More Of The Same
Posted on June 13th, 2008
by Daniel Larison |
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But an expansion of troop presence in the tens of thousands deep into the Arab heartland is a huge shift - the first real shift since the end of the Cold War [bold mine-DL]. And that makes this election a very profound one in many ways: it’s about the direction of the US - the meaning of the US - in a post-Cold War world. A permanent Iraq presence really does mean an imperial future for the US - revealed nakedly for what it is.
Replace Iraq with Saudi Arabia, rewind seventeen years and you could say exactly the same thing, because the “huge shift” occurred in the early ’90s and meaningful political resistance to that shift was never very great. There seems to be a great need to act as if the invasion of Iraq marks a radical departure from the interventionism of the ’90s and the prolonged military presence in the Gulf, when it would have been unthinkable without both for a number of reasons. Without the presence in the Gulf, the embargo of Iraq and the ten-year air war against Iraq, it is difficult to imagine what else would have so motivated predominantly Saudi terrorists to strike at the U.S., but more directly it is impossible to imagine anyone believing Iraq to pose a threat to the U.S. had we not spent an entire decade treating Iraq as a bombing range and viewing its government as our principal foe in the world.
That is another thing about mission creep and empire-building: it can always be described in the beginning as an act of defense (even if interventionist or hostile policies that helped pave the way for an attack had been in place long before). Even if you take the initial claim of self-defense to be true, it is the persistence in maintaining control or a military presence in places where none is needed any longer that separates empires from other powers. That is why in a very meaningful way our involvement in WWI had no meaningfully imperialistic overtones to it; it was a bad idea, but it was not a case of imperialism of any kind because all of our forces came home once the war was over. Indeed, the problem with our involvement with WWI was its crusading anti-imperialism directed at other states.
Rome eventually dismembered Pontus in response to an attack on Roman citizens in Asia, and it occupied Egypt when the latter took sides in the civil wars, but then the Romans never left. Their empire expanded by fits and starts, and often they acquired new provinces through some wars that could fairly be described as defensive (as well as some that were cases of out-and-out aggression), but it was above all the decision to remain and oversee these new lands, whether through intermediaries or directly, that made them what everyone acknowledges to be an empire.
James’ observation is correct, but aside from being another occasion to say that popular opinion is no guide to making good policy I would add that the frequent comparisons made between a long-term presence in Iraq and other long-term presences in Korea, Germany and elsewhere makes for an exceptionally good reason to leave Iraq immediately. It is clear that people easily become accustomed to the idea of long-term presences in other countries, which is why they should not be given the time to get accustomed to the idea. The long-term deployments in Korea, Germany and elsewhere, whatever legitimate and appropriate purpose they once served, are no longer necessary. A long-term presence in Iraq is not now and never will be necessary, so whether or not “the American people” will accept it misses the point: they have continued to accept long-term deployments and alliances long after these became obsolete, which suggests that the people’s willingness to accept outdated and unnecessary policies should not be a factor in embarking on a genuinely foolish and costly course of action.
Washington made the choice to undertake the “huge shift” without any real consultation or consent from the people in 1991, and so we remained in the Gulf and around the world. Leaving Iraq would be a first step to correcting that error.
Filed under: foreign policy, politics
You argue that popular opinion is no guide to making good policy and that especially in the case of foreign policy the electorate can, has, and will make horrible decisions vis a vis imperialism. As a result, popular opinion should be ignored in order to do the right thing.
I share this anti-democratic sentiment but it does make me wonder how this type of thinking fits into a paleo-libertarian perspective. Time and time again the electorate makes horrible electoral decisions that elect horrible leaders who implement disastrous policies.
How do you address this issue? I should note that I am not sure subsidiarity or any other devolution of power from the federal government to the states would answer this question. On the one hand, it would reduce the ability of any one group of electing one person to do horrible things to our entire country. But on the other you have terrible decisions made by a host of smaller entities.
The federal government is merely the failure of democracy writ large, the states is the failure of democracy writ small. I sometimes wonder if the fundamental issue is two party system we have and whether creating additional political parties would help to address this issue.
“I should note that I am not sure subsidiarity or any other devolution of power from the federal government to the states would answer this question. On the one hand, it would reduce the ability of any one group of electing one person to do horrible things to our entire country. But on the other you have terrible decisions made by a host of smaller entities.”
Yes, devolution of political power would prevent one group from having a terrible effect on the entire country, but hopefully also the leaders of a smaller government would have better knowledge of the conditions and problems of their area, and so could create better policies and decisions. The problem with “mass” democracy is that it includes lots of people with only the barest knowledge of the issues involved, but in a local democracy this might be less of an issue (not that my city or county’s politics are a good example of this.)
You’re entirely right that the mission’s crept nowhere in that region. It’s today exactly what it’s been since the end of that Second World War, viz., to prevent a hostile power using petroleum as a geopolitical weapon rather than an economic asset. That principle explains voting for Saddam before we actually voted against him. It explains why we desired a more powerful Iran when it had a Shah and a weaker one since. So long as the West imports petroleum and gas on the scale it does, it will also export security, or at least try, to that region.
American policy doesn’t miscarry the will of the polity. There may be disgruntlement about the execution of policy, often with justice. And there is, as there as been from the earliest years of the Republic, an often sizable current of feeling and thought coloring as immoral the exercise of American power. Even together though those are usually weaker than the abiding substrate of feeling that America is right, not perfectly so, but right enough to persevere in forceful action.
I do think, from a slightly different direction, the observation that size matters is on to something. Since America has grown to be first a peer and then a superior of other global powers, it has assumed a proportionately larger share of responsibility for maintaining a global order as good, from our point of view, as we can get it - market-driven, stable, and progressively more tolerant of human rights. There is of course a lot hooey written about, “American Exceptionalism,” but in at least one sense since 1945 and until today we have been exception, exceptionally large.
So Americans have realized that if challenges to a world order that we favor, and which I would characterize as inherently moral when contrasted with the alternatives, are to be met, we will have an exceptionally large share of the burden for doing so. And to date, by and large, our allies and their publics have realized the same.
With the rise of the China, Russia, and others, all this seems to be changing in these two important respects. Our relative power has declined and others are less committed to the values upon which we thought a world order should be based. Fortunately, the ultimate source of wealth and thus strength of these emerging global forces are the market-driven, consumer oriented economies of the West and of their own economies. Presumably that’s clear to most elites in the emerging powers who will appreciate that the maintenance of a functional world economy driven by consumers depends upon a stable world system at least roughly like the one we’ve underwritten the last sixty years.
But “roughly” means there will be rough edges. The inability to forge a working consensus on Iraq in part is probably a reflection of this changing alignment of power and tactical as opposed to strategic interests. American “leadership” now will mean helping to smooth out this new balance of players and agendas as a peer in a chamber ensemble rather than the conductor of the orchestra.
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