CHANGING COURSE

Can US Foreign Policy Be Turned Away From Perpetual War?

It’s not going to be easy, but it’s past time to change the course of US foreign policy.*

Mountains of experience — of repeated failures and unending engagement in warfare — prove that something really fundamental is wrong. We are locked into seemingly unresolvable conflicts in most regions of the world, erupting into widespread acts of war and even renewed fears of another war between major powers.

Why is US foreign policy mired in failure? 

We are undergoing a historic transition in our relationship to the rest of the world, but this is not acknowledged, let alone reflected in US foreign policy. We still act as if our exceptional military power, far flung imperial alliances and involvements, and our self-perceived moral superiority empower us to set the terms of “world order”.   That assumption was always questionable, but it certainly doesn’t square with reality in today’s world.

The hubris of “American century” — the claim that dominated triumphal US reaction to the end of the Cold War and collapse of the Soviet Union — set the course that the Bush Administration embarked on in the aftermath of 9/11. It chose war as the answer and that has had disastrous consequences, both foreign and domestic. Since then, we are caught up in a state of perpetual war in the Middle East, each military intervention slipping into the next while our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq defy definitive closure.

At home, the state of perpetual war has profoundly diminished democracy, bringing surveillance and our “security state” to unimagined levels. The Senate “torture report”, most of it still “classified”, shatters the trust we are asked to place in the secret, unaccountable apparatus that runs the most extensive Big Brother spy system ever devised.  

The multi-trillion dollar war and military expenditures dwarf deteriorating social programs and drive economic inequality, weighing heavily on the poor and working millions. What happened in rapid succession to Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Freddie Gray and others unnamed is a horrific reminder of how deeply racism — the unequal economic and social divide and systemic violence against Black and Latino youth — continues to plague our homeland.

Reality is very different than the assumptions that define US foreign policy.  That’s why failure follows upon failure almost invariably in every resort to military intervention starting with the debacle of the Vietnam War.

Economic and political power is shifting and giving rise to national and regional centers not controlled by US dominated global financial structures.  The world is too complicated to be reigned in according to the outlook and interests of any superpower. Either ways are found to cooperate across national distinctions and divergent political systems, or no international problem can be mitigated or resolved.

As failures and entanglements mount, the responsibility of those who set us on this course fades into background and the failures themselves bring Cheney, McCain and the neoconservatives back in full cry. They want more, much more. They still think the answer is military power, not only in the Middle East; the dream is to force “regime change” on all adversaries including ultimately Russia and China. War still excites them, risks and consequences be damned.

Nor are they alone. Despite significant, but inadequate efforts to curb our most overt engagement in wars, the Obama Administration has continued to fan the flames through extensive reliance on drone bombings, assassinations and “special forces” operations that ignore national sovereignty and international law. To Obama’s credit, he has recently tacked in a more hopeful direction, by engaging in the UN Security Council (plus Germany) negotiations with Iran and in finally opening relations with Cuba. For seeking a nuclear agreement with Iran, he is confronting the most ferocious assault from the GOP and many Congressional Democrats, not to speak of Netanyahu’s blatant interference in US politics.

Still, confronting the religious fanaticism and brutality of ISIS, we are back renewing a lost war, this time with the slippery mantra, “no boots on the ground” (maybe just a few). We stubbornly refuse to admit the need to find common ground with designated “foes” like Iran and Syria; we cling to allies like Saudi Arabia who actually fuel the crisis of religious fanaticism and internecine barbarity. We continue to give massive support to Netanyahu’s extremist right-wing government despite the expanding occupation and the ruthless war and blockade against Gaza. As if to demonstrate that the neocons have little reason to complain, Obama acts tough toward Russia and China.

Aside from the obvious peril, what’s wrong with this scenario? It is blind to reality; it defies a massive accumulation of experience. This is no nation’s century. “Order” cannot be enforced by a super power. Huge problems, some existential, confront humankind, and how we respond is vital to the future of the planet.  There is no resolution, possibly no tomorrows, unless common interests prove more important than those that divide nations and breed the chronic danger of war.

Is a significant change possible?

The obstacles are real and daunting. As long as competition for markets and accumulation of capital characterize modern society, nations will vie for spheres of influence and antagonistic interests will be a fundamental feature of international relations. Chauvinist reaction to incursions, real or imagined, and the impulse to respond by military means is characteristic to some degree of every significant nation-state. The more that some governments, including our own, become subordinate to oligarchic control, the greater is the peril of consequences such as those that precipitated World War I.    So too, religious fanaticism and ancient ethnic and racial hatreds are a constant source of human suffering, of ignorance and violence against women, of unending wars and eruptions of genocide.

These, however, are not the only factors that will shape the future. There is nothing inevitable that rules out a significant change of direction even if basic transformation or demise of a system of greed and exploitation is not at hand. The potential for change, especially in US foreign policy, resides in how social forces here and abroad respond to undeniable reality: 1) the chronic failure, massive costs, and frightening peril inherent in current policy, particularly the folly and futility of clinging to the delusionary mission of an “American Century”; and 2) the unpostponable need for international efforts to respond to climate change, to health and natural disasters aggravated by poverty, to rising violence from fundamentalist religious crusaders— above all, to preventing descent into another war, this time nuclear, between major world powers.

Without underestimating the blinding self-interest and insatiable greed of forces that thrive on gambling with the future of humanity, historic experience and current reality elevate a powerful common interest in peace and survival.  The need to change course is not something that can be recognized only on one side of an ideological divide. Nor does that recognition depend on national, ethnic or religious identity. Rather it demands facing up to reality, acknowledging the historic failure and enormous peril in plunging ahead unswervingly as everything falls apart around us.

At this moment, after the midterm elections, the political outlook appears even bleaker than it has been. Experience shows that elections, important as they are, are not necessarily indicators of when and how significant change can come about in matters of policy. On issues of civil rights and social equality, advances have occurred starting with a dedicated and persistent minority movement that helped shape a reality that changed public opinion and that the political establishment could not defy.

The Vietnam War came to an end despite the deadly stubbornness of Democratic and Republican administrations when reality, on the battlefield and in opposition at home, could no longer be denied. In our history and in the experience of other nations, significant changes have come about even as the basic character of society remained unchanged. Massive resistance and rejection of colonialism caused the great British Empire and other colonial powers to adjust to a new reality after World War II. We turned against McCarthyism in1954 after years of red scare hysteria during the Korean War; and, similarly, we ousted President Nixon after Watergate. One might also remember the huge surprise of Nixon in China, which (regardless of complex motivations) reversed a policy of hostility that had seemed cast in stone.

There are diverse and growing political currents in our country that see the folly and danger of the course we’re on. McCain and fellow hawks, perhaps even Hillary in sync with the neocons, may for a time make things even more dangerous. On the other hand there are many Republicans, Democrats, independents, libertarians — certainly most of the public — beginning to say “enough” to war and military intervention all over the globe. It is a dead end to base foreign policy on dividing countries into “friend or foe”. Whether coping with climate change, Ebola or ISIS, the common interest of people in all countries is the only realistic basis for cooperation and collective action.

It will always be necessary in each new crisis to counter those who mislead and browbeat the public into acceptance of another military intervention. But disillusionment in war as an answer is probably greater now, among Americans and worldwide, than it has ever been. Maybe that can prove strong enough to produce a shift away from perpetual war, a shift toward some modesty and common sense realism in US foreign policy.

How can American foreign policy be changed?

Foremost is the need to force a real debate, a serious public challenge to the war-prone thrust of US foreign policy. We need to hear and consider alternatives that elevate possibilities of negotiation and diplomacy, that boldly strive for international cooperation, that make human needs and the future of the planet our first priority.

As we approach another presidential election, no strong popular voice of challenge is heard on foreign policy. Fear and questionable political calculation keep even most progressive politicians from daring to dissent as the crisis of foreign policy lurches further into perpetual militarism and war. That silence of hopeless political acquiescence has to be broken. Nor is it a matter of concern only on the left. There are many Americans — right, left or neither — who sense the futility of the course we’re on. These voices have to be represented and heard, or the election process will be even more of a sham than we’ve recently experienced.

Confronting the need to change course can open up consideration of many steps toward making the world less dangerous.

One can’t predict just what initiatives in what particular circumstances might signal a new willingness to ease tensions and expand opportunities for broadly based international cooperation. At present there are too few signs of such possibilities, but that’s why it’s so important to defeat the frenzied opposition to completing an international agreement with Iran. The recent US-China climate agreement, while far short of what has to be done, suggests that necessity can override significant obstacles. There was a glimmer of hope also in the US-Russian joint action that removed chemical weapons from Syria. Now there is Obama’s bold move, long overdue, to restore diplomatic relations with Cuba.

Despite shifts in political fortunes, the unexpected can happen if there is a need and strong enough pressure to create an opportunity.

It is significant that Obama’s main argument for finally recognizing Cuba is that the old policy of isolation and aggressive hostility was a failure. Instead of starving Cuba into surrender to US dominance, pressures against US policy built up in Latin America and worldwide; and pragmatic domestic considerations along with shifting public opinion finally overcame deeply entrenched resistance to change. A similar process is being propelled by the worldwide boycott movement against Israel’s recklessly dangerous policies of occupation, blockade and suppression of Palestinian rights and statehood.

* *

For years, media propaganda has bemoaned the ineffectiveness of the United Nations while Washington (especially Congress) has systematically weakened the UN and tried to consign it to irrelevance in the public’s estimation.  A major excuse for casting the United Nations aside is supposedly irreconcilable differences, especially on “human rights”, between the United States (on the side of “Western democracy”) and both Russia and China. Leaving aside the many inconsistencies in our concern (or lack thereof) with abuses of human rights, international solidarity against flagrant injustice has to have primarily popular expression and a stronger, more effective UN.

There is no effective way to support human rights by unilateral US intervention and covert operations (military and intelligence abuses of national sovereignty). Such methods tie “human rights” to ulterior political motives aimed at subverting “unfriendly” regimes. It’s time to defuse these issues, removing NSA, the CIA and their contracted proxies from interference in the internal politics of other countries.

It might also help if the media, which specialize in demonizing designated adversaries, were countered with a better understanding of common interests as well as common problems in US-Russia-China relations. The strongest common interests are grounded in anti-war sentiment born of devastating experience and the recognition that climate change and other existential crises have to rise rapidly to top priority.  However, despite historic distinctions in political, economic and cultural evolution, the problems that plague the three societies also have much in common.  Actually, a basic problem for the people of all three countries is the vastly expanded power of oligarchs and the huge gulf of economic and social inequality. We are learning that our own democracy can be cancelled out by big money through beholden politicians and an entrenched Supreme Court majority.  Voices need always be raised against injustice, persecution, excessive police and military force everywhere, but most of all where we live. What Ferguson and Baltimore have brought to the surface once again should not silence protest against abuses in any other country. But the depth of racial injustice, as well as police excesses in breaking up Occupy and homeless encampments, argues for dispensing with a “holier than thou” approach. That attitude sustains open and covert interventionism and serves as a block on serious negotiations to solve or mitigate disputes between countries.

Despite super-nationalistic attitudes that remain powerful among our people (“USA #1”), the strongest links to potential change are the widespread feeling that the United States cannot be the world’s policeman, that our wars and military sacrifices fail to solve other peoples’ problems, and that it’s time to make domestic concerns primary to take care of our own problems. These views don’t contradict pride in the historic achievements of our nation and its contributions to human progress. The United States remains vitally important on the world stage, with enormous capacity for good within the world community and in our own national interest.  What we can’t do is run the world in the selfish interests of our military, industrial, finance and “security” complex.

There certainly are common interests that join people of all nations regardless of differences in government, politics, culture and beliefs. 

Will those interests become strong enough in the face of growing existential crises of our times to override the systemic pressures that fuel greed, conflict, war and ultimate catastrophe? There is a lot of history, and no dearth of dogma, that would seem to sustain a negative answer. But dire necessity and changing reality may produce more positive outcomes in a better, if far from perfect, world.

It is time for change — time for the very best efforts of all who nurture hopes for a sane world.

*I’ve chosen for this article to look at the forest and skip over most individual trees (specific conflicts). I want to look at why we persist in a war-prone foreign policy despite so much failure and rising peril. I want to give voice to hope for a change in outlook and a popular political challenge to existing policy. I hope that strong voices of peace and reason enter the political fray as another presidential election approaches. There are many sources I could call on to make-up for my neglect of important particulars. Conn Hallinan, in his Dispatches From the Edge, keeps an active eye on the military, political and economic workings of US policy in every part of the globe. The daily columns and blogs of Foreign Policy in Focus, an arm of the Institute for Policy Studies, are an excellent source of reporting and analysis on every aspect of foreign policy.