Consortiumnews
Consortiumnews
Volume 26, Number 295-Wednesday, October 21, 2020
Reframing America's Role in the World
October 20, 2020
Since 1945, the U.S. pursuit of "dominance in the name of internationalism"
has mainly served as a device for affirming the authority of foreign-policy
elites, writes Andrew J. Bacevich.
German troops in Paris, June 1940. (Fremke, Heinz, CC-BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia
Commons)
By Andrew J. Bacevich
TomDispatch.com
The so-called Age of Trump is also an age of instantly forgotten bestselling
books, especially ones purporting to provide the inside scoop on what goes
on within Donald Trump's haphazard and continuously shifting orbit. With
metronomic regularity, such gossipy volumes appear, make a splash, and
almost as quickly vanish, leaving a mark no more lasting than a trout
breaking the surface in a pond.
Remember when Michael Wolff's Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House
was all the rage? It's now available in hardcover for $0.99 from online used
booksellers. James Comey's Higher Loyalty also sells for a penny less than a
buck.
An additional 46 cents will get you Omarosa Manigault Newman's "insider's
account" of her short-lived tenure in that very White House. For the same
price, you can acquire Sean Spicer's memoir as Trump's press secretary,
Anthony Scaramucci's rendering of his tumultuous 11-day stint as White House
communications director and Corey Lewandowski's "inside story" of the 2016
presidential campaign.
Bibliophiles intent on assembling a complete library of Trumpiana will not
have long to wait before the tell-all accounts of John Bolton, Michael
Cohen, Mary Trump, and that journalistic amaneusis Bob Woodward will surely
be available at similar bargain-basement prices.
All that said, even in these dismal times genuinely important books do
occasionally make their appearance. My friend and colleague Stephen Wertheim
is about to publish one. It's called Tomorrow, the World: The Birth of U.S.
Global Supremacy and if you'll forgive me for being direct, you really ought
to read it. Let me explain why.
The 'Turn'
Wertheim and I are co-founders of the Quincy Institute for Responsible
Statecraft, a small Washington, D.C.-based think tank. That Quincy refers to
John Quincy Adams who, as secretary of state nearly two centuries ago,
warned his fellow citizens against venturing abroad "in search of monsters
to destroy." Were the United States to do so, Adams predicted, its defining
trait - its very essence - "would insensibly change from liberty to force."
By resorting to force, America "might become the dictatress of the world,"
he wrote, but "she would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit." While
his gendered punchline might rankle contemporary sensibilities, it remains
apt.
A privileged man of his times, Adams took it for granted that a WASP male
elite was meant to run the country. Women were to occupy their own separate
sphere. And while he would eventually become an ardent opponent of slavery,
in 1821 race did not rank high on his agenda either. His immediate priority
as secretary of state was to situate the young republic globally so that
Americans might enjoy both safety and prosperity. That meant avoiding
unnecessary trouble. We had already had our revolution. In his view, it
wasn't this country's purpose to promote revolution elsewhere or to dictate
history's future course.
Adams was to secretaries of state what Tom Brady is to NFL quarterbacks: the
Greatest Of All Time. As the consensus GOAT in the estimation of diplomatic
historians, he brought to maturity a pragmatic tradition of statecraft
originated by a prior generation of New Englanders and various slaveholding
Virginians with names like Washington, Jefferson, and Madison. That
tradition emphasized opportunistically ruthless expansionism on this
continent, avid commercial engagement, and the avoidance of great power
rivalries abroad. Adhering to such a template, the United States had, by the
beginning of the 20th century, become the wealthiest, most secure nation on
the planet - at which point Europeans spoiled the party.
Copy of 1843 daguerreotype of John Quincy Adams by Philip Haas. (Wikimedia
Commons)
The disastrous consequences of one European world war fought between 1914
and 1918 and the onset of a second in 1939 rendered that pragmatic tradition
untenable - so at least a subsequent generation of WASPs concluded. This is
where Wertheim takes up the story. Prompted by the German army's lightning
victory in the battle of France in May and June 1940, members of that WASP
elite set about creating - and promoting - an alternative policy paradigm,
one he describes as pursuing "dominance in the name of internationalism,"
with U.S. military supremacy deemed "the prerequisite of a decent world."
The new elite that devised this paradigm did not consist of lawyers from
Massachusetts or planters from Virginia. Its key members held tenured
positions at Yale and Princeton, wrote columns for leading New York
newspapers, staffed Henry Luce's Time-Life press empire, and distributed
philanthropic largesse to fund worthy causes (grasping the baton of global
primacy being anything but least among them). Most importantly, just about
every member of this Eastern establishment cadre was also a member of the
Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). As such, they had a direct line to the
State Department, which in those days actually played a large role in
formulating basic foreign policy.
While Tomorrow, The World is not a long book - fewer than 200 pages of text
- it is a tour de force. In it, Wertheim describes the new narrative
framework that the foreign-policy elite formulated in the months following
the fall of France. He shows how Americans with an antipathy for war now
found themselves castigated as "isolationists," a derogatory term created to
suggest provincialism or selfishness. Those favoring armed intervention,
meanwhile, became "internationalists," a term connoting enlightenment and
generosity. Even today, members of the foreign-policy establishment pledge
undying fealty to the same narrative framework, which still warns against
the bugaboo of "isolationism" that threatens to prevent high-minded
policymakers from exercising "global leadership."
Wertheim persuasively describes the "turn" toward militarized globalism
engineered from above by that self-selected, unelected crew. Crucially,
their efforts achieved success prior to Pearl Harbor. The Japanese attack of
Dec. 7, 1941, may have thrust the United States into the ongoing world war,
but the essential transformation of policy had already occurred, even if
ordinary Americans had yet to be notified as to what it meant. Its future
implications - permanently high levels of military spending, a vast network
of foreign bases stretching across the globe, a penchant for armed
intervention abroad, a sprawling "national security" apparatus, and a
politically subversive arms industry - would only become apparent in the
years ahead.
While Wertheim is not the first to expose isolationism as a carefully
constructed myth, he does so with devastating effect. Most of all, he helps
his readers understand that "so long as the phantom of isolationism is held
to be the most grievous sin, all is permitted."
Contained within that all is a cavalcade of forceful actions and grotesque
miscalculations, successes and failures, notable achievements and immense
tragedies both during World War II and in the decades that followed. While
beyond the scope of Wertheim's book, casting the Cold War as a de facto
extension of the war against Nazi Germany, with Soviet dictator Josef Stalin
as a stand-in for Adolf Hitler, represented an equally significant triumph
for the foreign policy establishment.
At the outset of World War II, ominous changes in the global distribution of
power prompted a basic reorientation of U.S. policy. Today, fundamental
alterations in the global distribution of power - did someone say "the rise
of China"? - are once again occurring right before our eyes. Yet the
foreign-policy establishment's response is simply to double down.
So, even now, staggering levels of military spending, a vast network of
foreign bases, a penchant for armed intervention abroad, a sprawling
"national security" apparatus, and a politically subversive arms industry
remain the taken-for-granted signatures of U.S. policy. And even now, the
Establishment employs the specter of isolationism as a convenient mechanism
for self-forgiveness and expedient amnesia, as well as a means to enforce
discipline.
Frozen Compass
War refugees in France, June 1940. (Bundesarchiv, CC-BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia
Commons)
The fall of France was indeed an epic disaster. Yet implicit in Tomorrow,
The World is this question: If the disaster that befell Europe in 1940 could
prompt the United States to abandon a hitherto successful policy paradigm,
then why have the serial disasters befalling the nation in the present
century not produced a comparable willingness to reexamine an approach to
policy that is obviously failing today?
To pose that question is to posit an equivalence between the French army's
sudden collapse in the face of the Wehrmacht's assault and the accumulation
of U.S. military disappointments dating from 9/11. From a tactical or
operational perspective, many will find such a comparison unpersuasive.
After all, the present-day armed forces of the United States have not
succumbed to outright defeat, nor is the government of the United States
petitioning for a cessation of hostilities as the French authorities did in
1940.
Sept. 11, 2001: Firefighters battling fire in portion of the Pentagon
damaged by attack. (U.S. Navy/Bob Houlihan)
Yet what matters in war are political outcomes. Time and again since 9/11,
whether in Afghanistan, Iraq, or lesser theaters of conflict, the United
States has failed to achieve the political purposes for which it went to
war. From a strategic and political perspective, therefore, the comparison
with France is instructive, even if failure need not entail abject
surrender.
The French people and other supporters of the 1930s European status quo
(including Americans who bothered to pay attention) were counting on that
country's soldiers to thwart further Nazi aggression once and for all.
Defeat came as a profound shock. Similarly, after the Cold War, most
Americans (and various beneficiaries of a supposed Pax Americana) counted on
U.S. troops to maintain an agreeable and orderly global status quo. Instead,
the profound shock of 9/11 induced Washington to embark upon what became a
series of "endless wars" that U.S. forces proved incapable of bringing to a
successful conclusion.
Crucially, however, no reevaluation of U.S. policy comparable to the "turn"
that Wertheim describes has occurred. An exceedingly generous reading of
Trump's promise to put "America First" might credit him with attempting such
a turn. In practice, however, his incompetence and inconsistency, not to
mention his naked dishonesty, produced a series of bizarre and random
zigzags. Threats of "fire and fury" alternated with expressions of high
regard for dictators ("we fell in love"). Troop withdrawals were announced
and then modified or forgotten. Trump abandoned a global environmental
agreement, massively rolled back environmental regulations domestically, and
then took credit for providing Americans with "the very cleanest air and
cleanest water on the planet." Little of this was to be taken seriously.
Trump's legacy as a statesman will undoubtedly amount to the diplomatic
equivalent of Mulligan stew. Examine the contents closely enough and you'll
be able to find just about anything. Yet taken as a whole, the concoction
falls well short of being nutritious, much less appetizing.
On the eve of the upcoming presidential election, the entire national
security apparatus and its supporters assume that Trump's departure from
office will restore some version of normalcy. Every component of that
apparatus from the Pentagon and the State Department to the CIA and the
Council on Foreign Relations to the editorial boards of The New York Times
and The Washington Post yearns for that moment.
To a very considerable degree, a Biden presidency will satisfy that
yearning. Nothing if not a creature of the Establishment, Biden himself will
conform to its requirements. For proof, look no further than his vote in
favor of invading Iraq in 2003. (No isolationist he.) Count on a Biden
administration, therefore, to perpetuate the entire obsolete retinue of
standard practices.
As Peter Beinart puts it, "When it comes to defense, a Biden presidency is
likely to look very much like an Obama presidency, and that's going to look
not so different from a Trump presidency when you really look at the
numbers." Biden will increase the Pentagon budget, keep U.S. troops in the
Middle East and get tough with China. The United States will remain the
world's No. 1 arms merchant, accelerate efforts to militarize outer space,
and continue the ongoing modernization of the entire U.S. nuclear strike
force. Biden will stack his team with CFR notables looking for jobs on the
"inside."
Joe Biden at Pentagon, Sept. 11, 2011 . (White House, David Lienemann)
Above all, Biden will recite with practiced sincerity the mantras of
American exceptionalism as a summons to exercise global leadership. "The
triumph of democracy and liberalism over fascism and autocracy created the
free world. But this contest does not just define our past. It will define
our future, as well." Those uplifting sentiments are, of course, his from a
recent Foreign Affairs essay.
So, if you liked U.S. national security policy before Trump mucked things
up, then Biden is probably your kind of guy. Install him in the Oval Office
and the mindless pursuit of "dominance in the name of internationalism" will
resume. And the United States will revert to the policies that prevailed
during the presidencies of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama -
policies, we should note, that paved the way for Donald Trump to win the
White House.
The Voices That Count
What explains the persistence of this pattern despite an abundance of
evidence showing that it's not working to the benefit of the American
people? Why is it so difficult to shed a policy paradigm that dates from
Hitler's assault on France, now a full 80 years in the past?
I hope that in a subsequent book Stephen Wertheim will address that
essential question. In the meantime, however, allow me to make a stab at
offering the most preliminary of answers.
Setting aside factors like bureaucratic inertia and the machinations of the
military-industrial complex - the Pentagon, arms manufacturers, and their
advocates in Congress share an obvious interest in discovering new "threats"
- one likely explanation relates to a policy elite increasingly unable to
distinguish between self-interest and the national interest. As secretary of
state, John Quincy Adams never confused the two. His latter-day successors
have done far less well.
As an actual basis for policy, the turn that Stephen Wertheim describes in
Tomorrow, The World has proven to be nowhere near as enlightened or
farseeing as its architects imagined or its latter-day proponents still
purport to believe it to be. The paradigm produced in 1940-1941 was, at
best, merely serviceable. It responded to the nightmarish needs of that
moment. It justified U.S. participation in efforts to defeat Nazi Germany, a
necessary undertaking.
After 1945, except as a device for affirming the authority of foreign-policy
elites, the pursuit of "dominance in the name of internationalism" proved to
be problematic. Yet even as conditions changed, basic U.S. policy stayed the
same: high levels of military spending, a network of foreign bases, a
penchant for armed intervention abroad, a sprawling "national security"
apparatus, and a politically subversive arms industry. Even after the Cold
War and 9/11, these remain remarkably sacrosanct.
My own retrospective judgment of the Cold War tends toward an attitude of:
well, I guess it could have been worse. When it comes to the U.S. response
to 9/11, however, it's difficult to imagine what worse could have been.
Within the present-day foreign-policy establishment, however, a different
interpretation prevails: the long, twilight struggle of the Cold War ended
in a world historic victory, unsullied by any unfortunate post-9/11
missteps. The effect of this perspective is to affirm the wisdom of American
statecraft now eight decades old and therefore justify its perpetuation long
after both Hitler and Stalin, not to mention Saddam Hussein and Osama bin
Laden, are dead and gone.
This paradigm persists for one reason only: it ensures that statecraft will
remain a realm that resolutely excludes the popular will. Elites decide,
while the job of ordinary Americans is to foot the bill. In that regard, the
allocation of privileges and obligations now 80 years old still prevails
today.
Only by genuinely democratizing the formulation of foreign policy will real
change become possible. The turn in U.S. policy described in Tomorrow, The
World came from the top. The turn needed today will have to come from below
and will require Americans to rid themselves of their habit of deference
when it comes to determining what this nation's role in the world will be.
Those on top will do all in their power to avert any such loss of status.
The United States today suffers from illnesses both literal and
metaphorical. Restoring the nation to good health and repairing our
democracy must necessarily rate as paramount concerns. While Americans
cannot ignore the world beyond their borders, the last thing they need is to
embark upon a fresh round of searching for distant monsters to destroy.
Heeding the counsel of John Quincy Adams might just offer an essential first
step toward recovery.
Andrew Bacevich, a TomDispatch regular, is president of the Quincy Institute
for Responsible Statecraft. His most recent book is The Age of Illusions:
How America Squandered Its Cold War Victory.
This article is from TomDispatch.com
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not
reflect those of Consortium News.
