With Clinton, more wars ?

While the US campaign degenerates into personality contests, Barack Obama’s legacy, a few weeks from the end of his double mandate, gives us the opportunity to ask pertinent questions to his or her successor — most likely Hillary Clinton.

His her remarkable TV series “The Obama years”, broadcast on Oct. 4 on the franco-german TV channel Arte, one of the most remarkable topics is a key moment of the US President’s eight years, when, in August 2013, he decided not to bomb Syria despite his own words about the “red lines” not to be crossed : the use of chemical weapons by the syrian regime of Bashar el-Assad. A three-nation military operation -by the US, France and the UK- was scheduled to “punish” Assad’s army, but first hit a negative vote by the british parliament, then Obama’s own decision to unplug it to favor a diplomatic path with Russia.

In the documentary, Obama makes this surprising statement :

“Retrospectively, this is one of the decisions I’m most proud of”.

This is surprising because in Paris President François Hollande still hasn’t accepted the abrupt cancellation of the military operation that was only hours away, french jets flight plans and targets having already been approved. The French President has mentioned this incident several times in public with regret, and is far less amenable in private for his american counterpart’s choice of giving up the military track.

It’s also surprising because the situation in Syria hasn’t ceased to aggravate since the crisis of the summer of 2013, spreading out of the syrian borders through terrorist attacks by the so-called Islamic State, and the flow of refugees in neighbouring countries and in Europe. It also alllowed a window of opportunity for a determined russian and iranian action in support of Damascus.

This episode touches upon a contradiction, or a least, to use a more nuanced word, a misunderstanding about the Obama era : this intellectual President was elected in 2008 to cure America’s woes, not only about domestic racial issues, but also this inheritence of the Bush administration of two wars (Afghanistan and Iraq). A “Soft Power” President, meaning gaining influence through other means than the use of force, Obama was confronted to issues of “Hard Power”, those of war and peace, and faced them reluctantly.

Barack Obama did not succeed in disengaging totally the US from the two wars left over by the Bush administration : a small contingent is still needed to ensure the survival of the afghan regime who is having a hard time, and the struggle against ISIS is still mobilising the US army in Syria and Iraq. In addition, this President ordered the killing of most people by drone strikes, a less visible but no less deadly way of making warfare in the XXIst century.

The problem is that the world is not more secure at the end of the Obama era than it was at Bush’s end. A that time, there was too much intervention. What about today ? Is it because of the US relative disengagement ? This is an easy answer, generally given by those in favour of an old-style US leadership on world affairs, in a radically changed world.

This is most likely the answer given by Hillary Clinton, the likely successor of Barack Obama. In a most opportune way, Wikileaks just released the content of a speech given by the former Secretary of State during a closed meeting with Goldman Sachs in 2013. These “leaks”, widely spread by russian propaganda outlets, include a criticism of the relative passivity of Barack Obama in Syria, and Clinton’s support for a no-fly-zone in Syria. With this remark :

“To have a no-fly-zone you have to take out all of the air defense, many of which are located in populated areas. So our missiles, even if they are standoff missiles so that we’re not putting our pilots at risk — you’re going to kill a lot of Syrians”.

During her Oct. 9 debate with Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton reiterated her support for a no-fly-zone in Syria, but without mentioning the risk to syrian civilians, and furthermore in a dramatically changed strategic environment with Russia directly involved in the conflict with its air power, and not likely, in a new period of cold-war-style tensions, to back such a measure.

We could therefore find ourselves in a few weeks going from a frustated Soft Power President, hesitant to use force, to a President who is eager to reaffirm US power and would have no hesitation to use armed force. This would deserve more debate in the US than the Trump “diversion” allows…

I was thinking about this whilst reading a book by Chris Hedges, a US journalist who was for two decades a war reporter on several fronts, including for the New York Times, before writing a plea … against wars. This book was significantly translated into French by the Paris-based, Canadian-born and highly political writer Nancy Huston, and carries a very provocative title : “War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning” (originally published by Perseus Books Group, 2002, in French by Actes Sud, 2016).

In the foreword to the just released French edition of this book initially published in 2002, after 9/11 and the war in Afghanistan, but before the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Chris Hedged explains that he wrote the book “to warn a nation on the brink of war”.

“I wrote it because I abhor those who exalt wars and benefit from it. But as in all wars, previous lessons are always ignored, made null and void by the intoxication of the new crusade”

Chris Hedges’ foreword makes an assessment of sixteen years of american wars in the world, “the longest in US history”, which, he reckons, are “the most serious strategic errors of american history. In the last instance, they will likely produce the end of the US imperial power”.

This analysis could sound excessive, but it’s a reality of the last sixteen years of western wars, judging by the poor state of Afghanistan, Iraq or Libya.

So, should we have gone to war in Syria in 2013 ? Obama answers negatively without any hesitation in Norma Percy’s documentary. Hillary Clinton seems to have a different anwser, but doesn’t express it not to weaken Obama’s support to her campaign.

Is the world condemned to this binary approach : American war or not ? The current catastrophic state of international relations, with the paralysis of the United Nations as shown again last weekend by the russian veto to a French-inspired resolution calling for a ceasefire in Aleppo, leaves few other options at this stage.

Who could deny, however, that one of the most important challenges of the next years will be to find a new balance in international governance to face the big world issues such as climate change, inequalitues, economic development, radical islam terror.

These issues are relegated to second rank in the US election, and threaten to follow the same path in the already started campaign for the 2017 French presidential election. Is the intoxication of war denounced by Chris Hedges winning without a sound debate, without any contradiction ? This is food for thought whilst observing the behavior of candidates to lead the world’s number one power!