A NEW VISION FOR AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY:
Maturing Past the Mistakes of NeoConservatism

Kenneth L. Hacker

August 20, 2006


I began writing this post on 20 August 2006 and will continue adding for a few days. This will serve as an introduction to a larger document that will posted on a web site as a PDF file. Constructive comments are welcome.

Both major political parties and all points on the political spectrum must accept the fact that the Bush administration will soon be losing gravity and will fade into the twilight of historical analysis. A new presidential administration will begin mustering as a campaign sometime after the off-year elections of 2006 and the new president that gets elected in 2008 will clear the board of the analysts, advisors, and office holders that have constituted the failed presidency of G. W. Bush.

Whether the new president is Republican or Democratic, that leader will want new and more valid ways of thinking about the role of America in the world and how to rebuild our national image in the minds of people in those nations that have turned against us. We will want strong allies again, an end to generating more terrorism than we stop, and a jettisoning of the power-based international relations schools of thought that hijacked White House analysis.

The mistakes that have brought us to where we are today, low in respect and nearly absent in world credibility, have resulted from flaws in the latter Clinton years, but mainly the years of the Bush Two presidency. The mistakes of the administration are not the results of the president alone, but are attributable to the team members he appointed, his vice president, and himself.

The role of the United States after World War II was respected by those nations we needed as allies. Today, the Iraq situation has become a drain on American credibility because the war is a war of convenience rather than one of necessity. A war of necessity would be grounded in the kind of coherent foreigh policy that guided the nation into previous conflicts - cases where the debates were about the legititate national security interests and world position of our nation. In contrast, the war in Iraq has been rooted in a succession of shifting arguents for initiating the war and changing rationalizations for continuing it.

There are interesting changes now occurring in the White House which suggest that the president could change directions, but it may be too late to expect much in a more progressive direction since the commitment to the Iraq occupation is so strong. Still, some of the neocon thinkers were given their walking papers and that is a positive sign that the White House may be looking for more more intelligent ways of analyzing the role of the United States in the world. It is better to have a sensible foreign policy emerge late than never at all.

In my view, the neocon power-based versions of policy and international relations is not a foreign policy but rather an ideological fanstasy spun by writers who do not understand the complexities of world event and systems analysis. It has done great damage to our role in international relations, with our position as the strongest world leader, and with being able to take sound believable to both friends and foes.

August 22, 2006:

The association of Saddam Hussein with the 911 attacks was done with various linguistic techniques in speeches given by President George Bush and others working in or for the White House. The war was initially framed as part of the response to 911 despite the fact (Micheal Barone's citing of nonexisting conversations by Czechs notwithstanding) that there is no credible evidence that Hussein had any involvement whatsover with 911. This initial framing, however, was not just about Iraq and 911 but also about terrorism in general. Thus, the war in Iraq was launched as part of the war on terrror and the fight against Hussein would be part of the war of terror. The latter actually was ending in Afghanistan and pro-admininisration voices seem to confuse the concepts of invasion and occupation with the concept of war.

There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq despite the speeches given by Bush, Rice, Cheney, and others indicating that a mushroom cloud was looming imminently as long as there was no regime change in Iraq. At least 90 million dollars was wasted trying to find the WMD that the UN had already failed to discover over many years of searching for them. The United Nations did not find WMD and neither did Kay, Dulfur, or Powell.

The rhetorical combination of 911, terrorism, and threats of Iraqi aggression created an environment of fear in the United States. Elsewhere, American leaders and their followers looked silly as most people in the world knew that a royal con game was occurring. American journalists, thrilled to be embedded with soldiers in attacking Iraq, forgot their mission to be critical thinkers. White House news outlets like Fox News made the war second only the return of Christ in terms of international importance.

The general feelings of confidence characterizing most Americans gave into feelings of fear, emergency, and trusting the president to do whatever it takes to keep the nation safe from the terrorists in Iraq who they were led to believe had attacked New York and the Pentagon.

August 26, 2006:

Terrorism is a very grave problem in the world today. It is not a new problem, but it is very serious and no one should minimize the importance of counterrorism actions by various nations and the international community. However, terrrorism is not something you can eliminate or defeat by military force. It is a methodology used for violent politics. A foreign policy that makes sense for the 21st century cannot base international relations on terrorism. Such a mistake playes right into the strategies of extremists who employ terrrorism. The United States should seek to eliminate terrorist organizations while at the same time addressing the grievances that the terrorists are bringing to the attention of their supporters.

The neocons wer trying to get President clinto to invade Iraq back in 1998. Their ideas about foreign policy were simply supremacy of the United States added to a rhetoric of aggressive national defense. These men who had never served in war themselves were anxious to send others to fight for American dominance. Dominance is not a foreign policy. Moreover the supremecist ideology of the neocons confirms the worst mpressions that other nations have of us. The Bush administration is considered (by the neocons that those in the administration they have conned), correct on all matters and anyone objecting is consider to be on the side of the enemies. Forcing viewpoints and demanding compliance with debatable positions does not make a foreign policy.

President Bush and Osame bin Laden have both done the same thing in that both have framed the world today as a binary conflict of good vs. evil and both have cast current history in light of a clash of political forces related to religion and ideologies. Despite this, the so-called war on terror is a concept that is over-manipulated by the White House and there is still a lag between what needs to be done about terrorist threats and the uses of terrorism and what is actually being accomplished.

Anti-Terrorism is Not Foreign Policy

Anti-terrorism and counterterrorism are both necessary in today's world but are police and paramilitary (clandestine, information operations, diplomacy, etc.) more than military matters. Our leaders need to argue more clearly that a "war on terror" may be like the old "war on poverty, and that concepts like the "end of evil" or the end of terrorism are akin to thinking that we can stop bad leaders, bad governments, and bad human behaviors at some magical point in the future. This is obviously wishful thinking and it detracts from the real issues of how nations and groups of nations can deal with the sources of supply networks of terrorist organizations.

Democracies are not introduced to societies by military force or invasions. Analogies of rebuilding Japan and Germany do not match the circumstances of Iraq. Iraq was not a homogeneous culture at war with the United States and the invasion was not planned carefully enough to include an exit plan for United States forces. There is a stead stream of books now about the incompetence of Donald Rumsfeld and his advisors in designing the war. But even if Rumsfeld resigns, President Bush is still the focal point of the war effort. Bush finds himself caught into perpetuating a war that he hopes will succeed at some unspecified point in the future. Any good military planners knows that this is not how you run a war. As General Wesley Clark argues, you need specific details for how and why to start, how to win specific and limited objectives, and how to leave with a clear victory. The Clark approach does not trail off into the future for a succession of other presidents to manage.

Fanon was a theorist of terrorism and argued that violent attacks jolt the power of a state to overreact and that overreaction then persuades people that the terrorists are correct in arguing about the oppressive nature of the state power. This is what is occurring in the Middle East and this is why Bush placed America exactly where bin Laden wanted it.

The Bush posture (some might call it a doctrine) is inconsitent with the democratic and international heritage of the United States. It violates traditional American values and this is why many people, including Republicans, see the United States going in the wrong direction and see Bush as being out of touch.


Effective Counterterrorism Needed

Effective counterterrorism would not use fear as a means to steer American public opinion. Instead, it would seek to incorporate counterrorism (and anti-terrorism) into a coherent foreign policy that frames the role of America in terms of its positive and contructive role in promoting freedom, free markets, and democracy without imposing its will on any other nation.

Victims of terrorism, like the United States and Israel, must be vigilant about their retaliation against terrorism in order to assure that they do not employ the same terrorizing methods to gain avenge. Talk about "shock and awe" may apply well to battalions of soldiers but may constitute terrorizing actions when done against civilian populations. If victims become perpetrators, the victims reframe themselves negatively and lose credibility in their arguments about political violence by extremists. Dictators from Hitler to Mugabe in Zimbahwe have appealed to what citizens saw as injustice to their society as a way to build their own extreme form of power.

Israel had leaders who once used acts of terrorism against the British and enemies of Israel still claim that Ariel Sharon committed terrorism at Shatila and Sabra. Today, we see that the retaliation of Israel against Israel can be seen as just on one hand but inhumane when civilians are harmed much more than military forces. I have noted that the ratio of civilians in Lebanon to Hezbollah fighters is approximately ten to one (10:1). This ratio cannot help but harm public perceptions of Israel in many nations.

An approach to terrorism that would work better than what we have now would use foreign policy to assure that the U.S. is never viewed as an invader, and occupier, a state sponsor of terrorism, a perpetrator of human rights abuses, or a nation out to dominate all others. In just six years, we have moved from being a nation admired by most countries of the world to one distrusted by most nations of the world. This never needed to happen and it is the result of incompetence in the present administration and the absence of a workable foreigh policy.


Cycles of Behavior

Nations or groups involved in political conflict tend to create cycles of behavior in which both contribute to the problems of escalation and both can contribute, with enough political will, to the de-escalation of conflict. Israel, as noted earlier, is usually justified in its move to retaliate against Palestiniand or Hezbollah violence. But too much retaliation can generate more violence on both sides and escalating violence will shut down diplomacy.

The United States should, as the largest and most powerful democratic republic on the planet, help nations like Israel depolarize its political discourse and de-escalate its military solutions. Both nations are correct in hunting down terrorists (anti-terrorism) and developing innovations in working to defeat the ideological machinations of terrorists (counterterrorism). However, there are actions by both, because of poor foreign policies, that contribute to the regeneration of terrorism at the same time that efforts to reduce terrorism are accelerating.

The United States, with the Bush administration, has created more backlash, blowback, and ill will toward the United States than has ever occurred in the history of the nation. The reason for this is that the neoconservative supremacist ideology that passes for foreign policy does not account for the importance of mulitlateral politics in conflict situations, assumes that whatever is deemed national interests can also be deemed national security interests, and refuses to analyze with any depth whatsoever the roots of international problems, conflicts, and terrorism.

Most nations in the world sympathized with Americans right after the 9/11 attacks. Countries that later would not support the invasion of Iraq did support the American attacks on the Taliban in Iraq. There was plenty of political capital after 9/11 and during the assaults on Afghanistan to continue working with other nations to build a foreign policy that would include good citizenship in the international community along with strong and aggressive actions against terrorist organizations and states that aid them.

As early as 2002, because of the actions and rhetoric of the Bush administration, thirty-three percent of people in Great Britain thought that Bush was more of a threat to world peace than Saddam Hussein (Soros, 2004). Around the same time, more South Koreans viewed the United States as a greater threat to them than North Korea (Soros, 2004).

The mistakes of the administration can be blamed on a multitude of factors, but the easiest charge to prove is that Bush's advisors do not know what they are doing with international affairs. The fact that so many of Bush's aids had to disemble to make a case for the invasion of Iraq is dramatic proof of the failure to construct a rational and coherent foreign policy before ever consider the invasion. The lack of policy is evident in the fact that terrorism became a new frame for justifying the war after the war had already been on the drawing board since the 1990s for other reasons.

George Soros (2004) correctly argues that a major problem with using terrorism as a jusification for foreign policy decisions is that the terrorists end up controlling the foreign policy agenda. In fact, some experts argue that Osama bin Laden and other terrorist leaders would have far less rhetorical power if they were not elevated to high levels of influence in the discourse of American political leaders. Soros (2004) observes that terrorists win when their actions make their victims of violence perpetrators of retaliatory violence. In other words, terrorists set out to generate the cycles of violence we see today. An American with a strong and ethical foreign policy would not play this game.

A better vision for a strong and ethical foreign policy includes the objective of fulfillng the expectations other nations for the United States to be a key leader of free and democratic states in the world. As Soros (2004) notes, other nations are in a position in which they need to respond to the policies of the United States, so the United States should be careful about constructing good policies.


Undoing Goodwill

The present presidential administration has done much to undo the goodwill between the United States, it allies, and other nations in the world. This is not likely as deliberate as it is the result of negligence in foreign affairs analysis. The current ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, exemplfies what other nations disdain about this eight years of American relations with them. Not since the Vietnam war, have we had such an atrocious lack of intellectual ability and fortitude in the White House staff.

The leader of South Korea, Kim Dae Jung, had improved diplomatic ties with North Korea. But President Bush did not extend this effort, intead choosing to stop the efforts of Kim Dae Jun and American President Bill Clinton to normalize relations with North Korea. The North Koreans, who are surrounded by states they perceive as possible threats, retreated into a rhetoric of self-protection and an accelerated push to develop nuclear weapons.


Soft Power and New Policy

While Donald Rumsfeld and others may scoff at the utility of soft power versus hard power in international relations, many experts know that soft power is being used daily by nations that are increasing their political clout and power networks in the world. Ironically, some of these nations include states considered enemies of the United States, such as China and Iran.


A Need for Consistency

A new foreign policy for the United State should include a commitment to reject regimes that are undemocratic and repressive and to not throw some out while coddling others. You can hear President Bush rail about the dictator Saddam Hussein yet say nothing about other dictators, just as repressive such as Islam Karimov who is the president of Uzbekistan. The leader of Libya is also a dictator but has bee privileged with being cajoled with soft power rather than shock-and-awe massive bombing, to empty his nation of WMD. President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan is actually the dictator of Pakistan who still refuses to hold elections.


Promoting Democracy

The promotion of democracy in the world should always be part of American foreign policy because of the historical commitments the United States had made over many years in that direction. The present war in Iraq is now being sold as promoting democracy, but other nations might be more impressed if they saw us actively helping the democracy in Turkey and the one in Lebanon as ways to change the turbulent situation in the Middle East.

A commitment to democratization and the stablization of democracy must not be the marketing pitch given by necons who seek to use the concept to justify American supremacy, however. Democracy is not equatable with a regime that simply helps us with economic and military benefits. While freeing up elections in Iraq in conducive to the eventual emergence of some kind of democratic system, there is no guarantee that elections will produce the kind of democratic system consistent with American democracy. The oil reserves in Iraq are second only to those of Saudi Arabia. Some experts believe that Americans are occupying Iraq to create permanent military bases and to secure an important source of fuel (Soros, 2004).

REFERENCES:

Cetron, Marvin & Davies, Owen (1989). American Renaissance. New York: St. Martin's Press.

Dallek, Robert. (1983). The American Style of Foreign Policy. New York: New American Library.

Ferguson, Niall. (2006). The next war of the world. Foreign Affairs, 85, 61-74.

Kennan, George. American Diplomacy. (1951). New York: New American Library.

Kennedy, Paul (1993). Preparing for the Twenty First Century. New York: Random House.

Soros, George. (2004). The Bubble of American Supremacy. New York: Public Affairs.

Viereck, Peter. (1962). Conservatism Revisited. New York: Collier Books.