(from lecture at American University OLLI, May 2024.
American foreign policy is at a dead end.
After the 20 years of wasted lives and treasure in Iraq & Afghanistan, we now are now:
-stuck in an unwinnable proxy war in the Ukraine,
-collaborators in the ethnic cleansing horror without end in Gaza and the West Bank.
-losing a 20-year war on terror in Africa.
-openly planning for a war with China over Taiwan that our own military thinks we can’t win.
-stripped of our claim to be the world’s moral leader and peacemaker.
Imperialism? Hush!
What remains is our dominant global military presence.
We have 750 bases around the world, spend more on the armaments than the next 10 ten largest military powers, and are the world largest weapons exporter. The US Navy patrols 7 seas. The Coast Guard, mandated to protect our country’s shores, now extends around the world from the Persian Gulf to the coast of China.
Global “full spectrum dominance” (land, sea, air and cyberspace) has been the xplicit purpose foreign policy under Biden, Trump, Obama, the 2 Bushs, and Clinton.
We don’t of course physically occupy all the countries in our orbit. But like most earlier empires our military and economic power allows us to rule through client elites who accept our direction.
We have been able to pay for all this it because the unique status of the dollar, dating from the end of World War II, that lets us repay money borrowed from foreigners with own currency. In effect, settling our debts with IOUs.
A simpler term for “global full spectrum dominance” is “empire”. By comparison, the empires of China, Rome, Spain, England at the height of their power produced 25-30 percent of their world’s GDP. At its height the US produced 50 %.
The people who manage our empire know what they are doing: Thus, Carter’s national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski routinely referred to Europe as a US “vassal” and Americans as equivalent to roman pro-consuls.
But that word “empire” makes us uncomfortable. It conjures up images of Roman legions, Spanish conquistadors, and 19th century European colonial oppressors.
So, we use euphemisms, such as leadership, indispensable nation, enforcer of the rule-of — law, to obscure the nature of our presence in the world.
As historian Niall Ferguson — a supporter of American imperialism — once observed: “the great thing about the American empire, is that so many Americans disbelieve its existence.”
No wonder, since it doesn’t affect us much.
We live comfortably behind the moats of two great oceans separating us from Asia and Europe. After the Vietnam War revealed our reluctance to make personal sacrifices for the empire, Richard Nixon ended the draft. Ten years later, Ronald Reagan showed Republicans that dollar supremacy allowed us to pursue war without war taxes.
For most of us, wars became something to watch on tv and cheer for Team America. And when bored, turn to another channel.
Distance breeds indifference. – and ignorance. When the Iraq war began, 90% of Americans said they supported our invasion; 15 % could find Iraq on map
Not just ordinary citizens looked away. When news leaked recently that 4 American soldiers were killed in a firefight in Niger, most members of congress – charged by the constitution to decide on war — said they didn’t know the US had any troops there. And didn’t seem to care. After admitting his ignorance, Senator Lindsay Graham said: “I can say this to the families. They were there to defend America.”
Search the internet and you’ll find plenty of discussing and political bickering over specific conflicts. Gaz, Ukraine China. But no serious national discussion of the question that a reasonably curious American citizen might ask: what the hell are we doing out there in all these places?
Why Are we there?
Now, there is a place where this question is supposed to be answered. The law requires that Presidents submit their national security strategy to Congress every 2 years – although in practice it’s been once a term.
The curious citizen who reads them will find the answer always same. Whatever we’re doing, it’s in the “national interest.” The term is sprinkled like fairy dust over foreign policy discussions.
George Bush’s version refers to America’s interests 24 times. Barack Obama’s, 29 times. Donald Trump’s 67 times.[i]. Joe Biden’s 53 times.[1]
The closest these documents come to explaining what we are doing in the world are three generalities on protection, prosperity and principle.
Protection?
The first claim is that we fight all over the world to defend Americans at home.
The curious citizen might ask: against whom?
Neither Russia, nor Iran or Hamas, nor China, Cuba or Syria. nor our many other designated enemies threaten an unprovoked attack on Americans.
But, what about the attack of 9/11?
George Bush II said they attacked because “they hate ourfreedoms — our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other”
Osama bin laden, who masterminded the attacked, said was in retaliation for the 40,000 American troops stationed in Saudi Arabia. In other words, they attacked us not because of what we do here, but because of what we were doing there.
But what about the future? We are constantly told that if the Russians succeed in taking over the Russian-speaking 20% of the Ukraine and stopping the Ukraine from joining NATO their next step will be the Baltics. Then Poland. Then Western Europe and then…?
But despite its nuclear weapons, Russia is at best a 2nd rate military power – with an economy the size of Italy’s – after 2 years still can’t defeat the much smaller Ukraine.
We’re told the same story about Iran in the middle east, China in the pacific, terrorists in Africa, and so forth — we must kill them before they kill us.
The Vietnam war’s discredited domino theory lives on. To justify the war, at that time, Americans were assured that if the communists won, they would take over the rest of southeast Asia. And then India and Australia.
Well, communists won. In 60 years, they have not moved an inch. A unified Vietnam is now a major US trading partner & informal ally against China.
Despite the huge unaudited tens of billions they spend on intelligence gathering, our leaders got it wrong in Vietnam.
In Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Somalia, and in the African Sahel. They got it wrong about 9/11, wrong that free trade with China would turn that country into a US satellite. Eight days before the recent Hamas attack on Israel’s fronteir, Biden’s national security advisor assured Americans that middle east was quieter than it had been in 2 decades.
Yesterday’s NYTimes carried a long analysis of how, during Afghan war , our governmentt promoted the career of a war lord who was a vicious murderer and torturer, alienating his own people. Wrote the reporters: “it helps explain how little the US understood about the war it was waging”and why we lost.”
Prosperity?
The National Security Strategy paper’s
second point is we need to dominate the world to “expand economic opportunity and prosperity for Americans.”
In other words, we are expected to believe that spending close to a trillion dollars a year on a bloated, inefficient and in some areas, corrupt, national security system that is not audited – make us richer!
Yet, we have been running trade and fiscal for 45 years. Since 1970s, investment in our collective future –infrastructure, civilian technology education health has not kept up with our needs. Our best technical minds are set to work on killing people, our kids school performance has been dropping steadily, and the health care system is in chaos. And China is eating our economic lunch – having caught up and is now racing ahead in robotics, e-cars and green technologies.
Even now we cannot fulfill the weapons production we’ve promised to Taiwan and the Ukraine.
It is not just a question of budget.
As the stalemate in the Congress over aid to the Ukraine showed, deep political divisions on our governing classes are paralyzing our government.
Solving the problems at home– inequality, rising authoritarianism, intolerance – will require a huge mobilization of political as well as financial capital. During, three presidencies barely 17 % of Americans thought that our government mostly does the right thing, down from 80 percent several decades ago. Moreover, effective global cooperation on climate change, nuclear proliferation and mass forced migration is impossible to imagine in a situation where the US, China, Russia, and Western Europe constantly see each other as enemies.
Perversely, an increasing number of pundits are suggesting that only war can bring Americans together.
Principles?
The third argument of the strategy papers is that we have some obligation to promote, even impose our notions of democracy, human rights and peace.
Our imperial foreign policy makes that claim hypocritical. One would think a “champion of the rule of law” would certainly be a member of the international court of justice. And a signatory to the law of the sea, and treaties against land mines, and cluster bombs.
The network of “democratic” alliances we have around the world includes dictatorships, monarchies, military juntas and thoroughly corrupt oligarchies and regimes that routine practice torture as a form of law and order.
Authoritarian politics is on the rise in all over the world in places we claim to have spent decades promoting democratic values,
However noble we think our intentions, our interventions in the Ukraine, the Middle East, in Africa have brough have brought instability, destruction, suffering and death
Here at home, the war in Gaza has erupted campuses in fear and intolerance. Members of congress accuse those who question our policy in the Far East as being collaborators with Chinese communism.
Liberal pundits tell us darkly that many Americans want Putin to win. Last week, a 70-year-old professor was held by the FBI at the Detroit airport force no other reason than to interrogate him on his political beliefs.
And the violent mind-set that already induces our gun-saturated culture is spreading further. We just learned that an upside-down flag signaling support for the January 6th insurrectionists was flying at the home of a supreme court justice.
We Americans are culturally optimistic. We like the sunny side of the street. But the shadows are getting longer. I am feminded of the Woody Allen skit where preacher tells his congregation that they face a choice between two sinful paths. One leads to disaster, and the other to catastrophe. Let us pray, he says, that we have the wisdom to choose between them.
Is There Another Road?
Maybe. But it requires a realistic road map.
The first thing to face is that the American empire is collapsing. And history shows us that stubbornly clinging to a collapsing empire will not end well.
Our foreign policy is not the sole cause of our domestic problems. But as Lyndon Johnson tragically found out 60 years ago, we cannot create a war against poverty, intolerance and suffering at home, while we are causing death and suffering abroad.
There might have been a moment when it was at least possible for us to do both. After collapse of Soviet Union, we might have led the world to a system of just, stable global governance, and provided for a peace dividend at home.
But we blew it. Instead of honoring our stated intention of ending the Cold War by not moving NATO an inch eastward beyond Germany, we have pushed it all the way to the Russian border. And we accelerated the aggression beyond Europe. As a study by Tufts University reported, in 43 years of cold war, America intervened militarily other countries 46 times. Twenty-five years after Cold War ended, had intervened in other countries 188 times.
So, it is time to think about the unthinkable.
Which brings me to another word even more beyond the pale of serious political discussion: Isolationism.
In the protocols of mainstream political debate, the word is widely misused — not only considered pejorative, but lunatic.
To clear away one misconception, Isolationism is not pacifism. The common ad homonym attack on those who question our imperial policies is, “You wouldn’t have gone to war against Hitler.” For what it’s worth – I was not old enough to enlist at the time — I’m sure I would have. But neither Putin, Iranian Ayatollahs nor the Chinese leaders are Hitler.
Contrary to our common belief, the US did not go to war to save the Jews. Nor to liberate France. Nor to bring democracy to Europe. We went to war because Hitler first declared war on us, thinking that right after Pearl Harbor we’d be too busy with Japan. Obviously, a big mistake.
Today, we have another misdefinition. The word Isolationist is most often applied to Donald Trump. To avoid confusion – I am a lifelong progressive democrat and intend to vote for joe Biden in November.
In any event, Trump is no Isolationist.
Consider: as president, he owned at least 144 separate businesses in 26 countries. He used the presidency to expand his corporate empire throughout the world. He is
surrounded by people with financial interests in Russia, China, Europe, Central and South America and the Middle East. Remember, Trump’s makes his money from luxury hotels and resorts, which depend on a global tourist market.
Trump is a demagogue. Not an ideologue. Foreign policy for him is personal, opportunistic and aggressive.
He loves Russia’s Putin, North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and China’s xi Jingping and tic-Tok on Tuesday. He hates them on Wednesday. On Thursday he wants to invite them to the While House.
Pondering what Trump thinks about the specifics of foreign policy is a waste of time. But clearly, he doesn’t want to distance himself from the world, he wants to dominate it – alone.
The fundamental difference between Trump—and the so-called internationalist presidents– Biden, Obama, the Bushes and Clinton — is not that they didn’t want America to dominate the world. But they knew we can’t do it alone, which is why they have ringed the world with military alliances.
Trump’s “America First” rhetoric echoes the fascist antisemitic movements of the 1930’s. Yet America was never close to becoming fascist isolationist state. At the height of those rightwing movements Franklin Roosevelt won the 1936 election in a landslide. Four years later Republicans nominated an internationalist for {resident.
But a different form of isolationism did characterize the America in an earlier, much longer epoch.
A Bit of History
From the founding of our country until World War II the default foreign policy was staying out of other people’s business.
For 150 years America was guided by the warnings of George Washington to avoid “foreign entanglements.” And john Quincy Adams who warned against “roaming the world seeking monsters to destroy.”
Nevertheless, this “isolationist” America traded with the world, signed treaties, and embraced immigration. Its citizens traveled and interacted with others on culture and, science and technological progress.
Yes, it was morally stained by the brutal ethnic cleansing of native Americans and the war with Mexico. But the primary business of America was its own domestic development, which among other things, enabled the north’s industrial power to finally destroy America’s original sin of slavery.
The 1898 war with Spain violated these isolationist principles. But it was brief. As was us involvement in World War I, which soon after most Americans thought was a mistake,
By 1938, the US Army was smaller Portugal’s.
Four hundred thousand American soldiers died in World War II. But, the civilian population of 132 million remained safely protected by our ocean-moats. . Moreover, the war brought prosperity. In a few short years the unemployment rate fell from 25 to about one percent.
Victory and rising living standards created a belief in America’s exceptional wisdom, military strength, and moral superiority. Bill Clinton’s Secretary of State Madeleine Albright famously called us the ‘indispensible nation”. Why? Because “we stand taller and see further than other people.”
Herb Stein, Richard Nixon’s chief economist, once wryly remarked that if something can’t last forever, it probably won’t. That includes the America empire.
In the sense of the global power and influence of its governing class, America is on an inevitable decline.
But that doesn’t mean Americans have to be on the decline. We remain a huge rich nation now faced with the task of rebuilding.
Which brings me to my case for a progressive isolationism. Not just pulling back, but pull out
So, what specifically?
Dodging the Bullets
For starters, we need to drag our Ukraine clients to the negotiating table with Russia. Victory is a delusion. The only way to stop the slaughter and to preserve the Ukraine is a deal in which Russia controls the Russian speaking eastern part of the Ukraine and agrees to let the rest of the Ukraine develop economically and politically as it wants — free to join the European Union, but not NATO, which is a military alliance against Russia. We should aim for an agreement like the Cold War arrangement with Austria where both side guaranteed neutrality.
Second, we need to pull out of the Middle East quagmire. We no longer need to control the Arabs oil to develop our economy, And Israel no longer needs our protection.
It is the strongest military by far in the Middle East and possesses nuclear weapons. It can take care of itself.
And only way to save what is left of the Palestinians as a people, is to stop supporting Israeli’s genocide
We should pull out of war on terror in Africa, which has tragically backfired. After twenty years, the Pentagon’s own analysis tells us that terrorism has relentlessly spread — with the help of the weapons with which we have flooded the region.
We should also halt the momentum toward war with China. Time to accept that China is inevitably going to be the dominant power in east Asia –and perhaps in compet4ition with India for regional dominance. But that is not our business.
Why should not we return to the agreement that Nixon and Kissinger negotiated 50 years ago, in which we recognized Taiwan is historically part of China and the Chinese agree to suspend their claim. Not a neat solution, but it kept the peace.
Finally, we need to untangle ourselves from the senseless spaghetti of military alliances around the world. That includes NATO. As lomng as the US leads it, the Europeans – who are as rich as we are and possess nuclear weapons – will not take responsibility for their own defense needs.
So, if we pull out of these places, what becomes of the us role in the world?
America as a World Citizen
First, we should be good world citizens – which most American support. This means paying our dues and participating in genuine humanitarian and peace-keeping operations with others.
Second, it means working to solve the global problems common to all. Foremost are global warming, nuclear non-proliferation, and forced migration.
Without the excuse of protecting the troops we have spread throughout the world, we might also just join the international court of justice, the law of the sea and bans on cluster bombs & land mines.
Third, it means becoming more responsible for our own neighborhood. Helping the economic development of the nations south of our borders is the only possible long-term solution to the one foreign policy issue – illegal migration — that most Americans care about.
If you believe that we Americans are in mortal danger from the rest of the world, this set of policies makes little sense. Instead. it follows that we should continue to arm ourselves to the teeth, prepare for World War III and start praying.
But if you believe that the empire may have outlived its usefulness to us and the rest of the world, then it’s time to consider dismantling it, and devoting our resources, and political energy to rebuilding our own endangered democracy — before its too late.
[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Biden-Harris-Administrations-National-Security-Strategy-10.2022.pdf