Between Hubris and Paranoia: Discerning American Foreign Policy in the 21st Century
For anyone who has come of age after September 11, there has been two distinct types of American foreign policy. The first was grounded in a heady post-Cold War euphoria. Drunk on that euphoria of the uni-polar moment, America stumbled into Iraq’s sectarian landmine. The other type has been called “leading from behind.” It is a type of leadership rooted in a passive approach to conflict management, a slow-and-deliberate coalition building, and strategic rapprochement with dangerous adversaries in the hopes that conflict and bloodshed can be avoided.
The results have been a mix of outcomes that on balance have left deep and lasting impressions on the American public. In the early stages of the Iraq War, Americans watched as the remnants of Saddam’s army was quickly dispatched from the battlefield. That was followed by jubilation as the Iraqi population took to the streets to celebrate. What came next was a well-intentioned, hopelessly quixotic democratic transition that placed minimal restraint on the Shia majority. Then the sectarian retribution began. The civil war that resulted between the Sunni and Shia militias backed by their patrons tore through the country. For the Iranians, the ensuing political and security vacuum was the perfect opportunity to extend its strategic reach. Likewise for the Sunni extremists the mayhem was a fertile ground to advance their objectives. General Eric Shinseki’s congressional testimony that an occupation force far greater than initial estimates was uniformly rejected by the Bush administration, but the results that followed proved his remarks eerily prescient. In the minds of many, Iraq has become a textbook case on how intervention and nation-building does not work in contemporary American political debate. Or does it? Was there ever a time when a robust, properly executed, and fully committed US strategy for nation building did succeed? A balanced and critical examination will reveal that this prevailing and deep pessimism in the current political discourse is unwarranted and misguided.
If intervention in Iraq was made to sound quick and easy under President Bush, President Obama’s prescription for getting out of it was no better. Obama disowned his predecessor's mess even before he had sworn in as the next president. His administration’s abandonment of Iraq to the sectarian Al-Maliki is well documented. And while Al-Maliki’s worrisome strategy of pursuing Sunni rivals became clearer and clearer, Obama pressed ahead with the withdraw regardless.
The poorly conceived war under Bush and the non-commitment to the Iraqi project under Obama are terrible examples that have done much harm to our impression of the potential for US foreign policy to do lasting good. Instead let us consider the example of Germany in the immediate aftermath of WWII. There the US fully committed to the rebuilding of a former adversary as it became apparent that any European recovery depended in large part on the recovery of German industrial might. Recognizing that abandoning Germany at its weakest to Soviet influence may well jeopardize the evolution of Germany into a free and democratic nation, the US initiated a massive aerial campaign in response to the Berlin Blockade to relieve the population of hardship. What followed is indicative of the type of effort, cost, and commitment needed to achieve the project of a free and democratic Germany. From the initial involvement in fighting the Nazi regime to the subsequent security blanket performed by US troops along with NATO until German reunification, we may properly measure that commitment in decades.
The German example is not unique. American involvement in South Korea, Taiwan and Japan all demonstrate without any doubt that for the price of American lives, blood, and immense national wealth, the long-term effect on these nations and for America has been by tremendous. To further illustrate that rhetorical point however we need only to contrast what decades of Communist Chinese support to North Korea or Soviet Russia’s presence in the Eastern Bloc has achieved for their respective populations.
The Ghost of Vietnam
If an free, independent and prosperous Germany, South Korea, Taiwan and Japan were unequivocal foreign policy successes, America quickly forgot them as its blood and wealth flowed through the jungles of Vietnam. Seeking to avoid the type of costly intervention the Korean War eventually became, three presidential administrations implemented a policy of incremental and minimalist intervention. Military advisers gave way to air bases, air base defense became search-and-destroy missions, search-and-destroy became open-ended ground engagements. Policy constraints and risk aversion prevented each successive administration from engaging the real adversary in the form of North Vietnamese regulars backed by their Communist patrons in Moscow and Beijing. The extent of corruption within the South Vietnamese regime is well documented yet efforts over time addressed this core issue with success. Furthermore, despite Communist propaganda, in the late stages of the conflict the South Vietnamese population actually grew increasingly disenchanted with the brutality of the Viet Cong. So it is all the more puzzling that just as the South Vietnamese population began to turn against the North that American domestic opinion would then turn against the war. After the Tet Offensive, no subsequent administration could campaign on a political platform of further escalation in Vietnam and hope to win. Nixon’s Vietnamization, a begrudging acknowledgement that further US involvement was unsustainable, became official policy. While the US drew down its forces, the North became more emboldened than ever. In a slow, steady and irreversible progression, South Vietnam gradually fell apart.
In a dark and recent premonition, we saw the dramatic effects of Obama’s own Vietnamization in Afghanistan as an Afghani national force many times larger than the Taliban irregulars fighting them appeared incapable of holding on to Kunduz except with US assistance. Or even earlier when an entire Iraqi national army fell apart to a jihadi force many times smaller. If we are to learn any lessons from Vietnam, let them at least be the correct lessons.
The Correct Lessons
The first lesson is that US interventions work best when policy makers and the public are fully committed and prepared to pay the price of intervention in human and material costs. This was the case in Korea. This was not the case in Vietnam. The social schism resulting from persistent leftist activism combined with the legacy of slavery did much to sap American national will.
The second lesson is that strategic flexibility must be an imperative whereas tactical flexibility will inevitably follow from the prosecution of war. The pursuit of an inflexible strategy at any cost will devastate policy outcomes even if there are tactical successes on the front line. The unwillingness of American leaders to seriously punish the North Vietnamese in their own territory and in adjacent territories at the risk of high American casualties was one strategic error. The general reluctance to escalate involvement vis a vis the Soviets and Chinese was another profound strategic error. This strategic inflexibility limited policy choices and dramatically influenced how Vietnam was fought and eventually lost.
The third and final lesson is that for any US involvement to be successful, local partners must be ideologically, materially, and sacrificially committed to the project for which they are fighting for. The inability for the great majority of the South Vietnamese to get behind their own government during the early phases of the conflict did much to undermine South Vietnam and US public opinion.
In his final State of the Union address, Barack Obama exhorted the nation to never forget the lessons of Iraq and Vietnam and avoid entangling quagmires. The notable omission of course is that Iraq and Vietnam were foreign policy projects flawed from the very beginning. On balance, America’s foreign involvements have been a tremendous force for good in the post-WWII era. South Korea alone is an enduring quagmire that continues to this day. Yet this vibrant, democratic, and free nation that is globally renowned for its technology and soft power can leaves no doubt that US intervention in the Korean peninsula was worth it. America’s experience there is now more relevant than ever as tensions rise in Asia, and the fires of conflict tear through Iraq and Syria and Ukraine.