Burnt Orange Report

Some thoughts on foreign policy...

By Zach Neumann

In the most recent issue of Foreign Affairs Magazine, Yale professor John Lewis Gaddis says some interesting things about the Bush foreign policy. I thought I’d post them here (along with some of my own commentary). I’d like to get everyone’s input on these matters as they have a direct impact on the course our country will take over the next fifty years. This is going to be an extended-length post.

Neither Bush nor his successors, whatever their party, can ignore what the events of September 11, 2001, made clear: that deterrence against states affords insufficient protection from attacks by gangs, which can now inflict the kind of damage only states fighting wars used to be able to achieve. In that sense, the course for Bush's second term remains that of his first one: the restoration of security in a suddenly more dangerous world.

Those of you who know me personally are undoubtedly familiar with my interest in the much-talked-about globalization phenomenon. I am particularly interested in the effect globalization will have on the moral restraints that generally govern the nation state. With threats emerging from a variety of non-state actors, it seems that there is potential justification for the use of force against almost any entity that threatens the security interests of a nation state. Not only does this weaken human rights internationally, it also sets the stage for a world plagued by miscalculation, confusion and unnecessarily prolonged military conflicts. I think that Gaddis’ recognition of America’s vulnerability to terrorist attacks underlines a much deeper problem in the emerging system of “globalized” international relations.

But the traditional warnings governments had used to justify pre-emption--the massing of armed forces in such a way as to confirm aggressive intent--would not have detected the September 11 attacks before they took place. Decisions made, or at least circumstances tolerated, by a shadowy regime in a remote country halfway around the world produced an act of war that killed more Americans than the one committed six decades earlier by Japan, a state known at the time to pose the clearest and most present of dangers.

I agree. To begin with, America must develop its intelligence services to the point where potential threats can be assessed with a high degree of accuracy. That being said, intelligence will never be perfect. Though it is important that the United States do its best in evaluating the dangers it faces, we must be quicker to the “draw” if we are to survive. While Iraq has been something of a debacle, its potential alternative is/was much scarier. America must send the message that it will deal promptly with its potential enemies, regardless of their background or their construction.

The narrowest gap between Bush's intentions and his accomplishments has to do with preventing another major attack on the United States. Of course, one could occur at any moment, even between the completion of this article and its publication. But the fact that more than three years have passed without such an attack is significant. Few Americans would have thought it likely in the immediate aftermath of September 11. The prevailing view then was that a terrorist offensive was underway, and that the nation would be fortunate to get through the next three months without a similar or more serious blow being struck.

The Bush Administration has not done enough to prevent attacks on the United States. With poorly guarded nuclear weapons floating around Russia and other former soviet bloc states, it is imperative that border/port security be increased. Our continuing vulnerability to a nuclear “brief case” attack is overwhelming. Though I am not completely opposed to Bush’s interventionist policies, I feel that they have distracted the country from the more important tasks of deterring nuclear proliferation (see North Korea and Iran) and ensuring that we not fall victim to another major terrorist attack.

Pre-emption defined as prevention, however, runs the risk--amply demonstrated over the past two years--that the United States itself will appear to much of the world as a clear and present danger. Sovereignty has long been a sacrosanct principle in the international system. For the world's most powerful state suddenly to announce that its security requires violating the sovereignty of certain other states whenever it chooses cannot help but make all other states nervous. As the political scientist G. John Ikenberry has pointed out, Washington's policy of pre-emption has created the image of a global policeman who reports to no higher authority and no longer allows locks on citizens' doors. However shocking the September 11 attacks may have been, the international community has not found it easy to endorse the Bush administration's plan for regaining security.

What this means is that the second Bush administration will have to try again to gain multilateral support for the pre-emptive use of U.S. military power. Doing so will not involve giving anyone else a veto over what the United States does to ensure its security and to advance its interests. It will, however, require persuading as large a group of states as possible that these actions will also enhance, or at least not degrade, their own interests.

We cannot go it alone. Though I believe that preemption and intervention are necessary (even in cases where a nation-state is not primarily involved), it is impossible to continue down the path we have chosen. If we are track highly mobile terrorists, deter proliferation in the developing world and secure our economic interests, we must be willing to work with others.

A final and related lesson concerns vision. The terrorists of September 11 exposed vulnerabilities in the defenses of all states. Unless these are repaired, and unless those who would exploit them are killed, captured, or dissuaded, the survival of the state system itself could be at stake. Here lies common ground, for unless that multinational interest is secured, few other national interests--convergent or divergent--can be. Securing the state will not be possible without the option of pre-emptive military action to prevent terrorism from taking root. It is a failure of both language and vision that the United States has yet to make its case for pre-emption in these terms.

We must repair the security problems globalization has created. Though Al-Qaeda will one day meet its demise, others will follow the trail it has blazed. Until the world model can be adjusted to address the growing threat posed by non state actors, civilian populations will become increasingly more vulnerable. This entails a restructuring of our military forces as well as a change in the way states do business with one another. If we are to take on the threats our nation faces, we must be willing to radically change our paradigm.

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