US Foreign Policy Adrift: Why Washington No Longer Calling the Shots

By Ramzy Baroud

Jonah Goldberg and Michael Ledeen have a lot in frequent. They’re each writers and in addition cheerleaders for army interventions and, usually, for frivolous wars. Writing within the conservative rag, The Nationwide Assessment, months earlier than the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, Goldberg paraphrased a press release which he attributed to Ledeen just about the interventionist US international coverage.

“Each ten years or so, america wants to choose up some small crappy little nation and throw it in opposition to the wall, simply to point out the world we imply enterprise,” Goldberg wrote, quoting Ledeen. 

These like Ledeen, the neoconservative mental henchman kind, usually get away with this sort of provocative rhetoric for numerous causes. American intelligentsia, particularly those that are near the middle of energy in Washington DC, understand warfare and army intervention as the inspiration and baseline of their international coverage evaluation. The utterances of such statements are often conveyed inside pleasant media and mental platforms, the place equally hawkish, belligerent audiences cheer and snicker on the war-mongering muses. Within the case of Ledeen, the receptive viewers was the hardline, neoconservative, pro-Israel American Enterprise Institute (AEI).

Predictably, AEI was one of many loudest voices urging for a warfare and invasion of Iraq previous to that calamitous determination by the George W. Bush Administration, which was enacted in March 2003. 

Neoconservatism, not like what the etymology of the identify might counsel, was not essentially confined to conservative political circles. Suppose tanks, newspapers and media networks that purport – or are perceived – to precise liberal and even progressive thought immediately, like The New York Occasions, The Washington Put up and CNN, have devoted a lot time and area to selling an American invasion of Iraq as step one of an entire US geostrategic army hegemony within the Center East.

Just like the Nationwide Assessment, these media networks additionally offered unhindered area to so-called neoconservative intellectuals who molded American international coverage primarily based on some unusual combine between their twisted tackle ethics and morality and the necessity for the US to make sure its international dominance all through the twenty first century. In fact, the neocons’ love affair with Israel has served because the frequent denominator amongst all people affiliated with this mental cult.

The principle – and inconsequential – distinction between Ledeen, for instance, and people like Thomas Friedman of The New York Occasions, is that the previous is brazen and blunt, whereas the latter is delusional and manipulative. For his half, Friedman additionally supported the Iraq warfare, however solely to convey ‘democracy’ to the Center East and to struggle ‘terrorism’. The pretense ‘warfare on terror’, although deceptive if not outright fabricated, was the overriding American motto in its invasion of Iraq and, earlier, Afghanistan. This mantra was readily utilized at any time when Washington wanted to ‘decide up some small crappy little nation and throw it in opposition to the wall’.

Even those that genuinely supported the warfare primarily based on concocted intelligence – that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, possessed weapons of mass destruction, or the equally fallacious notion that Saddam and Al-Qaeda cooperated in any approach – should, by now, understand that your entire American discourse previous to the warfare had no foundation in actuality. Sadly, warfare fans are usually not a rational bunch. Subsequently, neither they, nor their ‘intellectuals’, needs to be anticipated to own the ethical integrity in shouldering the duty for the Iraq invasion and its horrific penalties.

If, certainly, the US wars within the Center East and Afghanistan have been meant to struggle and uproot terror, how is it doable that, in June 2014, an erstwhile unknown group calling itself the ‘Islamic State’ (IS), managed to flourish, occupy and usurp large swathes of Iraqi and Syrian territories and useful resource underneath the watchful eye of the US army? If the opposite warfare goal was bringing stability and democracy to the Center East, why did a few years of US ‘state-building’ efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, for instance, depart behind nothing however weak, shattered armies and festering corruption?

Two necessary occasions have summoned up these ideas: US President Joe Biden’s ‘historic’ journey to Cornwall, UK, in June, to attend the forty seventh G7 summit and, two weeks later, the loss of life of Donald Rumsfeld, who’s broadly depicted as “the architect of the Iraq warfare”. The tone struck by Biden all through his G7 conferences is that ‘America is again’, one other American coinage just like the sooner phrase, the ‘nice reset’ – which means that Washington is able to reclaim its international function that had been betrayed by the chaotic insurance policies of former President Donald Trump. 

The latest phrase – ‘America is again’ – seems to counsel that the choice to revive the US’ uncontested international management is, kind of, an completely American determination. Furthermore, the time period shouldn’t be completely new. In his first speech to a world viewers on the Munich Safety Convention on February 19, Biden repeated the phrase a number of instances with apparent emphasis. 

“America is again. I converse immediately as President of america, on the very begin of my administration and I’m sending a transparent message to the world: America is again,” Biden stated, including that “the transatlantic alliance is again and we’re nt trying backward, we’re trying ahead collectively.”

Platitudes and wishful pondering apart, the US can’t probably return to a earlier geopolitical standing, just because Biden has made an govt determination to ‘reset’ his nation’s conventional relationships with Europe – or wherever else, both.  Biden’s precise mission is to merely whitewash and restore his nation’s tarnished status, marred not solely by Trump, but additionally by years of fruitless wars, a disaster of democracy at residence and overseas and an impending monetary disaster ensuing from the US’ mishandling of the Covid-19 pandemic. Sadly for Washington, whereas it hopes to ‘look ahead’ to the longer term, different international locations have already staked claims to components of the world the place the US has been pressured to retreat, following twenty years of a rudderless technique that’s fueled by the idea that firepower alone is ample to maintain America aloft eternally. 

Although Biden was obtained warmly by his European hosts, Europe is more likely to proceed cautiously. The continent’s geostrategic pursuits don’t fall completely within the American camp, as was as soon as the case. Different new components and energy gamers have emerged in recent times. China is now the European bloc’s largest commerce accomplice and Biden’s scare techniques warning of Chinese language international dominance haven’t, seemingly, impressed the Europeans because the Individuals had hoped. Following Britain’s unceremonious exit from the EU bloc, the latter urgently must maintain its share of the worldwide financial system as massive as doable. The limping US financial system will hardly make the substantial deficit felt in Europe. Particularly, the China-EU relationship is right here to remain – and develop. 

There’s something else that makes the Europeans cautious of no matter murky political doctrine Biden is selling: harmful American army adventurism.

The US and Europe are the inspiration of the North Atlantic Treaty Group (NATO) which, since its inception in 1949, was virtually completely utilized by the US to say its international dominance, first within the Korean Peninsula in 1950, then in all places else.

Following the September 11 assaults, Washington used its hegemony over NATO to invoke Article 5 of its Constitution, that of collective protection. The results have been dire, as NATO members, together with the US, have been embroiled of their longest wars ever, army conflicts that had no constant technique, not to mention measurable objectives. Now, because the US licks its wounds because it leaves Afghanistan, NATO members, too, are leaving the devastated nation and not using a single achievement value celebrating. Comparable eventualities are transpiring in Iraq and Syria, too. 

Rumsfeld’s loss of life on June 29, on the age of 88, ought to function a wake-up name to American allies if they really want to keep away from the pitfalls and recklessness of the previous. Whereas a lot of the US company media commemorated the loss of life of a brutish warfare prison with amiable non-committal language, some blamed him virtually completely for the Iraq fiasco. It’s as if a single man had bent the need of the West-dominated worldwide group to invade, pillage, torture and destroy whole international locations. If that’s the case, then Rumsfeld’s loss of life ought to usher in an thrilling new daybreak of collective peace, prosperity and safety. This isn’t the case. 

Rationalizing his determination to depart Afghanistan in a speech to the nation in April 2021, Biden didn’t settle for, on behalf of his nation, duty over that horrific warfare. As a substitute, he spoke of the necessity to struggle the ‘terror menace’ in ‘many locations’, as an alternative of maintaining ‘1000’s of troops grounded and concentrated in only one nation’. 

Certainly, a detailed studying of Biden’s determination to withdraw from Afghanistan – a course of which started underneath Trump – means that the distinction between US international coverage underneath Biden is just tactically totally different from the insurance policies of George W. Bush when he launched his ‘preemptive wars’ underneath the command of Rumsfeld. Particularly, although the geopolitical map might have shifted, the US urge for food for warfare stays insatiable.

Shackled with a legacy of pointless, fruitless and immoral wars, but with no precise ‘ahead’ technique, the US, arguably for the primary time for the reason that inception of NATO within the aftermath of World Battle II, has no decipherable international coverage doctrine. Even when such a doctrine exists, it could possibly solely be materialized by way of alliances whose relationships are constructed on belief and confidence. Regardless of the EU’s courteous reception of Biden in Cornwall, belief in Washington is at an all-time low. 

Even whether it is accepted, with none argument, that America is, certainly, again, contemplating the vastly altering geopolitical spheres in Europe, the Center East and Asia, Biden’s assertion ought to, finally, make no distinction.

– Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He’s the writer of 5 books. His newest is “These Chains Will Be Damaged: Palestinian Tales of Wrestle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons” (Readability Press). Dr. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Analysis Fellow on the Heart for Islam and World Affairs (CIGA) and in addition on the Afro-Center East Heart (AMEC). His web site is www.ramzybaroud.web