby making meaningful reform unlikely. Thus, Michael Glennon ends his insightful analysis of the national security establishment on a gloomy note, concluding that the traditional system of “checks and balances” is effectively impotent and that little can be done to arrest the power of the existing “Trumanite network.” In his words, the U.S. government now has “the power to kill and arrest and jail, the power to see and hear and read people’s every word and action, the power to instill fear and suspicion, the power to quash investigations and quell speech, the power to shape public debate or to curtail it, and the power to hide its deeds and evade its weak-kneed overseers. The Trumanite network holds, in short, the power of irreversibility.” 40
Similarly, the longtime congressional staffer Mike Lofgren ends his own critique of America’s “deep state” by enumerating an ambitious program of reforms—eliminating private money from public elections, redirecting the peace dividend to national infrastructure, reforming tax policy, staying out of the Middle East, etc.—only to concede that his proposals are “utopian, even unworldly.” He presents no plan for moving the country in the directions he favors and is left with the wan hope that “the United States has done more surprising things in its history” and might be capable of similar surprises today.41 But as we have seen, the foreign policy community has made little or no effort to rethink its deep commitment to liberal hegemony.42
What might produce such a “surprising” turn? In theory, world events could trigger a serious reconsideration of U.S. grand strategy and a major effort to reform existing foreign policy institutions. A catastrophic foreign policy disaster—such as an actual nuclear attack—might discredit reigning orthodoxies once and for all and create the opportunity for meaningful change. But no patriotic American should wish for such a tragedy to befall the country, and even a major setback might not be sufficient to produce meaningful change. If the failures of the past two decades, a major financial crisis, and the consecutive elections of Barack Obama and Donald Trump did not prompt a systematic rethinking, what could?
The Hell of Good Intentions Page 31
