Nor Are We Out of It

Those are the lines Marlowe put into the mouth of the demon Mephistofeles in Dr. Faustus, “Why, this is Hell, nor are we out of it.”  Sartre put it more succinctly in No Exit, “Hell is other people.”  And Sherman most precisely, with “War is Hell.”  So, we cautiously begin our benevolent journey to save one group of people by destroying another, and the air does once more grow dim and sulfurous. But we lack even Mephistofeles’ excuse, “Thinkest thou that one who has seen the face of God and tasted the eternal joys of Heaven can but suffer 10 thousand Hells in the memory of their loss?” – Hell loves company.  We resume again the Never-Ending War, and as we slog on through the 21^st century battling a ceaseless war in the Middle East with one hand and ceaseless climate change with the other, we may indeed come to remember the 20^th century as heavenly.

I know all the good reasons for re-entering the fray, and they are good. It is clearly intended as a humanitarian effort on our part to stop the brutal slaughter of innocents.  That supports the containment principle of firm resistance to any behaviors, like Assad’s use of chemical warfare, that are clearly contrary to international law.  The common assertion these days that we are inconsistent in our Middle Eastern policy stems from a failure to recognize what our policies actually are.  But it is also clear that a  significant part of that slaughter is a deliberate attempt to egg us on to enter the war and stir up the “arab street” against another incursion by the West into Arab affairs.  That is how ISIL’s brutality differs from that of Assad, and we have to take that into account.  I respect the cautious way we are proceeding, complete with vows of “No boots on the ground”, though our military seems already champing at the bit to stroll through desert sand again.  The one big reason to enter would be that it would make a difference.  If it does not make a difference, then even the principles of Just War do not support our being there. Our military seems to think it would, but of course every war in the history of the world has started with that premise. The big reason for not going in is that any success on our part that does make a difference will shift the power balances between multitudes of warring factions.  That will inevitably be perceived as taking sides in an internal war, and increase Middle Eastern resentments against us.  At best, it may result in collapse of a faction we don’t like, the “bad guys”, but that in turn would produce a premature pause without real resolution of conflicts only they can resolve. And that would generate only the seeds of continued conflict, not lasting peace.

So, what are we to do? Nuanced diplomacy does not seem to work with ISIL.  As with Missouri mules, first you have to get their attention.  But the rest of the Middle East will require a lot of the nuanced approach.  We need to respect the views of Middle Eastern governments, even those we don’t get along with like Iran. And part of our demands need to be a quieting down on their part of the bad-mouthing we are constantly getting; “public diplomacy” needs to be a big part of our arsenal.  On balance, the course proposed by the Administration seems as close to workable as we may get. But the generals may have to be told to stop their “Let, me in, coach” chaffing. They may be absolutely right that total victory cannot be achieved without “boots on the ground”, but sometimes total victory cannot be the goal. Total peace in the Middle East may not include total military victory on our part.  As Bismarck noted, sometimes “War is too important to be left to generals.”  

Learning an Outside Voice

One old joke I love is about the guy who kept getting hangovers from scotch and soda, switched to bourbon and soda, then to vodka and soda, still getting hangovers all the way.  So he gave up soda. It’s also a teaching tool in logic and methodology classes, like the story about the statistician who drowned wading a creek with an average depth of six inches.  The jokes remind you to look beneath the surface for hidden variables and to avoid simple post hoc – propter hoc (it comes after that, so that must have caused it) reasoning.  History classes taught me also that (in the words of one of my teachers), any theory that attributes historical change to one cause is wrong.  But it seems doubtful that many of our politicians have ever gotten those messages.

I’m annoyed that so many politicians, from both parties, are attributing the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, the expansion of China in Asia and the multitude of conflicts in the Middle East all to a lack of firmness in U.S. foreign policy.  They seem anxious to violate all the precepts of logic and History at once.  An old colleague of mine used to warn during Cold War days of the “nationalities problem” Russia would face when the Soviet Union blew apart.  That’s just part of the problem Putin is taking on with Ukraine, and it will get much worse for him should he succeed there. It’s not the same problem as in the Far East, where China is flexing new-felt economic muscle like a teen-ager or new entrepreneur, or in the Middle East, where the birth pangs of replacing an ancient culture with a 21^st century globalism will probably be felt for another century.   But our politicians seem eager for the U.S. to take on a global governance problem by firm suppression of all age-old national strife, whatever its origin, wherever it occurs, using the outworn cold war strategy of knocking heads together.  They still seem in love with the Pax Romana.

One problem is the failure of both patience and continuity. Conflicts that have endured a thousand years, like the Sunni-Shiite strife in the Middle East will not end overnight.  And no outsider will resolve them, only the combined pressures of global change.  In other places, like Russia, the internal economic failures arising from repression will do the job, but not instantly.  In Asia, many of the issues are struggles for economic dominance papered over with flag waving. While China declares victory over Japan in WWII a national holiday, Japan and India reach out to each other in mutual trade and defense agreements to combat what India calls “expansionism.”  A modus Vivendi will be reached.  Globally, growing pressures from climate change plus increasing dominance of multi-national corporations will eventually generate “a new world order”.  We need to shape it, but we cannot determine it.

Meanwhile, American foreign policy is known in other countries for its short-term horizons, with wild swings that cannot be relied on based on our domestic politics.  Foreign Policy in practice takes place in obscure embassies and trading centers around the world.  It is not just speeches by the President or Secretary of State.  But at present, for example, Fareed Zakaria reports that 67 ambassadorial appointments are waiting in vain an average of 267 days for Senate approval because of filibusters. The proposed appointments include 40 for skilled career ambassadors in places like Africa, where there are currently 13 vacancies, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Asia. That creates vacuums in our foreign policy presence in key parts of the world. Tea Partiers are threatening not to renew funding for the Export-Import Bank at the end of September.  The Bank, similar to those in 60 other countries, is a key player in providing credit for exports. Such domestic partisan disputes enable countries like China to eat our lunch in places like Africa.  Terms of office for our agency heads are even shorter than those of politicians, and policy changes accordingly.  But we are living in an age of transition, as most periods of history are, where longer views and policies are needed, and we have to come to terms with that.  Our policy will be as firm as we allow it to be.

Another problem is the failure to recognize the changing nature of international power.  Power is based on dependency relationships, and as those change in a globalized world, so do the power relationships.  Scotland has its own source of income from North Sea oil, and its political relationships with the UK are struggling with change accordingly. Russia is seeing a sharp rise in its exports to China relative to the EU, and power changes are coming from that.  And as technological changes sweep the world they generate political change and strife.  The “Arab Spring” was accompanied by graffiti on falling walls thanking Facebook.  

A kind of blindness toward the realities of foreign policy – the “bust your opponent in the chops!” attitude of political activists and the herd mentality of journalists are obvious causes – exists as well.  When one looks at the world without such partisan lenses, the principles of current American foreign policy   are evident. Three principles, self-determination, multilateralism and containment, stand out as the guiding ones and are being practiced reasonably firmly.  The principle of self-determination is as old as this country, and should not be controversial.  But when practicing it means letting combatants in other parts of the world fight it out until one destroys the other, or both are exhausted, abiding by it gets much harder.   It requires the patience and long view I’ve mentioned we are so short of.  Multilateralism has to be the working principle in a multi-polar, global world, or else we force ourselves into becoming the new Rome; such empires are not lasting ones.  The third principle, containment, seems the hardest one for us to grasp.  During the Cold War, containment essentially meant confining the Soviet Union into its existing territory, something we still seek to do in Ukraine, and to some extent, with ISIL.  But its main meaning today in our foreign policy is more the kind of containment practiced by parents with multiple kids in the back seat on cross-country trips. It means confinement within acceptable norms of international behavior, a difficult process with kids in a car, and even more difficult with parts of the world which have conflicting traditional norms.  Beheading is as ancient as the Middle East, and is still practiced in Saudi Arabia, but it went out elsewhere hundreds of years ago.  Borders are transparent these days and sometimes almost meaningless.  Norms are important as the world gradually integrates into a global community.  The Obama Administration seems mostly to have grasped this, and to be practicing it with reasonable skill, though, as with parenting, there are successes and failures.  It has not yet articulated the principle in ways that can be seriously discussed.  In part, this is because often such containment has to apply both to opponents and allies, and sometimes between allies, and publicly telling allies they need containment gets awkward, as in the Palestinian-Israeli conflicts.

The   biggest issue is the entwinement of both domestic and foreign policy.  In the old days, partisanship mostly ended at the border.  There was an American consensus that when the President was abroad, the country was speaking with one voice, even if we disagreed with parts of his message. Now it appears there remains no consensus on anything.  Everyone is an expert, and no one is.  Our domestic economic differences dominate our thinking about behaviors around the world.  As a nation, we need to stop, take a breath, and remember we are one country to the rest of the world.  We need to show that.