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Back to the Future: Rediscovering Americas Foreign Policy

Traditions

Ivan Eland

Mediterranean Quarterly, Volume 19, Number 3, Summer 2008,

pp. 88-98 (Article)

Published by Duke University Press

For additional information about this article

Access Provided by University College Dublin at 09/21/11 8:42PM GMT

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Back to the Future: Rediscovering Americas

Foreign Policy Traditions

Ivan Eland

In January 2009, the new occupant o the Oval Oce will ace a US or-

eign policy wasteland inherited rom the Bush administration. For starters,

any new chie executive will be let holding the bag in two losing wars o

occupation included in a counterproductive general war on terror. In both

Aghanistan and Iraq, de acto US occupations are ueling Islamist ervor and

spiking terrorist attacks and suicide bombings worldwide. In Somalia, the

Islamist threat was minimal until the United States began supporting corrupt

warlords, ueling the Somali publics resentment o oreigners and making the

Islamists popular enough to seize the country. The United States then sup-

ported a third non-Muslim invasion and occupation o a Muslim land which

provokes Islamists into a renzy by aiding the Ethiopian invasion o that

nation. Similarly, in Lebanon the Bush administration tacitly supported an

Israeli war against Hezbollah, which merely enhanced the groups status in

that country and in the Islamic world as a heroic ghter against non-Muslim

aggression. Furthermore, the administrations policy o exporting democracy

to ensure stability ailed as the radical Hamas group won elections in Pal-

estine, and democratic governance eroded in more countries than those in

which it advanced.

The administrations invasion o Iraq seemed to make North Korea and

Iran two countries arther along than Iraq on the path toward successully

launching a nuclear weapon on a long-range missile so nervous that they,

respectively, withdrew rom the Nuclear Non-Prolieration Treaty and explo-

Mediterranean Quarterly 19:3 DOI 10.1215/10474552-2008-015

Copyright 2008 by Mediterranean Aairs, Inc.

Ivan Eland is senior ellow at the Independent Institute and author o the books The Empire Has No

Clothes: US Foreign Policy Exposed andPutting Defense Back into US Defense Policy.

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Eland: Back to the Future 89

sively tested a nuclear weapon, and accelerated their nuclear program. These

countries believe that the only thing that will deter the United States rom an

Iraq-like attack on them is nuclear weapons.

Despite popular perceptions on the let and in the middle o Americanpolitics, however, President George W. Bush did not invent such an inter-

ventionist oreign policy. Past presidents, both Democratic and Republican,

since Truman have pursued this nontraditional US oreign policy o creating

permanent, entangling alliances, establishing US military bases all over the

world, and meddling egregiously into the aairs o many nations around the

globe. Ater the Cold War ended, America could have reduced its global oot-

print. Instead, the United States increased it by expanding NATO, tighten-

ing its alliances in East Asia, establishing new military bases in the ormerSoviet Union such as those in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, and invading and

occupying Aghanistan and Iraq.

This policy should be replaced by the ounders original policy o military

restraint overseas. With the advent o a new administration, President Bushs

oreign policy oibles should provide a catalyst or a long-needed national

debate that could lead to such an urgently needed policy change.

More Continuity than Variation

in PostWorld War II US Foreign Policy

Despite the intense criticism by liberals o President Bushs neoconservative

policy o invading and occupying Iraq, it must be remembered that conserva-

tives threw barbs at similar nation-building eorts by Bill Clinton, who used

the US military to intervene in Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo. And US

interventionism did not stop there. Although there were sporadic US inter-

ventions (especially in Latin America) beore World War II, interventionismbecame standard US policy during the postwar era in both Democratic and

Republican administrations up to the present.

The policy began with the Truman administrations interventions in Greece

and Korea and was continued by Dwight Eisenhowers sending o US troops

to Lebanon and the copious use o Central Intelligence Agency covert opera-

tions around the world or example, to overthrow the democratically elected

governments o Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran and Jacobo Arbenz Guzman

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90 Mediterranean Quarterly: Summer 2008

in Guatemala. The interventionist imperative was also evident in John Ken-

nedys support o Cuban exiles in the Bay o Pigs invasion and the even more

profigate use o covert action, such as

the assassination of Patrice Lumumba in the Congo;

Lyndon Johnsons escalation of Eisenhower and Kennedys involvement

in Southeast Asia and invasion of the Dominican Republic; and

Richard Nixons continuation of a lost cause in Southeast Asia and his

overthrow o the democratically elected Allende government in Chile.

The policy continued even during the Vietnam Syndrome o the

post Southeast Asia years, albeit with somewhat less intensity. Gerald Ford

meddled in the Angolan civil war and Jimmy Carter began covert aid to

Islamic radicals ghting the Soviets in Aghanistan. As the Vietnam Syn-

drome waned, Ronald Reagan stepped up the pace o interventions by

continuing and vastly expanding the aid to the Afghan rebels;

aiding the government of El Salvador, the Nicaraguan rebels, and

Saddam Hussein, who was ghting Iran; and

supporting a nation-building asco in Lebanon, the invasion of Gre-

nada, and attacks on Libya.

George H. W. Bushs invasions o Panama and Kuwait/Iraq and intervention

in Somalia continued the postWorld War II interventionist tradition.

These are just some o the major US interventions. In total, in the sixty-

two-year period beginning at the end o World War II, the United States has

conducted, under both Democratic and Republican administrations, more

than one hundred military or covert interventions major and minor into

the aairs o other countries.1US orces used in all o these military incursions come rom the United

States or the 766 bases in orty countries that the Pentagon says it has over-

1. I have created a composite list rom two sources: Ellen C. Collier, Instances o Use o United

States Forces Abroad, 1798 1993, Department o the Navy, Naval Historical Center, http://

history.navy.mil/wars/foabroad.htm; and Dr. Zoltan Grossman, From Wounded Knee to Iraq: A

Century o US Military Interventions, http://academic.evergreen.edu/g/grossmaz/interventions

.html.

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2. Department o Deense, Oce o the Deputy Undersecretary o Deense or Installations andEnvironment,Department of Defense Base Structure Report: Fiscal Year 2006 Base Line, 6, 23,

www.acq.osd.mil/ie/irm/irm_library/BSR2006Baseline.pd.

3. Chalmers Johnson,Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic (New York: Metropolitan,

2006), 140.

4. Department o Deense, Active Duty Military Personnel Strengths by Regional Area and by

Country, 30 September 2006, http://siadapp.dmdc.osd.mil/personnel/military/history/hist0609

.pd.

5. US Force Levels Swell to All-Time High, Agence France Presse, 6 September 2007, http://ap

.google.com/article/ALeqM5haE4Ll5mcW2njmq6WVFu5HRO-IPA.

6. Troops Keep Comin to Aghanistan, New York Daily News, 10 May 2007, www.nydailynews

.com/news/wn_report/2007-05-10_troops_keep_comin_to_Aghanistan.html.

seas.2 (With the addition o secret bases, acilities provided by oreign hosts,

and more recently acquired bases in places such as Aghanistan, Iraq, Kyr-

gyzstan, and Uzbekistan, the number would probably exceed one thousand.3)

According to the US Department o Deense, almost 300,000 US orces arestationed overseas at these bases or afoat.4 This total does not count the

nearly 170,000 troops in Iraq5 or the approximately 26,000 in Aghani-

stan6 where two wars are currently being ought.

These troops stationed overseas help provide a US security umbrella

or many nations worldwide through a web o US-dominated ormal and

inormal alliances. The United States is ormally allied with thirty-three

nations twenty-six European North Atlantic Treaty Organization nations

(up rom sixteen NATO members during the Cold War) and seven others,including Australia, Japan, and South Korea, which are bilateral alliances.

The United States has inormal alliances unwritten understandings that

the United States will come to a countrys deense i it is attacked and threat-

ened with extinction with twenty other nations, including Israel, Egypt,

Jordan, the Persian Gul kingdoms, and Taiwan.

The High Cost of US Interventionism and Empire

Liberals have been rightly troubled by George W. Bushs unwarranted and

disastrous invasion o Iraq but seem to ignore Clintons dubious record in

nation building. Trying to restructure societies at gunpoint seldom works.

The Iraq debacle demonstrates what sociologists already knew people have

to grow democracy and ree their economies locally on their own through

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7. Minxin Pei and Sara Kasper, Lessons rom the Past: The American Record on Nation-Building,

Carnegie Endowment Policy Brie, May 2003.

8. Center or Arms Control and Non-Prolieration, US Military Spending Versus Rest o the

World, 5 February 2007, www.globalissues.org/Geopolitics/ArmsTrade/Spending.asp.

building social capital (social interconnectedness) and resent it when such

reedoms are imposed by an outside nation using brute orce. Despite

Clintons interventions in Somalia and Haiti, those countries remain poor,

undemocratic, and prone to violence. Bosnia and Kosovo, also recipients oClintons militarized social work, are hardly models or successul nation

building and may yet erupt in urther violence. Muscular liberals, like the

neoconservatives, believe that military power can be used to make the world

more like us but it is rarely successul in doing so. Analysts rom a liberal

research institute ound that, since 1900, the United States has attempted

seventeen eorts to build democracies in oreign nations but only our created

democracies that remained or at least ten years (Aghanistan and Iraq will

probably not add to the our).7 Sometimes a US military intervention makesthings worse, as the quagmire in Iraq illustrates.

Liberals should also be concerned about the eects o repeated wars on

domestic civil liberties, which make this country unique. Overseas wars usu-

ally allow governments to control dissent at home or example, the US gov-

ernment spied on and provoked into violence Vietnam War protestors. The

seemingly perpetual war on terror, like the long Cold War, might be more

injurious to such liberties than past conventional wars, usually o limited

duration, because no end to hostilities terminates the government clamp-down. Also, some o the enemys attacks may be on the homeland, thus gen-

erating more ear than would a strictly oreign war. Such blowback terrorism

results, in part, rom US nation building that is, meddling in other nations

conficts and civil wars, such as those o Aghanistan, Iraq, and Somalia.

To support the inormal US worldwide empire o alliances, overseas bases,

and personnel, which are used to justiy and conduct requent military inter-

ventions, the United States spends huge sums on deense compared to other

nations. The United States spends on deense more than the combined secu-

rity expenditures o the next sixteen highest-spending countries.8 In all, the

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9. Calculated rom data included in Global Military Spending Hits $1.2 Trillion Study, Reu-

ters, 11 June 2007, www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L11196461.htm.

10. Calculated rom data ound at World Bank,Data and Statistics: 2006, www.sitesources.world

bank.org/DATASTATISTICS/Resources/GDP.pd.

United States accounts or 44.0 percent o the worlds deense spending,9 but

only 27.5 percent o the worlds gross domestic product (GDP).10

This comparison, along with the strain that the two small wars in Iraq

and Aghanistan have imposed on US orces, indicate that the inormal USempire might be overstretched. Many prior empires have declined because

their security spending, overseas deense commitments, and military

interventions exceeded their ability to pay or them. Even the British and

French empires, on the winning side o both world wars, became nancially

exhausted because o ghting those wars and maintaining their vast terri-

tories and went into decline. More recently, the Soviet Unions empire, and

even the country itsel, collapsed because its giant military, Eastern Euro-

pean alliances, and military interventions in the developing world becametoo much or its dysunctional economy to bear. Many in the United States

say that the US economy is much bigger than these ailed empires and that

decline cannot happen here. But that is what the elites o past empires

believed, too. Furthermore, over time, small dierences in economic growth

rates between competing countries can lead to a reordering o great powers

on the world scene. Most o the United States economic competitors have less

deense spending as a portion o GDP to be a drag on their economies.

Thus, even national greatness conservatives should be wary o too muchdeense spending, excessive military commitments overseas, and unnec-

essary wars, such as Iraq, that sap national resources. All other orms o

national power military, technological, and cultural derive rom main-

taining a healthy economy.

Ironically, conservatives who rail against government activism and heavy

public spending at home oten seem to support it abroad, even though it has

even less chance o being eective, because the US government has less cred-

ibility overseas than it does at home. Domestic government spending goes up

as the price a president has to pay to generate continuing support or his

overseas war or wars. For example, President George W. Bush has increased

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domestic spending drastically at the same time he has ought wars in Iraq

and Aghanistan. During wartime, the government usually intrudes more into

the private sector to direct greater resources and productive capacity to the

war eort. For example, during World War I, World War II, and the Koreanconfict, the government attempted to insert itsel into important sectors o

the civilian economy. In the latter case, it was somewhat less successul at

this dubious objective than in the ormer two cases, in which the government

virtually took over the civilian economy. Ater the war is over, wartime prece-

dents or government activism in private economic decisions oten linger dur-

ing peacetime. As a result, conservatives should revisit their opposition in the

1920s and 1930s to the nontraditional US policy o interventionism, which

was rst practiced broadly by the liberal Woodrow Wilson and was resur-rected ater World War II by the liberal Harry Truman.

All Americans should be concerned about an interventionist oreign pol-

icy, because it endangers both the American people and the system o checks

and balances enshrined in the Constitution, which is supposed to prevent

excessive aggregation o power by any one branch o government. George

Washington spoke out against permanent alliances and Thomas Jeerson

similarly railed against entangling alliances; both men and other founders

worried that such alliances could unnecessarily drag the United States intocostly oreign wars. They had observed the militarism o European kings and

realized that the costs in blood and treasure o armed royal adventures ell

to the common people. In keeping with the ounders vision o staying out o

other countries aairs, the United States did not acquire permanent allies

until ater World War II. Similarly but with some exceptions, especially in

Latin America the United States adhered to the ounders policy o military

restraint until the Cold War began. The ounders realized that geography pro-

vided the United States with unique security against oreign invasion withtwo large oceans separating the US homeland rom the worlds centers o con-

fict, thus making it dicult or other nations to get their military orces to

the United States and sustain them in any war in North America. In the

modern era, we can add in the US nuclear arsenal by ar the most potent

in the world which should dissuade other nations rom any conventional or

nuclear attack on the United States.

During the Cold War, at least a plausible argument could be made or some

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US intervention overseas to counter Soviet encroachment. But the Cold War

is long over, the Soviet rival is in the dustbin o history, and the gains rom

interventionism have been drastically reduced while the costs have skyrock-

eted. The only type o attack that cannot be deterred by the US nuclear arse-nal is that rom terrorists as was demonstrated on 9/11. Retaliation or US

interventionism in the Arab-Muslim world is al Qaedas primary motive or

attacking the United States. Specically, Osama bin Ladens biggest gripes

are with US that is, non-Muslim occupation o Muslim lands and med-

dling in their politics by supporting corrupt dictators and Israel.

Because conventional and nuclear military power have very little utility in

stopping terrorist attacks and because the United States has an open society,

with thousands o miles o borders and many possible targets, homeland secu-rity eorts will likely have only limited eect. Naturally, in the short term,

the utmost eort should be made to capture or kill bin Laden and eradicate al

Qaeda, but in the long term the only way to eectively deal with anti United

States terrorism is to reduce the motivation o terrorists to attack America in

the rst place. Poll ater poll in the Muslim world indicates that Muslims like

US political and economic reedoms, technology, and even culture but hate

US meddling in their world. Thus, practicing military restraint, rather than

interventionism, would make Americans saer at home. Protecting its citizensand property should be the rst goal o any government, but the US quest or

an inormal global empire actually undermines this objective. Empire does

not equal security in act, it sabotages it.

Even more important, overseas interventions and wars can lead to the

erosion o the system o checks and balances that promotes a diusion o

power in the US republic. War increases the presidents power and that o the

executive branch that he heads, because Congress, with many members and

opinions, is not suitable to run a war. The ounders intended Congress to bethe rst among equals among the three branches o the US government,

but the Spanish-American War and World Wars I and II caused the congres-

sionally dominated government o the late eighteenth century and nineteenth

centuries to give way to the president as the rst among equals by the end o

World War II. The long-term Cold War allowed presidents, beginning with

Harry Truman, to institutionalize presidential dominance o the other two

branches in what has been called the imperial presidency, which was a

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much stronger executive branch than the ounders had intended. Since 9/11,

what promises to be a long-term war on terror has already urther aug-

mented presidential power.

President Bush has claimed breathtaking executive powers during war-time and redened the right o the commander-in-chie by signing state-

ments that ignore laws passed by Congress and by fagrantly violating the law

and Constitution in authorizing domestic surveillance without a warrant. I

the threat o anti United States terrorism is not reduced by adopting a more

modest oreign policy, uture presidents will also take advantage o the war

against it to expand their powers to the peril o the republic. Foreign military

adventures led the Roman republic to transorm into the autocratic Roman

Empire. Similarly, oreign wars eroded democracy in ancient Athens. Finally,oreign intervention turned the French Revolution into the terror back

home. It is not out o the realm o possibility that the same could occur in the

United States. We have already started down that road. Erosion o republican

institutions is the most important ill eect o war, but the one least talked

about. To reduce the costs and dangers to the US public and political sys-

tem, the current US policy o hyperinterventionism should be reversed and a

policy o global military restraint should be adopted.

What a Policy of Global Restraint Might Look Like

The demise o the United States principal superpower rival, the Soviet Union,

should have rendered many places in the world less strategic to US interests.

Rising powers such as China, India, or a resurgent Russia will probably

take decades to rival the United States militarily, i they ever do.

Even i another potential hegemonic power arises, the United States might

adopt a less expensive and dangerous strategy than it did during the ColdWar vis--vis the Soviet Union. The United States should not have tried to

counter the rival superpower everywhere in the world, including in backwater

countries such as Korea (during the Korean War, South Korea was a poor

country), Vietnam, Angola, Grenada, Nicaragua, and so orth. Allowing the

Soviet Union to pay the costs o conquering, administering, and aiding these

economic basket cases would have caused its overextension much earlier.

Even in regions o great economic and technological power that is, Europe

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and East Asia the United States should have let its allies be the rst line

o deense.

The European Union now has a GDP that exceeds that o the United States

and could do much more or its own deense. In East Asia, the now wealthynations o Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Australia could band together

to be the rst line o deense against any turn by China toward militarism.

In each o these two regions, the United States could act as a second line o

deense that is, as a balancer-o-last-resort intervening only i the bal-

ance o power was disrupted and an aggressive hegemonic power threatened

to dominate either region.

Other areas o the world are much less developed and thereore nonstra-

tegic. I any other hegemonic power wants to conquer them, they will haveto pay the exorbitant cost o administering and aiding them, thus increasing

the likelihood o imperial overstretch and decline. Unortunately, now it is

the United States that is in danger o experiencing such overstretch as it tries

utilely to police the world and convert countries to democracy.

US military power is not even needed in the Persian Gul to protect sup-

plies o US oil. Oil is a valuable commodity, and Persian Gul countries are

heavily dependent on it to earn oreign exchange because they export little

else. They need to pump and sell the oil as much or more than Westernnations need to buy it. Indeed, the market will ensure that oil reaches the

West. Even i war or instability in the gul makes the price o oil go up, recent

experience has shown that industrialized economies are very resilient to high

oil price increases. For example, the oil price is now high by historical stan-

dards in part because the United States invaded and occupied Iraq, thus

causing instability in the gul but the US economy hasnt collapsed. Also,

rom the ourth quarter o 1998 to the third quarter o 2000, the eective

crude oil price in Germany skyrocketed 211 percent but the German econ-omy grew while experiencing alling unemployment and infation.11

Nevertheless, i US leaders persist in accepting the myth that the United

States must have military power in the Persian Gul to guard oil that will

fow anyway, they should at least withdraw US land-based orces (the Army,

11. Donald Losman, Economic Security: A National Security Folly? Cato Policy Analysis No.

409, 1 August 2001, www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=1268.

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Marines, and Air Force) stationed in the gul and bring in such orces rom

oshore only i a major danger to the oil arises. This change in policy would

eliminate the lightning rod o non-Muslim orces on Muslim lands, which

drives radical Islamists into the ranks o anti US terrorists. The oil eldswere successully deended using over-the-horizon orces brought in as

needed during Desert Shield and Desert Storm in 1991. At minimum, the

United States should go back to this posture, minimize or eliminate much

o its land-based military presence in the Persian Gul and abroad, and rely

on the American Navy overseas to deter anti US aggression and protect US

trade.

With this much lighter ootprint abroad, the United States also needs to

change its mindset. The countrys exhausted armed orces cannot withstandmany more Iraq-style quagmires. The good news is that, to ensure US secu-

rity, they dont need to endure such calamities. In the post Cold War and

post-9/11 era, only a ew areas in the world are strategic to the United States.

And even in these regions East Asia and Europe the United States can

quit providing security to rich allies (which are economic competitors) and

assume a balancer-o-last-resort strategy i such allies are conronted with a

severe threat rom a hegemonic power such as an expansionist China or a

resurgent and aggressive Russia.The United States is only endangering its homeland by meddling in non-

strategic areas and thus generating the potential or blowback anti US ter-

rorism. To reduce this risk, the United States should resist the unnecessary

urge to control events in backwater regions o the world. I the United States

needs limited strikes to destroy terrorist bases or camps, it can rely on the

Navy or Air Force bombers fying rom the United States.

A smaller ootprint abroad, especially in the Persian Gul, and a policy o

US global military restraint would cost less in blood and treasure, encouragewealthy US allies to take more responsibility or their own deense, be less

dangerous to the American public, and allow the US government to better

carry out its constitutional duty to deend US citizens and property without

endangering American democratic civil liberties and checks and balances.

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