Looking beyond the Bush Doctrine

Joseph Nye, Jr.

Will [the United States] provide global leadership or conclude that the best course in world affairs is to remain uninvolved? Some Americans are tempted to believe that the United States could reduce its vulnerability if it withdrew its troops, curtailed its alliances and followed a more isolationist foreign policy. But isolationism would not remove the vulnerability.

The United States is well placed to remain the leading power in world politics well into the twenty-first century. This prognosis, however, depends upon some key assumptions: ... that there will not be some catastrophic series of events that profoundly transforms American attitudes in an isolationist direction; and that Americans will define their national interest in a broad and farsighted way that incorporates global interests.(my emphasis)

But isolationism or extreme unilateralism are not promising options for the world's largest state. (my emphasis)

Those quotes are from Recovering American Leadership by Joseph Nye, Jr Survival: Global Politics and Strategy 03/09/08 (try this link if that one doesn't work). Nye has been a leading critic of the Bush Doctrine of unilateralism and is known for his emphasis on the use of "soft power", not a phrase designed to appeal to followers of John "100 Years War" McCain or his warmonger theocrat buddies John Hagee or Rod Parsley.

But with the possibility of a Clinton or Obama administration on the horizon, it's not too soon for the base to start taking a critical look at the kind of alternative policy options being promoted by prominent figures in the "foreign policy establishment". And one thing we need to watch for is policy advocates warning of the impending danger of "isloationism". Andrew Bacevich is basically correct when he sees such warnings as mostly a bogeyman argument. As he writes in American Empire: The Realities and Consequences of U.S. Diplomacy (2002), Old Man Bush waved the specter of "isolationism" as one of the great dangers confronting the US at the end of the Cold War:

But to judge by Bush's frequent remarks on national security, the most worrisome danger facing the United States lay not abroad but at home. As would be the case with Clinton, Bush professed to be mightily concerned that Americans after the Cold War would again succumb to the temptation to which he believed they were peculiarly susceptible: turning inward and ignoring the rest of the world.

No cause was more important than that of saving his fellow citizens from that error. Decrying the danger of isolationism became a frequent theme of the president's speeches. Bush denounced those who would "retreat into an isolationist cocoon." He railed against those "on the right and left who are working right now to breathe life into those old flat-earth theories of protectionism, of isolationism." He even resorted to unvarinished demagoguery. At ceremonies marking the fiftieth anniversary of Pearl Harbor, the president declared that "isolationism flew escort for the very bobmers that attacked our men 50 years ago," thereby finding the millions who before December 7, 1941, opposed U.S. entry into World War II guilty not simply of bad judgment but of treason. (my emphasis)

Now, I certainly wouldn't argue that Americans in general are necessarily well-informed about the world outside our national borders. But "solationism" in mainstream political talk is really part of the effort to identify one's own policies with the "Good War", the Second World War, and one's opponents with those who for whatever reasons didn't take the threats from Germany and Japan seriously enough prior to 1939-1941.

Bacevich continues:

There were in fact few indications that the American people after the Cold War were inclined to "turn their backs on the world" - few, indeed, that they had ever done so throughout their history. But by reviving this shopworn refrain - and by portraying every foreign policy issue as a test of whether Americans would stay the course or shirk their duty to the world - [Old Man] Bush used isolationism as a calculated device for shoring up popular and congressional deference to the executive branch. Bill Clinton would do likewise. (my emphasis)

Bacevich frames this in the context of what he calls "the myth of the reluctant superpower", an image that is a favorite of the foreign policy establishment:

Few scholars specializing in American diplomatic history today accept such an outline of twentieth century U.S. foreign policy. But in practice, the myth of the "reluctant superpower" — Americans asserting themselves only under duress and then always for the noblest purposes — reigns today as the master narrative explaining (and justifying) the nation's exercise of global power.

At this point, I supose it's time to mention that I have commented in my blogging quite a bit on both the historical phonemenon of pre-Second World War isolationism in the US and its generally sordid set of ideological fellow-travellers. I have also commented on the kind of Old Right isolationism often featured on Antiwar.com, though it's a site I still recommend as a useful accumulator for war news and also for substantial commentary by people like Andrew Bacevich. The "paleo-conservative" commentary on foreign policy is essentially isolationist, and we see that viewpoint also reflected in The American Conservative, though it also features commentary by others who don't embrace the Old Right isolationist outlook.

Real Existing Isolationism

To the extent "isolationism" as such is influential in the US, it is mostly within the context of today's peace movement. And not as a leading ideology, but more as a Trojan Horse of rightwing, nationalist, nativist viewpoints within the broader context of those who are critical of the Iraq War and a militarized foreign policy. You can see the Trojan Horse effect in the way Antiwar.com promotes Bircher and other far-right articles in the midst of more substantial fare. Antiwar Radio at the Antiwar.com Web site is a useful source for interviews with good commentators and analysts of foreign policy, including Chris Hedges, Gareth Porter, John Esposito, Greg Palast, Aaron Glantz, Steve Clemons Daniel Ellsberg, Fred Kaplan and Michael Scheuer, to name some of the recent guests. But you're not likely to get through a whole segment without hearing at least one plug for "Dr. Ron Paul", darling of the white-supremacist set, from the host.

And you can get the direct feed of the far-right worldview at Antiwar Radio from Paul himself, his former staffer Lew Rockwell of the Ludwig von Mises Institute the neo-Confederate site LewRockwell.com, and other far-right types.

If you have the stomach for it, check out the Rockwell interview linked above (02/27/08) at around 2:15 and following to hear Rockwell explain how the New Deal was consciously modeled on Italian fascism, how That Man Roosevelt set up "the first peacetime police state" and how FDR took the US into the Second World War "on behalf of his pals in the Soviet Union, which his administration was very close to". Paranoid, dishonest rightwing crap, in other words. (If you really have a strong stomach, you can listen to the rest and hear how William Buckley and most of the Republican conservatives are part of a CIA-Troskyist conspiracy.)

You can also listen to the wisdom of Will Grigg (02/12/08), who describes himself as a Christian Libertarian whose profession is "writer, editor, dogmatist". He practiced his profession as a senior editor and contributor to the John Birch Society's official journal, The New American. He has apparently since broken with the JBS in some factional fight. He is also featured at the LewRockwell.com site.

To the extent that "paleo-conservatives" like Pat Buchanan influence the mainstream foreign policy debate, it's mostly by reinforcing the nativism and nationalism that is at the heart of Bush Doctrine unilateralism.

Real Existing Foreign Policy Options

There are basically three major trends in the foreign policy circles that actually wind up setting policy: liberal internationalism, realism and unilateralism. Those are ways of conceiving foreign policy, not viewpoints that can easily be aligned with liberal/conservative or Democratic/Republican splits. Although unilaterialism by its nature is more suited to the Republican neoconservatives and Cheney-style nationalists in our current political configuration.

Nye's perspective in "Recovering American Leadership" is that of liberal internationalism. And he has some constructive things to say:

To play a leading role in producing public goods [on the world stage], the United States will need to invest in both hard-power resources and the soft-power approach of leading by example. The latter will require more self-restraint on the part of Congress in international affairs as well as more robust action on domestic problems in such spheres as the economy, the environment and the criminal justice system. Providing public goods will also require an investment of resources in the non-military aspects of foreign affairs that Americans have been unwilling to make.

That's perfectly sensible. We need to have more diplomatic options than just ordering other countries to do what we tell them or else, which is the Bush Doctrine in brief.

But other aspects of Nye's admittedly general prescriptions deserve close scrutiny when they get close to becoming actual policies:

While polls show that American soft power has declined in the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq, they also show that the cause of the decline is government policies, not American culture and values. This is important because policies can change relatively quickly, while culture and values change more slowly. In the early 1970s, American policies in Vietnam led to low ratings in polls, but the country regained much of its soft power within a decade.

Faced with such a threat [as transnational terrorism], a certain degree of unilateral action, such as the war in Afghanistan, is justified if it produces global goods. After all, the British navy reduced the scourge of piracy well before international conventions were signed in the middle of the nineteenth century. But isolationism or extreme unilateralism are not promising options for the world's largest state.

Moreover, new problems like climate change and pandemics cross borders without the slightest regard to American culture or intentions. Turning inward does no good if the problems follow you home.

The United States’ role as a stabiliser and a bulwark against aggression by aspiring hegemons in key regions is generally seen as a public good by smaller states in those regions.

Promoting an open international economic system is good for American economic growth, and is good for other countries as well.

In addition, in the long term, economic growth is more likely to foster stable, democratic, middle-class societies in other countries, though the time scale will be far lengthier than it was recently fashionable to believe. To keep the system open, the United States must resist protectionism at home and support international economic institutions, such as the World Trade Organisation, the International Monetary Fund and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, that provide a framework of rules for the world economy.

The Middle East is the crucial current case in which American leadership is certainly required to establish lasting peace. It is true that there are some situations in which other countries can more effectively play the mediator’s role, and in other cases leadership can be shared, as with Europe in the Balkans. But often the United States is the only country that can bring parties together at relatively low cost, and when it is successful, such leadership increases American soft power at the same time that it reduces a source of instability.

If the assumptions hold, the United States will continue to be in a position to provide leadership in managing global security in all its dimensions. But it will have to learn to work with other countries to share such leadership.

I won't try to comment on each of those, because they're general enough to be open to a variety of interpretations. I'll add in relation to that last quote, when I heard former German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer speak in San Francisco last year, he commented on the proper role for American world leadership (quoting from memory), "I don't say that the United States is everything. But without the United States, everything is nothing." He went on to explain that what he meant was that the US can't do everything on its own or achieve everything it might like to. But that the US currently plays such a predominant role that larger problems like global climate change require active American participation and that others require at least an American willingness to go along with the leadership of other international actors more directly connected with certain situations.

But my concerns about the viewpoint Nye expresses in that article is that its not at all clear how far it is consistent with some important things that the US needs to take seriously in the wake of the Iraq War and the Afghanistan War:

• The US spends way too much money on the military. Currently, we spend half or more of the world's military spending. Our nearest competitor is China, which spends about 10% of what we do. That to me is insane on the face of it.

• Any American power that can be used for good purposes can also be used for bad ones. And we can't forget that there are bad people like Dick Cheney and Rummy can get into a position where they can misuse American power.

• An "Iraq syndrome" doesn't have to be a resurgence of "isolationism". On the contrary, a constructive evaluation of the limits of American power is critical. As Stanley Kutler says in Why George Bush Loves John McCain Truthdig.com 03/11/08:
  
  

  The more things change, the more they remain the same. The only thing we learn from the past is to forget it. But not so long ago, Vietnam taught us invaluable lessons. No, they were not about dominoes that never fell; it was that the United States had to understand and recognize the limits of power. An arrogant giant, knowing no boundaries, no restraint, could be defeated by Lilliputians. George W. Bush hardly gave the Vietnam War a thought 40 years ago, and surely he does not now. And sadly, neither does John McCain, who, with all that experience, should know better.

Tags: antiwar.com, isolationism, joseph nye jr, lew rockwell, neo-confederates, radical right