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Saturday, February 18, 2017

The Myth of Altruistic American Foreign Policy

It is a measure of the extremely unusual nature of the 2016 US Presidential election that national security  received very little serious attention with much of the discussion by the winner focused on the security of the southern border, the need for "extreme vetting" of immigrants and a proposed ban on certain religious groups. There was also a pledge to start using the term "radical Islam" which would apparently defeat the terrorists in some undefined way. A more charitable view might be that calling the beast by its true name is a prerequisite to actually confronting and defeating it, but the month since the official transfer of power has not left me feeling overly charitable or optimistic that there is any real plan to confront the ideology if extremism. It is a measure of the oddness of this past election that the losing candidate had far more developed ideas on nearly every policy question, including, or especially, foreign relations and national security. Liberals and conservatives alike had issues with Mrs. Clinton and were less than devastated at her defeat;  many progressives especially hated her approach to foreign policy. But one thing both critics and supporters did agree on was that had she won, it may be safely assumed that policy would be debated before US forces are committed to war.

Perhaps the greatest fear under the current leadership is a seeming naivete at the top when it comes to using American military power and an impossible-to-dismiss worry that US forces may be drawn into a shooting war without much debate or reasoned discussion.  While the US government has many checks and balances and it is safe to assume that any decision to unleash the military machine would require some level of discussion within the government, Donald Trump seems to have no discernible philosophy that would shape such a debate and hence any decision that rests with him could be swayed by a lightest of breezes. From repudiating our long-time allies in Europe and East Asia, to picking battles with China and Mexico, to warmly praising Russia and supporting dictators like Egypt's al-Sisi, Trump's policy has no unifying thread, or if it does, that common strand is well hidden. Or scarier yet, the policy towards a country seems to be directly linked to how their leaders praise him and stroke his ego. But for all my criticism of  the Trump Doctrine, the fact is that the US has not seriously debated policy for decades, perhaps not since the Vietnam war, and most Americans have extremely strange ideas about geopolitics and the role their country plays on the world stage. We had debates in the past, to be sure, but no one really stops to think exactly what current policy is, or what an alternate policy would actually look like. We have minor changes in direction, be the overt aggressiveness of Ronald Reagan or the initially less interventionist turned preemptive aggressionist instincts of George W. Bush. Barack Obama for all his vows of change really followed the same line of thinking as his predecessors. We've seen varying levels of isolationism and reaching out, but only in a narrow range about the historic position. Now for the first time since the World Wars, US policy is been stood upside down, with a distinctly isolationist "America First" pledge though I'm hard-pressed to know exactly how this plays out in actual policy.

To examine the concept of "America First", one must first drill down into the thinking behind such a slogan, The Trump administration, which is to say basically only Mr. Trump, appears to believe that our policy of the last fifty years or so has been to generously help the rest of the world while asking nothing in return. This is, however, a surprisingly widespread view across America, especially on the right side of the aisle, but not exclusively so; Americans of all political stripes hew to the idea that America is that "shining city on the hill" and that US interventions abroad have been almost always altruistic; a smaller, non-intersecting group, almost exclusively leftwing,  believes that all US policy is imperial and criminal, while a small group hopes that the US will be more outward looking without the military excursions. It is the idea that the world has been living off American generosity that underpins the Trump doctrine, and it is the same thinking that calls the US the "global cop", whether in despair, pride, disdain or exasperation. Interestingly, this school of thought - the US as the sworn upholder of world order with no personal stake - is widely held in many corners of the world, with the same mix of emotions surrounding it, and whether welcomed or hated, it is however treated as a truism.

It would undoubtedly surprise most Americans, as well as their detractors and supporters, around the world if they knew that I declare this most sacred and widely accepted tenet to be false. Undoubtedly, my lack of standing on geopolitical matters would lead to instant dismissal of this unwelcome opinion, but I may offer some arguments in favor of my unlikely theory. I would postulate that US policy since the Second World War has been singularly self-serving. This is not a criticism of that policy, nor does it imply that US interests have always been served; it simply recognizes that each US Administration has acted, wisely or otherwise, successfully or not, to further American interests to the best of their ability and based on the best information available and their best interpretation thereof. To examine this hypothesis, consider some of the most important and far-reaching decisions of US foreign policy since the World War: the Marshall Plan, creating the UNO, the Vietnam war (and in truth, its ideological predecessor, the Korean War), policing the maritime trade routes, the China policy (all the way from Chiang Kai-Shek to Nixon's visit to Tiannemen Square to present), Afghanistan policy (from 1980 to present) and the Gulf Wars.

There is no better place to start than with the Marshall Plan. In the minds of most Americans familiar with their post-World War history, this ranks as one of the most generous and altruistic actions, an infusion of American wealth into a battered and exhausted Europe that helped the nations of Western Europe endure and prosper. To be sure, the American aid did rescue Europe, there is little to dispute there. But in reality, it was the most rational and self-serving action by the US government, when you consider the alternatives facing President Truman. The US had just emerged victorious from the war, and undisputed superpower, but across from them sat Soviet Russia, bloody but equally triumphant and determined to expand its own power into Europe. The Americans knew that to let Western Europe slip into chaos would be to open all of Europe to a Russian embrace and America would find itself thrust back to its own shores. It was in America's greatest interest that Europe recover and provide strong allies in the coming battle against communism, and fortunately the US government also realized that this was a war that had to be fought and won on the ideological level. And when the European economies stabilized and thrived again, they provided a group of energetic trade partners to repay the prior largesse of their benefactor.

The Vietnam War and the Korean War were fought with one blunt idea. It is important to recall that it is not the wisdom of the idea that is in question here, and the conventional wisdom of the day predicted a domino effect should America permit any of their allies to fall to communist insurgents, again with the effect of driving the US back across the Pacific. In retrospect the fears that the fall of the South Vietnam republic would lead to an invasion of the US homeland were wildly overblown, but they were very real in the minds of US leaders as crises bloomed in Vietnam, and before that in Korea. It is why the US was willing to pour millions of dollars and thousands of lives into an effort to hold back the communist insurgents. As in succoring Europe, the benefits to the populace were a bonus, a stroke of fortune that the US did not grudge them, but also not the primary aim in crushing the Vietcong or North Koreans. The cynical nature of this policy is quite clear in the allies the US chose to aid them in their battles - the spreading of democracy, freedom and the American way was never going to take priority over the realpolitik of defeating the communists - and when policy suggested that America wage war on Nature itself to deny the Vietcong cover of their jungles, the US government had few qualms in deploying Agent Orange. It's worth recalling too that the need to crush "the Commies" was not significantly challenged in America, until the middle class realized that success in the jungles of Southeast Asia would require the blood and sacrifice of their own children. The draft defeated America, and it was only after the students rebelled against the meaningless carnage in which they were asked to participate that a wider questioning of the aims tore American society apart and finally ended the war. It's also noteworthy that earlier, in Korea, America was willing to fight to defend their South Korean allies to safeguard their own position in Korea, Japan and Formosa (now Taiwan) but when the excessively aggressive tactics favored by MacArthur threatened to widen the war theater and bring the costs of war home to America, President Truman was perfectly willing to settle for a stalemate and draw than push to liberate the entire Peninsula. Fast forward a few decades, and in much the same way, the US chose to look conveniently away when China deployed tanks and armored columns to crush a pro-democracy protest that electrified Tienanmen Square for a few weeks in 1989. Democratic ideals are fine, but when the US had to choose between unarmed students and a desperate but ruthless government re-asserting its power in a bloody massacre, the benefits accruing from an understanding with the cynical Deng Xiaoping was more than enough to decide the issue.

Globalists and isolationists alike love to consider the United Nations Organization the ultimate gift of the US to a mostly ungrateful world. To rightwingers and isolationists, it is the ultimate symbol of US unselfishness that the organization created by US efforts is so often aligned at cross purposes to American policy. Yet, both they and the globalists miss the wider point, that America created the UNO and continues to pay a huge majority of its costs, not out of selfless benevolence but from calculated and far-sighted self-interest. A student of history would remember that after the First World War, the League of Nations was formed to prevent future global conflict, and failed spectacularly. The causes of failure were built into the League from its inception, from the aloof disdainful non-engagement of the US (ironically, after pushing to found it) to the exclusion of the newly communist Soviet Union to the forced exclusion of the defeated Axis nations to the utter lack of compliance mechanisms. Following the failure of the League and the subsequent Second World War (or part of the World War, as many modern historians now say), the US and her allies formed a new forum for world diplomacy and drew on the lessons of the earlier failure. The UNO may often oppose American aims, but it also often aligns with her, and  against American foes. Decision in the UNO, especially the Security Council may require plenty of diplomacy and deal-cutting, but that is precisely its aim - to foster a diplomatic solution above all other options and encourage nations to work out their differences peacefully. There are notable failures, from the Israel-Palestine issue, to the India-Pakistan conflicts to North Korea, yet in all cases, the UN has still provided that crucial forum to debate and discuss and for most part has succeeded in tamping down violent confrontations. The US, for all its setbacks in the General Assembly, gains enormously when peace reigns around the world and that, and that alone, is why the UN remains the best tool of American policy. Harkening back to Korea, it's worth remembering that the coalition opposing the invasion across the 38th Parallel was sanctioned by the UN while the USSR boycotted the UNO; both sides learned an important lesson then, as the USSR and later Russia never again relinquished their chance to mold world policy and action, as mirrored by the US. Tthe US has rarely committed its forces to open war without first ensuring that any and all opposing Great Powers will not enter the field against them, from Iraq, Afghanistan and even Serbia, the US has never risked an accidental and potentially escalating shooting war with nations like Russia or China, and that has protected US lives over the years.

The benefits of peace are plentiful to America, and should be easily discernible. In the years following the world wars, America was the greatest industrial power, and large as domestic consumption was, she needed to sell her products abroad as well to fully realize the benefits. Keeping the trade routes open was key to American prosperity and while there is no US policy that screams "global cop" than the ubiquitous presence of the US Navy in all the seven seas, it is a policy totally unlike that of a policeman, who is supposed to uphold the law and maintain peace with no personal benefit. The US ensures the freedom of passage around the world not from wholly or even mainly, altruistic motives but from a simple understanding that a nation whose prosperity depends on trade and (for a long time) an unhindered supply of oil sourced from perennial flashpoints needs to maintain peace around the world.

I should emphasize that it is not my thesis that American policy benefits no one but herself. Far from it, indeed, for many nations have prospered in the safety of the American shield or grown off American treasure, and America has usually rejoiced in their success. Rather, I wish to emphasize that the arc of US policy since the world wars has been singularly grounded in realpolitik and has consistently been designed (however mistakenly) and executed with the aim of promoting American power and interests and that this reality runs contrary to popular belief across the US political spectrum. Those who demand an "America First" policy would be well advised to educate themselves on this reality before they demand a whole-scale reversal of policy. That many aspects of policy need revisiting is beyond question, as is the fact that American governments in the past have quite cynically differentiated between what is good of the nation as opposed to what is good for the American people, and that is, ultimately, the matter that should be addressed in any re-evaluation of global policy. But such a re-evaluation must be performed with a clear-eyed acceptance of reality rather than with the popular prejudice that dresses America in the role of all-generous and long-suffering selflessness, for such delusion cannot result in any positive changes.