ANOTHER ASH HEAP OF HISTORY :

Bomb Saddam? : How the obsession of a few neocon hawks became the central goal of U.S. foreign policy (Joshua Micah Marshall, Washington Monthly)

To anyone who's followed foreign affairs for the last couple of decades, the names of the neoconservative hawks will be familiar--or, if you're a
liberal, chilling. Their eminence grise is Richard Perle, who serves simultaneously as a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, a heretofore somnolent committee of foreign policy old-timers that Perle has refashioned into a key advisory group. Of all the hawks, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz probably has the most powerful job inside the Bush administration. A dozen others hold key posts at the State Department and the White House. Most are acolytes of Perle, and also Jewish, passionately pro-Israel, and pro-Likud. And all are united by a shared idea: that America should be unafraid to use its military power early and often to advance its interests and values. It is an idea that infuriates most members of the national security establishment at the Pentagon, State, and the CIA, who believe that America's military force should be used rarely and only as a last resort, preferably in concert with allies.

The neocons have been clashing with the establishment since the 1970s. Back then, the consensus view among foreign policy elites was that the Cold War
was an indefinite or perhaps even a permanent fact of world politics, to be managed with diplomacy and nuclear deterrence. The neocons argued for
deliberately tipping the balance of power in America's direction. Ronald Reagan championed their ideas, and brought a number of neocons into his administration, including Perle and Wolfowitz. Reagan's huge defense buildup and harsh, even provocative, rhetoric contributed significantly to running the Soviet military-industrial complex into the ground.The president went for the Hail Mary pass--whatever the dangers--and it worked.

During the Gulf War, the hawks urged President George H.W. Bush to ignore the limits of his U.N. mandate, roll the tanks into Baghdad, and bring down Saddam Hussein's regime. Bush sided with the then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Colin Powell (the embodiment of the establishment, who had advised Bush against liberating Kuwait), and left Saddam in power. The neocons have been saying I told you so ever since.

In the 1990s, as the Balkans descended into civil war, this same establishment urged President Clinton to proceed with caution. After several years of carnage, Clinton finally broke with the experts and launched air strikes against Bosnia, then Kosovo. Many conservative Republicans criticized Clinton at the time, but the neocons, despite their loathing for the president, supported his efforts. And rightly so: American action ended the bloodshed and brought stability to a key region of Europe with practically no loss of American life.

Again and again, for more than two decades, the neocon hawks have called it right. But they've gotten a lot wrong, too. Back in the 1970s and early 1980s, they portrayed the U.S.S.R. as a menacing giant about to overwhelm us, when in fact--we now know--it was already headed for collapse, and its downfall had more to do with its own terminal rot than anything America did. They cheered on (and in some cases aided) bloody proxy wars in Central America and Africa that did little to hasten the Soviets' demise, but plenty to brutalize entire populations and tarnish America's image abroad.

Somehow Mr. Marshall manages to get wrong both much of why the neocons were right and most of why they were wrong. As for where he says they were right--Iraq and Bosnia--it seems apparent that these were two foreign adventures that we'd have done well to steer clear of. Both involved our attacking regimes that were de facto allies in the struggle with radical fundamentalist Islam and neither really involved our national security interest. The only even marginal argument for intervening in either case might have been to protect the flow of oil from Kuwaiti fields, but suppose that Saddam had been allowed to take and keep those fields--big deal? What was he going to do with the oil, other than sell it to the West?

On the other hand, they were, of course right in urging the U.S. to renew its efforts in the Cold War in the 70s and this will eternally redound to their credit. Further--contrary to Mr. Marshall's assertion--the various proxy wars of the 1980s worked brilliantly and were instrumental in bringing the Cold War to an end. In the 50s and 60s the Soviet Union had sponsored proxy wars--Korea and Vietnam--that threw the US and her allies on the defensive and wreaked a tremendous cost in the American domestic sphere (even though we did manage to fight those wars to draws). But in the 80s, the US turned the tables--from Afghanistan to Angola to Nicaragua--and showed that it was equally as capable of putting the USSR on the defensive (and in fact the communist governments of Afghanistan and Nicaragua proved untenable). The great advantage of this policy is that it cost almost nothing in terms of US blood and fairly little in dollars--in effect, it exacted no cost at home and could thus have been pursued indefinitely.

But the neocons were again proven wrong in their fundamentals as the Communism proved to be a far weaker foe than they had anticipated (though their ally, Ronald Reagan had understood this quite clearly). They were surprised when the bonus to this policy proved to be that where American democracy had shown itself to be quite resilient even in the face of fighting these kinds of bloody stalemates, communist Russia proved incapable of handling such setbacks, perhaps for ideological reasons as much as anything (as Marxist historicism inexplicably reversed course). It seems fair to ask whether they aren't making exactly the same mistake again in regards to radical Islam. Just as they wildly overestimated Saddam's military capabilities in the run up to the first Gulf War, so too they appear to be overestimating the threat that Islam poses to the West in general--and once again their error seems to be related to an underestimation of their own ideas and an overestimation of their opponents ideology.

It seems increasingly evident that the American system of liberal capitalist protestant democracy, what Francis Fukyama referred to as the "final form of human government, is such a powerful and relentless creator of wealth that no other form of government can compete with it in the long term. Mere patience and a return to these principles would probably have sufficed to win the Cold War and would more than likely eventually triumph in a showdown with Islam, which, like communism, is incapable of satisfying the material desires of its populace. Further, again like communism, Islam interprets its own failures vis a vis the Judeo-Christian West as a historical impossibility--representing as it does a negative judgment upon Islam by Allah--and this will in all likelihood create an eventual breakdown of the authoritarian nature of Islam, just as a similar paradox has created the breakdown of Chinese communism.

All of this history offers us a few lessons which we seem determined not to learn. First, and most important, despite the feelings of vulnerability that were induced by the 9-11 attacks, we have never been in a stronger geo-political position. We have the strongest economy in the history of mankind and there may never have been a moment in human history when the mightiest military power enjoyed such an absurd technological advantage over its rivals, an advantage which continues to grow. Realistically, there are no significant external threats to the United States and therefore fairly few to our allies. The greater dangers are internal--from declining populations to burdensome social welfare nets to environmental Luddism.

Second, fundamentalist Islam (hopefully, as Rand Simberg and Tom Friedman suggest, it's just Wahhabism, the Saudi variant of Islam, that's the problem) is quite simply doomed. Under pressure from a burgeoning and dissatisfied populace; assaulted by the liberalizing pressures of globalization; incapable of competing in the global economy because of its totalitarian nature; authoritarian Islam may already be in the midst of its death throes. The relative success of more Westernized Islamic nations like Tunisia, Turkey, Bangladesh, etc., suggests that Islam may be compatible with more secularized government. Meanwhile, the failure, after just twenty years, of the Iranian Revolution and the rising demands of its people for economic and political liberalization and improved relations with America, suggest that Islam's future will be found in the West, not by turning further inward.

Third, these differences within Islam offer us a chance to pursue a variety of tactics, short of all out war against Islam. Obviously, our greatest priority should be to assist the already Westernizing nations of the Islamic world. Their success stands as testimony to the possibility that all of the Islamic world can enjoy higher standards of living without having to jettison their religious beliefs entirely. Our first step should be to remove all trade barriers with such nations and to offer them developmental assistance and political alliance. NATO is no longer worth a tinker's dam, but an Alliance of Mediterranean and Indian Ocean Nations (which would include non-Islamic nations like the US, Israel, India and Russia) could be an important bulwark of liberty and a model of Western/Islamic cooperation.

Next, we should encourage nascent democratic movements within countries like Iran, Palestine, Jordan, etc.--with a goal, not of making them just like us, but of getting them more firmly on the road to liberalization, even if they may ultimately settle on monarchies or Islamic republics, or whatever. Even where official government or the positions they take may be anathema to us, we need to be able to look beyond them to see what their own people are saying. So, though Yassir Arafat or the mullahs in Iran may be beyond the Pale, we need to see that the people of Palestine and Iran are themselves demanding reform and democratization and recognize that they may even by our allies against their own current governments.

Third, the rapid success of the Afghan battle plan along with those earlier models from the Cold War), suggests that where we determine that it is necessary to force a regime change, the most effective means of doing so may be by means of proxy war. In places like Iraq, Libya, Syria, etc., where we find the dictators to be intolerable, we should be training and arming insurgencies, training and educating potential civilian leadership for the next regime, applying determined political and economic pressure, and preparing the way for the application of air power and use of Special Forces when push comes to shove.

Finally, we need to recognize that these different categories are inherently unstable and that different nations may move from category to category and need to be treated differently at different times. Perhaps most difficult, we must be mature enough to accept that failures along the way may be worthwhile failures. It may be that Islam is just incapable in the long run of the kind of Westernizing reforms of which we're speaking and that some kind of apocalyptic war between the Abrahamic faiths is inevitable. Even if this is true--and I don't think it is--the effort to avoid such a war and to redeem Islam is still worth making. Or, on a smaller scale, it might be that after aiding the reformers in Iran we'd see a clampdown by hard-liners and Iran would return to being a genuine enemy. So be it. But while we have an opportunity why not try to exploit it? Or it might be that an uprising against Saddam would fail utterly and we would be required to do the fighting ourselves, even to the point of a massive commitment of ground troops. Okay, we can do that. But why do it until it is proven necessary?

Certainly in the wake of 9-11 it was comforting to court the notion of declaring our ownjihad against Islam. But however viscerally satisfying this might be, it represents a disappointing lack of faith in our own beliefs. We celebrate the desire for freedom, the value of democracy, and the basic human urge to improve one's lot in life : do we really think that Muslims do not share these dreams? Before we decide that Islam is incompatible with liberty, let us join the struggle of those Muslims who are already fighting for the idea of freedom within Islam. The worst that could happen is we'll fail together and even then, there'll still be plenty of time to start killing each other.

ISLAM UPDATE :
War of Ideas (THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN, June 2, 2002, NY Times)

Frankly, I hope Saddam Hussein disappears tomorrow. But even if he does, that's not going to solve our problem. Saddam is a conventional threat who can be eliminated by conventional means. He inspires no one. The idea people who inspired the hijackers are religious leaders, pseudo-intellectuals, pundits and educators, primarily in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, which continues to use its vast oil wealth to spread its austere and intolerant brand of Islam, Wahhabism.

But here's the good news: These societies are not monoliths, and there are a lot of ordinary people, and officials, inside both who would like to see us pressing their leaders and religious authorities to teach tolerance, modernize Islam and stop financing those who won't.

Too bad President Bush has shied away from this challenge. [...]

[A]merica and the West have potential partners in these countries who are eager for us to help move the struggle to where it belongs: to a war within Islam over its spiritual message and identity, not a war with Islam.

IRAQ UPDATE :
The Triangle Offense : How Bush is winning the war over going to war with Iraq (William Saletan, May 29, 2002, Slate)

For the past decade, hawks, doves, and moderates have debated whether to use force or persuasion to change the behavior of the Iraqi government. Last week, the moderates scored two apparent victories. Military officials disclosed that they had dissuaded the Bush administration from attacking Iraq until at least winter, and diplomats at the United Nations Security Council boasted to the New York Times that they were undercutting American hawks by pushing to resume weapons inspections in Iraq.

It looks like another triumph of triangulation: The doves want to lift sanctions against Iraq; the hawks want an invasion; and the moderates win by splitting the difference. But before you can triangulate, somebody has to set up the triangle. That's how the hawks, led by President Bush, are winning the war over going to war. They've pushed American and global expectations so far toward military conflict that those who want to dissuade or undercut them have to shift positions in order to keep up. The middle is moving to the right.

Roughly speaking, the last three presidencies offer three models for dealing with international conflict. In the Clinton model, the United States mediates disputes among countries pursuing their own agendas. In the George H.W. Bush model, the United States seeks support for its own agenda but ultimately accepts the limits of international consensus. In the Reagan model, the United States pursues its own agenda whether others like it or not. George W. Bush is basically following the Reagan model.

This is the counterargument to those who think W's gone wobbly.

IRAQ UPDATE :
REVIEW : of The Reckoning: Iraq and the Legacy of Saddam Hussein by Sandra Mackey (Paul William Roberts, Washington Post)

Far from being the indictment of Saddam Hussein that its author presumably intended, The Reckoning is ultimately a savage indictment of Euro-American exploitation of the Middle East, and the indefensible meddling in its affairs that continues and has no clear objective beyond self-interest. If for no other reason than this, the book is indispensable reading for anyone with an opinion on world affairs.

A model of blame the West hysteria.

UPDATE :
Patrick Ruffini has some further thoughts.

Posted by Orrin Judd at June 2, 2002 08:31 AM