Quo Vadis American Foreign Policy?
Monday, November 5, 2012 at 9:53AM During the third Presidential debate the international community watched two hawks almost equally making the case for continued American ‘leadership’ – alas hegemony – around the globe.
While Mitt Romney emphasized his foreign policy relied on the strength of America’s forces, the President argued it was his ‘job to keep Americans safe’, thus embracing a policy that increasingly has relied on pursuing so-called enemy-combatants with drones.[1]
In one of the few more heated moments of an otherwise intellectually non-challenging ‘debate’-that-was-none, Mitt Romney called for a more ‘complex strategy’ in US foreign policy that would focus on ‘how extremism could be rejected by people around the globe’. The contender raised the ongoing violence in Syria, new challenges in Mali, that the ‘hopes we had for that region’ <of the Middle East> were starting to unravel; the gravest threat being, according to Romney an Iran armed with nuclear weapons. All in all, America was witnessing a ‘dramatic reversal’ of positive developments the 'Arab Spring' had promised. The challenger congratulated the President for ‘taking out Osama Bin Laden’, however, America could not ‘kill itself out of this mess’. According to Romney, America needed to help the ‘world of Islam to reject this violent extremism’, which presented a threat to America, to its friends and allies and the world as a whole.
In his response, the President emphasized that under his leadership the war in Iraq had been ended, the leadership of Al Qaeda ‘decimated’;[2] overall the focus of his administration had rightfully so been on 'those who killed us on 9/11’. According to the President, it was now necessary for ‘Afghans to take responsibility for their own security’.[3] As Norman Solomon has argued, American Presidents from Nixon to Bush have lied to their constituencies and manipulated them into embracing war. Once events on the ground had started to go wrong - with growing numbers of American (and civilian) casualties - calls to bring the troops home ensued. This on the other hand would have caused Presidents to 'call for peace', while still radicalizing the means of continued war by other means. President Nixon in that regard had spoken about going from ‘Americanizing the war in Vietnam to Vietnam-izing the search for peace’.[4]
The third Presidential debate raised none of the crucial questions that Americans have been and will have to ponder with in the light of enormous global challenges in the 21st century. No mention of the costs of war to American and global civil society; no (sufficient) debate about balancing ‘soft’ and ‘hard power’ in American foreign and security policy. No significant reflection about America’s waning influence around the globe due to the lack of credibility in American leadership, which its irresponsible foreign policy has caused particularly over this past decade. No discussion about which role globally served America’s people best – beyond and above the abysmal legacy of the so-called ‘war against terror’ that Americans and any vision of ‘America the beautiful’ can’t afford to wage any longer. No mentioning of the consequences – or ‘blow back’ of American meddling (by its own security agencies, such as the CIA or private security firms) in the affairs of other nation-states around the globe over the past decades, whether during the Cold War, or now in the aftermath of 9/11, which witnessed America entering center stage in the new ‘Great Game’ of the 21st century: the new competition for geo-political dominance, since European-led colonialism has ended (officially).[5] Last but not least, no mentioning of other international challenges, which would go beyond national security concerns, such as global warming, and how America through invention and new investments in technology could take a leadership role to avert the enormous and evident risks of global warming.
This debate was disappointing to anybody seriously interested in global affairs and still hoping for a return of American (leadership) to a more humble and self-reflective course. From a transatlantic perspective, the question is who of the two contenders would put more emphasis on Europe as an ally, friend and partner, particularly when it comes to global challenges that exceed America’s most pressing national security concerns? Who might look to Europe as a source of advice, potentially? Obama’s record, for instance with regard to managing the European debt crisis – holding European 'indecisiveness' responsible for America’s self-caused economic woes – has not been outstanding in that particular regard. From a German perspective, under Obama, the US has started to close military bases in Germany, to shift its foreign and security policy focus from Europe to Asia, the Pacific and Africa. And, Germany and the US have increasingly not looked eye to eye when it came to challenges in the Middle East. This trend seems to have unprecedented levels over the war in Iraq in 2003, and resurfaced again over disagreements regarding military intervention and NATO involvement in Libya. Whatever the outcome of this particular Presidential election, the disconnect between US geo-political interests and continental European interests - and the disenchantment because of that - seem both to be growing.
[1] Tobias L. Winright & Mark J. Allman, "Drone Warfare. Barack Obama’s Idea of a ‘Just War'", www.globalresearch.ca, October 1, 2012.
[2] Michael R. Gordon, “In US Exit from Iraq, Failed Efforts and Challenges”, New York Times, September 22, 2012; John Glaser, “US May Keep American Troops in Iraq, Despite Lack of Authority. Some of the Hundreds of US Troops still in Baghdad have been Training and Supporting Maliki’s Abusive Elite Security Forces”, www.antiwar.com, October 1st, 2012.
[3] It has been apparent to Afghan society and the international community alike, that Afghanistan is in no position to assume responsibility for its own security, be it because of corruption, a flourishing opium trade, an insufficiently trained police force, or the fact that the Taliban and Al Qaeda have benefited from an overall lack of security, insufficient or failed coordination among different national NATO troop contingents, or – probably most important - the support that the Taliban have received from Pakistan across the porous border.
[4] “War Made Easy. Wenn Amerikanische Praesidenten Luegen” (documentary movie by Loretta Alper & Norman Solomon, 2008). According to Solomon US Presidents since the end of WWII had increasingly talked about wanting peace, but opted for war. The movie shows how the ‘rhetoric of democracy’ had been used to sell war (and war means) to an otherwise war-wary or isolationist American public).
[5] Peter Hopkirk (1992), The Great Game (Kodansha International); Craig Unger (2004), House of Bush, House of Saud (Gibson Square Books).
Also an American Legacy in Iraq: a commentary and a review
The scene is dark. All the spectators can hear is the soft spoken voice of a scared man reflecting on hopes crashed following American invasion in Iraq in 2003. ‘Betrayed’ a play by George Packer, author of the ‘Assassin’s Gate’ and directed by Pippin Parker tells the story of three young Iraqis “who loved America too much”. When the lights go on, we can see his figure: how the sharp lines in a tired face do not match up with the warmth of the voice! It is a Friday evening at ‘Culture Project’, a tiny, charming theatre on Mercer Street in SoHo. I had planned to see the play ever since reading ‘Imperial Life in the Emerald City’, an insider’s story told by Washington Post journalist Rajiv Chandrasekaran. “Death to Saddam, long live the American liberators!” an actor portraying a Sunni Iraqi in Western clothes yells while tearing apart a pos
ter of the former Iraqi dictator. The scene is vivid. It reminded me of images we had seen in Eastern Germany and other Eastern European countries once communism fell. “Death to Ceausescu”, the Romanian people in late 1989 demanded liberation both, from a brutal tyrant and his hardliner interpretation of socialism. The early 1990s also saw the international community punish Saddam Hussein for having invaded oil-rich Kuwait; twelve years later, America decided to finish off Hussein himself by toppling his regime. Chandrasekaran’s book highlights the enormity of betrayal of American values that followed in the aftermath of the war in 2003. High hopes by Iraqi civilians for a speedy process of economic, political and social peace-building efforts spearheaded by Americans did not materialize. It is obvious that the Administration had not planned how to improve or safeguard the well-being of Iraqi civilians. ‘Citizen safety’ was not a major concern. Children being able to go to school – a prerequisite for stability in any society – has remained a key failure of America’s legacy in post-Saddam Iraq.
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