Really, How'd it Get This Way?

Why can't America mind its own business? I posed the question earlier and touched on it briefly. But it's a question intruiguing enough to answer, and it comes from an opinion common enough to rile me. Since World War II, every American policy has been built around an interventionist approach to foreign affairs - even the most Wilsonian and internationalist of policies lead us into conflicts - from Korea to Kosovo, good intentions lead to the use of American power abroad. Why can't we be like every other nation?

There are several flaws to this argument, and even then it takes valances - the purely isolationist and the multilateralist being most prominent. These posts often reek of the strawman fallacy, but I assure you I have heard these arguments made.

The first is that, quite simply, America is not like every other nation. We are still one fifth of the world's economy. This is not to say that economic might paves the way for diplomatic right, but it is a figure you should keep in mind. America is still a bull in a china shop. Even when it lies down to sleep, it is still going to knock something over. Other countries expect things of the most powerful countries, especially when they are the only one that can deploy power anywhere in the world. Even with the rise of China, you are not going to see comparable military power. American aircraft will still patrol the Taiwan Strait and American carriers will still linger in the East China Sea. But I will bet money that you will not live to see Chinese CVNs at a permanent base in Hispanola or 30,000 PLA troops in Guatemala. India is even less prepared for a role as a military superpower. Russia virtually ended naval construction and its strategic air capabilities are unlikely to return to Cold War capabilities (Even Russia's traditional strong point, missile technology is on the wane - reporting botched Topol tests is a taboo subject in Putin's Russia). The EU might be least prepared of all potential superpowers - Europe includes powers, but it is not a power itself. The EU, internally, is a remarkable institution. But it is less than the sum of its parts beyond its own borders. (One could, of course, argue that we don't need any superpower lording over anyone, but this would be to assume there are no genuinely international problems or concerns that require a forceful resolution. History shows rather well that there are, and such an attitude generally results in the triumph of the nastiest superpowers.)

Even if we do have a role to play, then who will help us do it? This is the multilateralist form of the argument. Who wants to do what we do? If Europe is on the rise and will some day act as a unified power beyond its own borders, then it is the most logical ideological heir to America's role. So too, people would argue, it could also be America's successor in practical terms - after all, KFOR was representative of NATO, ISAF's non-American component is largely European, etc. But do they want to?

The answer, overwhelmingly, is no. Britain is a telling example. Iraq? Britain's been there, and it bought the T-shirt. Afghanistan? Also not a positive experience. But it's not just Britain: Europe is tired of anything that smells of empire. Want to see multilateral, institution-based, trans-Atlantic cooperation? French socialists are trying to avoid entering the NATO unified command structure precisely so they don't have to contribute or defer their national interest to others. When the choice comes down to spending more on the military so half of it doesn't walk away so they can fight wars of choice or maintaining a massive amount of morally unquestionable entitlement programs, which way do you think a democratic European country will swing? There are willing Eastern European countries, to be sure - the ones who remember American favors and Soviet boots, but Western Europe is sensibly enough more concerned about angering its petroleum supplier than getting more Ukranians in ISAF.

But the truth is, Europeans know issues like a potential Iraqi collapse, a crisis in the Taiwan Straits, and war in the Korean peninsula are real issues - they'd just rather have someone else dump half their discretionary spending into the military and hundreds of thousands of soldiers into permanent overseas bases. International security is a public good, and public goods are free rider problems. The UN will not likely be the "government" that resolves such problems when they appear on a national scale. Giving the US, UK, France, Russia and China vetoes alone is problematic enough, proposals to make the council more representative by giving the same to Germany, Japan, India, Brazil, and an Islamic Player to be Named Later is not going to help. So the superpower among great powers often does the work of others. To go back to Afghanistan's long history of interventions...

"On another hand, it's absolutely clear that Nato countries, and Great Britain among them, they are doing our job," he adds.

"Now western countries are doing our job and support tremendously Russian security."

There's the Catch-22 of American foreign policy. When our actions serve the interests of all international players, we will bear the brunt of the costs. When they do not, there will be fewer to help with whatever ones we do not.

But what about the 1990s? Or, to put it in a partisan manner, what about the Clinton administration? Our unipolarity then was also unquestioned, but we now nostalgically look back upon it as an era of hope for multilateral policy and the international rule of law. Well, part of that is justified. And much of it is a kneejerk reaction to the misguided policies of George W. Bush. But it is important to remember that while Bush's interest in nation-building came after 9/11, the neoconservatism of his advisors was already there. PNAC's letter petitioning Clinton to depose Saddam went out in 1998. Its famed "Rebuilding America's Defenses" came out in 1997.

Let's review:

• The Battle of Mogadishu, 1993 - You've seen the movie, maybe even read the book, but the American withdrawal here was emblamatic of much of what neoconservatives thought was wrong about American foreign policy.
• The Rwandan genocide, 1994 - The US decides to "do what everyone else is doing," which, in a collective action problem, is absolutely nothing. Using force to protect human rights starts looking like a good idea again.
  
• Operation Deliberate Force, Bosnia, 1995 - NATO bombs the Balkans to the peace table. Russia prevents the UN from doing anything constructive.
• 3rd Taiwan Straits Crisis, 1995-1996 - China launches missiles over Taiwan, Chinese generals imply they would use nuclear arms against American cities if the US intervened. These war fears persist well into the beginning of Bush's first term... And then 9/11 happens. This is why PNAC is writing letters about rebuilding America's defenses.
  
• Operation Desert Fox, Iraq, 1998 - Iraq refuses to comply with inspectors. America bombs Iraq, and Clinton signs the Iraq Liberation Act that supports anti-Saddam militias. The aforementioned PNAC letter to go further comes here.
• Operation Infinite Reach, Afghanistan, Sudan, 1998 - In response to the African embassy bombings, the US bombs a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan and other targets in Afghanistan. Russia and the Muslims are angry, but the US is still riding enough goodwill from the attacks on its embassies that Europe gives it the general OK.
  
• Operation Allied Force, Kosovo, 1999 - Similar story, slightly different location. The phrase "humanitarian bombing" is used intentionally by NATO spokespersons. KFOR - Western troops - are on the ground. Criticisms include the questionable use of UN resolutions as a justification, undermining of the international system, the unnecessary escalation of conflict due to a misreading of the target nation's actions, and committing the US to nation-building. Only this time, it's conservatives saying the latter rather than liberals.

Obviously, these events were not as blatantly unilateral as Bush's. Iraq was the first in a line of major military operations (1st, 2nd Balkans interventions, Afghanistan) to be without the backing of a multilateral institution. But I think the issue is not how we lost the goodwill America enjoyed in the 1990s, because by 1999 we were on our way to losing it (to extrapolate a counterfactual history, if we continued our interventionist projects into the 2000s without 9/11, a lot of the world, and NATO, would likely still be somewhat mad with us. Another counterfactual: if 9/11 occurred under a Clinton administration, how much less would we really overreact?). The issue is how we lost the world's goodwill after 9/11. Gitmo and the Green Zone explain most of that. I do not intend to assert or imply Clinton was as nearly as disastrous for foreign policy as Bush was.

Yet the system was broken before Bush came into power. Bin Laden escalated the war on terror, and when we escalated we found out we didn't know how to fight. Yes, George W. Bush was not the optimal in his conduct, to put it lightly. (Neither is he necessarily the worst - remember that we have yet to invade Syria, Iran and Pakistan as the doomsayers predicted. John McCain could have been President in 2001, too.) But the blowback we are reaping now is not all from Bush. Ossetia and Abkhazia are once again on the brink of war. Russia wraps up its support for these Georgian breakaway regions in a tu quoques argument based around NATO support for Kosovo. It would also be foolish to discuss Putin's hawkish tendencies without noting the US-lead effort to incorporate former Soviet puppets in 1999, or to discuss European skepticism (and Russian paranoia) about American hawkishness without remembering in 1999 when fellow NATO commanders refused to follow Wesley Clark's orders to start World War III.

The wounds of Afghanistan, Iraq, and America's looming confrontation with the reality of its own unpreparedness for a "global war on terrorism" were open, we've just spent the last 8 years worsening them. Modern advocates of multilateralism argue that while the US was a unipolar power in the 1990s, it was not unlimited in its capabilities or grossly irresponsible in its actions; and thus aggressive, unilateral policy cannot be used as the baseline for its 21st century actions. I agree, and I add: while multilateral systems in the 1990s were certainly more effective, they were limited in their capabilities and appeared increasingly irresponsible to those whose interests they did not serve. The problems inherent in these multilateral systems that lead, in part, to our rejection of them, still exist, because they are entrenched in these organizations themselves.

America cannot and will not act like just another country, or a nicely fitting cog in a multilateral regime because the system it inhabits will not permit such a policy. The abdication of international responsibility, to borrow a phrase from Therese Delpech, applies not only to America's conduct in the beginning of the 21st century but also to the reluctance of its presumptive allies in sacrificing their own limited self-interest and the actions of its rivals. The multilateral system will not live up to the expectations American internationalists are today setting for it as long as all the major players refuse to cooperate, whether that means the US, Europe, NATO as a whole, or Russia or China. But it is also worth noting that these international systems are more effective when they have a clear leader to guide them, as is the case when NATO acts. To the extent that the world becomes more multipolar, this too will be more difficult.

The "orderly" systems that are able to govern great powers are often, historically, self-defeating in the long run and thus require the work of a great diplomat to create and sustain them. When that diplomat is gone, the system breaks down. Metternich's system collapsed when there was no Metternich to defend it from Bismarck. Bismarck's realpolitik and "great wheel" failed when he was no longer around to keep it from imploding on itself. Wilson's system of internationalism was perhaps more disconnected with the reality in Europe than the previously mentioned ones, but it is unquestionable that the lack of his direct presence in the League of Nations and the lack of a suitable successor contributed to its failure. For our century, we have no adequate international order or system guarantee its stability, and we will likely need a great diplomat to build one. Unfortunately, "not being George W. Bush" is not a sufficient qualification. This system is too compromised, I fear, for anything less than brilliance and luck to fix it.

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That was a lot longer than I intended.