It would have been a surprise if it happened, of course. But it is still somewhat disappointing that the presidential debate included no discussion of the possibility of a relatively extensive rethinking of American foreign policy. The policy we have in place – insofar as it is something other than a long-term commitment to world empire, which any number of quite respectable people argue that it is – is one of forward deployment of military forces all over the world, a hangover from the old Cold War days.
One could have argued even during the Cold War, as I and many others did, that it was inappropriate as a policy for confronting the ambitions of the Soviet Union and other communist states. But at least it was plausibly justifiable then, if the threat was as many decent Americans – though not all – believed it was.
Did the Soviet Union pose a possible threat to Western Europe? Then NATO and keeping U.S. troops stationed in Western Europe long after the end of World War II were at least defensible strategies. Did communist ideology include the idea of eventual world domination? Then having military forces stationed in other parts of the world, it could be argued, made a certain amount of sense. Did communists seek to foment revolution wherever opportunities seemed to present themselves? Then responding with clandestine activity or a willingness to fight brushfire wars on the peripheries of the two superpowers could be seen as a plausible way to counter such ambitious activities.
Not every American bought into this forward-deployment strategy during the Cold War, of course. But at least it had a certain plausibility, especially if you believed that the Soviets posed more of a threat than, in retrospect, we can now see they did.
New Situation, Same Old Policy
With the fall of the Soviet Union and the general discrediting of aggressive socialism as a way to organize human activity, it should have been appropriate to reconsider U.S. foreign policy in light of the radically different situation in the world. Unfortunately, whether the cause was bureaucratic inertia, the entrenchment of public and private special interests with a serious investment in the way things had been (the military-industrial complex), a serious lack of imagination, or simple comfort with the relatively affluent 1990s, the U.S. did nothing of the kind.
Instead, it kept the old policies – and the troops – in place and cast about for different missions for institutions that had been designed for different times. Remember in the early ‘90s when people were making the case that the CIA should be doing international industrial espionage to keep America on top industrially and economically (which by making companies more dependent on government would have been disastrous for the health of the U.S. economy, but never mind such quibbles)? Remember when the neocons, between writing policy papers calling for the overthrow of Saddam, kept touting China as the big threat we would have to deal with, possibly preemptively?
Well, eventually a reasonably genuine threat – beyond conflicts that were manifestly non-threats to the United States itself, like Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia and Kosovo – made itself apparent. So we had something to do with all that military bulk. The trouble was – beyond the likelihood, as will be discussed more below, that the threat to the United States was at least in part a response to existing U.S. foreign policies– that we had this huge military machine designed for a confrontation with another mega-state, and the threat came from essentially stateless terrorists.
It’s not that Osama bin Laden and the gang didn’t use states when it was convenient, though rudimentary ones like those in Somalia or Afghanistan served their purposes better. But what al-Qaeda evolved into was more like a multinational private corporation or non-government organization than a state. They took state sponsorship when they could get it, but the old era of state-sponsored terrorism largely disappeared after Libya became convinced that sponsoring terrorism was more cost than gain, which it did in the early 1990s.
This is not to say that Iraq, Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries didn’t subsidize Palestinian suicide bombers attacking Israel, but there’s at least a respectable case to be made that support from other Arab states and Iran was not essential to that insurgency. While money from states no doubt encouraged the insurgency, and some groups operating in Palestine do seem to have been largely creatures of foreign governments, the Intifada taken as a whole was not "sponsored" by foreign governments. It might have been smaller and perhaps even less violent without foreign help, but it’s reasonably clear that it would have occurred even without assistance from outside – though reasonable people might well disagree on the extent.
When 9/11 happened, the U.S. government made some rhetorical bows to facing a threat different from what we had faced before. I’ll accept (largely on faith, since we’ve been told almost nothing) that it did some things appropriate to the new threat, like tracking financial trails, sniffing out "charitable" organizations that served at least in part as fronts to funnel money to terrorists, and perhaps some special operations designed to disrupt possible terrorist plans. But in the main, it acted like the man with a hammer who sees everything as a nail. We had the most potent military in the world so we sought an opportunity to use it in a classic state-on-state military encounter by invading Iraq. We seem to have done almost nothing to reorient intelligence to find where real threats were likely to develop, stymied by the bureaucratic inertia of an overgrown, slow-moving, change-allergic CIA and other intelligence agencies.
Policy as a Problem
Beyond the inability of a lumbering giant to change course when faced by a new threat from flexible, adaptable, almost invisible to the state-threat-obsessed and therefore almost naked eye, there has been a distinct reluctance to explore the possibility that U.S. foreign policy contributes to the danger Americans face from terrorism.
In his book, Imperial Hubris, the CIA analyst who writes as "Anonymous" deplores the fact that most U.S. analysts do virtually everything but take bin Laden’s words seriously and "connect the dots" between his major themes and the actions al-Qaeda has taken. It isn’t blind hatred of freedom, democracy, unveiled females and kootchy kootchy clubs – although he undoubtedly disapproves of all of these – that impels bin Laden to attack the United States and its perceived interests and allies. It is specific U.S. polices.
As "Anonymous" puts it,
"[A]lways keep in mind how easy it is for Muslims to see, hear, experience, and hate the U.S. policies bin Laden repeatedly refers to as anti-Muslim:
"U.S. support for Israel that keeps Palestinians in Israel’s thrall.
"U.S. and other Western troops on the Arabian Peninsula.
"U.S. occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.
"U.S. support for Russia, India, and China against their Muslim militants.
"U.S. pressure on Arab energy producers to keep oil prices low.
"U.S. support for apostate, corrupt, and tyrannical Muslim governments."
The major goal of al-Qaeda is to oust secular or "heretical" governments in Muslim countries and replace them with Islamist regimes, establishing a new Caliphate. Osama bin Laden might hate the U.S. on general principles, but the attacks are inspired by specific U.S. actions.
Now if, in fact, none of those actions defend the core interests of the United States or contribute to its security, might it not be prudent to think about changing these actions? Yes, I know, some will argue that this is "giving in to terrorism." But we shouldn’t be reluctant to discuss steps that might actually improve U.S. security – and have numerous beneficial side effects as well – just because some people will spin it as appeasement.
It is time to start talking seriously about a humbler foreign policy that would involve pulling U.S. troops back from the 150 or so countries where they are now stationed, letting North Korea’s neighbors handle North Korea, removing troops from Okinawa and Western Europe, and dismantling military bases in central Asia.
The United States promotes freedom best by example – encouraging unhampered trade with all countries but withdrawing over time from political and military alliances that invite hostility and war. (See Ivan Eland’s new book The Empire Has No Clothes for a more fleshed-out discussion of what a new foreign policy might look like.) It’s time to lead by example rather than with missiles, to rediscover and refurbish our own best traditions of liberty rather than trying to remake the world.
Neither Bush nor Kerry has talked in these terms. Both have failed the American people. But those of us who believe in serious rethinking should take more advantage of the opportunities a political campaign offers to put such ideas into more active circulation.
