The
Indirect Approach to American Foreign Policy
American
foreign policy has been dominated by the question of preventing
attacks on the Continental United States such as those that occurred
on 9-11. I would have to argue that on balance the terrorist acts do
not justify the response which has devastated two countries and has
no end in sight, despite two declared ends to the Second Iraq War and
an occupation of Afghanistan that has gone on longer than the Soviet
intervention in the same country. The resolution to the current
international tensions present in the world is that the United States
should stop supporting covert operations in which the right hand of
the federal government does not know what the left hand is doing, and
stay out of regions in which is has no actual national interest like
the Ukraine. Leaving aside the aforementioned crisis in Ukraine and
the sequel to the Cold War which the human race can only hope will
get stuck in development hell, the primary conflict the United States
is engaged in is called the War on Terrorism. Terrorism, legally
speaking is only the threat of violence to accomplish objectives, and
there exist criminal statues for dealing with the act, statutes which
have been applied to countless everyday people in situations ranging
from altercations to domestic disturbances. So the idea is so vast as
to include ordinary people decidedly not Islamic, let alone foreign.
Then
there is the question of method: BH
Liddel Hart, a noted strategist, favors an indirect approach to
warfare, and it stands in direct opposition to the hyper-power
approach followed by the American government post September 11th.
Often cited as the 'good war' by vast swathes of the political
spectrum, World War 2 was far less interventionist than any war
since. Indeed, during the lead up to the war, Americans did not
assist Spain during the Spanish Civil War and American companies
helped arm and fuel Franco through various mechanisms. That is, the
United States did not intervene in Europe in some attempt to prevent
the rise of Fascism like it did post Great War to attempt to strangle
Bolshevism in its cradle.
The
American response to the destruction of three buildings in the World
Trade center complex can best be analogized with an example using
hypothetical real people. Suppose a kid, who could be rightly called
a punk, puts a brick through a man's window, who could be named
'Sam'. This punk causes some damage harms or kills members of Sam's
family and runs. Sam is angry and finds where the punk is staying,
and in this case, he is a guest in someone else's home. Sam goes,
kills members of the family he is staying with, and lays claim to the
damaged home. But the punk escapes. Rather than track him down, Sam
attacks a neighboring home because they shared similar interests with
the Punk, claiming that he never liked the shady nature of the
residents in the second household anyway. This is what America did in
launching two invasions, killing hundreds of thousands and rendering
millions homeless in a hopeless act of retributive justice which has
left the U.S. looking like a unipolar rogue state. The recent
contradictions relating to Syria are grand. America armed Syrian
rebels to destroy the sole remaining secular Arab regime that had
cooperated with it against Sunni terrorists in the past, and now
claims a faction of the people it armed are so great a threat that it
will again re-enter Iraq and attack targets in Syria after the
American population clearly rejected direct intervention against the
Damascus government.
The
opposition to the idea of not intervening abroad is sure to include
the moralistic component that underlies American politics. Americans
are as outraged at a beheading as Romans were at the accounts of the
Wicker Man ceremony. There is the constant glorification of military
service in popular culture, which is a far cry from what most
military personnel experience when they learn to 'hurry up and wait'.
Self sacrificial ideas are at the heart of Western Culture, which
draws its obvious inspiration from Christianity. Terrorism is an
asymmetrical response to the American 'hyperpower'. There is a fear
of this force, which managed to hijack planes, get past NORAD and
accomplish what the major empires in the 20th
Century never could: a strike on the American homeland. It was a
strike against the financial and government centers. The fear of
this, and desire to change the Middle East through military action is
understandable. Why not maintain such a military presence as we do
when there are such wide-ranging threats? The post World War 2 Red
Army was scary, and the existence of the military industrial complex
grew out of a desire to dominate the Soviets and prevent a Red Pearl
Harbor. There is a certain wisdom in being afraid of people who hold
the Salafist interpretation of Islam and who have no obvious fear of
death despite obvious American superiority on all levels. Islam is
not a simple weak faith. There is a history of conflict between Islam
and every other religion it encounters, and a theocratic impulse
towards establishing religion. The American Republic even fought wars
early on against Barbary pirates.
Fear
of Islam in general ignores the disparate interpretations of Islam.
It also ignores the modern roots of the Salafist organizations which
has root in the very interventionist approach that is supposed to
solve it. Fighting this global movement with military force merely
leads to the replacement of the destroyed terrorist network with that
of another, ad infinitum. 9/11 would have been best prevented by
following existing protocol, or perhaps not fermenting religious
extremism in Afghanistan, nor of setting up the apparatus for a
modern Jihadist movement to kick the Russians out of this country.
Surprise attacks are not going to occur as a result of state actors,
and if it remains the role of the U.S. Military to combat other
nations, and not small non-state groups, it should not be forward
deployed in the current manner.
What
would a voluntary withdrawal from the world stage look like and how
could it be accomplished? Bases in Europe are antiquated. NATO should
have been dismantled post Cold War, its expansion is absurd. A treaty
with Russia, of whatever form, is the best way to redress any
grievances. Putin is not Stalin. Massive commitments in the middle
east have destroyed two countries and dismantled one terrorist
network, merely to see another rise on its ashes out of American
desire to overthrow Bashar Al Asaad. These conflicts are not
something America should be involved in. American commitment to
Israel began in 1973, so the fact that this relationship is regarded
as sacrosanct is odd. Syria and Iran are nations with whom we need to
be negotiating. Our commitments in the pacific are likewise
nonsensical. North Korea is so starved and poor that if it ever
crossed the DMZ its soldiers would spend more time eating than
fighting. South Korea is perfectly capable without the American
presence of arming and defending itself. China is not some Maoist
backwater, but now the second largest economy on earth. Japan was
long ago capable of building a navy and air force to defend itself
and the idea of such a country being under our 'defense umbrella' is
insane. Afghanistan is a choice of occupying a country until the end
of time in order to force its various groups to continue pretending
to be a nation or to bring the troops home and let that country sort
itself out.
Humans
are capable of great iniquity to one another in the name of
conflicting metaphysical values, and the world can be a scary place,
especially when viewed through a media filter that is owned,
operated, and held in place by a handful of companies. Sensationalist
internet reports, cable news of whatever bent broken by commercials
to convince you that you are undersexed, unhealthy, or otherwise
flawed certainly causes the person watching such programming to
become more insecure about themselves and the environment. But this
ignores cold hard actuarial fact that Americans are far more likely
to be killed by a black uniformed police officer than a terrorist. It
ignores the fact that this exact kind of paranoia led to the world
wide atrocity called the Cold War and the subsequent war against the
Third World that has never stopped. It ignores the fact that if you
act as an empire you will be subject to the deprivations of liberty
inherent in imperial action. It ignores the destruction of rights,
whether they be natural or simply invented that should form the
rational basis for society. It ignores the militarization of the
police which has recently led to near revolt in Missouri. It ignores
the fact that men who hold ideas can be killed, but the ideas
themselves do not die. 'No man, no problem' doesn't kill the meme of
the person that you killed. There is no way to democratize the middle
east, or the police borders drawn up in centuries long struggles that
predated the United States. We cannot kill our way to world peace,
nor is this the sole national responsibility of the paramount world
power.
