Texas National Security Review Security National Texas UNDER THE MAGNIFYING GLASS MAGNIFYING THE UNDER Print: Online: ISSN 2576-1021 1969 1991 ISSN 2576-1153 1944 1958 1977 1998 2012 1951 1962 1984 2005 2021 UNDER THE MAGNIFYING GLASS Volume 4 • Issue 2 • Spring 2021 Spring • 2 Issue • 4 Volume 500BC 340BC 40BC 200BC 100AD VOLUME 4 • ISSUE 1 • WINTER 2020 VOLUME 4 ISSUE 2 SPRING 2021 MASTHEAD TABLE OF CONTENTS Staff: The Foundation Publisher: Executive Editor: Associate Editors: 03 Revise! Ryan Evans Doyle Hodges, PhD Galen Jackson, PhD Francis J. Gavin Van Jackson, PhD Editor-in-Chief: Managing Editor: Stephen Tankel, PhD William Inboden, PhD Megan G. Oprea, PhD The Scholar 09 From Citizen Soldier to Secular Saint: The Societal Implications Editorial Board: of Military Exceptionalism Susan Bryant, Brett Swaney, Heidi Urben Chair, Editorial Board: Editor-in-Chief: 25 The Gulf War’s Afterlife: Dilemmas, Missed Opportunities, and the Post-Cold Francis J. Gavin, PhD William Inboden, PhD War Order Undone Samuel Helfont Richard Betts, PhD Stacie E. Goddard, PhD Vipin Narang, PhD Tami Davis Biddle, PhD Jim Golby, PhD Lien-Hang T. Nguyen, PhD 49 The Future of Sino-U.S. Proxy War Philip Bobbitt, JD, PhD James Goldgeier, PhD Suzanne Nielsen, PhD Dominic Tierney Hal Brands, PhD Sheena Greitens, PhD Elizabeth N. Saunders, PhD 75 Keeping Norms Normal: Ancient Perspectives on Norms in Civil-Military Relations Miguel Centeno, PhD Beatrice Heuser, PhD Kori Schake, PhD Jim Golby, Hugh Liebert Robert Chesney, JD Michael C. Horowitz, PhD Kiron Skinner, PhD Audrey Kurth Cronin, PhD Robert Jervis, PhD Sarah Snyder, PhD Annika Culver, PhD Nina Kollars, PhD Bartholomew Sparrow, PhD Ashley Deeks, JD Sarah Kreps, PhD Kristina Spohr, PhD Peter D. Feaver, PhD Melvyn P. Leffler, PhD Keren Yarhi-Milo, PhD Rosemary Foot, PhD, FBA Adrian Lewis, PhD Amy Zegart, PhD Sir Lawrence Freedman, PhD Margaret MacMillan, CC, PhD Shannon French, PhD Rose McDermott, PhD The Strategist 99 America’s Alliances After Trump: Lessons from the Summer of ‘69 Lindsey Ford, Zack Cooper 117 U.S. National Security Strategy: Lessons Learned Paul Lettow Policy and Strategy Advisory Board: Chair: Adm. William McRaven, Ret. Hon. Brad Carson Paul Lettow, JD, PhD Hon. Kristen Silverberg, JD Hon. Derek Chollet Hon. Michael Lumpkin Michael Singh, MBA The Roundtable Feature Amb. Ryan Crocker Hon. William J. Lynn, JD Adm. James G. Stavridis, Ret., PhD Hon. Eric Edelman, PhD Dan Runde Hon. Christine E. Wormuth 157 Competitive, Competent, Conservative: Internationalism After Trump Hon. John Hamre, PhD David Shedd Michael Singh Designed by Cast From Clay, printed by Linemark The Foundation Revise! In his introductory essay for Volume 4, Issue 2, the chair of our editorial board, Frank Gavin, emphasizes the importance of taking a second look at history and challenging our assumptions about the past. cholarship is not only about discovery vicissitudes of domestic politics as by any coher- of the new. It is also about challenging ent long-term plan. As late as 1979, few would have the old, or rather, what we think we al- assessed that the United States was ahead in the ready know. This can be difficult, even competition with the Soviet Union, to say nothing controversial,S and never more so than when the of being poised to ultimately prevail, and as late subject being reexamined and revised is our own as 1986, fewer still would have predicted the great history. It is easy to forget that history is not sim- rivalry would soon be over forever. The United REVISE! ply a recounting of what has happened, but also States did not appear to be especially hegemonic the way we decide to remember, recount, and in the early years of the post-Cold War era: U.S. make sense of the past. economic prospects seemed uncertain and Ameri- We often hold stylized narratives of the past can grand strategy stumbled, appearing ineffectual in our heads that we believe to be unassailable. against such noted great-power political foes as the Ask an intelligent observer to outline the story of Somali rebels, Rwandan Hutus, Haiti, and Serbia. America’s engagement with the world after 1945, Historical revisionism — the kind that dares us and he or she might offer a clear, bifurcated story: to challenge and interrogate strongly held assump- There was the Cold War and the post-Cold War tions about the past — helps push against our nat- era. The Cold War would likely be identified as an ural, if somewhat unhelpful, tendency toward ret- uninterrupted geopolitical and ideological conflict rospective or outcome bias: Since we know how a between the Soviet Union and the United States story like the Cold War ended, we can’t help but that began soon after World War II was over and construct a neat narrative of inevitability. Revision- ended with the revolutions in Eastern Europe in ism also allows us to complicate our understand- 1989. The analyst might suggest that the United ing of chronology and periodization. The conven- States prevailed by relentlessly pursuing the dec- tional narrative of postwar international relations ades-long strategy of containment, articulated by and U.S. grand strategy focuses on Europe and the George Kennan in his 1946 “Long Telegram.” With U.S.-Soviet competition. The reality of world poli- the collapse of the Berlin Wall and eventually tics after 1945 was far messier, and a variety of forc- FRANCIS J. GAVIN the Soviet Union itself, the United States rapid- es — such as decolonization and the emergence of ly switched, like the film The Wizard of Oz, from new nations; regional rivalries and conflict; Euro- black and white to color and to something com- pean integration and eventual union; the rise of pletely different: America’s hegemonic, unipolar political Islam; and globalization and the financial, moment and the rise of liberal internationalism. telecommunications, and rights revolutions — Upon closer examination, this seamless portray- shaped global affairs as much, if not at times more, al obscures as much as it reveals. Kennan’s version than the Cold War superpower rivalry. of political and economic containment was aban- The problem with a simplistic Cold War/post-Cold doned as a failure in the early 1950s, replaced by War narrative is exposed in Samuel Helfont’s fas- a more muscular military posture that he spent cinating reexamination of the 1991 Gulf War. The the rest of his career disparaging. Two especially conventional wisdom sees the war as a military tri- intense periods of confrontation when global war umph for the United States that exorcised the de- was a distinct possibility — 1949 to 1953 and 1958 mons of the Vietnam War and helped establish the to 1962 — were interposed between longer periods practice of collective security while reinvigorating of simmering competition and occasional détente global institutions for an American-led liberal inter- and even cooperation. Even as ensuing adminis- national order. This picture, however, was clouded trations worked to craft comprehensive and effec- by a post-conflict sanctions regime that impover- tive national security strategies, as Paul Lettow’s ished the Iraqi people without unseating Saddam article in this issue ably chronicles, America’s pol- Hussein’s brutal Baathist regime, harming America’s icies shifted while defense budgets rose and fell global image while splintering the wartime coalition. and rose again, in a rhythm driven as much by the The Gulf War was only the start of greater difficulties 3 4 The Foundation Revise! in a region that has been the cause of much grief for regional dynamics in East Asia that were much ding acknowledgement to seeing an old problem the United States ever since. different than those in Europe. Korea was divided, in a different way to a fierce desire to contact the Re-thinking the Gulf War also complicates the Vietnam a disaster, integrative alliances like NATO authors and argue with them. That is the desired issue of periodization, or how we mark and define and the European Union elusive, and China, after outcome for any good journal. Challenging and re- historical eras. For many, the Gulf War was the first 1972, an ally of convenience. As Adam Tooze re- vising history — and the assumptions and myths major event of the post-Cold War world. Another minds us, “The simple fact is that the US did not behind that history — is rarely comfortable, espe- way to look at the conflict, however, was as an out- prevail in the Cold War in Asia.”1 As the Communist cially as the past provokes strong feelings for many growth and culmination of political dynamics that Party’s ruthless massacre of protestors in Tianan- people. I have long thought that an underappreci- had been brewing in the region for years. The two men Square revealed, Beijing did not share Ameri- ated but important measure of a nation’s under- key dates here are 1967 and 1979. Up through the ca’s view of history and world order. The Commu- lying social and civic health is its ability to toler- mid-1960s, the Middle East was not a grand stra- nist Party leadership was obsessed, then and now, ate, and even encourage, historical revisionism. It tegic priority for the United States, trailing well with avoiding what it saw as the Soviet Union’s is easy to forget how hard — and how rare — it behind Europe, East Asia, and even Latin America grave mistakes in the Cold War competition with is to create an intellectual, political, and socio-cul- in importance. Britain was the major Western pres- the United States. Looking at today’s rivalry with tural environment that encourages a willingness ence in the region.