Number 131 • May /June 2014 • $8.95
Freddy Gray Flays David Cameron Geoffrey Kabaservice Revives L. Brent Bozell Jr. Jacob Heilbrunn Explores the Great War Dov S. Zakheim Decries Nation Building www.nationalinterest.org Paul R. Pillar Praises Good Spies
THE NATIONAL INTEREST NATIONAL THE THE PROMISE OF AMERICAN
NATIONALISMby Michael Lind
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N UMBER 131UMBER
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MAY/JUNE 2014
Number 131 . May/June 2014
The Realist
5 Misusing History by Jacob Heilbrunn Politicians and journalists should stop ransacking the past for historical analogies. Forget the comparisons of Russia’s behavior to that of Wilhelmine Germany or the Soviet Union. The lesson of history is that there usually is none.
Articles
9 The Case for American Nationalism by Michael Lind America should go nationalist. Too often derided as a dangerous creed, nationalism offers a hopeful path back to national greatness. Trade, immigration and foreign policy all must be drastically revised in order to reflect America’s true interests.
21 The Hollow Man by Freddy Gray Slippery and unctuous, David Cameron is the very model of a modern prime minister. He stands for everything and means nothing. Who is the real David Cameron? We’ll probably never know, and he may not either.
30 Reading Burke in Sydney by Tom Switzer Prime Minister Tony Abbott is the personification of old-fashioned conservatism, representativeof the virtues of prudence, continuity and measured change. He’s a model to which conservatives in Britain and America should pay close attention.
38 Abandon Nation Building by Dov S. Zakheim It is past time for Washington to recognize a fundamental truth: it cannot mold other states in its own image. While advocates of nation building argue that most people want to live in a free society, it is even more the case that most people don’t want foreigners telling them how to live.
46 Let’s Make a Deal by John Allen Gay Critics of the Iran deal have it all wrong. Neither appeasement nor surrender, the Joint Plan of Action buys time for negotiation and reduces the risk of miscalculation on either side. 53 Shaping Things to Come by Simon Serfaty Despite America’s battle fatigue, withdrawal from the world would create even more chaos. At stake is nothing less than the conviction that American power and world order are coeval.
58 China Goes Ballistic by Andrew S. Erickson and Michael S. Chase Watch out for China’s growing missile and nuclear forces. Beijing’s buildup poses an increasingly serious set of strategic, operational and tactical challenges for the United States and its regional allies and partners.
Reviews & Essays
65 The Tea Party’s Godfather by Geoffrey Kabaservice Daniel Kelly’s Living on Fire provides a sturdy introduction to the man who vied with William F. Buckley Jr. for leadership of the conservative movement. But as L. Brent Bozell Jr.’s life demonstrates, the problem with living on fire is that you end up flaming out.
76 The Secret Life of Robert Ames by Paul R. Pillar Kai Bird’s The Good Spy offers a penetrating portrait of Robert Ames, the cia operative who died in the 1983 bombing of the U.S. embassy in Beirut. The story of Ames’s clandestine contacts with the Palestine Liberation Organization illustrates the importance of talking to adversaries.
85 Red Alert by Jacqueline Newmyer Deal Now that Beijing has begun to adopt a more assertive posture abroad, the conventional wisdom has changed from dismissing the China threat to accepting it fatalistically. But must Washington and its Asian allies defer to Chinese expansionism? Not a chance. Geoff Dyer’s and Robert D. Kaplan’s new books offer a useful corrective.
Images Shutterstock: pages 11, 15, 18, 23, 26, 28, 33, 36, 55, 63, 80, 83, 87; Wikimedia Commons: pages 7, 39, 42, 48, 50, 60, 66, 71, 74, 92, 94 Published by The Center for the National Interest
Charles G. Boyd Chairman Henry A. Kissinger Honorary Chairman Maurice R. Greenberg Chairman Emeritus
Jacob Heilbrunn Editor Dimitri K. Simes Publisher & CEO Harry J. Kazianis Managing Editor Paul J. Saunders Associate Publisher Alexa M. Poteet Associate Managing Editor Robert Golan-Vilella Assistant Managing Editor Advisory Council John Allen Gay Assistant Managing Editor Morton Abramowitz Graham Allison Political Editor Conrad Black Robert W. Merry Ahmed Charai Contributing Editors Leslie H. Gelb Aram Bakshian Jr. Evan G. Greenberg Ian Bremmer Gary Hart Ted Galen Carpenter Zalmay Khalilzad Christian Caryl Kishore Mahbubani Amitai Etzioni John J. Mearsheimer Nikolas K. Gvosdev Richard Plepler Bruce Hoffman Alexey Pushkov Michael Lind Brent Scowcroft Paul R. Pillar Ruth Wedgwood Kenneth M. Pollack J. Robinson West David Rieff Dov S. Zakheim
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the very idea of honouring their sacrifice Misusing History as an exercise in ‘narrow tub-thumping jingoism.’” By Jacob Heilbrunn If Gove pointed to World War I to inculcate British national pride in a new generation, Japanese prime minister he lesson of history, the British Shinzo Abe took a slightly different course. scholar A. J. P. Taylor once ob- Speaking at Davos in January, he raised Tserved, is that there is no lesson. eyebrows among the international elite by It is not a stricture, however, that has ever alleging that Japan and China were in a enjoyed much acknowledgment, let alone “similar situation” to Britain and Imperial acceptance. Quite the contrary. In the past Germany on the eve of World War I and few months, a fresh spasm of analogizing by noting that close economic ties had the past to the present has taken place as not prevented those European nations politicians and journalists, at home and from going to war. Abe called for greater abroad, draw upon a rich treasure chest communication channels between the of events—World War I, whose one hun- two powers to avoid misunderstandings dredth anniversary arrives this August, the (though he himself has gone out of his Munich agreement in 1938 or the Cold way to incite Chinese ire by espousing War—to explain foreign affairs. At times, Japanese nationalism, as evidenced by the battles over the meaning of the past his recent visit to the Yasukuni shrine, almost seem to eclipse in intensity the origi- where the remains of soldiers, including nal events themselves. numerous war criminals, are interred). A In Britain, for example, Education Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, in Secretary Michael Gove created a flap in turn, dismissed Abe’s allusion to World War January when he came out swinging against I: “Such remarks by Japanese leaders are to Sir Richard Evans, Regius Professor of evade the history of aggression, to confuse History at Cambridge, in the Daily Mail. the audience.” “Why does the Left insist on belittling true In the United States, which did not enter British heroes?” Gove asked. Far from being World War I until 1917 and, unlike Great about incompetent political and military Britain, doesn’t have an uneasy conscience leaders mindlessly sending millions of about the conflict, most historical allusions young lads to their deaths in the trenches have centered on World War II. To forestall on the western front, the Great War, we complaints that she had been soft on Russia were told, was truly the stuff of greatness. during her tenure at the State Department, Evans, Gove claimed, had traduced the Hillary Clinton said in a speech at the Boys efforts of British soldiers and “attacked and Girls Club of Long Beach, California, that Russian president Vladimir Putin was Jacob Heilbrunn is editor of The National Interest. doing in Ukraine what “Hitler did back
The Realist May/June 2014 5 Historical comparisons often amount to an emotionally satisfying but misleading exercise in manipulating past figures and events as props to justify current policy stances.
in the ’30s.” She added, “All the Germans racial conquest, Hitler went far beyond that were . . . the ethnic Germans, the trying to rectify what many contemporary Germans by ancestry who were in places observers saw as the injustices of the Treaty like Czechoslovakia and Romania and other of Versailles. Hitler was a reckless gambler places, Hitler kept saying they’re not being who launched a genocidal war unparalleled treated right. I must go and protect my in history. people, and that’s what’s gotten everybody This is worlds removed from Putin. so nervous.” And in the Wall Street Journal, But such details have never deterred the former Bush administration official Douglas liberal hawks and neoconservatives from J. Feith echoed Clinton: routinely invoking Munich, robbing it of all meaning. The neocons in particular have a With a victory in Ukraine under his belt, Mr. penchant for characterizing any action that Putin might manufacture grounds for a Rus- can be construed as attempting to pursue sian military intervention to protect the ethnic diplomacy rather than a reflexive resort to Russians in Latvia. They could be for him what force (in Iran, North Korea, Syria, Russia Czechoslovakia’s Sudeten Germans were for and so on) as truckling to the enemy, a futile Hitler in 1938: a pretext for aggression. If Mr. and craven effort in—here we go again— Putin thinks nato is bluffing when it says it appeasement. President Obama thus has to will defend the Baltic states, he may call that explain what his Iran policy is not before he bluff. If he’s right, he could destroy nato with- can begin to explain what he hopes it will out war, the very alliance that destroyed the accomplish. As Yale historian Paul Kennedy Soviet Union without war. Nice. sardonically observed in these pages in 2010, “Nothing so alarms a president or But just how much do such comparisons prime minister in the Western world really elucidate about international than to be accused of pursuing policies affairs? Do they provide a reliable guide of appeasement. Better to be accused of to the present? Or do they amount to stealing from a nunnery, or beating one’s an emotionally satisfying but misleading family.” exercise in manipulating past historical figures and events as props to justify current hen it comes to World War I, similar policy stances? W cautions may be sounded. No doubt Consider Hillary Clinton. After her there are some unsettling parallels between embarrassing record of engaging in threat 1914 and today that should not be brushed inflation to justify voting for the Iraq War, aside. Substitute America in the position you might think that she, of all people, of Great Britain, China for Wilhelmine would be more cautious about drawing Germany and Russia for the Habsburg Em- parallels between Putin and Hitler. Putin, pire, and either Ukraine or the Senkaku/ after all, is acting upon traditional Russian Diaoyu islands can serve as a contemporary national interests in Crimea. In preaching Balkans, where a small power enlists greater
6 The National Interest The Realist ones, creating a general catastrophe based on a series of miscalculations. Indeed, then, as today, a complex web of financial inter- dependence existed right before 1914, as Charles Emmerson reminds us in his excel- lent 1913: In Search of the World Before the Great War. And then, as today, no one really wanted a wider war or expected a protracted one. Still, the sense of complacency that existed in prewar Europe has vanished. In 1908, President of the Board of Trade Winston Churchill could assure his Manchester constituents that London’s preeminence would never fade: “It will be the same . . . when the year 2000 has dawned upon the world.” With the Battle made plots that harrowed the hearts of the of the Marne, however, the belief in war world. All these men toys, all these agonies as a shining crusade for liberal values mere occasions for picturesque phrases to be disappeared in the mire and muck of the put into politicians’ speeches without heart western front, which, among other reasons, or even intelligence.” Those very sentiments is why Michael Gove’s sallies against continue to resound down to the present, Richard Evans and other historians for as Americans and Britons grapple with subverting Britain’s glorious role constitute the fallout from the wars in Afghanistan an antiquarian exercise in nostalgia. As and Iraq. Nor is this all. There are other Evans himself observed, “How can you reasons that suggest a return to the mind- possibly claim that Britain was fighting set of World War I is improbable. The old for democracy and liberal values when the European order, based on consanguine and main ally was Tsarist Russia? That was a rickety monarchies, that Christopher Clark despotism that put Germany in the shade.” eloquently describes in The Sleepwalkers— Indeed, the dominant feeling after the “Opaque and unpredictable, feeding a war was one of betrayal and treachery as the pervasive mood of mutual distrust, even reputations of the British generals, among within the respective alliances”—is gone. others, suffered a brutal battering. As the Instead, integration, not disintegration, is novelist Ford Madox Ford, who fought in bien-pensant Europe’s credo. the Battle of the Somme, observed in his Which is why the Cold War is likely no magnum opus Parade’s End, “All these men better an analogy to the present than either given into the hands of the most cynically of the world wars. In the New Republic, carefree intriguers in long corridors who Paul Berman declares, “We do seem to
The Realist May/June 2014 7 be on the brink of Cold War II, which which was viewed as an odious national might end up being a long affair.” But this, humiliation that had to be avenged. Today too, represents self-indulgent nostalgia it is the malignant spirit of Versailles that for a bygone era when intellectuals saw hovers over Putin’s Moscow. The trium- themselves as on the ramparts fighting for phalist mood that enveloped Washington freedom. America, for one thing, cannot after the collapse of the Soviet empire, the wage a cold war solo. A Europe intent on zeal to expand nato up to Russia’s bor- overcoming its bellicose past may agree ders, the intervention in the Balkans, the to economic sanctions, but it is loath to calamitous war in Iraq, and the ouster of engage in a real confrontation with Russia. Muammar el-Qaddafi in Libya, which has Moreover, if the best Russia’s latest Vozhd’, since descended into anarchy—all these or leader, can do is to restore a few shards have allowed Russia and China to depict of the former Soviet empire, then there’s the United States as a hypocritical and du- room for skepticism about how well he is plicitous and self-aggrandizing power that, really doing. Putin presides over a sclerotic whenever and wherever it can, deploys the country and a move into eastern Ukraine, idea of exporting democracy as an instru- let alone the Baltic states, would present the ment to subvert foreign regimes it dislikes. prospect of a messy entanglement, complete Moscow’s—and Beijing’s—persistent urge with partisan warfare. Anyway, it’s a long to redress their historical grievances should march from Sevastopol to the Elbe. not be underestimated. They are linked by a deep resentment of the West, one that f a historical analogy can help to explain they have sedulously nursed over the past I current events, then the most salient one decade. If Washington was animated by is probably not a war, but the Treaty of a genuine idealism, then that crusading Versailles. It created a wounded national- impulse has boomeranged upon it. For the ism in Germany, both through the demand dangerous thing, to borrow once more from for exorbitant reparations, which Germa- A. J. P. Taylor, isn’t when statesmen cannot ny finally paid off in October 2010, and live up to their principles. It’s when they through Article 231, the war-guilt clause, can. n
8 The National Interest The Realist The Case for American Nationalism
By Michael Lind
he United States of America has not necessarily, democratic) nation-states. lost its mind. To put it more pre- Americans gave moral and rhetorical, Tcisely, the United States has lost its though not material, support to Latin collective institutional memory. America Americans who broke away from colonial- achieved its present global preeminence by era Spain, to Greek patriots opposing the means of values and strategies that Wash- Ottoman Empire, and to the Poles and ington’s current bipartisan elite chooses to other rebellious nations in the revolutions repress from memory or actively stigmatize. of 1848. Americans had scant respect for Foremost among the repressed memories in the British Empire they had exited. They what Gore Vidal called the United States of failed to conquer Canada in the War of Amnesia is nationalism—including self-con- 1812, but through much of the nineteenth fident, unapologetic American nationalism. century it was hoped that Canadians would Until recently, the United States was one day voluntarily join the United States. both the modern liberal nation-state par During the two world wars, America excellence and the major champion of championed the rights of small nations national self-determination around the against empires—including its imperial world. The country owed its very existence allies like Britain—and during the Cold to a war of national liberation from the War Americans sympathized with the British Empire. Subsequently, the United “captive nations” of the Soviet bloc. States preserved its existence in the Civil At the same time, the United States War by crushing the South’s attempt to practiced the liberal nationalism that it secede from the American nation-state. preached. In its security strategy, Washington At the same time, long before Woodrow for most of its history has been guided by Wilson included the principle of national self-interested nationalism. By means self-determination in his Fourteen Points of the Louisiana Purchase, the Mexican- address and Franklin Roosevelt invoked American War and the defeat of Southern it in the Atlantic Charter, Americans secession, America’s leaders ensured that championed the right of ethnocultural North America, which for centuries had nations to secede from multinational been a battleground for European empires, empires and form their own (preferably, but would henceforth be dominated by a regional hegemon. As John Mearsheimer has Michael Lind is a contributing editor at The observed, the United States, while jealously National Interest, cofounder of the New America guarding its own regional hegemony in Foundation and policy director of its Economic North America, ensured that no other great Growth Program. He is the author of The American power would be able to enjoy a similar status Way of Strategy (Oxford University Press, 2006). in Europe or Asia.
The Case for American Nationalism May/June 2014 9 Since the end of the Cold War, to the strategic value of the objectives as however, the United States has abandoned they may have been, were extremely limited enlightened nationalism in order to pursue compared to the price paid by the United permanent American global hegemony States for victory in the wars with Germa- while preaching a new doctrine of ny—a price which, in turn, was much lower postnationalism. This grand strategy has than that paid by the other great powers in undermined the very morality, liberty the world wars. and security it was supposed to enhance. Cold War America, like America during And so, after several misconceived wars the world wars, championed the right and interventions, Washington must of national self-determination of small repudiate its post–Cold War commitment nations like those of Eastern Europe and to global hegemony and the ideology of Taiwan against regional empires, in order postnationalism that justifies it, and it to undermine the legitimacy of its Soviet must embark upon a wholesale revision and Chinese rivals. Indeed, during most of of military, trade and immigration policy the past century, the United States made in the national interest. None of these national self-determination a higher priority measures would endanger world order or than democracy. subvert American ideals. Rather, they would This approach was encoded in the fifth enhance them. It is time, in short, for a new of Wilson’s Fourteen Points. To a greater nationalism. extent than has usually been acknowledged, it became the dna of American foreign or much of its history, Washington has policy. Wilson demanded F pursued a security strategy by means that look more like cold, calculating na- a free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial tionalism than crusading idealism. In both adjustment of all colonial claims, based upon world wars, the United States assumed the a strict observance of the principle that in de- role of an “offshore balancer,” allowing its termining all such questions of sovereignty the allies to suffer tremendous losses of life and interests of the populations concerned must wealth before belatedly entering the conflict have equal weight with the equitable claims of to tip the balance at a minimum cost in the government whose title is to be determined. American blood and treasure. With the ex- ception of the wars in Korea and Vietnam, Free elections everywhere in the world are the United States waged the Cold War on not mentioned in the Fourteen Points. Nor the cheap, preferring to subsidize and advise is there any mention of internal democracy enemies of Communist regimes while using in the Atlantic Charter, which declared that embargoes and arms races to bankrupt the all peoples had a right to self-determination Soviet Union. While the Soviet Union may in world politics. Franklin Roosevelt also have spent up to a third of its gdp on the left the right to vote in free elections out of military, America during the Cold War his Four Freedoms. This ranking of priori- never spent more than around 15 percent, ties did not reflect any hostility to democ- even at the height of the war in Korea; it racy; Wilson and Roosevelt would have never mobilized its peacetime industries; agreed that liberal democracy is the best and it never adopted a universal draft, rely- form of government for an independent ing instead on a limited “selective service” nation-state. Rather, the emphasis on na- lottery draft. The losses of life in Korea tional independence rather than internal and Vietnam, horrifically disproportionate democracy reflected the recognition that a
10 The National Interest The Case for American Nationalism world of many sovereign nation-states, most America—when the geopolitical risk of which are small and weak, is safer for the involved in doing so was greatly reduced. United States than a world of a few power- ful multinational empires. n its economic strategy as well as its se- Neither Woodrow Wilson nor Franklin I curity strategy, America traditionally has Roosevelt was a postnational globalist pursued policies of enlightened, self-inter- in the contemporary sense. Quite the ested nationalism. Many otherwise edu- contrary. They were both old-fashioned cated people today believe that the United liberal nationalists in the tradition of States has always championed free trade Giuseppe Mazzini, John Stuart Mill and free markets. Nothing could be further and William Gladstone, for whom from the truth. international organizations were intended From America’s founding until World to coordinate—not replace—sovereign War II, the country used tariffs not only nation-states. After all, the word “nations” for revenue but also to protect “infant is found in the titles of the international industries” from competition with organizations they founded. The League of exports from industrial rivals like Britain. Nations was not the League of Citizens of In its rise from a postcolonial agrarian the World, just as the United Nations is not backwater to the world’s leading industrial United Humanity. power, the United States successfully The Nuremberg trials and the un Charter used protectionism (in the form of focused on banning not only genocide but tariffs), state capitalism (for example, also “aggressive war.” Indeed, the central subsidies to the private contractors who norm of the United Nations is the norm built the transcontinental railroad), and against the violation of state sovereignty by public research and development (such outside powers—a norm that postnational as government-funded research for champions of “humanitarian intervention” and “liberal imperialism” lamented and sought to alter in the Cold War’s aftermath. During the world wars and the Cold War, the United States did not allow its preference for liberal democracy to interfere with its self-interested national strategy. Before and during World War II, the Roosevelt administration pursued a policy of appeasement toward dictatorial regimes in Latin America in the hope of minimizing Axis influence in America’s neighborhood. During the Cold War, the United States pragmatically allied itself with military dictators and royal autocrats in Latin America, Asia, Africa and the Middle East as well as with Communist China against the immediate threat of the Soviet Union. Only with the end of the Cold War did the United States push for democratization in South Korea, the Philippines and Latin
The Case for American Nationalism May/June 2014 11 During the world wars and the Cold War, the United States did not allow its preference for liberal democracy to interfere with its self-interested national strategy.
the telegraph, agriculture and aviation). To the distress of British and French During this period, free trade was chiefly imperialists, the United States used its championed by the agrarians of the South power and wealth after World War II to and West, many of whom would have been force the rapid dismantling of colonial content for the United States to specialize as empires and their replacement with an a second-tier, commodity-exporting nation. integrated global economy centered on America’s repudiation of free-market New York and Washington, dc. As Britain ideology in favor of an American version had done in the 1840s, the United States of the developmental capitalist state became a champion of free trade only in extended to the intellectual sphere. To justify the 1940s, when its industrial supremacy government policies to help U.S. industry seemed assured. catch up with British industry, American nationalists in the tradition of Alexander f enlightened liberal nationalism served Hamilton and Henry Clay contrasted the I the country so well for two centuries, “American School” of “national economy” how is it that “nationalism”—including with the “English School” of free-market American nationalism—is now frequently liberalism. As an exile in the United States, identified as the evil that all right-minded the German liberal nationalist Friedrich List Americans are supposed to oppose? absorbed American nationalist economic In hindsight, the shift from American doctrines and publicized them in Europe. liberal nationalism to American Thanks partly to List, the American model postnationalism took place between the of economic nationalism inspired the state- Nixon and Clinton administrations. A case sponsored industrialization of Bismarck’s can be made that Nixonian nationalism Germany and Meiji Japan, as well as represented the makings of an alternate economic nationalists in other countries. grand strategy that was ultimately rejected. Having successfully used protectionism What I am calling Nixonian nationalism and state capitalism to industrialize the was a response to the perception of United States behind a wall of tariffs, American military overextension and the U.S. government then adopted a relative economic decline. Like Dwight different—but equally self-interested— Eisenhower, Richard Nixon sought to strategy of reciprocal trade liberalization wind down an unpopular, expensive proxy in the first half of the twentieth century. war with the Soviets in Asia begun under By that time, America’s powerful, mature Democratic predecessors. In his inaugural industries were better served by a federal address, John F. Kennedy had declared, “Let policy of seeking to open foreign consumer every nation know, whether it wishes us markets than by further protection from well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear import competition. America was now any burden, meet any hardship, support ready to battle the other industrial powers any friend, oppose any foe, in order for market share in their own markets. to assure the survival and the success of
12 The National Interest The Case for American Nationalism liberty.” Nixon implicitly rejected Kennedy’s national economic interests for the purpose grandiose vision. Instead, Nixon sought to of holding together Cold War alliances achieve security at a reduced cost by means allowed free-riding trading partners to of détente—a divide-and-rule strategy, prosper at America’s expense. pitting China against the Soviet Union— Unfortunately, the Nixonian nationalist and the “Nixon Doctrine,” according to turn in American security and economic which America’s client states and allies policy did not last. The realpolitik of Nixon would be expected to do their own fighting, and Henry Kissinger was denounced as rather than relying on American soldiers to amoral by many on the left and right alike. fight their battles for them. In his address On the center-left, Jimmy Carter sought to the nation on the war in Vietnam of to make the promotion of human rights November 3, 1969, Nixon declared: central to U.S. foreign policy at the price of undermining allies like the shah of Iran In cases involving other types of aggression, we and Nicaragua’s Anastasio Somoza. On the shall furnish military and economic assistance center-right, the neoconservatives—some when requested in accordance with our treaty of them former Democrats—denounced commitments. But we shall look to the nation realism as amoral appeasement and argued directly threatened to assume the primary re- for a grand strategy of crusades for global sponsibility of providing the manpower for its democracy, showing a Kennedyesque defense. insouciance toward costs. The Reagan administration was divided Like his security strategy, Nixon’s between neocons and those who might economic strategy put the American be described as realists, including Vice national interest first. During the 1950s and President George H. W. Bush, James Baker 1960s, following the loss of Japan’s Chinese and Brent Scowcroft. In economic policy, market and Germany’s Eastern European too, the Reagan administration was of two and Russian markets, the United States minds—defending U.S. manufacturers unilaterally opened its prosperous market against Japanese mercantilism while to help its Cold War allies and protectorates simultaneously preaching free trade and free export their way to recovery, while turning markets. The one-term administration of a blind eye to mercantilist policies that George H. W. Bush tilted even more toward discriminated against American exporters or realism in its sober and prudent foreign investors. By the Nixon years, however, the policy. Although he presided over the end costs of this generous policy were apparent. of the Cold War and the dismantling of the Japan and West Germany had recovered, Soviet Union, the elder Bush refrained from and the United States was beginning to run the American triumphalism that became the chronic merchandise trade deficits that a staple of neoconservatism and helped continue to this day. inspire the 2003 Iraq War. The Nixon administration responded by American realism went into decline in trying to defend the interests of American the 1990s, largely because an increasingly industry, by means of policies that favorable global environment altered the included delinking the dollar from gold calculation of costs and benefits. Nixonian and imposing quotas on Japanese imports. nationalism had been the policy of an Whatever the merits of these particular embattled United States confronted by measures, they illustrated a recognition rising powers—an increasingly sophisticated that the post-1945 policy of sacrificing and assertive Soviet Union and China in the
The Case for American Nationalism May/June 2014 13 security realm, and increasingly competitive new postnationalism meant rejecting trade rivals in Japan and West Germany. In America’s traditional support for national the 1990s, both security and trade threats self-determination in favor of a policy of temporarily receded. The Soviet Union freezing arbitrary, European-drawn colonial collapsed. Post-Maoist China was viewed borders forever. The United States initially as a huge potential consumer market for opposed the breakup of the Soviet Union, American corporations, rather than as a the partition of Yugoslavia, the secession of serious rival. The puncturing of the Japanese Eritrea and the division of Sudan. American real-estate and stock-market bubbles policy makers did not seriously consider the plunged the Japanese economy into decades partition of Iraq or Afghanistan, arbitrary of stagnation. Germany was plagued by a territorial states that combine antagonistic decade of slow growth because of the costs nationalities. of absorbing the former East Germany. While the new postnationalists reflexively Meanwhile, the United States was the opposed the redrawing of borders and sole remaining superpower and the initial national secessionist movements, they beneficiary of the information-technology favored weakening state sovereignty to revolution, identified with Silicon Valley. legitimate U.S. bombings, invasions and The ease with which the United States other forms of intervention. Postnationalists defeated the armed forces of Saddam called for a new norm in which the United Hussein and the Serbs in the Balkans added States and its allies could annul state to the giddy triumphalism of America’s sovereignty at will, not only in cases in foreign-policy elites. Talk of the limits which governments sought to carry out of American power—and of the need to genocide (as in the post–World War II balance commitments against resources— United Nations system) but also in cases in was seen as passé. It became an article of which a government failed to carry out its faith that Washington could afford quick, “responsibility to protect” (R2P) its citizens. high-tech and relatively bloodless wars to The R2P doctrine had the potential to promote democracy and human rights, serve as a hunting license for the United like the Gulf War and the Balkan wars. States and its dependent allies to intervene At the same time, the Nixon-era concern militarily in purely internal conflicts about predatory trade and currency unrelated either to genocide or cross-border policies by other countries gave way, in the aggression. This was postnationalism, not administrations of Bill Clinton and George internationalism. W. Bush, to complacency about foreign In trade policy, postnationalists favored mercantilism. continuing and extending America’s Cold War policy of unilateral free trade— he post–Cold War grand strategy of allowing other countries like China access to T American global hegemony, shared by America’s market, even if they used various mainstream elites in both parties, was but- mercantilist techniques to keep American tressed by a new ideology of postnational goods and services out of their own. Critics globalism. Unlike the old-fashioned interna- of foreign mercantilism were marginalized tionalism of Wilson and Roosevelt, the new and derided as protectionists. postnationalism argued that the American In immigration policy, the refusal of national interest and the interest of human- presidents and members of Congress of both ity were one and the same. parties to enforce immigration law seriously In U.S. national-security policy, the created a de facto open-borders policy in
14 The National Interest The Case for American Nationalism which the number of illegal immigrants ballooned to more than ten million. At the same time, the traditional idea of the melting pot was abandoned for “multiculturalism”—the notion that the United States was not a diverse nation-state, but rather a collection of separate ethnically or racially defined nations. Not only radical leftists but also centrist pundits compared immigration limits to racial By the second decade of the twenty- segregation. The traditional American first century, the post–Cold War fantasy idea that immigrants should be expected of limitless American power collided with to assimilate to the American majority’s reality, in the form of the Iraq and Afghan language and culture in time was often wars, the Great Recession and—most stigmatized as repressive and illiberal. important of all—the rise of China. Of all This new postnationalist consensus, the trends forcing a reconsideration of the however, was found only among the fashionable postnationalist consensus, none American elite, not among the general may be of greater significance than the rise public, who, except during the brief panic of China as both an economic and military following 9/11, remained suspicious of power. In the 1990s, optimists predicted that foreign wars, supportive of policies to defend China’s entry into the world economy would American manufacturing industries and lead the world’s most populous nation to hostile to illegal immigration. adopt free-market capitalism and multiparty The appeal of the post–Cold War democracy. Not so. On both the economic American hegemony strategy had rested and strategic fronts, China has grown on the widespread belief that Washington more aggressive in recent years—taking a enjoyed overwhelming advantages in harsher line with foreign corporations and military power and economic strength. The alarming Japan and other neighbors by U.S. military was so advanced and powerful, means of a military buildup and attempts at the thinking went, that the United States unilateral redefinition of its regional security could police the world and intervene in prerogatives. local conflict after local conflict in which Today’s China is often compared it had little or no stake at minimal cost in to Imperial Germany a century ago. But American lives and dollars. And America China presents a challenge unlike any that was so rich, or so it was often assumed, that Americans have faced in their national it could easily shed “old” industries like history, including those posed by Germany manufacturing for new “sunrise” industries and the Soviet Union. like software, even as it easily absorbed huge As a giant nation-state, the United numbers of poor, low-skilled immigrants. States has enjoyed significant advantages
The Case for American Nationalism May/June 2014 15 over medium-sized nation-states whose And one can reject the combination hopes for enduring great-power status of lax immigration enforcement with depended on possessing foreign empires, multiculturalism without embracing like Britain, France, Germany, Japan and xenophobia or rejecting immigration tout Russia. Likewise, the United States is not court. threatened by the feeble, multiheaded hydra A new strategy of enlightened nationalism of the European Union, even if on paper would revive the Nixon-era themes of the eu rivals America in population and shifting more of the burden of defense to gdp. And with the exception of China, the America’s allies and clients and treating other countries that will have the greatest the country’s remaining manufacturing populations in the generations ahead, industries as national-security assets to be such as India, Nigeria and Pakistan, are defended against foreign mercantilist assault, multinational agglomerations, some or not as bribes to be given away to American all of which in the future might split into allies and protectorates. more homogeneous successor nation-states. Only China rivals America in combining a nstead of seeking global hegemony, the majority population whose members share I United States should seek what Samuel a strong sense of common national identity P. Huntington called primacy, as the primus with a huge domestic market and a high inter pares in a world of multiple great pow- level of industrialization. The fact that China ers. The hegemony strategy is based on the has surpassed the United States already as the idea that the best way for the country to world’s leading manufacturing power—and prevent hostile hegemons from dominating will soon surpass it in total gdp—makes the Europe, Asia and the Middle East is for the triumphalist American vision of a unipolar United States itself to be the hegemon of Eu- world in which other great powers like rope, the hegemon of Asia and the hegemon China forever accept the subordinate status of the Middle East. The hegemony strategy of American Cold War satellites like Japan not only permits but also encourages free and the former West Germany appear even riding by America’s European and Asian al- more delusional. lies, which, relieved of much of the burden When confronted with any challenge of defense spending, can devote greater re- to their newly minted orthodoxy, sources to investment in economy-growing postnationalists often try to foreclose debate infrastructure, civilian industry and generous by claiming that the only alternative to their social-welfare spending. grand strategy of American hegemony is As part of a strategy of primacy rather retreat into the bad old days of isolationism, than hegemony, America should replace protectionism and nativism. But one can its policy of unilateral protection of other reject the project of a hugely expensive great powers with a less expensive strategy of American global hegemony without favoring offshore balancing—or what I call a concert- a return to pre–World War II isolation. balance strategy. Unilateral American Likewise, one can reject the policy of protection would be replaced by regional allowing other industrial nations to export concerts in Europe and Northeast Asia, to their way to riches and military power by which the local nations would be expected exploiting one-way access to the American to contribute more while the United States consumer market and U.S. technological contributed less. Hostile regional great innovations without favoring a revival of powers would be met, not by unilateral nineteenth-century infant industry tariffs. protection for which American taxpayers
16 The National Interest The Case for American Nationalism As Britain had done in the 1840s, the United States became a champion of free trade only in the 1940s, when its industrial supremacy seemed assured.
and soldiers pay most of the costs, but by export surpluses have been obtained in part traditional balance-of-power coalitions with the help of mercantilist policies of in which Washington takes part, like the wage suppression, which in turn suppress coalitions of World Wars I and II. consumption, to the detriment of the world A concert-balance strategy would allow economy in general. the country to spend less on the military, It is not only absurd but also dangerous without compromising its security. The for American strategists to focus on the United States could remove most of its Iranian threat to the Strait of Hormuz or troops from Europe and Asia, as allies in the Chinese naval threat to this or that those regions assumed more responsibility island, while complacently accepting the for their own defense. The army could be decline of the domestic American industrial downsized to a modest expeditionary force, base on which U.S. military power stationed most of the time in the United depends. America’s strategy toward China States and expected to fight alongside is particularly perverse, combining military American allies in regional concerts or encirclement with economic appeasement. balance-of-power coalitions—not to fight for A sensible strategy would do the reverse, them while they watch from the sidelines. combining limited military appeasement The navy, air force and Marines would grow of China in its own neighborhood with in relative importance. robust defense of American industry Nor is this all. Unlike the Cold War, against Chinese mercantilism. Encircling in which the Soviet Union was a first- China with bases in Japan, Korea, Australia rate military power but a third-rate and elsewhere will only aggravate Chinese economic power, rivalries in the future nationalism, without any impact on are likely to take place chiefly in the realm the major sources of Chinese power— of geoeconomics. In a world in which its domestic population and its domestic geopolitics is becoming indistinguishable industry. from geoeconomics, the three most Much contemporary American strategic important states in the world for the thinking appears to be shaped by the archaic United States are the next three biggest geopolitical theories of Alfred Thayer Mahan economies: China, Japan and Germany and Brooks Adams, who thought that the (the European Union is a single economy control of sea-lanes was the basis of world only in theory). All to some degree are power, and of Halford Mackinder, who nonliberal mercantilist economies, using grandiosely argued that the “Heartland”— various methods to maintain permanent Russia and Eastern Europe—was the “pivot merchandise trade surpluses. These trade of history.” A sounder approach was set forth surpluses come directly or indirectly at the by Leo Amery: “The successful powers will expense of the United States, which has be those who have the greatest industrial run chronic trade deficits since the 1970s. basis. It will not matter whether they are in In China, Japan and Germany, chronic the centre of a continent or on an island;
The Case for American Nationalism May/June 2014 17 those people who have the industrial power innovate within its own borders. And it and the power of invention and science will must innovate repeatedly, merely to be able to defeat all others.” maintain its relative rank in the world. As Amery recognized, in the modern Innovative technology increasingly is a world a deindustrialized country can never wasting asset, given the growing ease with which intellectual property can be transferred by high-tech espionage. Even if the great powers of the future are deterred from direct attacks on one another, great-power conflicts might take the form of new cold wars. Like the Soviet-American rivalry, tomorrow’s cold wars may be fought by several means, including arms races, proxy wars and embargoes. In each of these arenas of competition, the country with the superior domestic be a great power, no matter how rich its manufacturing base, and a large economy financiers, realtors and insurance executives to support it, will have the advantage. The or how efficient its retail distribution greater industrial power will find it easier to networks. It would be dangerous in ramp up weapons production in arms races, the extreme for a country to allow its without severely curtailing production for manufacturing industries to vanish, and civilian consumption; easier to supply allies, its skilled industrial workforce to atrophy, client states and insurgents with state-of- on the hopeful theory that it can always the-art technology and supplies; and easier reconstitute them at a moment’s notice, in a to withstand hostile embargoes of finished time of danger. goods, industrial components and critical According to Global Firepower, the resources. world’s leading military powers are currently Dual-use manufacturing capability that the United States, Russia, China, India, can be quickly converted from civilian to Britain, France, Germany, Turkey, South military production will become all the Korea and Japan. And according to the more important, as expensive robots and World Bank, in 2012 the leading nations by drones move to the center of international gdp were the United States, China, Japan, security competition. Today’s incipient Germany, France, the United Kingdom, revolutions in manufacturing are not Brazil, Russia, Italy and India. The close likely to undermine the logic of security- correlation between gdp and military conscious, manufacturing-focused economic power is striking. (Because of World War II nationalism. Automation may eliminate the memories, Japan and Germany continue to jobs of most industrial workers—but for spend proportionally less on their militaries purposes of national security, a robot factory than the victors.) on American soil will always be preferable A great power must both produce and to a robot factory in a foreign nation that
18 The National Interest The Case for American Nationalism can embargo exports to the United States integration, a moderate level of or have them cut off by a blockade. Rapid immigration combined with domestic prototyping or 3-D printing may allow fecundity could permit the U.S. population greater customization of production. But to grow even as the populations of China visions of 3-D printing leading to a revival and India, absent immigration, peak and of home and village industry are probably begin to decline. Moreover, if the world wishful thinking. It is more likely that 3-D population crests at 9–12 billion and printing will be adopted most successfully by starts to diminish, the United States could large industrial concerns, many of them state account for a growing relative share of backed or state owned, which can exploit global population, markets and military economies of scale and scope. power. The promotion of population growth is mmigration policy is seldom thought of a venerable American tradition. Benjamin I as an element of national strategy, but an Franklin, in his 1751 Observations immigration policy in the national interest Concerning the Increase of Mankind, noted should also be a central component of a new that Americans saw population growth American grand strategy of primacy. as proof of the benefits of enterprise and A generous immigration policy helps freedom. In 1806, the famous American the United States tap into a global pool of novelist Charles Brockden Brown predicted talent and enterprise. Another country’s that in a century the United States would brain drain can be America’s brain gain. have three hundred million people (a Today’s American immigration is based number that was reached only around chiefly on nepotism, with most slots for 2006). Abraham Lincoln looked forward legal immigrants going to the relatives of to the day when the United States would American citizens. Because poor people in have “five hundred millions of happy and poor countries tend to have larger families, prosperous people.” In his 1890 book The this policy promotes chain migration Cosmopolitan Railway, William Gilpin, the by unskilled people from Third World former territorial governor of Colorado, countries. Meanwhile, skilled immigrants predicted: “The basin of the Mississippi will from developed and developing countries then more easily contain and feed ten times alike must compete for limited quotas, the population [of the Roman Empire], or including H1-B quotas, which represent 1,310,000,000 of inhabitants!” If Canada a modern form of indentured servitude, were added, he wrote, “2,000,000,000 will binding immigrant workers to their easily find room—a population double the employers. The United States should follow existing human race!” The really surprising the lead of the other English-speaking thing would be an abrupt stop to America’s countries and allot most of its quotas for historic population growth, which has legal immigration on the basis of skills, not ballooned from four million in 1790 to nepotism. seventy-six million in 1900 to nearly 320 Immigration will be even more necessary million today. in the future to prevent population decline The United States will not run out of and perhaps to enable gradual expansion land. Only 3 percent of America’s land area of the U.S. population. While it would is urbanized. Will population growth lead be folly to bring in immigrants at a rate to mass poverty? It hasn’t to date. Between that drove down wages or overwhelmed 1900 and 2000, average American income the processes of cultural and economic rose seven-fold, even as the population
The Case for American Nationalism May/June 2014 19 It is time to reject the strategy of perpetual U.S. global military hegemony and the doctrine of postnationalism that justifies it, and replace them with enlightened American nationalism.
swelled from seventy-six million to about for the United States to pay more attention three hundred million. to its domestic needs, while adapting to a In recent years, the U.S. population multipolar world: “With a return to ‘nor- has grown at the slowest rate since the mal’ times, we can again become a normal Great Depression, around 0.7 percent a nation—and take care of pressing problems year. But even at this slow growth rate, the of education, family, industry, and technol- U.S. population could be more than half a ogy. We can be an independent nation in a billion in 2100 and nearly a billion in 2200. world of independent nations.” China’s population is expected to peak Nearly a quarter century later, at 1.4 billion around 2026, while India’s Kirkpatrick’s prescription is more relevant is expected to peak at about 1.6 billion than ever. It is time to reject the strategy of around 2060. If China’s population, along perpetual U.S. global military hegemony and with that of India, stabilizes and begins the doctrine of postnationalism that justifies to decline, while America’s population, it, and replace them with enlightened fed by immigration from other countries, American nationalism. In the pursuit of continues to grow, then, as odd as it sounds, primacy, the United States would shift much at some point in the next century or two of the burden of the defense of its allies and the United States really could become the protectorates to those countries themselves, world’s most populous nation. while insisting on strictly reciprocal trade Needless to say, the proposal that rather than access to American markets U.S. immigration policy should aim at by mercantilist nations that protect or gradually expanding the U.S. population, subsidize their own industries. America without undermining assimilation to a would combine its security strategy of common national identity, will horrify neo- offshore balancing with intelligent economic Malthusians who think the United States is nationalism. Finally, an immigration policy already overpopulated. But from America’s in the national interest would shift the founding to the present, the country has emphasis from family reunification to skills, eclipsed its great-power rivals mainly by while using immigration to enable long-term outgrowing them in population and gdp. population growth, of a kind compatible with the economic integration and cultural n the fall 1990 issue of this magazine, assimilation of newcomers to the United I Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, the former U.S. am- States. bassador to the United Nations, published This is the path to the restoration of an essay entitled “A Normal Country in a American security and solvency, one that Normal Time.” She wrote: “The United should have been taken following the Cold States performed heroically in a time when War. After a quarter century of delusion heroism was required; altruistically during and debacle and folly, it is time for an the long years when freedom was endan- American foreign policy based on the gered.” But now, she argued, it was time national interest. n
20 The National Interest The Case for American Nationalism The Hollow Man
By Freddy Gray
n Anthony Trollope’s novel Phineas London’s equivalent of the Beltway— Redux, Mr. Daubeny, a prime minister had heard of him. His only brush with I modeled on Benjamin Disraeli, proud- the big time had come in his twenties ly announces, “See what we Conservatives when he worked as a special adviser to can do. In fact we will conserve nothing Norman Lamont, the chancellor of the when we find that you do not desire to have exchequer, and then Michael Howard, the it conserved any longer.” It’s a credo that home secretary. In the footage of “Black Prime Minister David Cameron appears to Wednesday,” September 16, 1992, when live by. Britain announced the withdrawal of its Among a crowded field of contenders, currency from the European Exchange Cameron may be the slipperiest Briton ever Rate Mechanism, you can see the twenty- to have successfully climbed the greasy pole. six-year-old Cameron, his hair and suit We read his name in the papers. We see unruffled, standing behind Lamont as he his face on our televisions and computer addresses the cameras outside Downing screens, yet nobody is quite sure who he Street with the momentous news. really is or what he is doing. Buying muffins Cameron went on to have a successful for his children? Tending to weighty matters career as a pr man at the media firm of state? Conscientious servant? Rank Carlton Communications, where he fine- opportunist? He has been at the forefront tuned his genius for news management. of British public life for almost a decade, He returned to politics as a member of yet all definitions slide off him. He has been Parliament in 2001 and quickly emerged as prime minister for nearly four years, but his a first-rate public speaker, the outstanding agenda remains no more than an aspiration. figure among a group of young center- As the journalist Alex Massie recently asked, righters on a mission to “detoxify” the Tory “What is David Cameron for?” brand and drag their party into the twenty- We used to think we knew: “Dave” was first century. He went to great lengths to a modernizer. In 2005, when Cameron appear as un-Tory as he possibly could. He first rose to prominence, the British wore Converse trainers and quoted Gandhi. Conservative Party seemed ruined. The He promised “compassionate conservatism” Tories had lost several elections in a row. and talked about sharing the proceeds of They were distrusted, reviled, “the nasty growth. Politics, for him and his camarilla, party.” They needed a savior: in breezed was about “achieving progressive ends Cameron. Only a few months earlier, through conservative means,” whatever nobody outside Westminster Village— that meant. He bicycled around London and preached about the environment. He Freddy Gray is managing editor of the Spectator. changed the party logo from a flaming
The Hollow Man May/June 2014 21 We read David Cameron’s name in the papers. We see his face on our televisions and computer screens, yet nobody is quite sure who he really is or what he is doing.
torch of liberty to a green-and-blue tree. feeling affluent and strangely unburdened He lauded gay marriage and sneered at the by notions of class. Cameron’s poshness was “headbangers” on his right. a good joke, and it infuriated committed There were grumbles from the old socialists, but the public didn’t feel put guard. Peter Hitchens (brother of the off. Indeed, the media, even on the left, even more famous Christopher) accused were infatuated by Cameron’s glamour. Cameron of having “mopped up the last- Successful journalists in Britain tend remaining puddles of moral, social and to have liberal values and come from the cultural conservatism.” Lord Saatchi, the richer parts of London, so even if they advertising guru and former Conservative despised Tories they could at least identify Party chairman, called Cameron’s entourage with Cameron—someone who came the “say anything to get elected” Tories. from money but tried to be enlightened. But most British right-wingers—a practical The Cameroons—Cameron’s immediate more than an ideological bunch—were circle—had tailored their message cheered by the thought that, finally, the specifically to placate the bbc and the Conservative Party had found a winner. Guardian, Britain’s most important Cameron bested his rival David Davis, a lefty institutions. Meanwhile, the new-look more robustly right-wing type, took his Tory combination of enthusiasm for free party by storm, or at least by the neck, and markets and progressive social attitudes— instantly established himself as a popular mixed with social pedigree—made the public figure. party attractive again to the power brokers at News International, Rupert Murdoch’s here was another aspect of Camer- empire, who had fallen for Tony Blair in T on that everyone understood: he the 1990s. This particular alliance turned was privileged—not an aristocrat, exactly, out to be acutely toxic—following the great but upper-middle class enough to be seen phone-hacking scandal—but in the last by almost every voter as “posh.” An Old decade it was still considered invaluable Etonian and Oxford man who mingled in politics. The Sun, Britain’s most-read among a circle of similarly smart and suc- tabloid, embraced the Cameron project, as cessful friends—the “Notting Hill set”—he did the Times. seemed almost typecast from one of those When, in 2007, Blair stepped down to soppy Richard Curtis comedy films such be replaced by the more robustly left-wing as Love Actually, in which English toffs figure of Gordon Brown, Cameron’s stock roam around London being self-deprecating rose further still. The self-appointed “heir and charming. to Blair,” Cameron appeared destined to Experts suggested that Cameron’s capture the center back from New Labour. elite background meant he would never He was the good guy in British politics; hold mass appeal. They were wrong. In Brown was a thug. the middle of the last decade, Britain was But then disaster struck in the form of
22 The National Interest The Hollow Man the global financial crash. Cameron found Edmund Burke and the importance of himself stranded: having maneuvered the “little platoons” in civil society. He had Tories to the middle, he found that the a curious flirtation with the political atom of Blairite centrism—with its faith philosopher Philip Blond, a “new localist” in the unifying power of neoliberal and who believed that the financial crisis global economics—had started to split. had created an opportunity to revive the People were scared and wanted something neglected tradition of “red Toryism.” more than platitudes and spin from their “British conservatism,” wrote Blond in a politicians. Brown veered left, virtually much-discussed essay in Prospect, “must nationalizing the bankrupt banking system not . . . repeat the American error of and presenting himself as a megastatist hero preaching ‘morals plus the market’ while of the future. Cameron could not be seen ignoring the fact that economic liberalism to support Brown’s dangerous overhaul of has often been a cover for monopoly the economy, but he also didn’t want to be capitalism and is therefore just as socially viewed as unpatriotic during a crisis. He damaging as left-wing statism.” At floundered, while “Super Gordon” enjoyed the World Economic Forum in Davos, a bizarre political revival. Suddenly, too, Cameron expressed his concern that the posh factor counted against Cameron: “someone working in the local branch of a nobody wanted an Old Etonian in charge at global corporation can feel like little more a time of real emergency. than flotsam in some vast international The “Brown bounce” didn’t last. It sea of business.” Elsewhere, he seized on a did, however, expose a real weakness in report by Demos, the London-based think Cameron’s position. He needed to reassure tank, about the value of stable families, voters that he stood for something more those littlest platoons. “Parenting is the than his own personal advancement coalface of creating character,” he said, in a and that he had deep answers to the big deep voice, to some applause. questions posed by the crash. He needed “the vision thing,” as George H. W. Bush called it. Cameron had always said that his “progressive conservatism” had intellectual roots, but now, with the 2010 general election looming and the global crisis ongoing, he had an urgent pr need to spell it out. Encouraged by Steve Hilton, his director of strategy, and Oliver Letwin, the shadow cabinet policy coordinator, Cameron began talking about
The Hollow Man May/June 2014 23 ll this high-minded waffle came to a Gordon Brown did not leave Downing A head in the Conservative Party’s elec- Street. It looked, for a day or two, as if tion manifesto in 2010, which laid out the the left-leaning Liberal Democrats might party’s vision for the “Big Society”—a Brave enter into coalition with Labour instead New Even Greater Britain in which the of the Conservatives. A charm offensive state would empower individuals or small was needed: here Cameron came into his groups to make life better for everyone. The element. He quickly forged a close bond central government would act as the enabler with the Liberal Democratic leader Nick of “social entrepreneurship,” cutting away Clegg—another privately educated man red tape and pushing the petty bureaucra- (Westminster) with whom Cameron has cies aside to enable true localism to prosper. more in common than he does with many It was much too grandiose an idea for Tories. As Labour sulked, Cameron and his British politics, and duly backfired. The negotiators offered the most generous terms concept sounded suspiciously intellectual to their prospective government partners. to common sense–loving Tories—it didn’t Sure enough, on May 12, Cameron and help that the Big Society’s acronym was Clegg appeared together in the Downing “bs”—and the public could not process Street Rose Garden to announce their the idea that the nasty party wanted to be political marriage to the world. Cameron nice, actually. Critics on the left smelled a was prime minister, at last, and Clegg Tory rat: those cruel right-wingers were at would be his deputy. It looked, at least for a it again, they said, scrapping vital public few hours, like a triumph. services and dressing it up as benevolence. Polly Toynbee, the influential Guardian hat was then. Ever since, Tory policy columnist, called the Big Society a “big fat T decisions usually have involved re- lie.” Under pressure from his more hands- sistance—often in public—from the Lib on shadow ministers, Cameron promptly Dems, Britain’s most leftward-leaning po- ditched the bs and started campaigning litical party. Cameron insists that his ad- again on practical policies. But the damage ministration has proved itself resilient—“it had been done: soon after their Big Society does what it says on the tin,” he said, quot- manifesto was published, the Conservatives’ ing a well-known varnish commercial— poll ratings dipped, and they did not and it’s true that the “Lib-Con” union has recover sufficiently to win an outright survived its first term in reasonable condi- majority. Today, Cameron still uses the tion, in large part thanks to the working words “Big Society” from time to time as relationship between Cameron and Clegg. a feel-good line in the odd speech—in his But often the two men have been tugged 2013 Christmas message, for instance—but apart by their respective bases. Cynics may it’s hardly a model for reforming the nation. say that Cameron has been able to use the He would never again make the mistake of Lib Dems as an excuse to be less and less trying to be too profound. conservative. But sharing power has both The general election of May 6, 2010, narrowed and broadened the prime minis- resulted in a hung Parliament. The ter’s political scope. On some issues, Cam- Conservatives had only a small majority. eron and Clegg have been able to sing from To form a proper government, they the same liberal hymn sheet—for instance, would have to enter into coalition with in legalizing gay marriage last year. But, the Liberal Democrats. For a few days, in exchange for supporting the Tories, the however, uncertainty ruled. The loathed Lib Dems have been eager to present them-
24 The National Interest The Hollow Man Cameron’s enthusiasm for announcing big policy ideas is not matched by a willingness to go through the heavier, less exciting slog of implementing them.
selves as the coalition’s progressive force, crisis and its immense debt problem. For holding back the rabid right-wingers. This these reasons, at the end of 2013, the has proved tricky for Cameron, precisely Daily Telegraph’s Peter Oborne called the because it is exactly the image of himself prime minister “the great reformer.” “Mr. that he liked to project. Governing in a co- Cameron,” he wrote, “has had to cope with alition has forced him to be less left-liberal, economic crisis, a mutinous Tory party, a especially because these days he faces an in- coalition government and a fractious media. surgent challenge from the right in the form But in his first three years in office he has of the United Kingdom Independence Party already a more solid record of domestic (ukip). Ferociously Euroskeptic and led by achievement than Tony Blair can boast over the charismatic Nigel Farage, the ukip has a full decade.” been attracting ever-larger numbers of dis- Is it possible that behind the superficial affected Tory traditionalists. As a result, front Cameron really is a great conservative Cameron has repeatedly felt compelled to pragmatist? Again, it’s hard to say. Effective reassure grassroots supporters that, au fond, domestic reform is, as Oborne says, hard he remains one of them. So Dave the once- and unglamorous work, only recognized proud environmentalist has found himself in the long term. But there is a lingering being quoted as saying that he wants to suspicion that Cameron’s enthusiasm for “cut the green crap”—though aides deny announcing big policy ideas is not matched that phrase was ever uttered. And Dave the by a willingness to go through the heavier, Tory leader who once told his party to stop less exciting slog of implementing them. “banging on about Europe” has found him- The coalition’s reforms have in fact been self committed to an “in/out” referendum something of a mixed bag so far. On as to Britain’s future within the European schools, thanks to his energetic minister Union. He particularly infuriated Clegg, an for education, Michael Gove, Cameron has outright eurofederalist, by effectively veto- made progress. But only 174 so-called free ing an eu treaty change on the grounds of schools have opened in the last three years, protecting Britain’s national interest. and Britain’s slide down the international The constraints of coalition have education rankings continues. The effort not, however, prevented Cameron’s to reshape the welfare system has great government from attempting radical public support, but has been ruined by public-sector reform on a number of bureaucratic mistakes. The ambitious fronts. The coalition has attempted to shake-up of the nhs has been reduced revolutionize state education (inspired to a step-by-step managerial effort. And in part by the U.S. model of charter while the economy is showing clear signs schools), revamp the administration of the of improvement, the “green shoots” are National Health Service (nhs), overhaul growing off ever-vaster levels of government the dysfunctional welfare system, and— borrowing. For all the talk of austerity and most of all—tackle Britain’s economic cuts, Chancellor of the Exchequer George
The Hollow Man May/June 2014 25 Osborne has actually increased state doubts about his judgment. Coulson spending in real terms: In 2009–2010, finally stepped down in January 2011, but public-sector current expenditure, adjusted the problem would not go away. Cameron to 2011–2012 prices, was £634.2 billion. subsequently established an official inquiry By 2012–2013, it was reportedly around into “the culture, practices and ethics of the £647.1 billion. press,” presumably in a bid to make himself look above reproach, but the decision caused him acute embarrassment when his turn came to answer questions. The lead counsel, Robert Jay, humiliated the prime minister by reading out a series of flirtatious text messages between him and Coulson’s successor at the News of the World, the red-haired Rebekah Brooks, who lived near him and was a close friend. Nothing else could have so perfectly encapsulated the cozy complicity of the political At the same time, Cameron’s reputation and media elite. In one cringe-inducing as a good man has been undermined by message, Cameron thanked Brooks for the never-ending phone-hacking scandal. letting him ride one of her family’s horses The story began as a series of revelations (“fast, unpredictable and hard to control that Rupert Murdoch–owned newspapers but fun”). In another, the day before one had been illegally intercepting celebrity of his major speeches, she told him: “I am voicemails. By 2011, after incessant so rooting for you tomorrow not just as pushing by the Guardian, the bbc and the a proud friend but because professionally New York Times, whose own motives are we’re definitely in this together! Speech of not hard to fathom, it had transformed your life! Yes he Cam!” In the last decade, into a wide-ranging exposé of the entire Cameron’s successful wooing of News political-media matrix through which International had made him look like a Britain is run. Cameron was compromised worthy prime-minister-in-waiting. In the first by the fact that his director of more anxious 2010s, it made him look communications, the tabloid man Andy grubby and not a little absurd. Coulson, had resigned in 2007 as editor of the News of the World following the ike so many leaders struggling at home, first round of hacking reports. Cameron’s L Cameron has found solace in adventure decision to appoint Coulson only seven overseas. He always promised that he was months later—and stand by him as the no neoconservative: in a speech delivered allegations intensified—raised serious on the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks,
26 The National Interest The Hollow Man he had warmed many a realist heart by dis- as university fees and social security, were tinguishing between his liberal conservatism pleased to have discovered an excellent and the more hawkish variety. “We will adventure, a grand humanitarian mission, serve neither our own, nor America’s, nor like gay marriage, upon which they could the world’s interests if we are seen as Ameri- embark together? ca’s unconditional associate in every endeav- Cameron, for his part, must have enjoyed or,” he said. Democracy, he added, “cannot playing the statesman on the global stage be imposed from outside. . . . Liberty grows after a challenging few months, especially from the ground—it cannot be dropped since it turned out that the military from the air by an unmanned drone.” campaign was relatively quick, casualty Yet Cameron’s instinctive liberalism— free (for Britain at least) and successful in his impulse to be the good guy—also the short term. The drama of war excited makes him a natural interventionist on the prime minister, too. According to the humanitarian grounds, and in the civil war journalist Matthew D’Ancona, author of In in Libya, he saw a conflict worth fighting. It Together: The Inside Story of the Coalition Cameron’s friends today insist that he was a Government, Cameron’s experience in Libya, reluctant warrior. His priority, like President in the words of one of his friends, was “the Barack Obama’s, was to heal the economy moment when Dave said to himself—‘wait and fix a broken society at home. The last a moment—I have the levers of power.’” thing he wanted was an expensive and No matter whether Libya was a energy-sapping military engagement. But real foreign-policy success or not, the as Muammar el-Qaddafi’s forces rounded Cameroons were eager to claim the conflict on Benghazi, and a terrible slaughter looked as a big win for their man. He had saved imminent, Cameron performed a volte- the day. As another unnamed government face and became a passionate advocate for source told D’Ancona, “Whenever things intervention. It was Cameron—probably get bad, and the press is saying what even more than the bellicose French a rubbish government we are, I remind president Nicolas Sarkozy—who applied myself that there are people alive in the most external pressure on President Benghazi tonight because we decided to Obama to intervene. (Secretary of State take a risk.” Hillary Clinton, along with Susan Rice Cameron was so enthused by his Libya and Samantha Power, did the twisting of experience, in fact, that he soon adopted Obama’s arm at home.) a gung-ho approach to the next major We shouldn’t scoff at the thought that Arab conflict of Western interest. Spurred a prime minister wished above all to on by his wife Samantha, who in March save lives. It would be naive, however, to 2013 had toured the country with the suggest that political gain was not among organization Save the Children, Cameron Cameron’s motivations. The allied effort pushed hard for intervention against Bashar in Libya came at a time when coalition al-Assad in the Syrian civil war. Last August, relations were at a low ebb. Far from being he came back from holiday determined to an unwanted distraction, Libya was a act militarily following another round of welcome one. Clegg, like Cameron, was reports that the Syrian president’s forces had no conventional hawk, but he too decided used chemical weapons. The world could military action was the right course. Is not “stand idly by” (that phrase again) as a it too cynical to say that the two men, dictator massacred his people, though, like exhausted after squabbling over issues such Secretary of State John Kerry, Cameron
The Hollow Man May/June 2014 27 utterly failed to spell out what the objectives would rush to war for the sake of his own of a strike would be. conscience, or just some good headlines. As it turned out, the war effort flopped. In a rare flex of legislative muscle, olitics must be personal for Camer- Parliament bridled at the prospect of yet P on, and it is pr. He has filled his gov- another intervention in the Middle East and ernment with his chums and he is loyal narrowly rejected a vote sanctioning the use to them. One of the refreshing features of of force. It helped set the stage for President Cameron’s government has been that he Obama’s own retreat from his red line, as gives his ministers autonomy within their the U.S. Congress, too, looked as though various departments. He has moved away it would not serve as a rubber stamp for from the highly centralized “sofa cabinet” war, as it had before the Iraq imbroglio. system of Tony Blair. But it is also often And so Cameron the never-say-die human- said that Cameron has a lazy streak. As long rights warrior almost instantly reverted to as he is winning the headline war against Cameron the sober realist: “It is clear to me Labour, he doesn’t want to be bothered that the British parliament, reflecting the with the nitty-gritty of government bat- views of the British people, does not want tles. At first this claim seems incredible—a to see British military action. I get that and successful politician can’t possibly be idle. the government will act accordingly.” He But Cameron does pride himself on being performed the metamorphosis so smoothly laid-back, focused on the bigger picture.
that some of his sharpest critics were left He reportedly calls Fridays “thinking days” applauding his humility in the face of defeat. (which presumably means “not working One day, we may look back on Cameron days”) and can frequently be seen with his as a heroic figure who only went to war feet on his desk, drinking a beer. reluctantly for the noblest causes, while In that sense, he is a typical Old Etonian: at the same time pulling off massive Britain’s most famous public school has a political, economic and cultural reforms at reputation for turning out supremely self- home. But Cameron’s obvious impulsivity confident leaders who don’t sweat the small in foreign affairs suggests a far different stuff. They have social inferiors to do that verdict—a meretricious figure who for them. Cameron’s critics also accuse him
28 The National Interest The Hollow Man of “government by essay crisis”—a reference As the 2015 general election approaches, to his Oxford education. When things seem Cameron is shifting shape yet again. He has to be going well, he can be complacent; it brought in the Australian political strategist takes a crisis to sting him into action. Lynton Crosby, a no-nonsense right-winger, One of Cameron’s nicknames is to toughen up his image. At the same time, Flashman, the bully character in Tom he has hired Barack Obama’s campaign Brown’s School Days who was turned manager Jim Messina, a lifelong Democrat. into a great literary antihero by George Just as Obama did in 2012, Cameron is MacDonald Fraser. He has a reputation for now urging the electorate to let him “finish being rude, or, as the journalist Damian the job” by awarding him a second term. Thompson puts it: “He exhibits the But the public does not seem willing to calculated rudeness of people with very nice comply. The latest polls suggest that the manners.” Cameron certainly has a temper. Labour Party remains favored to win in His opponents on the Labour front benches 2015. If Cameron is ousted, he might try enjoy referring to the “crimson tide”—what once more to imitate Tony Blair and Bill the shadow education secretary Tristram Clinton, setting up foundations and being Hunt described as “that half hour journey, a sort of global spokesman for hire. Or every Question Time, during which the he could go back to the gilded life of the Prime Minister’s face turns from beatific British toff: a good country house and some calm to unedifying fury.” At the same time, decent claret shared among a tight circle of however, he is an inveterate charmer, more influential and discreet friends. Who is the than capable of buttering up his enemies if real David Cameron? We’ll probably never it provides him with an advantage. know, and he may not either. n
The Hollow Man May/June 2014 29 Reading Burke in Sydney
By Tom Switzer
ony Abbott likes to tell the story would regard America as a foreign country.”) about his first visit to the United He champions “smaller government, lower TStates as a newly elected member taxes, greater freedom, a fair go for families of the Australian Parliament. It was 1995, and respect for institutions that have stood and he was widely seen as a rising star in the test of time.” the center-right Liberal Party, where the When he is not on message, which is rare word “liberal” still means more or less what for spin-soaked politicians in the relentless it meant in the nineteenth century. He had 24-7 media and Internet environment, he also distinguished himself as a leading op- is gaffe-prone. During the federal election ponent of the Labor government’s ill-fated campaign last August, he said that a female proposal to replace Australia’s constitutional parliamentary candidate had “sex appeal” monarchy with a republic. and that his opponent, the then Labor But something got lost in translation: prime minister Kevin Rudd, was not the Abbott’s Washington-based hosts, the U.S. “suppository” of all wisdom. He has ticked Information Agency, had been told that almost every unfashionable box in modern he was “very liberal and strongly anti- politics. Republican.” Which meant his itinerary Like Margaret Thatcher’s victory in the during his two-week study trip consisted uk Conservative Party’s leadership contest of meetings with only commentators in 1975 and Ronald Reagan’s nomination and interest groups on the far left of the as the Republican presidential candidate in American ideological spectrum. 1980, Abbott’s narrow victory in the Liberal Trans-Pacific jokes aside, the conventional Party leadership ballot in 2009 delighted his wisdom of just a few years ago held that political opponents, who had dismissed him Abbott was too right-wing to become prime as easy to beat in a general election. The minister down under, a throwback to a Canberra press gallery—our equivalent of bygone era. After all, the devout Christian the Washington press corps—did not take and former Oxford boxing blue is skeptical him seriously as prime ministerial material. about abortion, same-sex marriage and He’s “too archetypically conservative.” He’s alarmist claims of global warming. He is too much of a “King Catholic.” He views an Anglophile who is a great admirer of the world through a “narrow ideological the United States and its leadership role in prism.” He’ll “split the party.” “Australia the world. (He once said, “Few Australians doesn’t want Tony Abbott. We never have.” So said seasoned observers of Australian Tom Switzer is the Australian editor of the politics. Spectator and a research associate at the United Nor were they alone. The nation’s States Studies Center at the University of Sydney. intelligentsia was contemptuous of the
30 The National Interest Reading Burke in Sydney “Mad Monk.” Under Abbott’s leadership, admirer. Among other things, his oratory one distinguished academic warned, the tends to lack range and theatrical effect. At conservative Liberal Party would become times, he is even rhetorically challenged, “a down-market protest party of angry more likely to address his fellow citizens old men and the outer suburbs.” Even the in simple sound bites than in an engaging U.S. ambassador in Canberra, in a cable to conversational style. He gave unqualified Washington that WikiLeaks revealed a few support to the previous government’s years ago, called him “a polarizing right- commitment of Australian troops in the winger.” depressing and endless war in Afghanistan. And yet for all his evident shortcomings, Never mind that our presence there had not the fifty-six-year-old Abbott reminds one been yielding lasting improvements that of the adage that low expectations are a were commensurate with the investment priceless political asset. He has seen off of blood and treasure. (Australia lost nearly three Labor prime ministerships in as many forty lives in the last four years.) years. And last September, he won one of Moreover, despite his vaunted the nation’s biggest landslide victories since commitment to reducing the size and scope World War II. Simply put, the man who of the federal government, he is hardly the once trained to be a Catholic priest has second coming of Milton Friedman. His resurrected the conservative cause, which government, not even three months old had languished in the Antipodes following last December, controversially rejected a the downfall of John Howard, Australia’s takeover bid by the U.S. agricultural giant prime minister from 1996 to 2007, whom Archer Daniels Midland of Australia’s Abbott served as a confidant and cabinet GrainCorp. Given Abbott’s declaration minister. on the night he was elected that Australia was “open for business,” it was an o how did this political Neanderthal win uncharacteristic move, one that earned S power in Australia? What defines the an editorial rebuke from the usually Abbott worldview? Is he a role model for sympathetic Wall Street Journal. His plan for American conservatives? And are the early an expensive paid paternal-leave program reports of his political demise exaggerated? also suggests a social-engineering streak. From the outset, I should acknowledge Still, one can concede Abbott’s flaws that I have known Abbott for fifteen years. and broadly support his political agenda. I like him enormously and consider him a At the heart of his appeal is his brand of friend, or—in Australian parlance—a top conservatism, something both his friends bloke with a larrikin streak. He’s been so and foes misunderstand. Abbott does not faithful to his mates that he has not lost subscribe to the left-liberal consensus, any. He is a volunteer bushfire fighter and which explains why the well-educated folk lifeguard in his federal seat on Sydney’s of inner-city Sydney and Melbourne are northern beaches. He is deeply committed full of scorn. But neither does he cleave as to the welfare of indigenous Australians, faithfully to the conservative “movement” and spends weeks living in remote as do many American conservatives. Nor Aboriginal communities in the outback. could he genuinely be described as “right- There is nothing phony about him. wing” in any crude ideological sense. Such But although I am not one of his many terms and labels are inappropriate ways of critics in Australia’s media and intellectual properly understanding the true nature of community, neither am I an uncritical conservatism.
Reading Burke in Sydney May/June 2014 31 Conservatives, traditionally speaking, the previous government’s carbon tax on are essentially antidoctrinaire and opposed the grounds of its expense and uselessness. to programmatic laundry lists. Like Tories And it is why Abbott is wary of unfettered of old, and unlike Tea Partiers today, free markets and lax foreign ownership they prefer flexibility and adaptability to laws, lest they create a radical backlash rigid consistency and purity of dogma. from the losers involved in the process of As Samuel Huntington observed in an what Joseph Schumpeter called “creative important article in the American Political destruction.” Science Review in 1957, the antithesis of On the other hand, many American conservatism is not simply left-liberalism or conservatives, especially Tea Partiers, fail even socialism. It is radicalism, which is best the temperament test abysmally. They do defined in terms of one’s attitude toward well on the doctrinal purity scale. They change. For conservatives, temperament impatiently lust after radical change and should always trump ideology, and upheaval. And they yearn to be consistent the single best test of temperament is a in the application of a fixed doctrine. But person’s attitude toward change. Although they attach little or no value to continuity. conservatism accepts the need for change, Nor do they place much emphasis on the onus of proof is always on those who the role of changing circumstances and advocate for it. conditions in the course of devising policy. Abbott more or less represents this Given the intransigence congressional tradition. He is temperamentally Republicans and presidential primary conservative, someone who likes to candidates have displayed in recent years, do things in settled and familiar ways, and their utterly unconservative refusal to and he recognizes that radical change is ground ideological ambitions in political fraught with the danger of unintended realities, there is much to be said for consequences. This is a man at ease quoting Abbott’s mind-set. Michael Oakeshott, Roger Scruton and What also distinguishes the Australian Paul Johnson, distinguished conservative prime minister from his conservative writers who champion incremental and brethren across the Pacific is his belief that consensual change over the large and a center-right party should represent a big divisive variety. tent, one capable of embracing a variety That is why Abbott defends the of beliefs and implementing a range of monarchy and opposes a republic. His policies depending on the circumstances critics try to paint him as a romantic loyalist and conditions. He is fond of quoting a who is sentimentally attached to the queen 1980 address by Liberal prime minister and “Mother Country” (where he was born Malcolm Fraser on the natural compatibility in 1957). But his position is based on a between liberalism, understood in belief that a republican form of government nineteenth-century terms, and conservatism, could amount to radical tinkering with understood in eighteenth-century terms. (As the constitutional arrangements that have it happens, the speech was written by Owen undergirded the nation’s stability and Harries, a fellow Australian conservative prosperity since 1901, when Britain granted who became founding coeditor of The formal independence to its colony. National Interest in 1985.) Abbott’s conservatism also explains why Like many Australian Liberals before he is skeptical about alarmist claims of and since his tenure (1975–1983), Fraser global warming: he has proposed to abolish believed that the Liberal Party is the
32 The National Interest Reading Burke in Sydney custodian of the center-right tradition in leader would consign conservatives to the politics. But he also stressed the importance political wilderness for a generation, much of both liberal and conservative thought in as the American consensus predicted Barack shaping public policy. Liberalism “always Obama’s victory in 2008 would mark what emphasises the freedom of the individual the historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. had and the absence of restraint,” Abbott previously called a new (liberal) cycle of approvingly quotes Fraser (and Harries) history in U.S. politics. as saying. “Conservatism . . . stresses the During the first two years of the Labor need for a framework of stability, continuity government, from late 2007 to late 2009, and order not only as something desirable the parties that form the conservative in itself but as a necessary condition for a coalition were vacillating, divided and free society.” And he further asserts: “The art of handling this tension, of finding that creative balance between the forces of freedom and the forces of continuity which alone allows a society to advance, is the true art of government in a country like ours.” Again, in striking contrast, Tea Party Republicans and many conservatives inside and outside the Beltway place more stress on classical liberalism as a rigid political ideology, à la John Stuart Mill and the Enlightenment, and less emphasis on the more classical conservative virtues of prudence, stability and measured change, à la Edmund Burke and Alexander Hamilton. This perhaps also helps explain why Tea Party Republicans exhibit a far deeper hostility toward the state than, say, Australian or indeed most Western conservatives.
till, although Abbott has little stomach S for ideology, his political rise is attrib- uted to his doing the very thing so many British Tories have shied away from doing in more recent times: he had the political leaderless. They proved unable to present nerve and moral conviction to sell a seem- a clear alternative to Canberra’s big- ingly unpopular policy to “middle Aus- government agenda. Like David Cameron tralia,” where the center of political grav- in Britain and John McCain in the United ity is decidedly to the right of most edito- States, Australia’s conservative political rial offices of media outlets as well as the leadership embraced the global-warming senior common rooms of our nation’s great agenda, and essentially aped the Labor learned institutions. policy to introduce a cap-and-trade scheme When Kevin Rudd won power in 2007, on the eve of the un’s Copenhagen climate the accepted wisdom was that the Labor conference. A gap of fifteen to twenty
Reading Burke in Sydney May/June 2014 33 Tony Abbott is the personification of old-fashioned conservatism, representative of the unexciting virtues of prudence, continuity and measured change.
percentage points between the two major gain, especially for many Australians who parties was the norm. Aussie conservatives were mortgaged to the hilt. The nation, were in the deepest political valley. having weathered both the Asian and the The turning point came in December Anglo-American financial storms in 1997– 2009, when Abbott took over the Liberal 1998 and 2008–2009, respectively, has leadership. His internal opponent was not suffered a recession in more than two Malcolm Turnbull, a Mitt Romney–type decades. But a significant segment of the figure without any conservative instincts, electorate has been increasingly conscious of and he—just like McCain and Cameron— high living costs, thanks to a tight housing had been a willing accomplice in the market and exorbitant energy prices. Add other party’s agenda to price greenhouse- to this the fact that Australia accounts for gas emissions in order to slash the nation’s only about 1.2 percent of global carbon carbon footprint. emissions and depends heavily on mineral But the (political) climate was changing, exports for growth. Abbott’s case was not at home and abroad. For several years, from an appeal to do nothing, but to avoid doing 2006 to 2009—which marked the period something stupid. And unilateral action to from Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth to the slash Australian emissions when no major U.S. House’s passage of the Waxman-Markey emitter would follow Australia’s lead, while climate bill—the global-warming debate its trade competitors were chugging up the had been conducted in a heretic-hunting smoky path to prosperity, was hardly in the and illiberal environment. It was deemed national interest. blasphemy for anyone to dare question not Then came the failed 2009 Copenhagen only the doomsday scenarios peddled by summit, which exposed the Labor agenda as the climate alarmists but also the policy a sham. When the rest of the world refused consensus to decarbonize the economy to endorse the climate enthusiasts’ fanciful via a tax or cap-and-trade scheme. Rudd notions for slashing carbon emissions, Rudd claimed that climate change was the “great imploded. Almost overnight, the Labor moral challenge” of our time. And in clear prime minister’s stratospheric poll numbers breach of the great liberal anti-Communist collapsed and he ditched his cap-and-trade Sidney Hook’s rule of controversy (“Before scheme, his government’s keynote legislation. impugning an opponent’s motives . . . Labor factional warlords panicked and, in an answer his arguments”), Rudd linked act of brutality late one night in June 2010 “world government conspiracy theorists” that could have been mistaken for a scene and “climate-change deniers” to “vested from Shakespeare’s Macbeth, they knifed interests.” Rudd in an internal party coup and installed It was in this environment that Abbott Julia Gillard as prime minister. challenged the media-political zeitgeist. Cap Undeterred, Abbott continued his and trade, he argued, merely amounted relentless attacks on other key issues to economic pain for no environmental of principle and policy. Throughout
34 The National Interest Reading Burke in Sydney the next three years, he opposed the ther sought nor received aid in return for its Labor government’s big-spending and support. And it is one of the few U.S. allies interventionist agenda, which had turned that has not been a burden on American a multibillion-dollar surplus under the taxpayers. At the height of the Cold War previous conservative government into in the 1950s and 1960s, Australia provid- skyrocketing debt and deficits, and he ed bases and other facilities to the United promised voters he would not be profligate States. More recently, in 2011 the Labor with tax dollars. He also supported tough government, supported by Abbott, agreed border-protection policies, which had to what amounts to a U.S. Marine base in traditionally helped boost public confidence Darwin on the northern coast and poten- in large-scale, legal immigration. So effective tially in western Australia. was Abbott in challenging Labor that the The alliance is deeply embedded in government changed leaders (again): Gillard the national psyche. From its birth as an herself was fatally knifed in June 2013— independent state in 1901, Australia has by the very man she had backstabbed always sought a close association with a three years earlier. By refusing to buckle great power that shares its values and in his opposition to Labor’s increasingly interests. For the first half of the twentieth antibusiness agenda and its craven attempts century, Britain filled that role; since the to woo groups such as gays, refugees, the end of the war against Japanese militarism arts lobby and public broadcasters at the and the onset of the Cold War, it has been expense of its more traditional constituency the United States. of blue-collar workers, Abbott aggravated The advantages of the U.S. alliance the sensibilities of the metropolitan include favorable access to technology and sophisticates. But he also broadened the intelligence, as well as an important security appeal of his conservative agenda. He insurance policy. On the American side, subsequently set the scene for the very the alliance is of value because Australia is electoral success that his critics had predicted a stable, reliable and significant presence. It he would never achieve. is the twelfth-largest economy in the world and serves as a fast-expanding and wealthy n foreign policy, and reflecting a market for U.S. goods and services. O broad bipartisan consensus, Abbott “When Australian ambassadors in will ensure that the U.S. alliance remains Washington express support for the United the centerpiece of his foreign policy. This is States, it is heartfelt and unalloyed, never no surprise. Australia is the only nation to the ‘yes, but’ of the other allies, perfunctory have joined America in every major mili- support followed by a list of complaints, tary intervention in the past century: both slights and sage finger-wagging,” the world wars, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, columnist Charles Krauthammer has Afghanistan and Iraq. It has done so for the observed. “Australia understands America’s most part out of conviction as well as cal- role and is sympathetic to its predicament culation. When disagreements do erupt— as reluctant hegemon.” Abbott shares that most notably over trade, where Australia has view. “It is often thought of America, in been more committed to unilateral cuts in its dealings with the wider world, that its agricultural subsidies than America—they knowledge is scanty, its attention span have been moderate and usually privately short, its judgment flawed, and its actions expressed. Australia has not resented its frequently counter-productive,” he wrote in dependence on American power. It has nei- his memoirs in 2009. “What can’t seriously
Reading Burke in Sydney May/June 2014 35 be questioned,” he added, “is Americans’ foreign policy: he appears to have been collective desire to be a force for good.” And mugged by reality in the Middle East. In he declared at the Heritage Foundation in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in the 2012: “America needs to believe in itself the United States in September 2001 and Bali way others still believe in it.” in 2002, Abbott became an unashamed But he is changing his thinking on supporter of the George W. Bush international relations in subtle but crucial administration’s doctrine of preventive war ways. For one thing, he appears to recognize and democracy promotion. He embraced what is emerging as a new political truism American neoconservatism. The invasion in the Antipodes: that the spectacular rise of Iraq in 2003 was overwhelmingly of China, now Australia’s largest trading unpopular among most Australians, yet partner, means that Canberra must learn to Abbott and the government of Prime play a more demanding diplomatic game Minister John Howard gave strong support than ever before. Notwithstanding Abbott’s to Washington’s decision to topple Saddam sincere admiration for America, there is a Hussein’s regime and attempt to transform sense that he believes Australia is not faced postwar Iraq into a viable state and with a stark binary choice between China flourishing democracy. and the United States. This means that Over time, however, he has come Canberra, far from embracing old traits of to recognize that such policies are costly dependability and unconditional loyalty, in terms of blood and treasure as well as will need to be more nuanced, qualified and credibility and prestige. In the lead-up to ambiguous in its diplomatic outlook. last September’s federal election, he took On the eve of his election last September, issue with then prime minister Kevin Abbott appeared to recognize this reality. Rudd over how Australia, a member of Under the headline “I would be an Asia- the un Security Council, should deal with first prime minister,” he told the Sydney the Syrian crisis. The Western allies, he Morning Herald: “Decisions which impact warned, did not have a dog in this fight on our national interests will be made in between “baddies.” Victory for either the Jakarta, in Beijing, in Tokyo, in Seoul, as Assad regime or the rebellion could mean much as they will be made in Washington.” dreadful massacres and ethnic cleansing, as Which brings me to another reason why well as an increased threat of terrorism if the Abbott has recently changed his tune on insurgency won.
36 The National Interest Reading Burke in Sydney Rudd seized on Abbott’s use of the term n power for only seven months, Ab- “baddies,” slamming it as “simplistic.” I bott’s government has gotten off to a “Words are bullets,” Rudd lectured, and rocky start. Vacillation and ineptitude over Abbott’s failure to side with the opposition the implementation of popular education Syrian National Coalition meant that reforms, along with a deteriorating rela- diplomats all over the globe would tionship with Indonesia thanks to Edward “scratch their heads” and “walk away in Snowden’s revelations of Australian intel- horror at this appalling error of foreign ligence spying on Jakarta’s political leaders policy judgment.” In Rudd’s telling, a Prime in 2009 as well as displeasure with Can- Minister Abbott would damage Australia’s berra’s border-protection policy of turning standing in the world. back boat people to Indonesian waters, has But whereas Rudd was talking as if it brought to an end Abbott’s postelection were still 2003, it was Abbott’s more honeymoon. Meanwhile, he has failed to realist response to the simmering cauldron develop the art of selling the government’s of sectarian malevolence that was more success in slashing illegal immigration, a appropriate for 2013. Although no one, hot-button issue in the electorate. including Abbott, doubted the tyrannical Already his new political opponents are nature of President Bashar al-Assad’s confidently predicting that Abbott will be a regime, it was also true that many rebels “oncer”—a one-term prime minister. Leave were linked to powerful and sinister groups aside the unintended irony here: after all, of West-hating Islamist fundamentalists, in the modern Labor Party, to serve a full including Al Qaeda. Meanwhile, the term as prime minister is an extraordinary Obama administration was wary of and enviable achievement given that the entangling itself more deeply in what was last two, Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard, becoming essentially an anti-Iranian alliance were dumped before either reached that with the Sunni autocracies of the Persian particular milestone. The point here is that Gulf that back the Syrian rebels. the critics who casually dismissed Abbott’s The episode was revealing. Here was prospects of ever leading the nation should Rudd, widely perceived as a foreign- be more cautious about doing so again, policy prime minister, whose hawkish especially so early in his term. Besides, pronouncements merely reflected a Australian voters are a conservative lot, wary childish posturing in an attempt to make of changing parties in power after only one Australia punch above its weight. Abbott, administration. Not since the early 1930s on the other hand, merely recognized the has a first-term government lost office. wisdom of Talleyrand’s advice, “Above all, In any case, a clear majority of Australians gentlemen, not the slightest zeal.” This preferred Abbott to the widely maligned was especially the case when none of the Labor Party in last year’s election. He supporters of a military strike against Syria may not be flashy and charismatic. But had a clear sense of the mission. Given the he is the personification of old-fashioned lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan, and since conservatism, representative of the the political objective remained perilously unexciting virtues of prudence, continuity unclear, there was much to be said for and measured change. It’s a lesson to which Abbott’s straight talking and foreign-policy conservatives in Britain and especially realism. America should pay close attention. n
Reading Burke in Sydney May/June 2014 37 Abandon Nation Building
By Dov S. Zakheim
he January 2014 Al Qaeda take- Sunni threat to the Shia-led Iraqi state raises over of the Iraqi cities of Fallujah a much more fundamental issue that goes Tand Ramadi, the scenes of some of well beyond the case of Iraq itself. When the bitterest fighting between American the United States invaded Iraq to remove and insurgent forces only a few years earlier, Saddam Hussein from power, its leaders has prompted numerous questions along had not taken into account the implications the lines of “Who lost Iraq?” and “Was the of occupying a state that was artificial intervention in Iraq generally, and in these from birth. Washington’s objective—to towns in particular, all in vain?” Of course, transform the Iraqi dictatorship into a force with hindsight, more and more Americans for peace and moderation in the Middle have come to the conclusion that the an- East, and to do so by promoting good swer to the latter question is “yes.” It is governance in Baghdad—presupposed that always easy to be a Monday-morning quar- good governance was even possible in a terback, and Washington has no shortage state whose citizens did not want to live of those who look brilliant when they start alongside one another, unless they were looking backward. forced to do so. Did the United States and At the time, however, the case for the international coalition that supported it intervention, backed by intelligence that fool themselves? More to the point, should many policy makers took at face value foreign nations, and America in particular, (whether they should have done so is still intervene with land forces in the Middle another issue) was far stronger than it East—or, indeed, elsewhere in Asia, or appears today. Indeed, there are still those in Africa—to preserve or create stability who firmly believe, in the face of so much and good governance in states that are evidence to the contrary, that, as one analyst inherently artificial? has put it, “whatever was gained came at horrendous cost. But Iraq is changed, and t is worth looking again at both Iraq it- in many ways for the better. So not all is I self and its neighbors in the Middle East lost.” Perhaps. before considering the wider aspects of this Nevertheless, the reemergence of a radical question. In the aftermath of World War I, Britain inherited the three former Turkish Dov S. Zakheim was the under secretary of defense provinces of Basra, Baghdad and Mosul, (comptroller) and chief financial officer of the U.S. which were combined under a League of Department of Defense from 2001 to 2004. He Nations mandate into a single unit called is vice chairman of the Center for the National Mesopotamia. The mandate took no ac- Interest and serves on the Advisory Council of The count of the different ethnic and religious National Interest. groups in the new entity, despite the Kurds’
38 The National Interest Abandon Nation Building effort to gain their own independent state. coups, usually to be replaced by new ones. Britain established a puppet government Foreign interventions made little difference. under the rule of King Faisal I, son of the Libya, once an Italian possession, and sherif of Mecca. Faisal, a Sunni Muslim, Yemen, part of which was under British surrounded himself with a clique of Sunni control, both were artificial combinations advisers who suppressed an increasingly of territories with vastly differing ethnic hostile population (especially the Shia and populations. Both were initially led by Assyrians) with the aid of British military kings. Both suffered from civil wars and force. Britain, financially exhausted and currently continue to do so. Western frustrated by its inability to foster good gov- and Arab states have intervened in both, ernance in the League’s artificial creation, resulting in chaos in Libya and ongoing finally persuaded the League to recognize instability in Yemen. Iraqi independence in 1932, though Lon- Like Iraq, Syria and Lebanon were don’s promises of self-determination had both created in the aftermath of World not been fulfilled. War I, initially the products of the 1916 The American experience seven decades Anglo-French Sykes-Picot Agreement later was virtually identical. Only the names and subsequently French mandates under of the actors had changed. The country the League of Nations. Both states were was still led by a corrupt king, this time completely artificial, consisting of a a secular one. Minorities were brutally suppressed. America—and indeed Britain as well—intervened with the intent of providing leadership and promoting good governance. All it did, however, was to replace one dictator with another and brutal minority rule with brutal majority rule. The history of a large part of the rest of the Middle East since World War I is not much different. Whether one examines the recent history of Libya or Yemen or combination of previously Ottoman Syria or Lebanon or Sudan or even Egypt, provinces that had hewed more closely, one finds patterns roughly similar to that though hardly exactly, to the ethnic and of Iraq. In most cases, Ottoman rule was religious populations that resided in followed by colonial domination, usually them. Syria, like Iraq (and Yemen), was with a puppet monarch, over territories initially ruled by a king—the very same that did not match ethnic boundaries. In Faisal I, who, upon failing to consolidate virtually all cases, ethnic groups engaged power in Damascus, shifted his attention each other in civil strife that at times led to to Iraq. Syria then came under the rule outright civil war. Kings were replaced by of a succession of unstable governments, strongmen. Strongmen were overthrown in with coups virtually the norm, until the
Abandon Nation Building May/June 2014 39 It is past time for Washington to recognize a fundamental truth, which is that it cannot mold other states in its own image and that its attempts to do so through force are actually counterproductive.
rise of General Hafez al-Assad, the son became an Anglo-Egyptian condominium, of a sheikh of the minority Alawi sect, though by then Egypt was itself under who had advocated a string of minority British control. In the aftermath of the enclaves—including a Jewish one—along 1952 Egyptian revolution, Sudan achieved the Mediterranean Sea as a bulwark against independence in 1956. Within two years, Sunni domination. From his base as general however, it suffered from the first of secretary of the ruling Baath Party, Assad several coups. With two brief intervals, became the country’s strongman after its it has been under continuous military defeat by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War, rule since 1969. From its inception as an successively serving as prime minister and Egyptian conquest, the country artificially then, after a successful coup, president incorporated both an Arab North and a for the remainder of his life. His far less black, animist South. Civil war between the capable but equally ruthless son, Bashar, two racial groups first broke out virtually now rules, and with the benefit of support at the same time as the Anglo-Egyptian from Russia, Iran and Hezbollah shows no condominium ended in 1955, just as sign of departing anytime soon. independence was about to be proclaimed. Lebanon, which emerged from the A second civil war began in 1983, and only consolidation of five previously Ottoman ended when the Arab North was forced provinces, never had a king once the to grant independence to its black African Ottomans departed, but was every bit as southern region in 2011. South Sudan is unstable as Syria. It had been plagued by now itself being torn by civil strife, with civil strife during the period of Ottoman the Arab North now attempting to mediate rule, and was wracked by civil wars the dispute between Sudan’s two main rival afterward as well, the most recent being the groupings, though several others are also at fifteen-year civil war that began in 1975. It war with the central government. has also been the victim of Syrian, Israeli Although ethnically (but not religiously) and American interventions, as well as of homogeneous, Egypt’s modern history rival warlords and militias, with a virtually also reflects the pattern of Ottoman rule, independent southern region under the beginning with colonial domination and control of Hezbollah. It currently is once a monarchy, followed by military rule and again on the verge of civil war, as the Syrian punctuated throughout by unrest and civil war continues to spill over into its revolutions. The country remained under territory, and tensions between Hezbollah Ottoman rule until 1882, when it became a and Lebanon’s other religious groups—the de facto part of the British Empire, though Sunnis, Druze and Christians—which were ruled through a succession of puppet kings. never far below the surface, continue to The 1952 revolution brought the country heat up once again. under military rule, which persisted in fact Sudan, once an Ottoman domain, later if not in form until the 2011 revolution, was conquered by Egypt and subsequently and subsequently returned after a year
40 The National Interest Abandon Nation Building in which the now-outlawed Muslim Dhofar rebellion, while Saudi Arabia and Brotherhood controlled the government. the United Arab Emirates dispatched forces It is arguable that even several of the to come to the aid of the al-Khalifa regime Middle East’s monarchies—which have in Bahrain. It is one thing for a Muslim been relatively stable, at least in the sense state to come to the aid of a beleaguered that none has been overthrown recently— fellow Muslim regime. It is quite another if are in some ways as precarious and artificial a Western state does so, especially in large as those states ruled by the generals. Jordan, numbers. This was not the case with British initially an Ottoman possession, was a support for the sultan of Oman, which British creation, carved out of what had was limited to its small but highly effective been mandatory Palestine in 1921 and Special Air Service units. established as a separate British mandate the following year. It has suffered from varying he Middle East is hardly unique as a degrees of unrest virtually throughout its T venue for artificial states drawn by Eu- existence, with the most marked examples ropean bureaucrats that are at best unstable being the assassination of its first king, and at worst collapsing entirely. Much of Abdullah I, in 1951, various assassination Central Africa reflects a similar history, attempts against his son, King Hussein, with similar results. Instability, dictatorship and the Palestinian insurrection beginning and outright warfare have predominated in 1970 known as Black September. both in what was once French West Africa Saudi Arabia was born out of warfare; it and in the former Belgian colonies along came into being when King Abdul Aziz the Great Lakes and the Congo River vir- Ibn Saud conquered the Hejaz in 1925 tually since France and Belgium departed after previously conquering the Nejd. The Africa at the beginning of the 1960s. Both country, initially part of the Ottoman European countries, and especially France, Empire, was formally unified and given its have intervened on the continent since current name in 1932. granting independence to their former col- Oman and Bahrain likewise have onies; the French intervention in Mali last suffered from civil strife. Though never year was only the most recent of numerous under Ottoman control, but for decades such interventions. under British influence, Oman’s Sultan For decades, Washington recognized Qaboos had to defeat a major rebellion that it was wiser to stand back and merely in the country’s Dhofar region. Likewise, assist the Europeans who sought to stabilize Bahrain’s minority Sunni leaders have their former African colonies. This was the come under tremendous pressure from case with France’s numerous interventions the state’s Shia majority, and faced virtual in Chad, Britain’s intervention in Sierra open rebellion in 2012–2013. Nevertheless, Leone in the 1990s and nato’s actions none of these states has collapsed into in Libya in 2011 (though in the Libyan chaos, in part because traditional rulers, case American military involvement was as opposed to strongmen, command (and far more significant than was publicly often buy) more loyalty among their acknowledged). Elsewhere, however, naturally conservative populations, and in Washington has often attempted regime part because other regional Muslim states change by inserting troops on the ground, are prepared to spring to their assistance. yielding mixed results over the long term. Most notably, Iran provided forces (as did America’s 1993 intervention in Somalia’s Britain) to help Sultan Qaboos quash the civil war did not prevent that state from
Abandon Nation Building May/June 2014 41 in El Salvador or Colombia, they played a supporting role, providing training and aerial intelligence for local troops rather than leading operations against insurgents. Finally, the United States has generally refrained from seeking to overhaul Latin American societies and governments, partly because, at least nominally, they share similar roots in a European-based political culture. falling apart. Nor is this all. Multiple Washington also intervened successfully interventions in Haiti, including one in in the Balkan wars of the 1990s. But both the early 1990s, have yet to yield stable in the case of the Bosnian civil war and and viable governance of that impoverished that of the fight for Kosovo’s independence, state. The 2003 invasion of Iraq has not American involvement in combat been a success. Afghanistan may yet prove operations did not include the insertion to be a failure as well, unless one may term of land forces. Rather, America employed achieving the objective of troop withdrawal its overwhelming airpower in both Bosnia, by the end of 2014 a “success,” regardless a state roughly the size of West Virginia, of its consequences for the future of that and Kosovo, which has a smaller area than state. But this would be tantamount to a Connecticut. Even then, only when cease- student declaring to his parents that he fires were negotiated did the United States has succeeded on a test by fleeing the commit its forces to larger, multinational examination room before it concluded. units. Unlike in the cases of Iraq and Where Washington has successfully Afghanistan, American forces did not intervened, it has almost invariably been constitute the majority of those units, nor because the venue was in its own Western did large numbers of American land forces Hemispheric backyard, with its more remain in theater for an extended period. familiar culture and shorter logistics lines. Finally, the United States did not take the Moreover, with the notable exception leading role in promoting good governance, of its support for the contras during the much less nation building, in either Bosnia 1980s, the United States has tended to or Kosovo; that daunting task was left to focus on providing arms, training and the Europeans. occasional aerial support to governments under pressure, rather than supporting t is past time for Washington to recog- opposition groups seeking to overthrow I nize a fundamental truth, which is that the government. In most cases, where it did it cannot mold other states in its own image insert general-purpose forces, they would and that its attempts to do so through force quickly depart the scene of their operations. are actually counterproductive. Ameri- Where American forces remained in a can greatness is not enhanced by engag- country for a considerable length of time, as ing abroad willy-nilly. Instead, it is under-
42 The National Interest Abandon Nation Building While advocates of nation building argue that most people want to live in a free society, it is even more the case that most people don’t want foreigners telling them how to live.
mined. Indeed, if America is truly excep- that only in such extended time frames tional, then, by definition, other states can- can nation building succeed. Indeed, it is not be made into knockoff Americas. It is remarkable that the American public was ironic that President Barack Obama seems willing to tolerate both of those lengthy less inclined to intervene in other states conflicts; the country’s previous two wars, than those for whom exceptionalism is an in Kuwait and the Balkans, both involved article of faith. His motivations may be en- the relatively brief commitment of tirely misplaced—he appears committed to American forces. Moreover, public pressure avoiding entangling foreign commitments led to the withdrawal from Somalia in that will undermine his ability to pursue March 1994, less than eighteen months his primary objective of “nation building at after the initial humanitarian intervention home”—but his instincts regarding inter- was launched in December 1992. vention are very much on the mark. A case might have been made in the America’s attempts at nation building early part of the past decade for supporting have rarely succeeded. Its greatest successes America’s intervention in Afghanistan have been in countries with fairly and its subsequent efforts to undertake homogenous populations—Germany, nation building in that country, despite Japan and Korea—and in which it has the length of time that such activity stationed troops for more than half a was expected to require. After all, the century. The states that are the primary American intervention in 2001 was sources of instability today, and that tempt highly popular, since it removed the hated some policy makers on the right and the Taliban regime. Refugees came streaming left to intervene in order to “set things back to Afghanistan from Pakistan in right,” are unstable precisely because they particular. Small businesses began to sprout are not homogenous. Forcing nationalities throughout the country. Al Qaeda was on with ancient communal hatreds to live the run, as was the Taliban. in harmony is a difficult mission at the Moreover, despite its ethnic diversity, best of times. For American forces, whose Afghanistan has a long history of nation- knowledge of foreign—particularly non- statehood. Its people have a strong sense European—cultures and languages is for the of national identity. It has been termed the most part rudimentary at best and whose “graveyard of empires,” for good reason— sense of history is measured in decades its people have historically found ways to rather than centuries, such a mission is defeat invading superpowers, whether they virtually doomed to failure from the start. were the ancient Greeks of Alexander, the In addition, in the aftermath of the Iraq armies of the British Empire or those of the and Afghan wars, few Americans would Soviet Union. Building upon a legacy of be willing to commit troops to unstable or governance, though it involved a delicate failing states for as much as a decade, or balance between a relatively weak central even longer. Yet development experts argue government and powerful provincial
Abandon Nation Building May/June 2014 43 leaders, was nevertheless a potentially release of the defense budget for 2015 has feasible task. only reinforced that sense of unease about However, Washington essentially turned the seriousness of America’s international away from Afghanistan to prosecute its commitments. war with Saddam Hussein. Until America In any event, it is one thing to intervene came to realize the extent to which it had with military force to defeat aggression withheld the military, civilian and financial against an ally or a friendly state, such resources required to help rebuild (not as Kuwait in 1990. It is quite another to build) Afghanistan, the Taliban was able to insert military forces either to topple an regroup and exploit the corruption that was unfriendly but nonthreatening regime, such endemic throughout the country. as Iraq in 2003, or to take sides in a civil Nevertheless, America’s second major war that has no direct impact on American intervention in Afghanistan as the Iraq War national security as is the case with Syria began to wane might have been successful. today and may well be the case in Ukraine It still might be. It has been seriously as well. Likewise, it is one thing to attack hampered, however, by the administration’s a putative aggressor from the air or sea, premature signal that it planned to as was the case with Libya in 1986 and withdraw the bulk of American forces in again a quarter century later; it is another 2014, come what may. That announcement to deploy troops on the ground. It is the vitiated the effectiveness of the surge, latter that provokes the greatest outrage which was announced in December 2009. among the largest number of people in the It provided the Taliban, other insurgent targeted country, in part because it is so groups, Afghanistan’s neighbors and the much easier to insert troops into a country Afghan government a timetable for planning than to withdraw them. for dealing with an Afghanistan that lacked Put simply, while advocates of nation a significant American presence. As a result, building argue that most people want to the American intervention in Afghanistan live in a free society, it is even more the is unlikely to realize U.S. objectives, despite case that most people don’t want foreigners the loss in combat of thousands of American telling them how to live, especially if those lives and the expenditure of hundreds of foreigners wear uniforms and carry guns billions of dollars. down their streets and alleys, kicking down the doors to their homes in the middle of o argue that America should be far the night. T more cautious about intervening It is easy in retrospect to regret the abroad is not to say that it should never in- launching of Operation Iraqi Freedom, tervene, however. Quite the contrary. Amer- especially since it is arguable that Iraq is ica’s willingness to intervene in support of hardly free today. Still, the case for a beleaguered ally is a sine qua non for intervention at that time looked far more maintaining its alliances. Without a credible compelling than it does today. Nevertheless, willingness to do so, the United States will it is undeniable (except for the most partisan find that it has no allies. Indeed, worldwide administration supporters whose job it is uneasiness with current American policy is to make silk purses out of sow’s ears) that not a result of the fact that America is too America’s standing in the Middle East is eager to intervene, but rather that it seems nothing short of a disaster. Iraq is falling too eager to minimize the demands of its apart. So is Syria. Libya and South Sudan commitments on its defense resources. The require little comment. Somalia is a failed
44 The National Interest Abandon Nation Building state. Lebanon, ever fragile, may once again sensible, policy of letting others, whether revert to civil war. Egypt has gone through Europeans or Africans themselves, take multiple convulsions. American intervention the lead in conducting both combat and in Iraq was not the sole or proximate cause stabilization operations. of all these developments, but it surely was At issue, therefore, is whether the United a contributing factor in many of them. States should continue to pursue an activist Another American intervention in the region combat role, followed by exercises in nation would only make matters worse. building, in Asia in general and in the Africa, with its own collection of artificial Middle East in particular. Whatever one’s states, several of which are either failing or view of whether America should or should on the verge of failing, is hardly a better not have invaded Iraq in 2003, there is no venue for American intervention. It is excuse for not learning the lesson of Iraq true that the United States has become that should by now be clear to all. It is a more actively involved militarily on that lesson first enunciated in a different Asian continent, particularly operating from its context by General Douglas MacArthur base in Djibouti, without suffering the kind and ignored ever since: the United States of blowback it has received in the Middle should not become enmeshed in a land war East. Indeed, Africa is one of the few places in Asia. What made sense in the late 1940s worldwide where America remains highly makes sense in the contemporary Middle popular. That may be the case, however, East for the same reason: ancient peoples, because the focus of American efforts is on with ancient hatreds, will not pay much counterterrorism operations that involve heed to well-intentioned Americans who a relatively small number of boots on the come to tell them what to do with their ground. For the most part, Washington polities, and sadly, all too often, they will continues to pursue its traditional, and try to kill them. n
Abandon Nation Building May/June 2014 45 Let’s Make a Deal
By John Allen Gay
t was long past midnight in Geneva last was that under the deal, “Iran retains November when the rumors began to its full capacity to enrich uranium, thus I fly. Iran and the world powers had just abandoning a decade of Western insistence reached a deal on its nuclear program. An and Security Council resolutions that Iran international crisis that had been building stop all uranium-enrichment activities.” toward what seemed like war for more than William Kristol announced, “The American a decade was now on the path to resolution. people won’t be able to repeal Iran’s nuclear The deal, a haggard John Kerry confirmed, weapons once Iran has them. That’s why was real. It wasn’t comprehensive—Iran serious people, in Congress and outside, would still be heavily sanctioned and heav- will do their utmost to expose and scuttle ily centrifuged—but it was unprecedented. Obama’s bad Iran deal.” And writing in All prior efforts had fallen apart. Now the the Wall Street Journal, Bret Stephens did two sides had agreed to initial trust-build- Bolton and Kristol one better. He didn’t ing measures, had outlined the terms of say the deal was as bad as the 1938 Munich a final deal and had made plans to work agreement. He said it was even worse. toward it. And what allowed the deal to Such overwrought piffle exposes the happen was equally important—a glimmer weakness of the neocon case. For the of rapprochement between Iran and the truth is that the deal does not amount United States, whose mutual distrust and to surrender. It will not lead to regime occasional enmity is the root of the nuclear change or other utopian goals. It represents issue. something more plausible—an armed truce No sooner had the deal been reached that is in the interest of both Iran and the than Israeli prime minister Benjamin United States and that could lead to a Netanyahu denounced it as a snare and a broader détente between the two nations. delusion. Similarly, a chorus of American neoconservatives insisted that the Obama ere’s why the agreement’s critics have administration had cut a lousy deal. “Abject H it wrong. While Iran’s gains may Surrender by the United States” was the have defied Security Council measures and headline on former ambassador John worked around international sanctions, in Bolton’s story the next day at the Weekly pragmatic terms the limits on Iran’s nuclear Standard. The surrender, said Bolton, program were being set in Tehran. Fear- ing war and deeper international coopera- John Allen Gay is an assistant managing editor at tion against it, Iran had converted some The National Interest and the coauthor of War with of its stockpile of 19.75 percent enriched Iran: Political, Military, and Economic Consequences uranium into fuel plates. The challenge (Rowman & Littlefield, 2013). of converting them back added time to
46 The National Interest Let’s Make a Deal By taking the most urgent concern off the table, the interim agreement buys time for negotiation and reduces the risk of miscalculation on either side.
any rush for bomb-grade uranium. Yet it that the Atlantic’s Graeme Wood took a continued to install new centrifuges and “hyperinflation vacation” to Iran’s Kish expand its stockpile of 3.5 percent enriched Island resorts, his hard currency granting uranium. Both would be useful in a nuclear him access to luxuries usually out of reach. breakout. Iranian officials regularly declared And he wasn’t alone; as he wrote, his flight their intentions to vastly expand parts of from the United Arab Emirates was packed the nuclear program in the future. And with at times, they even suggested they would build nuclear submarines or other nuclear- Filipinas on leave from jobs in Dubai. Kish, powered vessels, which would allow them, they told me, had emerged as a preferred holi- under the cover of international law, to day destination for those too poor to go all the enrich uranium to bomb grade. In short, way home to the Philippines. After just a short while international law had given us firmer flight, they could live like queens for a week, ground from which to oppose Iran’s nuclear having toiled as scullery maids for a year or advances, it was doing little to arrest them. more without vacation. The time had clearly come for other steps. Sanctions have been one of those other The economic troubles were undeniably steps. It is difficult to see why Iran’s linked to the nuclear situation—the rial rulers would negotiate seriously with the would swing wildly when negotiations West without being made to pay some were in session. The arrival of the genuine cost. They tend to agree that new government of Hassan Rouhani the international measures against Iran restored competence to Iran’s economic are illegitimate and rooted in double administration, but conditions remain standards. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, urgent. Rouhani’s stated goal is to reduce in particular, has long been skeptical of inflation to a still-blistering 25 percent by America’s intentions and honesty. early 2015; one of his close advisers said The United States has had some sanctions that he “doubt[s] that in the next four years measures against Iran in force for decades. the . . . inflation rate will fall to less than 10 They were not producing results until, percent.” under Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s Problems like these have prompted Iran tough rhetoric and continued nuclear to bargain more seriously with the West. gains induced other countries to join in Yet the key to the sanctions’ effectiveness the sanctions regime. One of the broadest had been the broad coalition backing sanctions coalitions in history formed. them. Forming that coalition had taken a These forces combined with Ahmadinejad’s big push by the United States. It is hard gross mismanagement to produce severe for many countries, especially those with turmoil in the Iranian economy, including, struggling economies, to resist the pull of at one point, a monthly inflation rate one of the Middle East’s largest markets. above 60 percent. Things were so bad If Washington doesn’t appear to be
Let’s Make a Deal May/June 2014 47 negotiating seriously, the sanctions regime Plan has “drain[ed] the uranium from Mr. could crumble. Netanyahu’s bomb.” By taking the most urgent concern off the table, the interim any capitals would have seen a refusal agreement buys time for negotiation and M of the initial deal signed last Novem- reduces the risk of miscalculation on either ber—the Joint Plan of Action—as just such side. a failure to negotiate seriously. For all its Similarly, expansions under way at Iran’s flaws, the Joint Plan represents a path to a enrichment facilities and at the unfinished livable final arrangement. heavy-water reactor at Arak (potentially a In the short term, the most important key element in a plutonium-based approach concession won from Iran is the reduction to a bomb) are now effectively paused, of its stocks of uranium enriched to nearly halting an alarming trend. And inspections 20 percent purity. This stockpile posed the of Iran’s facilities are now more rigorous greatest risk of a quick nuclear breakout. and extensive, which will provide a clearer Uranium needs to be enriched to more picture of the threat and a greater chance than 90 percent purity to make a usable of detection in the event of an attempted
nuclear bomb, but it takes far more work breakout. The concessions made on to enrich a unit of natural uranium to 20 sanctions, while significant, appear to be percent than to take it from 20 percent to worth the price of these gains, and certainly weapons grade. This is the principle behind so if they lead to a final deal. Netanyahu’s famous bomb diagram, shown The final deal outlined in the Joint Plan to the world in his September 2012 address of Action represents a further improvement. to the United Nations General Assembly. The parties have agreed that a final deal will It’s also the reason Iran was converting include Iran’s ratification of an Additional some of its 20 percent stockpile into Protocol agreement with the iaea, which fuel plates—it knew that a big stockpile would give inspectors a clearer picture of would be a rallying point against Tehran. Iran’s activities. Getting Iran on board with As Ploughshares Fund head Joseph the Additional Protocol has long been a Cirincione put it to the Washington Post, key American goal. Iran would also “fully reducing the stockpile under the Joint resolve concerns related to the reactor at
48 The National Interest Let’s Make a Deal Arak,” and agree not to reprocess spent on the key point of whether Iran will be nuclear fuel or build facilities that can do allowed to develop and deploy progressively so. This would block the plutonium path to more advanced centrifuges that would be a a bomb. greater proliferation risk than the primitive What’s the cost for a final deal? It models the country currently uses. But we would further legitimize the elements of should recognize that Iranian enrichment the nuclear program that Iran constructed is a manageable threat. Smaller numbers of illegitimately, as discussed above, and Iran less advanced centrifuges simply take longer would get to keep some capabilities that, to make a bomb. Pairing limits with a all other things being equal, we’d not want strong inspection regime, like the one in the them to have. We’d also “comprehensively Additional Protocol, makes the threat even lift [all] nuclear-related sanctions,” more manageable. The main work after a dismantling the impressive structure we’ve final deal would be ensuring that a strong built and giving Iran a clearer path to coalition of nations remains committed economic strength. Yet the whole point of to holding Iran to the terms. The worst- those sanctions was to push Iran to make a case scenario would be if Iran abrogated deal on the nuclear program, so it would be the deal and kicked out the inspectors, strange to keep them in place after making but only got a tepid response from the the deal. And we would be able to keep in international community. For this to place the range of sanctions we’ve applied happen, there would have to be significant, to Iran over concerns about terrorism and likely preventable shifts in the dynamics human rights—these are, after all, not of relations between the United States and “nuclear-related sanctions.” Agreeing to that other great powers, such that some of those in the Joint Plan was a concession by the powers would rather accept the danger of a Iranians, who had previously insisted that nuclear Iran than cooperate with the United all sanctions would have to be lifted in the States to forestall it. (The Ukraine crisis nuclear deal. Lifting the human-rights and risks moving things in that direction.) If we terror sanctions in order to resolve concerns reach that point in our relations with other about the nuclear program would have been great powers, the problem of a nuclear Iran an extremely tough sell at home—rightly will be far less severe in comparison. so—and would have sent a dangerous message to other states that America has et the hawks in Washington remain targeted over human-rights concerns: Y bedazzled by the prospect of con- namely, that by making yourself dangerous frontation. Their posturing in the wake of you can force concessions in other areas. the Iraq War brings to mind Talleyrand’s The biggest open question regarding the comment about the Bourbons: “They had final deal is what enrichment capability learned nothing and forgotten nothing.” Iran will retain. The Joint Plan specifies And so, days before the interim deal was that there will be “a mutually defined signed, a bipartisan group of fourteen sena- enrichment programme with mutually tors issued a statement that they intended agreed parameters consistent with practical- to pass new sanctions “as soon as possible,” needs, with agreed limits on scope and level saying that they were “committed to pre- of enrichment activities, capacity, where venting Iran from acquiring [nuclear-weap- it is carried out, and stocks of enriched ons] capability.” The group, which included uranium, for a period to be agreed upon.” well-known hawks like John McCain, Lind- Obviously this is rather vague, especially sey Graham and Charles Schumer, enig-
Let’s Make a Deal May/June 2014 49 mas like Tennessee’s Bob Corker, and Iraq imperil negotiations, that is as good a sign War opponent Robert Menendez, promptly as any that, for now, negotiations are not moved to make good on their word, pro- worth holding at all.” And Senator Mark posing the Nuclear Weapon Free Iran Act a Kirk of Illinois, another key supporter of month later. If enacted, the measure would the bill, stated that it “would not impose have tightened and expanded sanctions on any new sanctions during negotiations so Iran if it violated a range of strictures or long as Iran complies with the terms of failed to sign a final deal that met certain the interim step agreement and concludes criteria. a final agreement to dismantle its illicit The bill’s proponents sold it as a nuclear infrastructure.” Yet the bill did not reasonable step to ensure Iran was merely serve to put teeth in the Joint Plan negotiating in good faith. “Current of Action. It was instead an alternative to it, sanctions brought Iran to the negotiating drawing up parameters for a final agreement table and a credible threat of future that did not match up with those that had sanctions will require Iran to cooperate and been agreed upon in the Joint Plan. Had act in good faith at the negotiating table,” the bill been passed and had Iran then made said Menendez in a statement. When the a deal, even a generous one, under the Joint Obama administration pushed back, saying Plan, it would have still been hit with more that the measure could scuttle the deal, extensive sanctions than ever before. The National Review quipped that “if enforcing proposed legislation was thus a kind of de the terms of a weak existing bargain would facto referendum on the Joint Plan—one that attracted fifty-nine cosponsors before an intense campaign against the sanctions by the White House and its allies in the press stalled it. Even aipac was backing away from the bill by the end. Just where did the bill go wrong? It included a number of miscellaneous elements that added nothing to the legal impact of the bill, but which would have greatly influenced Iran’s interpretation of it, such as a declaration of the sense of Congress that “if the Government of Israel is compelled to take military action in legitimate self-defense against Iran’s nuclear weapon program,” the United States should support it with military force. It’s hard to say what this even means in practical terms—an Israeli military action against Iran’s nuclear- weapons program would be preventive and therefore not “legitimate self- defense” under the traditional laws of war; an Israeli military action in Wikimedia Commons/Mojtaba Salimi. CC BY-SA 3.0.
50 The National Interest Let’s Make a Deal After more than three decades of enmity and mutual isolation broken only by secret, furtive contacts, the United States and Iran are now speaking regularly and openly. That’s important.
response to imminent or actual Iranian don’t specify a time frame, which could nuclear attack would be legitimate, but make them impossible to fulfill—to grant would almost certainly be supported by sanctions relief, the president might have to the United States, nonbinding resolution certify that Iran has never supported an act or not. A third reading, perhaps what of terror against the United States (it’s done some of the bill’s authors intended, is that that before) or tested longer-ranged missiles it’s an attempt to stipulate that an Israeli (ditto). preventive attack on Iran’s nuclear program But the worst feature of the Nuclear would be “legitimate self-defense” (the Weapon Free Iran Act is that it would word “legitimate” now being redefined to move the goalposts set in the Joint Plan mean “supported by a statement from some of Action. In the Joint Plan, the parties legislative body somewhere”), and further agreed that a final deal would “involve a that America should support it. Whether mutually defined enrichment program with it’s prudent for Congress to declare our mutually agreed parameters,” and would support before the fact for wars initiated “fully resolve concerns related to the reactor at the leisure of a foreign government is a at Arak.” Yet under the bill, the final deal question we’ll leave for another day, but would have to “dismantle Iran’s illicit suffice it to say the Iranians would not take nuclear infrastructure, including enrichment such declarations as signs of our good faith. and reprocessing capabilities and facilities, As Edward Levine of the Center for the heavy water reactor and production plant Arms Control and Non-Proliferation has at Arak [emphasis added], and any nuclear pointed out, the proposed legislation would weapon components and technology.” also link relief of the nuclear sanctions to The bill and the Joint Plan are in direct two nonnuclear matters: the state of Iran’s contradiction on enrichment, and they’re ballistic-missile program and its support for in implicit contradiction on Arak. (And, terrorist activities. These are both critical as Levine observes, “How one dismantles areas of concern for U.S. national security, technology is left to the imagination.”) The and that concern should be reflected in Iranians would complain if the legislation U.S. law. Yet that does not mean that they passed—and this time, they’d be in the should be tied to the nuclear program right. (especially when resolving the nuclear issue would make Iran’s ballistic missiles n sum, the Iran deal is not “surrender” or and terrorist proxies a bit less threatening). I “Munich” or something even worse. It’s It also does not mean that the best way actually a positive, if limited, step. Indeed, it for Washington to address its concerns promises benefits that extend beyond what’s about missiles and terrorism would be to spelled out in the Joint Plan of Action. After breach the commitments it made in the more than three decades of enmity and mu- Joint Plan of Action. Worse still, Levine tual isolation broken only by secret, furtive notes that these linking clauses in the bill contacts, the United States and Iran are
Let’s Make a Deal May/June 2014 51 now speaking regularly and openly. That’s Of course, the Obama administration important. Not communicating, even when must remain clear-eyed in its view of Iran. relations are bad, is dangerous. It increases At this point, calls in some quarters for a the chances of miscalculation and misunder- “grand bargain” or even an alliance savor standing, and prevents potential areas of co- of geopolitical naïveté. Iran’s government operation—which do exist—from balancing continues to be a major sponsor of troubles in the relationship. terrorism. It is a rival to many of our allies, If the Joint Plan leads to a successful and though some of these alliances are not final deal that resolves the nuclear dispute, as close as they once were, they won’t be the unwritten benefits will be greater. Iran going away anytime soon. Iran talks like a and the United States do not trust each revisionist power, and sometimes acts like other. Each has ample reason for that. That one, too. mistrust amplifies each side’s worries about But there is plenty of room for a deal the other—and makes behavior that will with Iran that benefits both sides. be seen as untrustworthy more likely. This Washington has no interest in provoking unhealthy cycle has been on clear display a military confrontation that would foster with the nuclear issue: Iran builds secret even more anti-Americanism and send the nuclear facilities that make us think they’re price of crude spiraling. For its part, Tehran, up to no good; we mull attacking those wracked by economic woes, appears to have facilities to head off evil intentions, which a keen sense of its national interests. There makes them more secretive, which makes are plenty of nasty countries around the us more worried, and so on. Cooperating world that the United States, to borrow a to resolve a major strategic dispute gives phrase from former British prime minister each side an opportunity to test the other’s Margaret Thatcher, does business with. Iran trustworthiness. The success of the Joint can and should be one of them. When it Plan could thus yield benefits in unexpected comes to Iran, the Obama administration is areas. on the right path. n
52 The National Interest Let’s Make a Deal Shaping Things to Come
By Simon Serfaty
aymond Aron called the twentieth security order, one that transformed George century “the century of total war,” W. Bush, who had preached the virtues R and so it was, arguably the worst of a “humble” foreign-policy approach ever, exceeding even the devastation cre- during his debates with Vice President ated by the Thirty Years’ War. As many as Al Gore, into an unabashed unilateralist: 175 million people were deliberately killed, “Bring ‘em on,” as he incautiously put it. whether in combat or in cold blood—so Armed with America’s arsenal of unmatched many on both sides of Europe and through- capabilities, Bush went to Afghanistan the out the world that it is hard to acknowl- way Bill Gates would go to McDonald’s: edge them all. Instead, a selective history with too much money for the place and too of pain and a confining geography of hor- little taste for the food. And then, “because rors set perverse limits on the casualties we Afghanistan wasn’t enough . . . to make a single out over the innumerable others we point that we’re not going to live in this ignore—each “forgotten” victim an infinity world that they want for us,” as Henry and every overlooked region an offense. Yet, Kissinger reportedly said, and as Vice with the United States willing at last to ac- President Dick Cheney clearly believed, cept the baton of Western leadership from the war moved on to a new and even more the fallen European great powers, this past disastrous theater. century ended, or at least appeared to end, The tumult and bloodshed and agony as a triumph of American power and West- of the past decade have raised the prospect ern values: the very values that Europe had of significant change in American foreign transgressed and the power that America policy and the public conception of the asserted to restore them. country’s role in the world. At stake Ten years past the unipolar moment is nothing less than the conviction that that brought the past century to an American power and world order are early terminus, the traumatic events of coeval. First announced by President Harry September 11, 2001, threatened a new Truman in the doctrine that bears his name, this credo was reformulated periodically Simon Serfaty is a professor of U.S. foreign policy throughout the Cold War but never lost and eminent scholar at Old Dominion University its hold on the imagination of the foreign- and the Zbigniew Brzezinski Chair in Global policy establishment. Mostly forgotten Security and Geostrategy (emeritus) at the Center during the Clinton years, when the nation for Strategic and International Studies. His most seemed eager to take a time-out, even a recent book is A World Recast: An American Moment vacation, from the world, that doctrine was in a Post-Western World (Rowman & Littlefield, forcefully reasserted by George W. Bush in 2012). two wars to which his name remains affixed
Shaping Things to Come May/June 2014 53 and which Barack Obama was elected to have been heard repeatedly before, but end. For no matter how vengeful Americans they never proved all that convincing. Yet felt after September 11, the abuses of now, in a world in transition—or, better American power, in Iraq especially, proved yet, in mutation—the changed cast of increasingly repugnant, and the costs non-Western states that are auditioning of both wars, including Afghanistan, for global leadership seems to be more unbearably excessive. persuasive. Thus, at half past Obama, the Paradoxically, a fresh appraisal of the uses president and his administration possess of American power gained legitimacy when scant time to script a new role. Obama is the evidence of failure forced Bush, too, to caught between the aspiration to withdraw recognize its limits: even a power without from Afghanistan, on the one hand, and peers cannot remain a peerless power absent the inclination to engage in the Middle East allies that are not only “willing” but also peace process, on the other. capable and relevant. Indeed, remembering the expectations that prevailed in 2009 little he sense of retreat, of course, is not seems more ironic now than the realization T new. “Listening to America” over forty that the changes that occurred between years ago, Bill Moyers only met people, he Bush’s first and second terms in office were wrote, who “wanted to talk about the tribu- more significant than the changes from lations of America” and who showed “an Bush to Obama. We are all multilateralists impatience, an intemperance, an isolation now. That is a part of the Bush legacy that which invites opportunists who promise Barack Obama did not find hard to adopt. too much and castigate too many.” About Not only has America’s perception of its sixty years earlier, the prominent progressive role in the world changed, but so too has Amos Pinchot had come to similar conclu- the world’s conception of that role. For one, sions. Pinchot asked, “What’s the matter over the past two decades and under three with America?” He feared that Americans different presidents, this conception has had become listless and moribund—“a pur- been very much molded by the American poseless people, a nation . . . enamored performance, not only abroad but also at of strife and motion for its own sake.” He home. Other “emerging” powers, somewhat added: “Something is wrong. The great ma- dismissively designated as the Rest, have jority of our people have lost faith in the equated a decline in America’s global government.” The effects of the Panic of position with a decline in American power. 1907 still lingered on. So did those of the This is wrong. As was the case for previous atrabilious presidential election of 1912, such debates, both themes are exaggerated. when President William Howard Taft strug- As America stutters and Europe mumbles, gled for his party’s nomination against his other powers are starting to proclaim their predecessor and former chum, Theodore superiority—China flaunts its money, Roosevelt. Then, decades later, Vietnam Russia its machismo, India its people and and Watergate prompted another spasm of Brazil its vigor. Here are the “brics” of a national introspection. America lost its in- new post-Western world—and here are nocence all over again. some of the main parameters of a putative America’s debility, you could say, has, in new global order that calls for less of the one fashion or another, been accumulating West and more of the Rest. almost forever. A key part of the syndrome Such calls, which seem to invite America has been identifying an ascending power to pick up its military toys and go home, elsewhere. In the 1980s, it was Japan and
54 The National Interest Shaping Things to Come West Germany that were reintroduced could refashion much of the globe in its to the world as the next superpowers. own image willy-nilly. But that moment Their economic dominance, it was said, was not so much born out of the rise of presaged the end of the American Century, American power as from the collapse of one already unsettled by a Soviet military everyone else. Over the past decade, surge that some cold warriors, mesmerized by the putative power of totalitarianism, said would prove irresistible. Within a few years, however, the Soviet Union went poof. Then Japan became the next great loser of the post–Cold War world. The lesson is that extrapolations that foretell the “irresistible” rise of some and the “irreversible” decline of others are no plausible substitute for facts that confirm the dominance of some and the fragility of their competitors. The debate over the relative decline of American power and the consequences of such decline for the U.S. role in the world, then, is a rather otiose one. It is mainly geography that kept the European world away from America, but it is history the events of September 11 and their that brought America into the world when geopolitical aftermath, the financial crisis it proved to be the last major power left of 2008 and the Arab Spring of 2011 have standing. Yet even at the peak of the Cold served as cumulative shocks out of which War, with past powers recovered, the future has emerged the long-predicted polycentric of American primacy was never assured. world. For au fond, it was already emerging Different U.S. presidents envisioned during the Cold War, when expectations different futures. John Kennedy’s unbound in Third World countries rose after faith in the primacy of American power decolonization and when some temerarious sustained his commitment to do everything nonaligned countries demonstrated their and more, but Richard Nixon’s reluctant reach in the shadow of two superpowers. emphasis on limits cautioned Washington to do less of everything. Subsequently, ow, entering the new century, the days Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan held N of ever-deeper U.S. engagement are distinct but surprisingly complementary over: this, at least, is no longer a matter for views, with Carter’s preference for restoring debate. The overwhelming public opposition America’s good name serving as a needed to the war in Afghanistan suffices to confirm transition to Reagan’s insistence on its closure: two-thirds of the American pub- renewing America’s primacy. lic now conclude that the war is not worth It was the unipolar moment that fighting—an astonishing exclamation mark created the deceptive sense that America on a war that had nearly unanimous support
Shaping Things to Come May/June 2014 55 at home and abroad when it was launched. of disorder; will such greater disorder place “People used to say,” confided longtime Iraqi U.S. interests at greater risk without a foreign minister Hoshyar Zebari to Afghan reappraisal of their range and geography; president Hamid Karzai in late 2013, “that and will such greater risk and narrower no matter what . . . the Americans are here interests prove acceptable to the American [in Iraq] to stay. . . . But they were eager to public? In short, will the emerging post- leave, and they will be eager to leave your American, post-Western world show the country as well.” Describing such fatigue as institutional discipline and adopt the isolationism and interpreting a willingness to democratic values we favor? negotiate as appeasement, however, betrays Answers to these questions remain a simplistic understanding of both nine- elusive. Eager to move on, history does not teenth-century isolationism and twentieth- grant its occasional partners any time out, century appeasement. A decade after 9/11, and it is vital for them, therefore, to not Barack Obama is resetting the United States lose sight of priorities because it is over such halfway between the Kennedy-like force- priorities that the threat is most imminent ful commitment to deep engagement and and the risks greatest. For Truman in 1949, extended deterrence, and the Nixon-like dip- the priority was Europe, and before long lomatic turns of selective disengagement and a newly reelected president concluded an retrenchment. For in the end, and as was unprecedented peacetime alliance that the case after each world war waged during prepared the West for a new post-European the twentieth century—in 1919, 1945 and world. For Reagan in 1985, the priority 1991—this remains an American moment: was the Soviet Union, and just as swiftly Obama’s moment. as Truman had faced it down nearly forty Can a significant change in American years earlier Reagan ended the “evil empire” foreign policy be expected during such a and introduced the unipolar world that moment? Will it produce a more modest came next. In 2014, it is in the Middle East role in the world for the United States? Is that Obama is summoned to become the the world better prepared to respond to transformational president he had hoped to this reduced position? Here we go again: be during his first term. in the 1950s, these questions accompanied This is the region where Washington has the Korean War; in the 1970s, they grew the least historical experience, pursues the out of the Vietnam War; in the 1990s, they most contradictory geopolitical interests followed the end of the Cold War; and now, and faces the deepest cultural obstacles. in the 2010s, they are prompted by the wars But in a crucial moment this is also the in Iraq and Afghanistan. Even in a period of undisputed pivotal region—the global austerity, this is not just a matter of costs; Balkans of the new century. In short, it is also a matter of interest and efficacy. whatever distaste Americans may have for Insisting on “no more Iraqs” is all too the area, more disorder there would result obvious: never since the French invasion of from a lesser American role. the Ruhr in late 1922 has there been such a perfect example of strategic failure. he agenda for the Middle East is all Iraq alone, however, hardly prescribes T the more daunting as the timetable what comes next. For what if the emerging is short. Indeed, the agenda for 2014 is so polycentric structure of power is not ending full that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict no the world’s dependence on American longer looms as the priority it has been over power? Will the result be a greater degree the past sixty-five years. A few years ago
56 The National Interest Shaping Things to Come Whatever distaste Americans may have for the Middle East, more disorder there would result from a lesser American role.
it looked as though the Middle East was have in common is their urgency: by the headed toward a new model—in 2011 the end of 2014 most of them will have gotten political awakening that had taken place in much better or much worse—but few will Eastern Europe in 1989 seemed to be liv- have remained the same as “framework ing on in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. These agreements” alone will not suffice. revolutions seemed neither anti- nor pro- Thus, even as a post-American, post- Western, neither religious nor secular. But Western world keeps coming, and even the revolutions of 1848 were, of course, as it raises the prospects for change in the followed by the crackdowns of 1849. Soon nation’s foreign policy, the Middle East after the revolutions said no to the oppres- is the region where the postwar equation sors, the new leaders dismissed the revolu- of American power with world order tionaries. What looked like a healthy demo- continues to prevail: If not the United cratic contagion turned into a pandemic States, who? And if not now, when? of authoritarianism and anarchy in Libya, Secretary of State John Kerry had it Syria, South Sudan and Egypt. right, in Davos, Switzerland, on January In addition, consider the messy aftermath 24, when he dismissed the “bewildering of the war in Iraq and the ambiguous version” of the myth of disengagement end of the war in Afghanistan; a critical from the Middle East during a moment, he confrontation with Iran, imminent should said, “of American diplomatic engagement the six-month interim agreement painfully that is as broad and as deep as at any time negotiated in late 2013 not satisfy, at least in history.” tacitly, the other regional powers; the Admittedly, neither the region generally unfinished business of the Arab Spring, nor any of the issues that define it in Egypt especially, but also its spillover specifically can be addressed conclusively in the Sahel region; the increasingly one- by the United States without the rest of sided, no-happy-ending civil war in Syria, the West, or by the West without (let alone and its impact on Lebanon and Jordan; the against) the Rest. But this new reality disruptive potential of ever more fractured extends beyond the Middle East. Rather, states like Sudan and Libya; the agonizing this is the sorry condition of a messy zero- reappraisal threatened by some of the polar world the like of which was last seen closest U.S. allies in and near the region, during the so-called interwar years when including Saudi Arabia and Turkey; and the twentieth century was at its worst: more, including the “known unknown” of American power is indispensable to the an ever-possible act of terror in the United making of a post-Western order, but it is States or elsewhere in the West à la 9/11 no longer conclusive and must become in 2001, or in the region or close to it à inclusive of the non-Western powers that la Sarajevo in 1914. What all these issues hope to influence it. n
Shaping Things to Come May/June 2014 57 China Goes Ballistic
By Andrew S. Erickson and Michael S. Chase
hina is increasingly a force to be Liberation Army Second Artillery Force reckoned with, not only economi- (plasaf), which controls the country’s land- C cally but also militarily. Its aggres- based nuclear and conventional ballistic sive stance toward some of its neighbors, missiles and its ground-launched land-at- along with Asia’s growing economic im- tack cruise missiles. portance and the need to assure U.S. allies Possessing the world’s second-largest that Washington will increase its attention economy and a growing defense budget has to the region despite budgetary challenges enabled China to deploy more formidable and fractious domestic politics, prompted military capabilities, such as the world’s first the Obama administration to announce a antiship ballistic missile (asbm) and largest “rebalance” toward Asia. Now Beijing’s rela- substrategic missile force. Wielding such tions with Japan—which has been indulg- conventional capabilities, it seeks to increase ing in what China sees as alarming spasms its leverage in disputes regarding island of nationalism, including a recent visit by and maritime claims in the East and South Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to the Yasukuni China Seas and to deter or if necessary shrine—have deteriorated to their lowest counter U.S. military intervention in the level in many years. In addition, China’s event of a conflict with one of its neighbors. efforts to undermine Japan’s administrative Meanwhile, continued development of control over the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu its nuclear forces—with a new mobile islands are raising the possibility of a crisis intercontinental ballistic missile (icbm) that could draw in the United States by reportedly capable of carrying multiple challenging the credibility of U.S. extended independently targetable reentry vehicles deterrence. To deter negative Chinese ac- (mirv) under development and its first tions in this vital but volatile region while effective nuclear ballistic-missile submarine avoiding dangerous escalation, Washington (ssbn) going on a deterrent patrol this must better understand the ultimate instru- year—indicates China’s determination to ment of Chinese deterrence: the People’s further improve its position at the great- power table and force the United States to Andrew S. Erickson is an associate professor at respect its vital interests. the Naval War College and an associate in research Like its home nation, the plasaf is itself at Harvard University’s Fairbank Center for increasingly a formidable force. Thanks to Chinese Studies. Michael S. Chase is a senior top-tier industrial capabilities and long- political scientist at the rand Corporation. The term strategic prioritization, it boasts what ideas expressed here are those of the authors alone the National Air and Space Intelligence and do not represent the views of any of their Center (nasic) calls the world’s “most active employers. and diverse ballistic missile development
58 The National Interest China Goes Ballistic program,” with both types and numbers operations, China has developed and de- expanding; longer-range, more accurate, ployed the world’s foremost force of the- improved-payload missiles being tested ater ballistic missiles. It has fielded a large, and introduced, even as older systems are diverse array of increasingly capable srbms, upgraded; and new units being formed. particularly within range of Taiwan. Fol- China’s missile force has deployed a lowing a period of rapid growth in the last variety of systems, including short-range decade, the total number of srbms seems ballistic missiles (srbms) opposite Taiwan; to be holding relatively steady over the past mobile, conventionally armed medium- few years, but China continues to enhance range ballistic missiles (mrbms) for or improve the force in other ways (for ex- regional deterrence and conventional-strike ample, by swapping in newer missiles with operations; and new mobile, nuclear-armed better range, accuracy and warhead types). icbms for strategic deterrence. By December 2012, China’s inventory of From its establishment in the late 1960s srbms stood at more than 1,100. The pla- until the late 1980s, the missile force was saf also fields the ground-launched variant responsible only for a small, outdated and of the dh-10/cj-10 land-attack cruise mis- potentially vulnerable arsenal of nuclear sile, with a range of up to 2,000 km. The missiles, but since the early 1990s it has vast majority of China’s many other cruise added a conventional-strike mission and missiles are controlled by the service on improved its nuclear capabilities. In sharp whose platforms they are deployed. contrast to its relatively humble beginnings, Conventional df-21c (css-5) mrbms, it now controls a more sophisticated and which have a range of at least 1,750 km, survivable force of nuclear missiles capable and df-21d asbms, with a range of at of reaching the United States and regional least 1,500 km, represent an important targets as well as what has emerged as the strategic deterrent and a growing long- world’s premier conventional ballistic- and range conventional precision-strike cruise-missile force. The latter now includes capability. China currently deploys fewer not only the srbms it began introducing than thirty launchers of the former and in the 1990s, but also conventional an unknown but growing small quantity mrbms capable of striking regional air of the latter (multiple missiles can use a bases and asbms designed to target U.S. single launcher). China has developed—and aircraft carriers. Underscoring the Second fielded since 2010 in limited numbers—the Artillery Force’s growing importance to world’s first asbm. Future developments China’s national defense, in a December will include longer-range conventional- 2012 meeting with plasaf officers, Chinese strike capabilities, such as conventional leader Xi Jinping described the force as “the intermediate-range ballistic missiles (irbms). core strength of China’s strategic deterrence, Indeed, nasic assesses that “the pla is the strategic support for the country’s developing conventional intermediate-range status as a major power, and an important ballistic missiles (irbm) at a steady pace, cornerstone safeguarding national security.” to increase its capability for near-precision strike out to the second island chain.” hina has been taking other measures The plasaf’s capabilities for long-range C as well. To increase its influence over conventional missile strikes are particularly disputed territorial and maritime claims critical given the nascent or limited long- around its contested periphery in peace- range conventional-strike capabilities of the time and—if necessary—through wartime People’s Liberation Army Air Force and
China Goes Ballistic May/June 2014 59 publications indicate that the plasaf’s nuclear capa- bilities could help to deter conventional strategic at- tacks against China. How quickly is China moving? Some caution is in order here. China is not “racing to parity” with the United States and Russia, as some observers in the two nuclear superpowers have suggested, but it is enhancing its nuclear capabilities by increasing People’s Liberation Army Navy (plan). the size and sophistication of its strategic According to nasic, “China’s emerging missile force to respond to what it missile strategy will be marked by increased sees as threats to the credibility of its shooter survivability, enhanced operational nuclear deterrent. Specifically, Beijing is flexibility, and significantly greater reach modernizing its nuclear force to enhance and precision.” its survivability, increase its striking power At the theater level, China’s missile force and counter missile-defense developments. is capable of supporting a variety of types In addition, China is enhancing its nuclear of campaigns against Taiwan. According to command and control. According to the the Department of Defense, while “China U.S. Department of Defense, “The pla today probably could not enforce a full has deployed new command, control, and military blockade, particularly if a major communications capabilities to its nuclear naval power intervened,” its “ability to do forces. These capabilities improve the so will improve significantly over the next Second Artillery’s ability to command and five to ten years.” China’s missile force could control multiple units in the field.” also strike key targets on Taiwan with short- Under way for decades, Chinese range missiles or participate in operations nuclear modernization can be traced against other potential regional adversaries, back to concerns about the viability of such as Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines. China’s traditional strategic posture that were highlighted in Chinese military fter relying on a small, relatively unso- publications released in the 1980s. In A phisticated and potentially vulnerable particular, Beijing became concerned about nuclear force for several decades, China is what it perceived as potentially threatening now well on the way to a more credible advances in adversary intelligence, nuclear retaliatory capability, mostly be- surveillance and reconnaissance, cause of the plasaf’s deployment of more conventional precision strike and missile- survivable mobile icbms. Importantly, Bei- defense capabilities. While China’s overall jing continues to adhere to a “no first use” approach to nuclear weapons may not have policy, though there have been debates changed, its nuclear force is becoming about the circumstances under which it larger and more advanced. The transition would apply, and some Chinese military to a somewhat larger, much more modern
60 The National Interest China Goes Ballistic nuclear force that includes road-mobile as the mainstay of China’s intercontinental icbms and ssbns, the latter controlled by nuclear-deterrence force for more than the plan, is providing China with a more two decades after its initial deployment in survivable—and therefore more credible— 1981 and remains an important component nuclear deterrent. This is in keeping with of that force even today. China currently official documents like China’s biannual deploys about twenty silo-based df-5 defense white papers, in which China has icbms, which have a range of at least underscored its determination to deploy the 13,000 km, sufficient to strike targets “lean and effective” nuclear force it views throughout the continental United States. as necessary to meet its national-security Moreover, according to the director of the requirements. U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, China is Most nongovernmental experts believe “enhancing its silo-based systems” as part that China currently has several hundred of the modernization of its nuclear-missile nuclear warheads. For example, in the force. In addition, China also retains some Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Hans of its older, liquid-fueled, two-stage df-4 Kristensen and Robert Norris estimate that (css-3) icbms with a relatively limited range China has roughly 250 nuclear weapons. of at least 5,500 km. In 2013, nasic stated China possesses mrbms and irbms for that China retains about ten to fifteen css-3 regional deterrence missions, and silo-based launchers, but many observers anticipate and road-mobile icbms capable of striking that China will soon decommission this targets anywhere in the world. nasic older system. projects that China’s ballistic-missile force After lengthy development programs, will continue to grow by size and type, and the plasaf has deployed two three-stage that “the number of Chinese icbm nuclear road-mobile icbms: five to ten launchers warheads capable of reaching the United for the df-31 (css-10 Mod 1), which has States could expand to well over 100 within a range of at least 7,200 km, and more the next 15 years.” than fifteen launchers for the df-31a (css- For regional nuclear-deterrence missions, 10 Mod 2). This represents an important China currently fields five to ten launchers development because road-mobile icbms for the limited-mobility single-stage liquid- are more difficult for an enemy to locate propellant df-3 (css-2) irbm, which has and therefore more survivable than their a range of at least 3,000 km, and fewer silo-based counterparts. The df-31’s than fifty launchers each for the df-21 range is sufficient to reach U.S. missile- and df-21a (css-5 Mod 1 and 2) mrbms. defense sites in Alaska, U.S. forces in the Many observers expect that these older Pacific and parts of the western United df-3 missiles will likely be retired from States. After a protracted development service in the near future, as China has been history that began in the 1980s, China transitioning to a more survivable, road- conducted the first developmental flight mobile theater nuclear force composed of test of the df-31 in August 1999, and the df-21 and df-21a mrbms, both of which df-31 was finally deployed in 2006. The are solid-propellant road-mobile missiles df-31a has a maximum range of more with ranges of at least 1,750 km. than 11,200 km, which allows it to reach The Defense Department states that targets throughout most of the continental China currently has fifty to seventy-five United States. China reportedly began icbms. The liquid-propellant, two-stage, deploying the df-31a road-mobile icbm silo-based df-5 (css-4 Mod 1) icbm served in 2007; the Pentagon estimates that its
China Goes Ballistic May/June 2014 61 Beijing is modernizing its nuclear force to enhance its survivability, increase its striking power and counter missile-defense developments.
force will increase by 2015, and be joined have written, it will be sufficient to protect by enhanced df-5 icbms. Hans Kristensen China’s national security. China does not and Robert Norris estimate that China has believe it needs to match the United States deployed a total of about twenty to forty or Russia to protect its national security or road-mobile icbms. to cement its status as a major power, but it will continue to deploy the larger and hat this ongoing quantitative and more capable nuclear force it appears to W qualitative modernization portends see as essential to guaranteeing an assured- for the future of China’s nuclear force is a retaliation capability and a credible nuclear subject of growing attention in the United deterrent. In particular, China is reportedly States, Russia, India and other countries. developing and testing the df-41, a road- Over the next decade, China is likely to mobile icbm capable of carrying mirvs. continue increasing the size of its nuclear The principal motivation for developing stockpile while concentrating on further mirv technology appears to be increasing enhancing its ability to survive a first strike the number of warheads China could and overwhelm adversary missile-defense deliver against targets such as major cities systems, steps which Chinese strategists ap- and large military installations as a means pear to regard as critical to maintaining the of overwhelming U.S. missile-defense credibility of China’s nuclear deterrent. capabilities. In nasic’s assessment, “Mobile As part of a broader effort to counter missiles carrying mirvs are intended to U.S. and allied ballistic-missile defenses, ensure the viability of China’s strategic the plasaf could employ mirvs and deterrence. mirvs provide operational hypersonic capabilities. In addition, the flexibility that a single warhead does not.” Pentagon noted, it could deploy “decoys, For China, the key advantages of mirvs chaff, jamming, thermal shielding, and anti- include “simultaneously increasing their satellite (asat) weapons,” as well as other ability to engage desired targets while countermeasures. holding a greater number of weapons Even as China’s nuclear force continues in reserve.” Additionally, from an to increase in quality and quantity, however, organizational perspective, when the df-41 Beijing is highly unlikely to achieve is deployed, it will very likely ensure that numerical parity with the United States the plasaf maintains its status as the and Russia, unless the numbers of nuclear cornerstone of China’s strategic nuclear weapons in those countries’ arsenals decline deterrent even after the plan’s Jin-class dramatically. According to General Jing ssbns begin conducting deterrence patrols Zhiyuan (who served as plasaf commander later this year. from 2003 to 2012), China’s “limited development” of nuclear weapons “will s with the rest of the pla, albeit per- not compete in quantity” with the nuclear A haps to a lesser extent given the ex- superpowers, but as many Chinese scholars treme gravity of its mission, plasaf software
62 The National Interest China Goes Ballistic in the form of personnel and training has command platform. China is improving long lagged behind hardware. That is now command and control over its nuclear changing as recent Chinese leaders, and Xi arsenal. Over the past decade, a wide range in particular, have charged the pla with en- of demanding technical standards have been hancing training realism. While the plasaf promulgated and implemented. Technical lacks real combat experience, authorita- talents are being recruited through such tive sources such as its official newspaper, pipelines as the Defense Student Program, Rocket Forces News, and the pla’s Liberation China’s version of rotc, to ensure that Army Daily document extensively that it the plasaf is able to operate and maintain is implementing more realistic and rigor- its increasingly sophisticated equipment ous training. Particular emphasis is placed effectively. on preparing the plasaf to conduct future As part of his rapid, vigorous joint operations and operate under what are consolidation of leadership, Xi has known as “informatized” conditions. Spe- emphasized the importance of developing cifically, the plasaf’s latest known volume, reliable war-fighting capabilities. Along China Strategic Missile Force Encyclopedia, with the development and deployment of a emphasizes the importance of a “mobile more modern, survivable nuclear deterrent, command post” and “minimum communi- China also seems to be improving the cation support.” As a “necessity of high-tech readiness of its strategic forces. Scholars localized warfare,” the “New Three De- have long thought that all of China’s fenses” are likewise stressed to protect the nuclear weapons were kept in centralized plasaf against precision attack, electronic storage facilities and that its nuclear-missile interference and reconnaissance. Initiated forces were kept at an extremely low level in 2001 by an editorial committee led by of readiness, especially in contrast to those plasaf commanders, the tome endeavors of the United States and Russia. Indeed, at to support the plasaf’s development by of- least one Chinese scholar has suggested that fering detailed entries in such areas as doc- China might not have any nuclear weapons trine, operations, command and control, that would be considered operationally logistics, management and history. deployed by U.S. and Russian standards. Meanwhile, hardware to support such Yet passages in recent Chinese missile-force efforts is being improved still further, in the publications indicate that even in peacetime form of capabilities such as the integrated China stores at least a small number of
China Goes Ballistic May/June 2014 63 nuclear warheads at missile bases and s a result of the plasaf’s growing ca- suggest that some plasaf units maintain a A pabilities for nuclear deterrence, rap- higher level of readiness than others. idly improving long-range conventional- These sources indicate that China has strike capabilities, increasingly sophisticated been increasing the readiness of its forces, command-and-control systems, and more which is consistent with its transition to a rigorous and realistic training, China’s stra- strategic deterrent that will be composed tegic missile force poses an increasingly seri- largely of mobile missiles and ssbns. ous set of strategic, operational and tacti- Indeed, China’s most recent national- cal challenges for the United States and defense white paper indicated that the its regional allies and partners. Likewise, plasaf “keeps an appropriate level of China’s conventional missile force poses an readiness in peacetime,” and “has formed increasingly serious threat to regional bases a complete system for combat readiness and may also enable China to target U.S. and set up an integrated, functional, agile aircraft carriers. As for the modernization of and efficient operational duty system to the plasaf’s nuclear forces, China contin- ensure rapid and effective responses to war ues to derive considerable advantages from threats and emergencies.” Moreover, the adhering to its current nuclear policy, but a white paper states: larger and more diverse nuclear missile force may also give Chinese leaders a broader If China comes under a nuclear threat, the range of policy and strategy options. Chi- nuclear missile force will act upon the orders na’s growing nuclear capabilities could cre- of the [Central Military Commission], go into ate fresh challenges for U.S. regional ex- a higher level of readiness, and get ready for a tended deterrence, particularly with respect nuclear counterattack to deter the enemy from to Japan. Moreover, the United States will using nuclear weapons against China. If China need to continue developing and refining comes under a nuclear attack, the nuclear mis- new operational concepts and capabilities, sile force of the plasaf will use nuclear missiles and work even more closely with its allies to launch a resolute counterattack either inde- and partners to respond to the challenges pendently or together with the nuclear forces of posed by China’s growing conventional mis- other services. The conventional missile force sile-force capabilities. If it chooses not to do is able to shift instantly from peacetime to so, then it will discover that this, too, is a wartime readiness, and conduct conventional choice with potentially dire implications for medium- and long-range precision strikes. American security. n
64 The National Interest China Goes Ballistic Reviews & Essays
National Review, the magazine that gave The Tea Party’s the movement intellectual guidance and focus. Buckley rose to national prominence Godfather as an author, media personality and arbitrator of internal disputes within By Geoffrey Kabaservice the conservative camp. He produced the provocative best seller God and Man at Yale at the age of twenty-five and deployed Daniel Kelly, Living on Fire: The Life of his wit and charisma to attract recruits to L. Brent Bozell Jr. (Wilmington: isi Books, the conservative cause. His quest to move 2014), 272 pp., $27.95. conservatism from the margins to the center of American political life came to fruition t sounds like the premise of a novel: with Ronald Reagan’s election as president Two gifted young men meet in college, in 1980. He ended up as the éminence grise I become inseparable friends and plot of the movement, only to view what he had the beginnings of a political movement that wrought with trepidation by the end of his will irrevocably change American politics. life. Their contemporaries predict that one will “Hell Bent” Bozell was, for a while, as become a prominent writer and editor who much of a conservative-movement golden will influence both elites and average voters, boy as Buckley. In 1960, he both cofounded while the other will become a transforma- the activist group Young Americans for tive politician whose unstoppable drive will Freedom and, as ghostwriter for Barry propel him to the White House. As events Goldwater, penned the movement’s unfold, one will achieve all his dreams and canonical text, The Conscience of a more, while the other will go insane and die Conservative. But Bozell’s own election in obscurity. campaigns failed, and during the 1960s he Such, in fact, was the real-life story of increasingly distanced himself from Buckley William F. Buckley Jr. and his best friend and the New Right that he had helped to and brother-in-law, L. Brent Bozell Jr. create. In 1966, he started the conservative After graduating from Yale in 1950, they Catholic magazine Triumph, but its hard- helped to create the modern conservative edged theocratic politics attracted few movement. They channeled the ferment readers. stirred by McCarthyism and established By the mid-1970s, Bozell was in the throes of alcoholism and manic depression. Geoffrey Kabaservice is the author, most recently, His political and intellectual aspirations of Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation cut short, he plunged into a nightmare and the Destruction of the Republican Party, from succession of arrests, forced hospitalizations, Eisenhower to the Tea Party (Oxford University escapes and recommitments. When he died Press, 2012). in 1997, there were few who remembered
Reviews & Essays May/June 2014 65 national oration contest, then served in the merchant marine and navy at the tail end of World War II. In 1946, he enrolled at Yale University. As Kelly notes, “Brent arrived at Yale a Democrat and an Episcopalian. He left a Republican and a Catholic.” Though Bozell seems to have converted to Catholicism of his own initiative, his political him aside from movement veterans and transformation came about thanks scholars of conservatism. largely to his classmate, Bill Buckley. Living on Fire, the new biography of The two became best friends and formed Bozell written by the historian Daniel Kelly a near-invincible debating partnership, (who died in 2012), is a sympathetic and in which Bozell was the grave orator to briskly readable account that is candid Buckley’s sardonic verbal assassin. Buckley about its subject’s personal torments and increasingly influenced Bozell to adopt his failure of promise. But in a curious way, blend of conservative Catholic social values, it both makes too much and too little of anti–New Deal Republicanism and hard- Bozell’s significance. It overestimates his line anti-Communism. According to Kelly, impact on the conservative movement Bozell even went so far as to acquire some as it developed from the 1960s onward, of his friend’s faux-aristocratic mannerisms yet underestimates the ways in which he and verbal tics. was a precursor of the snarling, turbulent In his senior year of college, Bozell conservative movement we have today. married Buckley’s favorite sister, Patricia. It is Bozell, not Buckley, who deserves to In the fall of 1950, when Bozell was in Yale be remembered as the unacknowledged Law School and living a few doors down godfather of the Tea Party. from Buckley in a New Haven suburb, his wife gave birth to the first of what would ozell was born in 1926 in Omaha, Ne- be ten children, all of whom inherited their B braska. His father and namesake was a father’s bright red hair. (Patricia Buckley founding partner of what became a highly Bozell later explained that she’d had to successful advertising and public-relations abandon horseback riding, an activity at firm, now operating as Bozell Worldwide. which she excelled, since “I was always The young Brent enjoyed a prosperous and pregnant.”) relatively uneventful boyhood. In 1944, at Buckley and Bozell were captivated by age eighteen, he won the American Legion’s Joseph McCarthy’s headline-grabbing
66 The National Interest Reviews & Essays investigations into domestic subversion that liberalism was the same thing as during the early 1950s. The two were Communism, as McCarthy and many not put off by the Wisconsin senator’s of his followers often claimed. But character assassination and anti- while McCarthy the man was fallible, Communist hyperbole. Quite the contrary. McCarthyism was a movement “around They indulged in it themselves in the which men of good will and stern morality advertisements and radio spots they wrote [could] close ranks.” Of course, they were against Connecticut’s Democratic senator wrong. As Sidney Hook pointed out at the William Benton in the 1952 elections on time, no one did more to discredit genuine behalf of the Republican candidate, Prescott anti-Communism than McCarthy and his Bush. “Senator Benton has pampered and associates. The Kremlin should have been coddled loyalty and security risks in his delighted by his efforts. own office,” they charged. “Senator Benton McCarthy, who by the time of the book’s energetically leads the Administration’s publication had become a full-blown effort to cover up Communist treachery in alcoholic, complained that he couldn’t government.”1 understand it: “It’s too intellectual for me.” After Bozell graduated from law But he was sufficiently impressed with school, he toiled with his brother-in- Bozell that he hired him as his speechwriter law on a book defending McCarthy and adviser. and his populist crusade. McCarthy and His Enemies, published in early 1954, ozell was one of the first writers and essentially concluded that the ends justified B editors at National Review, the conser- the means. Communism, in the view vative intellectual magazine Buckley found- of Buckley and Bozell, presented such a ed in 1955. When McCarthy died in 1957, grave threat that extreme measures were Bozell moved into conservative journalism needed to root out Communist ideas from full-time. He became, Kelly writes, one of American government and society. Those National Review’s “more prolific contribu- who protested that these actions violated tors.” His articles focused on the Com- traditional civil liberties were, the authors munist menace, the Eisenhower adminis- strongly implied, unpatriotic. And since tration’s failings in domestic and foreign Democrats and moderate Republicans policy, and the unconstitutional overreach could not be trusted to act on their own to of the Supreme Court under Chief Justice remove security risks, McCarthyism was a Earl Warren. Bozell’s views in the late 1950s success because it spurred them to do so. were in line with what was later termed Buckley and Bozell conceded that McCarthy himself had at times made 1 William F. Buckley Jr. and L. Brent Bozell Jr. exaggerated or unsupported charges, radio copy, n.d. (1952). William F. Buckley Jr. though his overall record was “extremely Papers (Yale University) 97-M-160-4: “Corr.– good.” It was not true, they maintained, 1950s.”
Reviews & Essays May/June 2014 67 Bozell was poised to become one of conservatism’s principal spokesmen. Instead, he gradually moved away from the movement he had helped to birth.
“fusionism,” the synthesis of traditionalism, conservative politician left standing after libertarianism and anti-Communism that the Republican Party’s disastrous 1958 defined the emerging conservative move- elections. (Bozell was one of the victims ment and that would be championed by of the anti-gop backlash that year in an National Review’s Frank Meyer. More re- abortive run for Maryland’s House of cently, David Brooks has revived the notion. Delegates.) Goldwater used Bozell as a Kelly’s biography, like some other speechwriter and, at the urging of backers accounts, implies that Bozell acted as who wanted the Arizonan to run for National Review’s principal in-house president in 1960, hired the thirty-four- defender of civil rights. No doubt Bozell year-old to ghostwrite a book that would criticized Buckley’s notorious 1957 publicize his views. Bozell wrote The editorial, “Why the South Must Prevail,” Conscience of a Conservative in about six which justified Jim Crow oppression in weeks, with little input from Goldwater. To the South on the grounds that the white everyone’s surprise, it became the biggest community was “the advanced race.” But political blockbuster of all time, selling 3.5 Bozell argued only that the Fifteenth million copies by 1964. Amendment prohibited states from The Conscience of a Conservative appealed abridging the right to vote on account of to young people in particular because of race. He believed that private businesses its romantic assumption that the heroic were fully entitled to deny service to African individual could galvanize sweeping change Americans, while the principle of federalism through sheer force of will. “I have little meant that state and local governments interest in streamlining government or could maintain segregated schools and making it more efficient,” ran one well- other public facilities. Bozell was a harsh known passage, “for I mean to reduce and unrelenting critic of the Supreme its size. I do not undertake to promote Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. decision, and he denied that the court was My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal “the final arbiter of what the Constitution them.” (No one reading those lines would means.” During the Little Rock High guess that Goldwater was an isolated and School integration crisis, he castigated largely ineffective senator, with almost no Arkansas governor Orval Faubus for caving legislative accomplishments to his name.) in to federal pressure instead of upholding The book overturned conventional wisdom John Calhoun’s right of interposition.2 by presenting conservatism as an idealistic Bozell’s McCarthyist credentials and philosophy attuned to the spiritual nature conservative outlook commended him of humanity, while liberalism stood for mere to Arizona senator Barry Goldwater. The senator, who had been one of the few 2 Carl T. Bogus, Buckley: William F. Buckley Jr. Republicans to vote against McCarthy’s and the Rise of American Conservatism (New York: censure, became the most prominent Bloomsbury, 2011), 168.
68 The National Interest Reviews & Essays grubby materialism. And Bozell channeled moved away from the movement he had the restless spirit of the coming decade in helped to birth. While his former soul his paean to freedom, individual autonomy, mate Buckley channeled the conservative existential authenticity and radical action. movement toward Reagan’s victory in With totalitarianism threatening at home 1980, Bozell made all the wrong moves and and abroad, readers were summoned backed all the wrong horses. But it is Bozell’s to a life-or-death struggle to “enforce the trajectory after 1960, not before, that seems Constitution and restore the Republic.” to have greater relevance today. His dissents The book’s specific policy stances were and divergences anticipated the missteps also radical. Bozell proposed to devolve that have afflicted conservatism over the past to the states all federal programs not decade, particularly in the years since the rise specifically enumerated in the Constitution, of the Tea Party movement. including social-welfare programs, Bozell’s first miscalculation was education, agriculture, public power and his declaration that, after Goldwater public housing. Federal spending would be abandoned his pursuit of the Republican reduced by 10 percent each year in all areas presidential nomination in 1960, where “federal participation is undesirable.” conservatives should abandon the Progressive income taxation would be Republican Party, which had too many repealed, as would the farm subsidy Eisenhower-style moderates to be worth program. The federal government would saving. The way forward would be to create be forbidden to impose its understanding a purely conservative third party. Bozell of civil rights (other than voting rights) on later backtracked from this position, but the Southern states—and in any case, Bozell stipulated that the conservative movement declared that he was “not impressed by the should act as a sort of fifth column seeking claim that the Supreme Court’s decision to infiltrate the gop. The movement on school integration is the law of the would preserve its freedom of action by land.” In foreign policy, Bozell said that the ensuring that “its ties with the Republican United States should act unilaterally, break organization will be, as a practical matter, diplomatic ties with the Soviet Union, severable—ideally at a moment’s notice.”3 achieve military superiority in equipment This, in fact, would be the approach and weapons, and bring total victory over that Goldwater’s supporters pursued, Communism closer by allowing battlefield culminating in their seizure of enough commanders to deploy “small, clean nuclear delegates to the 1964 gop convention to weapons.” secure the presidential nomination for their With the success of The Conscience candidate. But it did the conservatives little of a Conservative, Goldwater became the conservative movement’s darling, while 3 L. Brent Bozell Jr., “The Challenge to Bozell was poised to become one of its Conservatives, II,” National Review, January 14, principal spokesmen. Instead, he gradually 1961, 12.
Reviews & Essays May/June 2014 69 good in the long term to portray themselves Conservative, Bozell lamented that “a craven as disloyal subversives burrowing into the fear of death is entering the American con- party with the goal of ruling or ruining sciousness.” But demanding that the Ameri- it. Farther-thinking strategists such as can people embrace heroic self-immolation Reagan and Buckley instead would present was hardly the way to win their votes. Buck- conservatives as loyal Republicans capable ley recognized this when he killed an article of coexisting with moderate party faithful— Bozell submitted to National Review favor- so long as ultimate control rested with the ing a preemptive strike against the ussr. conservatives. Bozell had been one of the founders n early 1961, Bozell relocated his fam- of the Young Americans for Freedom I ily to Spain, renting a farm near the six- organization, and along with Goldwater was teenth-century monastic palace El Escorial. a principal speaker at the group’s packed Kelly suggests that Bozell may have wanted anti-Communist rally in Madison Square to move there in order to have a distraction- Garden in March 1962. The conclusion free environment in which to produce a of Bozell’s speech brought the crowd to book about the Warren court, or because their feet as he envisioned the orders a costs were low, or because he wanted to live conservative president would give upon in a thoroughly Catholic society. What the taking office: book skips around, however, is the extent to which Bozell was attracted to the military To the Joint Chiefs of Staff: Make the neces- dictatorship of Francisco Franco. sary preparations for landing in Havana. To Scholars continue to debate whether our commander in Berlin: Tear Down the Wall. Franco is better described as a fascist or To our chief of mission in the Congo: Change an authoritarian. What is indisputable is sides. To the Chairman of the Atomic Energy that Spain under his rule was at odds with Commission: Schedule testing of every nuclear American ideals of freedom and democracy weapon that could conceivably serve the mili- and presented a gruesome contradiction to tary purpose of the West. To the Chief of the the basically libertarian philosophy Bozell cia: You are to encourage liberation movements had extolled as Goldwater’s ghostwriter. in every nation of the world under Communist After Franco’s victory in the Spanish Civil domination, including the Soviet Union itself. War, thanks in large part to assistance And you may let it be known that when, in the from Nazi Germany and fascist Italy, he future, men offer their lives for the ideals of the abolished independent political parties, West, the West will not stand idly by. trade unions and free elections. The regime executed and imprisoned opponents As much as Bozell’s young audience loved by the thousands, demonized Jews and this apocalyptic rhetoric, however, it struck Freemasons as well as Communists, and the vast majority of Americans as danger- suppressed women’s rights. And Bozell ous and irresponsible. In The Conscience of a can hardly have failed to notice that, for
70 The National Interest Reviews & Essays all his praise of decentralization and states’ rights in America, Spain was the most centralized country in Western Europe and enthusiastically persecuted advocates of regional autonomy. But Bozell was greatly impressed by the ways in which the Spanish regime elevated the power of the Catholic Church and prohibited other religions. The church ran the country’s schools and imposed cultural censorship; divorce, contraceptives and abortion were illegal. Bozell was also enthralled by the throne-and-altar virtue—by outlawing divorce, for example. conservatism of the Carlist monarchists This was consistent with the American (part of Franco’s Falangist coalition) as well tradition, according to Bozell, since the as the medieval poverty, piety and passion Founding Fathers’ writings contained “not of Spain. His wife recalled, “In Spain a hint of the ideology of freedom . . . not a he was swept away . . . by the concept word suggesting that freedom is the goal of of Christendom. Where before he was a the commonwealth.” dedicated Catholic, he [now] became a Bozell wasn’t yet calling for the Catholic who believed that all thinking, all traditionalists to break off from the action, no matter where and when, should libertarians in the conservative coalition. be rooted in Catholicism.” Anti-Communism still provided the glue Bozell began to introduce religio- holding the two wings of the movement political absolutism into his writings. together. Bozell instructed liberal Catholics In a long article entitled “Freedom or that the church’s mission was not to end Virtue?” published in National Review in poverty but, rather, to lead the Christian September 1962, Bozell declared that the West in a “crusade” against Communism. libertarians in the conservative movement Increasingly, however, Bozell would argue were wrong to believe that freedom was the that religious conservatives and libertarians highest value. In fact, the principal end of had little in common, and indeed were humanity was religious salvation, which diametrically opposed on many points. required virtue. Economic and political Religious absolutism prompted Bozell to freedom were good only to the extent that reevaluate the distinction he and Buckley they supported virtue. And since humans had carefully drawn between liberalism were prone to stray if left to their own and Communism in McCarthy and His devices, government should use its power Enemies. Following the formulation of to inhibit freedom in order to promote political philosopher Eric Voegelin, Bozell
Reviews & Essays May/June 2014 71 claimed that liberalism and all other and mysticism, Wills warned, “He is taking modern revolutionary ideologies that had an authoritarian course that can do [National emerged since the Enlightenment were Review] no good, I am afraid. Franco may be secular versions of gnosticism. And the goal good for Spain, but transferred to America of all gnostics was to “immanentize the his kind of rule goes down hard, and there is eschaton”: to create the kingdom of heaven no reason for anyone to waste time trying to on earth. make it go down.”6 There was no point in conservatives arguing with liberals, then, since both sides ozell returned to the United States by held incompatible views of human nature. B mid-1963, and by early the next year Liberal aspirations to improve the lot of had decided to challenge the congressman in the poor, for instance, were expressions of his Maryland district for a seat in the House what Bozell called the “hope of perfecting of Representatives. The incumbent, Charles man through the agency of man,” and were McC. “Mac” Mathias, was a moderate Re- foredoomed to failure—for God had taught publican and Yale graduate from a long- that the poor would always be with us. And established Maryland family—“the living liberals, according to Bozell, were coming to image of a type that Brent detested,” accord- understand that their dream of an earthly ing to Kelly. What especially raised conser- paradise could only be fulfilled “not by vative hackles was the fact that he was one changing society, but by changing man”— of only a handful of members of Congress through Communism.4 from segregated states who openly advocat- Not surprisingly, Bozell deemed the ed integration. The district’s registration was Democratic Party basically illegitimate. three-to-two Democratic, and a New Right He suggested to Buckley that the Kennedy candidate like Bozell had no realistic chance administration had timed the Cuban missile of winning in a general election. Nonethe- crisis to benefit Democrats in the 1962 less, anticipating the logic of Tea Partiers elections.5 decades in the future, he preferred to launch Bozell became increasingly dissatisfied a primary challenge against a moderate Re- with the compromises of American publican in a losing cause than to defeat a democracy and the inconsistencies within Democrat in a more conservative district. traditional Christian conservatism. As Buckley’s protégé Garry Wills shrewdly 4 “To Magnify the West,” reprinted in L. Brent observed, “I think Brent’s starting point is a Bozell Jr., Mustard Seeds: A Conservative Becomes a distrust of reality. He demands of creation Catholic (Front Royal, va: Christendom Press, 2001). a consistency it cannot afford him; and 5 L. Brent Bozell Jr. to William F. Buckley Jr., thinking it an insult to the Creator to accept October 23, 1962. Buckley Papers I-18: “Buckley such a messy universe, he tidies it up by Family - Bozell, Patricia and L. Brent (1962).” cutting a large part of it away.” And as Bozell 6 Garry Wills to William F. Buckley Jr., n.d. continued to marinate in Spanish politics (1964?). Buckley Papers I-33: “Wills, Garry (1964).”
72 The National Interest Reviews & Essays As much as Bozell’s audience loved his apocalyptic rhetoric, it struck the vast majority of Americans as dangerous and irresponsible.
Bozell’s campaign also proved ahead for president on a Republican platform of its time in claiming that Mathias was that was almost identical to the radical not a “real” Republican, though his great- program Bozell had laid out for him in grandfather had run on the same ticket The Conscience of a Conservative, including as Abraham Lincoln in 1860 and the opposition to federally enforced Southern Republican Policy Committee determined desegregation. He went down to smashing that he had supported party positions 83 defeat in every part of the country outside percent of the time. Bozell cast Mathias as the Deep South and took most of the gop a soft-on-Communism advocate of big- with him, reducing the party’s representation government handouts, and said that his in Congress to levels unseen since the New opponent’s support for civil rights would Deal’s high tide. The magnitude of the lead to “compulsory integration” at bayonet public rejection made many conservatives point. At a time when religion rarely figured rethink their strategy. Frank Meyer, one into electoral contests, Bozell implied that of Bozell’s intellectual sparring partners at Mathias’s opposition to mandatory (rather National Review, admitted that conservatives than voluntary) school prayer meant that could no longer seek to repeal the entire he was an atheist. (In fact, Mathias was a New Deal outright, since most Americans devout Episcopalian.) would interpret the elimination of Social Kelly’s account quotes various Bozell Security and other programs as “a radical campaign workers to the effect that he tearing down of established institutions. . . . was “the greatest natural campaigner” ever. It has to be made very clear that conservatives His principal fund-raiser, General Albert by their nature proceed in all changes with C. Wedemeyer, perhaps more accurately caution.”8 Chastened leaders like Buckley described Bozell’s appeal when he wrote to and Reagan came to realize that conservatism Buckley that “I cannot tolerate middle-of- could not win national elections if it refused the-road people. I would rather have them all compromise and embraced extremism and far over in the gutter either to the right unpopular positions. or the left but with convictions and the Bozell, however, was prepared to double courage to defend them.”7 The Republicans down. In 1965, he vehemently objected of Maryland’s Sixth District, however, did to Buckley’s condemnation of the John not warm to Bozell. They were persuaded Birch Society. When Buckley refused to by the incumbent’s argument that Bozell publish his protest letter, Bozell asked was a “radical” seeking to impose an “alien that his name be removed from National doctrine” on the gop. Mathias trounced the conservative in the primary before going on 7 Albert C. Wedemeyer to William F. Buckley Jr., to win the general election and, later, several August 21, 1963. William F. Buckley Jr. Papers terms as senator. Bozell never ran for office I-28, “Wetherby-Weiner (1963).” again. 8 Frank S. Meyer, “What Next for Conservatism?” In the fall of 1964, Barry Goldwater ran National Review, December 1, 1964, 1057.
Reviews & Essays May/June 2014 73 Review’s masthead. outrance” became Indeed, Bozell the norm. Indeed, later turned to Triumph closely the Birch Society’s resembled the founder for advice leftist revolutionary about Triumph, publications of the conservative the time in its Catholic magazine millenarianism, its he started in 1966. told-you-so delight And although in urban riots and Triumph originally other ills of the was marketed as a Catholic National era, and its contempt for America, which Review, Bozell quickly took the publication it often spelled “Amerika” to emphasize in a far more radical direction. its similarity to Nazi Germany. Bozell In short order, Triumph attacked boycotted patriotic and civic celebrations American Catholic bishops (for their and refused to salute the flag. alleged weakness on abortion and failure Bozell even took a page from the Students to crack down on liberal deviancy); the for a Democratic Society playbook when Catholic Church (for its Vatican II he staged an antiabortion demonstration reforms); the Constitution (for vesting final at George Washington University in authority in “the people” rather than God); Washington, dc, in August 1970. With the United States (for its moral degeneracy); his group, the Sons of Thunder (modeled and the conservative movement (for its after a pro-Franco Carlist militia), Bozell secularism). By 1967, the magazine was occupied a campus building, allegedly explicitly calling for Catholic theocracy. assaulted police with a large wooden cross Kelly’s account suggests several reasons and was dragged off to jail, bleeding and in for Triumph’s radicalization. Bozell’s handcuffs. New Right and New Left had jealousy of and growing separation from come full circle, with Bozell now exhibiting his more famous brother-in-law led him to the same sense of martyrdom, exaltation of take positions that he knew would distress “direct action” and with-us-or-against-us Buckley. Bozell’s incipient mental illness mentality that characterized his erstwhile may also have played a role. Conservative political opposites. thinker Russell Kirk, who briefly wrote for But the conservative movement as Triumph, felt that Bozell had been possessed a whole didn’t follow Bozell’s path, and by “the demon of the absolute,” which led he was not really, as Kelly half asserts, a him to “look for a dogma in all things.” founder of the Christian Right. Paul Buckley felt that his former friend had Weyrich spoke for most Christians and absorbed the “antinomian” ambience of conservatives when he worried that Bozell’s the late 1960s, when “formulations à actions would lead the public to “equate
74 The National Interest Reviews & Essays abortion opposition with Black power Review’s leader with a series of object les- and college lunacy.” Right-wing civil sons on how not to conduct the conserva- disobedience wouldn’t resurface on a large tive movement. Now that the movement scale until Randall Terry’s Operation Rescue no longer has Buckley’s guidance, it has of the 1980s and 1990s. Bozell’s bid to tumbled into many of Bozell’s pitfalls. The lead an ecumenical antiabortion movement Tea Party is much closer to Bozell than was thwarted by the Catholic bishops Buckley in its permanent rebellion against (who feared further violence) and his own the Republican Party and its leadership, its magazine’s antipathy toward Protestants; determination to eliminate any vestiges of Triumph maintained that only Catholics moderation from the gop, its inability to were authentic Christians. distinguish between liberalism and Com- Indeed, for all Bozell’s personal fecundity, munism, and its use of religion to divide he was something of a mule in terms of his rather than unite. influence on the conservative movement Buckley wanted the modern conservative as it developed after 1960. He disavowed movement to be intellectually respectable his book The Warren Revolution shortly and politically responsible. He knew that after its publication in 1966, and hardly the wild, paranoid conspiracy theories any conservative scholars seem to have of the Birchers made conservatism look directly followed his take on constitutional “ridiculous and pathological.”9 Like Reagan, originalism. Few conservatives nowadays he believed that conservatism needed to win call for Catholic theocracy or advocate some friends rather than destroy enemies, and of the more interesting ideas that came that conservatives had to devise policies to out of Triumph’s extremism, including its appeal to Americans rather than mocking moral opposition to nuclear weapons, its them as ignorant and cowardly sheep. He promotion of a quasi-communal economy, knew that traditionalism and libertarianism and its condemnation of capitalism and could only be held together by refraining the free market. Triumph, which never had from taking either belief to its extremes. more than a few thousand subscribers, And he cautioned against the tendency finally sputtered to a halt in the mid-1970s, of Bozell and other conservatives toward after which Bozell’s mental and financial fanaticism and obsession, which ultimately troubles all but incapacitated him. He represented a surrender of individual spent the last years of his life performing freedom. His warnings are as pregnant Catholic charitable work and regained some with meaning today as they were then. The measure of internal peace before dying from problem with living on fire is that you end pneumonia at age seventy-one. up flaming out. n
ozell partially reconciled with Buckley 9 William F. Buckley Jr. to Edward T. Foley, April B before his death, but in the 1960s and 17, 1962. William F. Buckley Jr. Papers I-20: 1970s he would have presented National “Foley, Edward T. (1962).”
Reviews & Essays May/June 2014 75 from being fully explored. The clandestine The Secret Life operator, exposed to dangers that typify the spy world when the action is hottest and of Robert Ames the opportunities greatest, is as likely to experience tragedy as triumph. By Paul R. Pillar Of course, the intrigue and danger of that world have provided material for an entire genre of fiction. David Ignatius launched Kai Bird, The Good Spy: The Life and Death a successful second career as a writer of spy of Robert Ames (New York: Crown, 2014), novels with Agents of Innocence, which is 448 pp., $26.00. based on events in the Middle East he had covered as a journalist. Set mostly in Beirut he secret world of clandestine op- in the 1970s, the story involves American erators and the more public world intelligence officers trying to swim through Tof statesmen intersect in a number a cauldron of conflict involving Israelis, of ways. The gathering of useful informa- Palestinians and other Arabs. Although this tion through espionage is well known, but novel was a roman à clef, Ignatius could take the clandestine operator can also help take the fiction writer’s prerogative of bending action and not just inform it. Sometimes the story in his preferred directions. what he or she does is given a formal struc- Now Kai Bird has written a vivid ture and called covert action. At other times nonfictional account of many of those the help is less formal, such as making con- same events. Bird demonstrated his chops tacts and opening channels of communica- as a biographer with a national-security tion that the statesman cannot, for one rea- specialty in earlier books on John J. son or another, embrace openly or directly. McCloy, the Bundy brothers and J. Robert An inspired and skillful operator can make Oppenheimer. He centers The Good Spy important things happen. on Robert Ames, the cia operations officer What the operator can accomplish, who did more than anyone else to open a however, is ultimately limited by the channel of communication between the political constraints that apply to the United States and the Palestine Liberation statesmen for whom he or she works. Organization (plo) at a time when the need Inspiration and skill can open promising for such a channel and the perils of opening avenues, but the constraints may keep them it were both great. It is a reflection of the drama of this patch of history as well as Paul R. Pillar is a contributing editor at Bird’s skill in rendering it that the book is as The National Interest. He is also a nonresident compelling a read as most spy novels. Not senior fellow at the Brookings Institution detracting from its page-turning quality is and a nonresident senior fellow at Georgetown our knowledge of the protagonist’s tragic University’s Center for Security Studies. end: his death in the rubble of the U.S.
76 The National Interest Reviews & Essays Ames did more than anyone else to open a channel of communication between the United States and the plo at a time when the need for such a channel and the perils of opening it were both great.
embassy in Beirut when a truck bomb Beirut—and at the level of its own broader demolished it in 1983. foreign-policy interests. The United States Ames is less well known to the public has been handicapped in coping with this than several other American intelligence uncomfortable situation because it often officers of his and earlier generations, has lacked effective communications with including ones who had operated in the parties that it really should talk to. That same part of the world and accomplished handicap is partly the product of deference no more than he had. Probably the main to Israeli sensibilities and partly due to reason for this difference is that those other Americans’ own notions of who ought to be officers lived to write their own books and shunned as an enemy. Ames did not. Bird’s volume fills that gap; Bird’s reportage relies on the cooperation while he presents other perspectives he is of Ames’s widow, including access to consistently sympathetic toward the mission personal correspondence. Many of the Ames saw himself performing and Ames’s book’s intimate looks at the perceptions views of the best way of doing so. and opinions of Ames come in the form The Good Spy depicts multiple and of quotations from letters to his wife. Bird often-conflicting considerations that go also conducted interviews with dozens of into planning and conducting clandestine former officers, some identified by name operations, a diversity of opinions that and some not, who worked with Ames. often exist internally about how to conduct The author’s only direct contact with his them and complexity in the cia’s relations principal subject took place long ago and with its policy-making customers. The was nonsubstantive—in Bird’s youth as book also describes the personal stresses the teenage son of a U.S. diplomat at the that accompany the life of a clandestine U.S. consulate in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, operator, including geographic separation when he lived next door to Ames. Bird from a spouse while trying to support a knew him as a young officer who liked to family (which in Ames’s case included six play basketball with the consulate’s Marine children) on a government salary. guards. The principal contribution of Bird’s Although the operations Bird describes book, however, is to illuminate earlier occurred more than three decades ago, chapters of a political and diplomatic story they remain sufficiently in the shadows that challenges U.S. policy makers to this that readers who were not involved in day. It is the story of the United States them—this reviewer included—cannot being caught between Israel and its regional independently assess their accuracy. A few adversaries as those enemies have waged war of Bird’s subthemes about the cia seem to be against each other both openly and in the grounded more in cliché and conventional shadows. The United States has suffered wisdom than in reporting. Elsewhere, as a result at a personal level—as with the however, Bird is appropriately agnostic victims of the bombing of the embassy in about events whose details remain unclear.
Reviews & Essays May/June 2014 77 ittle about the early life of Robert Ames of another cia officer, “Ames’s Sancho L pointed to the sort of role he would Panza” for the next fourteen years: Zein later play in Middle East policy and diplo- would become the model for a major macy. He grew up in Philadelphia and at- character in Ignatius’s novel, and would tended college locally at La Salle University, later become one of Bird’s major sources of where the basketball was serious—Ames information about Robert Ames. played on a team that included a future nba Zein grew up in a moderately wealthy professional. Inducted into the army, he was family in southern Lebanon. He learned assigned to a signals-intelligence facility in English attending an American school Eritrea, where in his spare time he began in Lebanon before graduating from high learning the Arabic he heard spoken by school and college in the United States. He townspeople in Asmara. He developed an stayed there and became one of the leaders itch to work someday in the lands on the of the New York–based Organization of other side of the Red Sea. Once out of the Arab Students. He became more actively military, he worked as a repo man for an involved in issues related to the Palestinians. insurance company. He applied to the For- While still in his twenties he started eign Service but failed the written entrance acquiring powerful acquaintances in the exam. The cia hired him in 1960. Middle East, meeting Egyptian president Ames had several of the qualities that Gamal Abdel Nasser during a stint in Cairo make for an excellent intelligence officer. and then landing a job as an adviser to the He had a flair for learning foreign languages ruler of Abu Dhabi, where he served as and would become highly proficient in an interlocutor with American and British Arabic. He liked making contacts with a lot interests seeking to make deals in the oil- of strangers, increasing the odds of contacts rich emirate. Zein’s subsequent endeavors, growing into friendships and lasting bringing him back to Lebanon and later relationships. That, in turn, increased the again to New York, spanned the worlds of odds of some of these relationships yielding international politics and business. useful information or leading to still other Zein’s entrepreneurial talent for making contacts that would yield it. He had a contacts in high places made him an ideal genuine yen for wandering the streets of candidate to be what intelligence officers dusty and even dangerous places. He was a call an access agent: someone whose good listener and an avid reader who easily main value lies not in having useful first- absorbed and digested information about hand information himself but instead in subjects in which he was keenly interested, identifying and facilitating relationships and he was fascinated by the Middle East. with others who do. Access agents may After duty in Dhahran and Aden, Ames be put on the payroll of an intelligence was assigned to Beirut. There in late 1969 service just as primary, information- he met a Lebanese Shiite named Mustafa providing agents typically are. It appears, Zein, who would function as, in the words however, that Zein never entered into a
78 The National Interest Reviews & Essays paid relationship with the United States, by itself would obviously have made Sal- and with his business success he was not ameh of interest to the cia. But during the in need of the money anyway. Bird quotes 1970s Salameh’s broader influence within testimony in court (related to a lawsuit Fatah grew to the point that some con- many years later involving Zein) from a cia sidered him second in importance only to official stating that “Mustafa Zein never Arafat himself. received any monies for his efforts. The According to Bird’s account, there would basis for Mr. Zein’s collaboration with the not be a recruitment, and Salameh would Agency has been his desire for the United not be a paid agent any more than Zein. States to comprehend and sympathize with But when Zein brought Ames and Salameh the Arab and Palestinian perspective on the together, it was the start of a decade-long situation in the Middle East.” relationship that provided a hidden and This sort of relationship suited Ames tempered (but important and otherwise as well. He was not a standout operations missing) means of communication between officer as measured by the number of fully the Palestinian nationalist movement recruited spies he put on the roster. He and the United States. The incentive that believed that useful information often could Ames held out to Salameh for having the be more easily obtained, and useful business relationship was nothing material but more readily conducted, by maintaining instead the argument that, as Bird puts it, a relationship on the basis of friendship “You Arabs claim your views are not heard and parallel interests rather than formal in Washington. Here is your chance. The recruitment. This outlook was at times a president of the United States is listening.” source of disagreement between Ames and Ames, the U.S. point man at the start of other officers in the clandestine service this relationship, kept a hand in it even after at the cia. But it would govern Ames’s he moved on to other assignments. dealings with Zein for the rest of his life. The extent to which the president of the United States really was listening is one of y far the most important of the con- the factual lacunae that Bird acknowledges B tacts that Zein would facilitate was and does not attempt to fill with a made-up with a young, energetic, flamboyant, cos- narrative. He assesses that the cia director mopolitan, womanizing Palestinian named at the time, Richard Helms, would very Ali Hassan Salameh. Salameh was a mem- likely have informed Richard Nixon and his ber of the Revolutionary Council of Yasir national-security adviser, Henry Kissinger, Arafat’s Fatah, the largest of the resistance of the contact. Kissinger says nothing of groups under the umbrella of the plo. Sal- this in his memoirs, but Bird’s assessment is ameh’s principal responsibility was to try to probably correct; however much distrust of develop Fatah’s nascent intelligence organi- the plo there was at the White House, the zation, later called Force 17, into a profes- channel was too important and potentially sional intelligence organization. That role useful to disregard.
Reviews & Essays May/June 2014 79 From the perspective of today, two Underlying this American posture was decades after Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin intense Israeli opposition against contacts shook hands on the White House lawn, with the plo. Israel spared no effort, regular communication between the up to and including assassination, to Palestinian leadership and the U.S. prevent or destroy any U.S. channel with government seems unexceptional and the Palestinians. Salameh thus became uncontroversial. The absence of such a prime Israeli target. Probably the first communication would be an anomaly that Israeli attempt to kill him was in 1971, disables U.S. diplomacy on a subject that using a Mossad-constructed letter bomb. is very important to U.S. interests. But Salameh—whom Zein says was warned by Ames established his channel more than Ames to be wary of letter bombs—did not two decades before the handshake, when open it and instead had it x-rayed. any official and openly acknowledged U.S. The kidnapping and murder of contact with the plo was considered out Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich of the question. The organization was Olympics by an offshoot of Fatah called viewed as a manifestation of international Black September accelerated the Israeli terrorism, to be shunned or combated assassination campaign against Palestinians rather than accepted as an interlocutor or (with Black September striking back, with the instrument of a legitimate nationalist less effectiveness, against the Israelis). aspiration. The Israelis, among others, believed that Salameh had a role in the Munich incident; Bird examines the evidence and concludes that he probably did not. But it didn’t matter as far as Salameh’s eventual fate was concerned, because the Israelis had their other reasons to kill him, including their determination to abort any dialogue between the United States and the plo. They tried again to do so in 1973 but bungled the attempt when a Mossad hit team, in a case of mistaken identity, shot an innocent Moroccan waiter to death in Norway. The negative publicity from this incident led the assassination teams to stand down temporarily.
80 The National Interest Reviews & Essays y the mid-1970s the value of doing and striking up friendships. Ames was B business with Arafat and the plo had sympathetic chiefly to the Palestinians. A become increasingly apparent—including different perspective, one sympathetic to to Henry Kissinger, who built on the Sal- the Jordanian monarchy, can be found in ameh channel by authorizing some other the posthumously published King’s Counsel secret contacts with plo emissaries. By 1974 by Jack O’Connell, who had been the cia’s Arafat had shut down Black September, the station chief in Amman and a longtime Palestine National Council had adopted a confidant of the late king Hussein. “ten-point plan” that implicitly accepted Meanwhile, the resistance to talking Israel’s existence and marked a step toward a directly with the plo persisted. When negotiated two-state solution, and the Arab Jimmy Carter negotiated language in League had recognized the plo as the “sole the Camp David accords that tentatively legitimate representative of the Palestinian addressed Palestinian political rights, he people.” For Ames it was a time of hope and was negotiating with an Egyptian president, of satisfaction in his own role in generating not a Palestinian. Carter’s ambassador to some diplomatic movement. These senti- the United Nations, Andrew Young, ments were tempered by his disappoint- was forced to resign in 1979—ten years ment that the movement was only slow and after the first meeting between Ames and incremental. The disappointment was well Salameh—when Israel leaked word that founded; in retrospect, it is hard to see how Young had held a single meeting with the much of the diplomacy that would wait plo’s representative to the un. until the 1990s should not have been ac- The Israelis had not forgotten Salameh. complished in the 1970s. They finally got their target in 1979 with On the U.S. side the slowness was a remotely detonated car bomb that also due partly to hang-ups about what killed eight other people in a Beirut street. the plo should say explicitly and not Bird’s account tells us that the Mossad agent just implicitly. It was also partly due to who did the detonation, a woman who uncertainty over the shape that Palestinian went by the name Erika Chambers and is self-determination might take, and living today in Israel, was chosen for the especially what the implications would be mission because in practice sessions she did for the kingdom of Jordan. The idea of a better job of pushing the button at the Jordan becoming “the Palestinian state” right moment than the men did. was still out there, even though the plo’s Even with Salameh dead, the usefulness ten-point plan also implicitly recognized to the United States of secret contacts with that a separate Jordan was there to stay. the plo continued. The usefulness became U.S. policy makers as well as intelligence all the greater with the outbreak in 1975 officers had differing sentiments about this, of civil war in Lebanon, to which the plo which tended to correlate with who had had retreated after King Hussein forcibly been their partners in doing business— pushed it out of Jordan. U.S. diplomats and
Reviews & Essays May/June 2014 81 Too often the insights and access that intelligence officers may provide are not followed up with the necessary political decisions for them to have any beneficial effect.
other Americans in Lebanon became partly Ames was later made, for what would be dependent on the Palestinians for their the last year and a half of his life, director security. The mess and danger in Lebanon of the cia’s analytic office covering the Near became messier and more dangerous with East and South Asia. He had exchanged the multiple Israeli invasions of the country. streets of the Middle East for corridors in This was especially true of the war of 1982, Washington as his operating milieu. which featured Ariel Sharon’s relentless Ames thrived in that milieu, quickly offensive to try to crush the plo once and gaining—largely through his on-the-ground for all, and the Israelis’ firing of flares that knowledge of the region—credibility and enabled Christian militias to do by night access with senior figures in Ronald Reagan’s the work that became known as the Sabra administration. This was especially true and Shatila massacre. Amid the chaos, the of George Shultz, who became Reagan’s United States still had the handicap of secretary of state in 1982. Shultz was a not being able to deal openly and directly tough, doubting customer of intelligence with the plo. Bird describes the heroic and who was turned off by tendencies to necessarily convoluted efforts of the U.S. politicize intelligence under cia director diplomat Philip Habib to negotiate the William Casey and Casey’s protégé Robert departure of the plo from Lebanon, amid Gates. After Gates became acting director warnings from Sharon that he would send following Casey’s death, Shultz told him, “I his army into West Beirut if Habib talked feel you try to manipulate me. So you have directly to any plo official. a very dissatisfied customer. If this were a business, I’d find myself another supplier.” y this time Robert Ames had made a But Robert Ames earned Shultz’s respect for B career change that partly reflected his his substantive command of Middle Eastern modest prospects, despite his accomplish- topics in general and Palestinian matters ments, for further advancement in the clan- in particular, even though Shultz writes in destine service; some in the service consid- his memoir that his distrust of Arafat and ered him “too intellectual,” even though he the Palestinian leadership prompted him to had no graduate degree. Ames sought, and oppose initially even secret contacts with the was appointed to, the position of national plo. intelligence officer (nio) for the Near East Shultz describes how on the day he and South Asia. The nios are senior officials was sworn in as secretary of state—and at the National Intelligence Council respon- having to deal immediately with the crisis sible for coordinating analysis and policy in Lebanon—his first telephone calls support across the intelligence community were to a few experts, including Ames, to for their regional or functional subject. I help him to think fresh thoughts about did some work for Ames at the council the Middle East. Ames became a regular and later would fill the same nio position member of a small group of policy myself. A more unusual move was when planners that Shultz assembled to shape
82 The National Interest Reviews & Essays a Reagan administration “peace plan” aimed not only at dealing with the Lebanese mess but also at building on the Camp David accords to make progress toward settling the Israeli-Palestinian issue. In these discussions Ames’s urging was mostly in the direction of more contact, more engagement and more effort to resolve the Palestinian problem. Although Ames, while in his senior Washington jobs, occasionally made trips to New York to (along with forty-six non-Americans) and meet with Zein, by the spring of 1983 it others who were severely wounded, as well as had been more than four years since he had the responses of some of the other Americans been in the Middle East. He thought that who were not at the embassy at the time was too long; he wanted to make a trip back of the attack. One of the latter was a cia to the region to get a feel for the current officer on temporary duty who would go to “ground truth.” Zein was temporarily back the morgue to retrieve a ring and a necklace in Lebanon and wished to set up a meeting from Ames’s body, which she brought back for Ames with the new Lebanese president, to give to his family. Amin Gemayel, even though the security The bombing of the embassy marked situation in Beirut had made the city, in the beginning of a chapter in which the Bird’s words, a “veritable hellhole.” Ames collateral damage to Americans of the did not have any other official business in Israeli-Arab conflict came partly through Beirut, but colleagues advised him to visit the hands of Shia extremists in Lebanon. the cia to avoid it looking like a snub. Several causes contributed to the rise of Thus Ames was in the U.S. embassy that brand of extremism in the early 1980s building at midday on April 18, when a and the emergence of the organization we suicide bomber drove a pickup truck up know now as Hezbollah, but Israel’s actions the steps of the embassy and detonated two and relationship with the United States thousand pounds of explosives, shearing unquestionably were a major factor. Bird off the front of the building and causing quotes later testimony from Robert Dillon, several floors to collapse. Bird’s account of the U.S. ambassador to Lebanon at the the day of the attack is detailed, wrenching time, who survived the blast and had to and poignant. He traces the actions before reconstitute the embassy’s operations after the bomb went off of several of the other climbing out from under the debris. “We sixteen Americans who died with Ames were very much identified with the Israelis,
Reviews & Essays May/June 2014 83 particularly among the Shias,” explained ird begins his book with a prologue Dillon. “There was huge resentment of the B about what was happening in the Near Israelis by this time in southern Lebanon.” East Division of the cia’s Directorate of An even higher price in terms of the Operations on the day of the handshake. number of American dead—the highest Chagrined that there was no cia representa- from any terrorist attack until 9/11—came tion at the White House ceremony—de- six months later when a truck bomb at the spite the agency’s contributions to the dip- Marine barracks in Beirut killed 241 U.S. lomatic achievement being observed—the servicemen. division chief, Frank Anderson, organized A narrow focus on one variety of on the spur of the moment an observance international terrorism emanating from the in which his own people could participate. Middle East had helped give rise to another About three dozen officers piled into a bus brand of it. Policies of shunning or crushing and rode to Arlington National Cemetery. a Palestinian movement that had practiced There they visited first the grave of Robert the first variety, and efforts to expel that Ames, and then the graves of the other cia movement from its place of exile in officers killed in the embassy bombing as Lebanon, boosted the early growth of Shia well as of William Buckley, the later cia sta- terrorism. And one of the first victims was tion chief in Beirut who was kidnapped in an intelligence officer who had contributed 1984 and tortured before dying in captivity. significantly to trying to break the whole The trip to the cemetery was intended as an deadly cycle. homage to the dead as well as an inspiration Even as Arafat and the plo were leaving to the younger officers on the bus. their Lebanese exile for far-off Tunisia, Too often the contributions of people the decisions that needed to be taken to in that profession are, as on that day, break the cycle were not adopted. In August insufficiently recognized by the public, 1982, Shultz called in Israeli ambassador although Bird’s volume is a helpful partial Moshe Arens to tell him that with Arafat’s corrective. And too often the insights departure from Lebanon imminent, it was a and access that intelligence officers may good time to “revitalize” the peace process. provide are not followed up with the Arens disagreed: “Look, we have wiped the necessary political decisions for them to plo from the scene. Don’t you Americans have any beneficial effect. On the latter now pick the plo up, dust it off, and give it subject Bird cites a cynical comment from artificial respiration.” It would take another Graham Fuller, who also had a career in decade and a change of Israeli leadership clandestine operations in the Middle East to get to the Oslo process, the signing of before becoming the nio for the Near a declaration of principles on Palestinian East and South Asia (later than Ames and self-government and the handshake on the earlier than I). “You have this notion,” White House lawn before a beaming Bill says Fuller, “that all you need to do is get Clinton. the right skinny, the right facts before the
84 The National Interest Reviews & Essays policy makers, and things would change. You think you can make a difference. But Red Alert gradually, you realize that the policy makers don’t care. And then the revelation hits you By Jacqueline Newmyer Deal that U.S. foreign policy is not fact-driven.” In the two decades since that White House ceremony we have had Sharon’s Geoff Dyer, The Contest of the Century: The stroll on the Temple Mount, the second New Era of Competition with China—and intifada, the breakdown of the Oslo process How America Can Win (New York: Alfred and plenty of reason for pessimism about A. Knopf, 2014), 320 pp., $26.95. an Israeli-Palestinian peace process going anywhere. We have come full circle back Robert D. Kaplan, Asia’s Cauldron: The to several features of Middle East conflict South China Sea and the End of a Stable that prevailed in Robert Ames’s day. These Pacific (New York: Random House, 2014), include the festering Palestinian issue being 256 pp., $26.00. an oft-cited motivation for anti-American terrorism, although the terrorists today are ears of China’s rise are growing. more likely to be Sunni than Shia. They Only a decade ago, most experts also include an Israeli posture of all threats Finsisted that the Chinese Commu- and pressure and no engagement with its nist Party’s overseas ambitions were limited principal adversaries of the day, including to Taiwan. Now that Beijing has begun to Hamas and the government of Iran; the adopt a more assertive posture abroad, the United States has gone along with the Israeli conventional wisdom has changed from posture on the first and broken with that dismissing the China threat to accepting it posture only recently on the second. There fatalistically. But must Washington and its is even a war of assassinations, including Asian allies defer to Chinese expansionism? botched ones, such as the Israeli attempt to Can we really have jumped from one world kill Hamas political leader Khaled Mashal to another so quickly? in 1997, and successful (in the sense that the Not a chance. Two new books provide a intended targets are dead) ones, such as the corrective to the lately fashionable gloom- killing of Iranian nuclear scientists. and-doom analysis. Each is by a crack We do not know what work members journalist. The first, Geoff Dyer’s The of the American clandestine service may Contest of the Century, addresses the U.S.- be doing today to try to blaze routes away Chinese relationship through the prism of from such futile and deadly paths. But we should hope that any such work, for the Jacqueline Newmyer Deal is president and ceo sake of its effectiveness, stays secret for of the Long Term Strategy Group, a Washington- now—and that years later the stories will be based defense consultancy, and a senior fellow at told by a biographer as adept as Bird. n the Foreign Policy Research Institute.
Reviews & Essays May/June 2014 85 China’s military, political, diplomatic and U.S. military operations. In January 2013, economic development. The second, Robert the U.S. chief of naval operations, Admiral Kaplan’s Asia’s Cauldron, focuses on the Jonathan Greenert, admitted that China’s competition between China and the states new capabilities have caused the U.S. Navy around the South China Sea—the central to change its deployment patterns “inside route for shipping between the Middle the first island chain” (China’s term for the East and East Asia, and the site of disputed major archipelagoes from Japan and Taiwan claims to resource-rich maritime territory. to the Philippines, Brunei and Malaysia that Certainly the fresh attention to China’s form the outer boundary of the East and aspirations is a good thing. As late as 2006 South China Seas). Last November, China the defense correspondent Fred Kaplan tried to unilaterally impose an air defense (no relation to Robert) was belittling the identification zone (adiz) covering airspace Pentagon’s attention to Chinese military over Japanese and South Korean territory modernization in its annual congressionally just before an East Asia tour by Vice mandated report on the subject. In an President Joe Biden. Before Biden departed, article called “The China Syndrome,” the United States defied the adiz with Kaplan wrote: an unannounced transit of two unarmed b-52s, and while the vice president was on “At present,” the report states, “China’s concept his first stop in Tokyo he assured his hosts for sea-denial appears limited to sea-control that the United States would go further in water surrounding Taiwan and its imme- and directly confront Beijing on the issue. diate periphery. If China were to shift to a During his subsequent stop in Beijing, broader ‘sea-control’ strategy”—in other words, however, Biden failed even to mention if it were seeking a military presence farther the adiz in public. We need to confront away from its shores—“the principal indica- Chinese assertiveness with a stalwart refusal tors would include development of an aircraft to bend, but we are in danger of conceding carrier, development of robust, deep-water anti- too much and disheartening our allies. Our submarine-warfare capabilities, development lack of firmness may convince Beijing that of a true area anti-aircraft warfare capability, it can get away with pressing even harder. acquisition of large numbers of nuclear at- While there’s plenty of room for debate tack submarines,” etc., etc. The point is: The about the scope of China’s blue-water Chinese aren’t doing—they’re not even close to ambition, the People’s Liberation Army doing—any of those things [Kaplan’s italics]. Navy (plan) has now completed sea trials of, and deployed, its first aircraft carrier, Just eight years later, the Chinese have with an estimated four to six additional made substantial progress on all of these hulls under construction, as Robert fronts, and Beijing has embarked on a path Kaplan notes. He stresses that in addition of military-backed assertiveness across the to focusing on its surface navy, China has region that has already provoked shifts in been expanding its fleet of nuclear ballistic-
86 The National Interest Reviews & Essays missile and attack submarines capable If the plan’s new aircraft carriers and of deploying into the Pacific and Indian destroyers are suited for engaging in Oceans. Dyer and Kaplan both point to Mahanian sea-control missions, this would China’s construction of a new submarine be a step beyond the impressive suite of base in the South China Sea, and Kaplan largely land- and air-based forces that also highlights China’s investment in aerial China has acquired to keep adversaries refueling to enable the projection of air from entering or operating within its near power toward that sea’s southern reaches. abroad. More than the carrier, these “anti- He might also have mentioned China’s access/area-denial” (a2ad) capabilities (e.g., deployment of new Type 052d destroyers precise ballistic and cruise missiles, along with state-of-the-art radars and a vertical with the complex of sensors and guidance launch system capable of firing advanced technologies that allow them to find and surface-to-air missiles against enemy prosecute moving targets) have implications aircraft, including anti-submarine-warfare for the U.S. position in the Asia-Pacific aircraft, enabling the destroyers to defend region because they raise doubts about our other plan surface ships and submarines. ability to protect our allies. Since the late Dyer lucidly sets out the context 1940s, the United States has played a key in which these developments have been role in tamping down potential conflicts occurring. He traces the rise of the plan to between regional actors. In Dyer’s words, China’s obsession with the late nineteenth- “America has defined its vital interest as century American naval theorist Alfred preventing any one power from dominating Thayer Mahan. Mahan saw sea power in the other main regions of the world and general, and the ability to exert control turning them into a private sphere of over commercial sea-lanes in particular, influence.” as essential to the well-being of trading For more than half a century the states. “Neglected at home,” Dyer writes, United States has guaranteed Taiwan’s “Mahan has become deeply fashionable independence, and our security over the last decade in Chinese intellectual commitment to Japan has made it possible circles, including translations of his books, for successive generations of Japanese academic articles on their importance, and leaders to maintain relatively modest conferences on his ideas.” defense investments. Thanks to China’s
Reviews & Essays May/June 2014 87 Now that Beijing has begun to adopt a more assertive posture abroad, the conventional wisdom has changed from dismissing the China threat to accepting it fatalistically.
buildup of a2ad capabilities, Tokyo mate by U.S. Navy captain Henry Hendrix may now question whether Washington that puts the cost of the People’s Liberation would send forces to protect Japan from Army’s (pla) carrier-killer missiles at $11 Chinese aggression in the East China Sea, million each, compared with a $13.5 billion where China has been challenging Japan’s price tag on a new U.S. carrier. administrative control over the Senkaku/ To be sure, not everyone missed the Diaoyu islands. The same question may flash. In 1992, Mark Stokes, a U.S. Air apply equally to the Philippines, another Force deputy attaché, traveled around the U.S. treaty ally, which has recently Chinese countryside and gathered evidence succumbed to Chinese military-backed that, together with what he was reading expansionism over disputed land features in in Chinese military journals, indicated a the South China Sea. major investment in medium- and long- range missiles. But he was largely ignored. ow did we get here? Here are three As Dyer recounts: H specific explanations. First, China’s military rise was difficult to see because it Back in 1992, plenty of people in the Penta- proceeded very slowly for a long time before gon dismissed the analysis of people such as suddenly yielding a spate of new capabili- Stokes, rejecting the idea that a country as poor ties, and these capabilities were not the ones as China would have such clear-cut military most Americans would have expected. The ambitions. Others argued that China’s ability high-tech electronic and sensor systems that to contest Asia’s seas with the U.S. was heavily form the backbone of China’s a2ad force constrained by its dependency on the global took years, if not decades, to develop, and economy. the shape of this new force may not have been observable until China actually began At the end of the 1990s, as Chinese to test highly accurate missiles. Compound- defense budgets continued to increase by ing the intelligence challenge, China did double digits, the evidence was getting not pursue military modernization paral- harder to ignore, but then the September lel to the U.S. model. As both Dyer and 11 attacks occurred, diverting U.S. Kaplan note, Beijing didn’t try to build attention from East Asia to Central Asia a navy like ours; rather, the plan has be- and the Middle East for the next decade. come a kind of anti–U.S. Navy, centered 9/11 is thus the second reason we are only around submarines; small, fast attack craft just now confronting the seriousness of armed with antiship cruise missiles; and, China’s challenge to the post–World War II most recently, drones. China has adopted order in Asia. an asymmetric approach, using relatively A third reason is that until recently, cheap weapons to prevent very expensive Chinese rhetoric and behavior worked American platforms like aircraft carriers to mask the ambition behind the pla’s from entering the theater. Dyer cites an esti- modernization. Dyer cites the work
88 The National Interest Reviews & Essays of journalist Joshua Kurlantzick, who opportunity in the eyes of many Western chronicled how Beijing used China’s wealth business interests. So we are tempted to and a carefully crafted image to embark on jump from denial to defeatism. Not Dyer. a “charm offensive” across the world from In his view: the mid-1990s through 2007. China often presented itself as the anti–United States, Whether they have come to praise or to warn providing capital in the form of investments about China’s rise, most authors on China sub- and loans with no requirements for good scribe to an almost linear transfer of wealth and governance. Meanwhile, in discussions influence from West to East, from a U.S. in with the West, Chinese Communist Party decline to an irrepressible China. There is an air leaders offered assurances that the pla of inevitability in the way China is presented. was not seeking an aircraft carrier, nor Yet the roots of American power are deeper would it militarize space, while business than they seem and hard to overturn. delegations were wooed with promises of exposure to a gigantic market of potential n different ways, Dyer and Kaplan pro- Chinese customers—as long as they I vide reasons for hope. Where Dyer argues provided investment in China’s research- that we are likely to prevent China from and-development sector and transferred succeeding in its effort to dominate Asia, critical know-how. Then, in January 2007, Kaplan predicts that we will engage in a China tested an antisatellite missile, and sustained naval competition, but at least the in 2008 the global financial crisis supplied “stopping power of water” (a term borrowed an opportunity for Beijing to trumpet its from University of Chicago professor John brand of state capitalism as an alternative Mearsheimer) will keep the contest from to the faulty Western market-based devolving into outright war. By following system. Testing of China’s antiship ballistic commonsense rules—striving to maintain missile, runway images of a Chinese “fifth a balance of power in the region—we can generation” aircraft and sea trials of the first prevail in what is likely to be a long-term Chinese carrier coincided with or directly competition. What’s more, both authors followed these events. By March 2009, as maintain that the United States should stay Dyer recounts, a flotilla of ten Chinese ships economically and militarily engaged, with saw fit to confront the usns Impeccable, Kaplan making the case that the two are an American naval survey vessel, in the linked: “It is only by enmeshing itself fur- northern part of the South China Sea. ther into the region’s trade that the United Even now, there is reluctance to identify States will remain self-interested enough to China as a competitor, perhaps born of continue to guard the sea lines of communi- difficulty conceiving of this possibility. cations in the Western Pacific.” Unlike our last major competitor, the Soviet So Dyer and Kaplan agree on the Union, China is also a major trade partner, diagnosis and even on the general and China continues to represent a market prescription, with both, again,
Reviews & Essays May/June 2014 89 recommending that the United States al American strength. Kaplan points out aim to preserve a balance of power. Here’s the challenging bathymetry around China’s Dyer: “Washington’s objectives should be coast for the detection of hostile subma- to maintain a favorable balance of power rines, implying that the U.S. advantage in and to provide clear defensive arrangements this area might be neutralized. In fact, what against any potential aggressors.” In this means is that stealthy U.S. submarines Kaplan’s formulation, “It is the balance of should be able to penetrate up to China’s power between the United States and China shores, while American sonar and other that ultimately keeps Taiwan, Vietnam, detection measures can be maintained along Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, and the choke points through which Chinese Singapore free.” And again a few pages later: submarines would have to pass to exit Chi- “For it is the balance of power itself, even na’s near seas and deploy out into the blue more than the democratic values of the water of the Pacific. So the undersea do- West, that is often the best preserver of main does indeed seem to count as such a freedom.” key area of U.S. advantage. Aiming for a balance of power sounds But more than U.S. submarines will unobjectionable, but what does this mean be required in order to preserve a balance in practice? Kaplan distinguishes between of power. Submarines are supposed to the past American dominance and the be imperceptible. But to maintain their future balance that he envisions: nerve and stand up for themselves in the face of Chinese coercive pressure, China’s The balance of power in Asia requires Ameri- neighbors will require visible evidence of can military superiority, in order to offset Chi- the U.S. commitment to their security. On na’s geographic, demographic, and economic the diplomatic side, Dyer is clear: “The advantage. One does not necessarily mean the endgame in Asia for Washington is . . . to crushing American superiority of recent de- forge a robust and stable set of rules and cades. In fact, the American military position institutions laced with American values of in Asia can afford to weaken measurably, to openness and political pluralism which will take into account future budget cuts, so long be resistant to Chinese pressure,” and he as the American military retains a clear-cut ad- cites Burma as a test case. On the military vantage in key areas over the Chinese military. question of how to deter China from It is that edge which will preserve the balance challenging the balance, he is sensible but of power. vague:
Unfortunately, Kaplan does not specify how If the basic objective is to convince Chinese much “edge” will suffice. Nor does he pro- hard-liners that there is no path to a quick win ceed even to adumbrate which “key areas” in the western Pacific and to defend its allies, he has in mind. One might think of the then U.S. strategy should be built around find- undersea domain as an area of tradition- ing ways to raise the costs so that China’s lead-
90 The National Interest Reviews & Essays To maintain their nerve and stand up for themselves in the face of Chinese coercive pressure, China’s neighbors will require visible evidence of the U.S. commitment to their security.
ers would never be tempted even to consider States can maintain a balance of power in such a proposal—and to do so in ways that are the face of China’s rise, then knowledge of politically and economically realistic and which conditions on the ground across the region are not hugely provocative toward China. will prove critical. This local knowledge will help Washington work with the countries The trouble is that the existence of China’s of the region, and potentially even embed a2ad force means that to ensure access the them in an alliance-like architecture (if not United States must possess the ability to a formal alliance such as nato) to keep Bei- prevent Chinese missiles from finding their jing at bay. targets. This would seem to require not only Kaplan’s virtuoso reportage and historical shipboard air-defense systems but also the sensitivity seem at odds with his insistence ability to penetrate China’s own air-defense on the primacy of geography and structural network to eliminate the elements of China’s factors. The first chapter of Asia’s Cauldron complex of sensors and guidance systems begins: “Europe is a landscape; East Asia a that enable the pla to precisely target Amer- seascape. Therein lies a crucial difference ican platforms. The U.S. military has begun between the twentieth and twenty-first to think through such an approach under centuries.” It is as though geography the rubric of “Air-Sea Battle,” but Dyer rules determines everything. But prior to this out this response as overly provocative to- opening, Kaplan offers a prologue called ward China because it implies strikes against “The Ruins of Champa” that vividly targets on the mainland. As an alternative, conveys India’s enduring cultural influence Dyer suggests a distant blockade to target in Vietnam: China’s economy, acknowledging that its imposition would entail “plenty of strategic I am in My Son, in central Vietnam, forty difficulties.” He also outlines an approach miles inland from the coast of the South China centered on arming regional powers and de- Sea. Flowers and grass grow out of every non- veloping a network of positions from which vertical surface of each monument where altars, to interfere with pla power projection. The lamps, and lingas used to be placed, swimming upshot is that the United States has a range in incense and camphor. . . . A lichen-coated of options to deter Beijing. linga, the phallic symbol of Shiva’s manhood, stands alone and sentinel against the ages. hough both Kaplan and Dyer choose T to foreground military issues, their So history and culture matter, too. The books are at their best when reporting message of the prologue is that one must local details or relying on deep historical “never lose sight of the vividness of India’s research—material that should inform the presence in this part of the world” even “at development of U.S. strategy. If the authors a time when China’s gaze seems so over- are correct that the fate of the Asia-Pacific powering.” In chapters covering not only region will depend on whether the United Vietnam but also Malaysia, Singapore, the
Reviews & Essays May/June 2014 91 Philippines and Taiwan, Kaplan offers a ippines is an “archipelagic nation,” and thus richly textured account of how each coun- the country is desperate for U.S. help in the try approaches its relations with the great face of China’s “creeping expansionism” in powers in its midst. We learn how Mahathir the South China Sea. bin Mohamad modernized Malaysia using Finally, Kaplan covers Taiwan, offering Islam as the glue to unite its variegated a new perspective on Chiang Kai-shek peoples, and that the country is, after Sin- and conveying the importance of Taiwan’s gapore, the most reliable military partner of position between the Japanese archipelago the United States in the South China Sea, and the northern reaches of the South having not forgiven China for its support of China Sea: “Taiwan is the cork in the bottle ethnically Chinese Communist insurgents of the South China Sea, controlling access through the 1970s. Kaplan similarly details between Southeast Asia and Northeast the perspective of Lee Kuan Yew, father of Asia.” Furthermore, if China were to annex modern Singapore, on the Vietnam War, Taiwan, then all of the assets currently focused on “reintegrating” (in Beijing’s parlance) that island would be freed for other missions. Kaplan points out that Chiang created a Chinese alternative to Mao’s Communist “People’s Republic” on an island where even today, 70 percent of the population has “aboriginal blood, which is ethnic Malay in origin,” cementing the connection to the South China Sea realm. To counter Chiang’s reputation as a corrupt failure, Kaplan cites the work which in his eyes bought time for the other of the contemporary historians Jonathan states of Southeast Asia to strengthen their Fenby and Jay Taylor, who show that economies and thereby ward off the Com- Chiang’s forces fought much harder than munist challenge. And regarding the Philip- has been appreciated against the Japanese pines, we learn that internal threats are so invaders in the World War II period, as dominant that the army there is three times Mao’s Communists “were pursuing the very bigger than the navy, even though the Phil- strategy Chiang was accused of: avoiding
92 The National Interest Reviews & Essays major military entanglements with the control traffic through its waters: “Domina- Japanese in order to hoard their strength tion of the South China Sea would certainly to later fight the Nationalists.” Drawing clear the way for pivotal Chinese air and again on Fenby and Taylor, Kaplan’s review naval influence throughout the navigable of Chiang’s early policies on Taiwan assigns rimland of Eurasia—the Indian and Pa- him credit for putting the country on the cific oceans both. And thus China would path to its current prosperous democracy. become the virtual hegemon of the Indo- Kaplan also visits Taiwan’s Pratas Islands Pacific.” Regional hegemony, not symbols in the northern South China Sea, which or logos, is what is at stake. provokes him to reflect on the origins of But Kaplan returns to more solid ground Beijing’s current “nine-dash line” claim to in an epilogue that, like the prologue on most of that maritime realm. The original Vietnam, offers visceral impressions of line had eleven dashes and was developed his visit to the jungle-enclosed eastern by the Nationalists on Taiwan. When the Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak. mainland Chinese inked an agreement with He concludes on a fittingly humble note: Vietnam over the Gulf of Tonkin in the “What if the future of the South China 1950s, two of the dashes were dropped. Sea is not just about newly strong states Kaplan lands on the main island and finds asserting their territorial claims, but also only enough to occupy him for an hour. about a new medievalism born of weak This inspires him to reflect: central government and global Islam?” Dyer’s historical research and reportage Because there was nothing here, these so-called are impressive and illustrate how Beijing features were really just that—microscopic bits squandered the gains of its aforementioned of earth with little history behind them and “charm offensive” in the last decade basically no civilians living on them. Thus, they by reverting to form. Dyer cites the were free to become the ultimate patriotic sym- Singapore-based scholar Geoffrey Wade to bols, more potent because of their very empti- establish that despite the image of peaceful ness and henceforth their inherent abstraction: exploration that China trumpets, the in effect, they had become logos of nationhood Ming-era voyager Zheng He was actually a in a global media age. The primordial quest for colonial gunboat diplomat at the helm of a status still determined the international system. well-armed armada. In the fifteenth century Zheng intervened with military force in This move into the realm of theory does civil conflicts in Sumatra, Java and even not serve Kaplan well. He is closer to the modern-day Sri Lanka, and he established mark earlier in the book when defining the a semipermanent Chinese garrison at importance of the South China Sea in terms Malacca to control traffic through the strait. of its centrality to trade, its resources and Dyer also offers a revealing quote from the fact that disputed land features within the Chinese international-relations expert it are being used as the basis for claims to Yan Xuetong: “Ancient Chinese policy will
Reviews & Essays May/June 2014 93 in what the [official Chinese] Xinhua News Agency gleefully described as ‘the wee hours’—the fourth such dressing down he had received.” From a strategic perspective, China’s conduct seems become the basis for much Chinese foreign counterproductive. Why antagonize policy, rather than Western liberalism or a potentially well-disposed Japanese Communist ideology. . . . It is easier to government over fish? “Beijing had a game- teach common people why they are doing changing opening to weaken American certain things if it is explained in these standing in the region,” Dyer notes. “But, terms.” rather than driving a wedge between the Putting aside his implication that U.S. and its most important allies, China “common people” are primitive, Yan’s has managed to push them much closer statement sheds light on some otherwise together.” The explanation must involve puzzling developments of the past few China’s sense of its status and impatience years. In a range of incidents China has to establish a new order in which the region alienated regional powers by according defers to Beijing. At the same time, the them treatment more befitting traditional onus is now on Washington to work more Chinese vassals than independent states. closely with Tokyo. For instance, in 2009 Japan voted out the Liberal Democratic Party, which had been urning to South Korea, the other in power for fifty years, and installed a new T major U.S. ally in Northeast Asia, government that favored closer ties with Dyer recounts that several months before China at the expense of relations with the the fishing-boat incident a North Kore- United States. Yet in September 2010, the an minisubmarine had fired a torpedo at captain of a Chinese fishing boat rammed a South Korean naval vessel, sinking the a Japanese coast-guard vessel in the vicinity ship and killing forty-six sailors. At this of the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands. While the point economic ties between China and captain was detained in Japan, huge anti- South Korea were “booming,” thanks in Japanese protests erupted in China, and part to a fact that Dyer uncharacteristi- Chinese shipments of rare-earth metals cally omits: China backstopped the South critical for Japanese high-tech manufactures Korean economy during the 2008 global started to decline. “At one stage,” Dyer financial crisis. But following the sinking, reports, “the Japanese ambassador was China blocked the un Security Council hauled in to receive a formal complaint from punishing Pyongyang and generally
94 The National Interest Reviews & Essays Both Dyer and Kaplan explain that China feels entitled by history to project its authority onto smaller states in its region.
failed to convey a sympathetic response to In the course of a few months, China Seoul. South Korea’s disappointment was thus went a long way toward undoing the reinforced in October 2010, when then vice goodwill that it had built up with South president Xi Jinping gave a speech on the Korea in the past decade. Dyer attributes fiftieth anniversary of China’s intervention this to Chinese fear of a North Korean in the Korean War eulogizing the conflict collapse, but we can also speculate that, as “great and just.” A month later, North having supported South Korea’s economy Korea struck again, shelling a South Korean through the 2008 crisis, Beijing may have island and killing four inhabitants. “Under felt entitled to more deference than Seoul pressure to rein in its ally,” Dyer explains, was willing to offer. Back in the era of “Beijing decided to call for a meeting of Zheng He, after all, South Korea would the so-called six-party talks.” Seoul would have been sending tribute missions to the of course have been loath to participate Chinese capital. without an apology from Pyongyang, but In the same vein, Dyer reports that the China was counting on the gesture to “de- South China Sea states consider China to flect some of the blame for the standoff be pursuing a strategy of “talk and take” in onto South Korea.” China’s heavy-handed an attempt to bully them into accepting approach at such a difficult moment with a new status quo that favors Beijing. South Korea can only be explained by a his- China’s ambition and presumptuousness torically informed sense of primacy. “With color even its relations with long-standing no formal warning, Dai Bingguo, the senior U.S. ally Australia. According to Dyer, Chinese foreign-policy official, turned up in a Chinese defector revealed that “senior Seoul to discuss the proposal.” This account officials in Beijing were openly suggesting is not footnoted; perhaps an outraged South that Australia could come to play a role Korean diplomat provided Dyer with the somewhat similar to France’s—still part of full scoop: the Western alliance, but detached from America and willing to take its own path He did not have a visa, so South Korean For- on important issues.” Dyer also provides eign Ministry officials had to rush out to the colorful background to the outburst by airport to get him into the country. Dai in- Chinese foreign minister Yang Jiechi at sisted on meeting with President Lee Myung- the 2010 Asia-Pacific Summit in Hanoi. bak that evening, even though he did not have “China is a big country,” Yang ranted to an appointment. And even though he asked an audience including Secretary of State that the meeting be off the record, he brought Hillary Clinton, “and you are all small a group of Chinese journalists along with him. countries. And that is a fact.” Before Lee told him that Seoul would not agree to a delivering this diatribe, Dyer tells us, Yang meeting involving the North Koreans, but Dai was apparently spotted pacing “in the went out and announced the proposed summit corridor beforehand rehearsing lines.” So anyway. we now know that his remarks were not
Reviews & Essays May/June 2014 95 spontaneous. Why would China behave in when he jumps on the anti-arms-race such a heavy-handed way? bandwagon, warning: Both Dyer and Kaplan explain that China feels entitled by history to project its Toward the end of the Cold War, the arms race authority onto smaller states in its region. ultimately bankrupted the Soviet Union before The authors liken Beijing’s position to that the pressures of high defense spending began of Washington in the era of the Monroe to seriously undermine the U.S. But if a deeper Doctrine and compare the South China Sea arms race were to develop between China and to the Caribbean. But as Dyer points out, the U.S., it is not at all clear that Washington unlike China’s current power-projection would be starting from a stronger financial efforts, “The Monroe Doctrine was not footing. imposed on an unwilling hemisphere: in much of the region, it was welcomed.” And In fact, the Pentagon’s strategy in the Cold as Kaplan reports: War was not to provoke ever-greater So- viet defense expenditures across the board One high-ranking official of a South China Sea but rather to try to stimulate the Sovi- littoral state was particularly blunt during an ets to spend in particular areas that were off-the-record conversation I had in 2011, say- relatively less threatening to us and likely ing, “The Chinese never give justifications for to be less productive for them. Of course their claims. They have a real Middle Kingdom Washington can’t hope to drive the Chinese mentality, and are dead set against taking these bankrupt through defense expenditures and disputes to court. China,” this official went on, wouldn’t want to because increased Chi- “denies us our right on our own continental nese defense spending—in the abstract, at shelf. But we will not be treated like Tibet or least—is a frightening prospect. What we Xinjiang.” can try to achieve through our own be- havior is to influence the investments that Dyer and Kaplan are thus at their China makes in response. But to formu- strongest when they are explaining late a cogent strategy toward Beijing will conditions on the ground in the region require avoiding defeatism or alarmism, and drawing on history to offer context for something that these two contributions today’s competition. But Dyer stumbles should help to accomplish. n
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