Not Another Cold War
Andrew Bacevich has a piece up at the Washington Post arguing that the U.S. should approach the war on terror like the Cold War; specifically we need a new doctrine of containment, which for Bacevich means everything from decapitation strikes (though not ones that kill civilians — as if any decapitation can be clean) to “well-funded government agencies securing borders, controlling access to airports and seaports” and “comprehensive export controls.” In each of these examples, Bacevich draws exactly the wrong lesson: decapitation attempts achieved little (think of Castro’s exploding cigars) and contributed to some awful blowback during the Cold War; the Soviet Union collapsed less because the Soviets had noisy submarines (thanks to those export controls) than because everybody in the Eastern bloc knew that life was sweeter in the West; and we had a pretty darn well-funded panoply of intelligence agencies and airport-security professional on 9/11, all of which failed to detect and prevent a low-tech attack by a handful of terrorists. Tightening border security makes sense, but throwing more money at already bloated agencies that aren’t fulfilling their missions effectively is only going to be counterproductive. And decapitations are precisely the kind of comic-book antics that detract from serious intelligence gathering and analysis — Tim Weiner’s Legacy of Ashes establishes that point as anyone could ask.
Bacevich’s American Empire: The Realities and Consequences of U.S. Diplomacy remains the best account of what U.S. foreign policy has been all about during the past half-century and more. None of Bacevich 2009′s suggestions for neo-containment address the fundamental defects Bacevich 2001 identified in that book. “Containment” is not a bad metaphor for what may be needed, but it’s the ambitions of the U.S. policy elite, as much as those of militant Islam, that need to be contained. William Lind has written some important essays on the idea of insulating the U.S. from centers of disorder — that’s a far more promising approach than pouring money into government agencies and attempting to control foreign states and other entities. Most of the active measures the U.S. took during the Cold War — the Vietnam War, CIA-orchestrated killings and coups, the still ongoing embargo of Cuba — failed dismally.
Bacevich concludes his piece with an interesting, but also quite mistaken, perspective on the moral-spiritual struggled involve in the terror war:
The competitive challenge facing the West is not to prove that Islamic fundamentalism won’t satisfy the aspirations of humanity, but to demonstrate that democratic capitalism can, even for committed believers. In short, the key to winning the current competition is to live up to the ideals that we profess rather than compromising them in the name of national security.
The upshot is that by modifying the way we live — attending to pressing issues of poverty, injustice, exploitation of women and the global environmental crisis — we might through our example induce the people of the Islamic world to consider modifying the way they live. Here lies the best chance of easing the differences that divide us.
The evidence just doesn’t support any of these contentions. Europe has gone farther than the U.S. toward “attending to … poverty,” but generous European welfare states do not seem to have dissuaded Muslims in those countries from becoming radicalized. And Muslim radicals in the developing world hold such compassionate welfare states in absolute contempt. On the other hand, Bacevich is mistaken about the appeal of Muslim radicalism on its own terms: Afghans were coming to hate the Taliban by mid-2001, and we’ve seen in the unrest in Iran this year that young people find something less-than-satisfying about the social system of the Islamic Republic. It’s a shocking idea, but the best way to discredit radical Islam to let it have its own states, so that the everyone can see — as everyone saw in the Communist states during the Cold War — just how miserable life is under such regimes. Only by such comparisons can welfare-state liberal democracy be made to look good.
I have to admit, I was shocked when I read this nonsense from Professor Bacevich. I suspect he is afflicted with Bruce Bartlett syndrome; a disease which affects men of the right who supported Obama in ’08 for conservative reasons but are now being forced to alter their reasoning to maintain any semblence of coherence in their political views and thus end up as liberals. Well Professor Bacevich it was nice reading you in amconmag.
As a citizen of a country which produced terrorists(Ireland), I can see firsthand why his position is nonsense. The IRA were thoroughly infiltrated by the Brits, lost public sympathy in Ireland after the early 90s bloodletting and American support after 9/11. The people from which the were sprung benefited from the British welfare state and were given makework public jobs on the Queen’s shilling, you name it. But all of this had nothing to do with why the IRA gave up. They gave up because they for the same reason they got in the terror business, they thought it was the best way they could make progress toward their goals, and they haveby entering politics. That crowd over there that doesn’t like you will turn its attention from America when it finds a greater Satan. If anything the rise of a westernised Middle East will increase radicalisation just as increased capitalism in the former GDR has increased sympathy for the far left.
That snippy little remark about Palin and Kucinich was unbecoming I would like to add.
Addendum. Eastern Europe didn’t embrace capitalism because they saw it on MTV and thought it looked good(Americans greatly overestimate the value of their cultural exports, everyone else is just as narcissistic as you are). They embraces it because it was what they had before Communism, which was an artificial system. State institutions always reflect underlying culture. Afterall, why is Central Asia so different from the Baltic states?
Like Johnny Foreigner I was kinda shocked reading this too. By attending to our so-called “pressing issues of poverty, injustice, exploitation of women and the global environmental crisis” the Islamic world will stop being upset with us?
Johnny calls this liberalism and it indeed has the touchy-feely, tendentious smell of same, but it’s no less George Bushist as well via essentially saying “they hate us for who we are.”
Very disappointing. Depressing in fact. Eight years since 9/11 and we are still on the trajectory of making ever more enemies in the Mideast instead of fewer, which I suppose is exactly what you’d expect when political correctness prevents anyone from observing that it’s our policies over there that make us so hated.
Could be vignette in a sequel to that movie “Idiocracy”: We’re so stupid we not only get mad when a dog that we endlessly taunt bites us, but we still don’t realize that’s why it bit us so we just keep on taunting it all the more.
“Sure, of *course* we aren’t going to stop subsidizing Israel’s expansion of those settlements. And sure, of *course* we’ll make sure that Goldstone report about Gaza is just buried away…. Why should our support of the stealing of Palestinian land and blocking investigations into war crimes against them have *anything* to do with how arabs feel about us?”
Yeesh; what idiocy.
Nice analysis, Dan. I admit, I was surprised to learn the degree to which Bacevich is trapped in Cold War Establishmentarian thinking.
I probably disagree with every political instinct you posses, but the quality of the articles here on TAC just keep improving.
This is a well written and informative article.
One admires how “hate America firsters” can keep their sanity, with such inconsistent premises. If you don’t believe in God, then what is your authority to say that America is wrong to act in her interest?
Kicking Saddam’s butt, death toll neglible. After the fact nation building, death toll about 5 thousand (US).
Us neocons will blame the left, for making us stay in Iraq out of some “noble” sentiment that we need to “fix what we broke”, and worry about “what is good for the indiginous population. Along the way, we will note the hundreds of thousands that Saddam left lying dead in ditches across the country.
You Libs will blame the right, for some “desire to spread democracy”, thinking that is what has kept us in Iraq. You will attempt to credit the US with hundreds of thousands more left lying dead in a ditch, from the conflict that we are stuck in. “Kerry and Murtha style”, you libs will assume that everyone who dies in the area somehow has the US to thank for that.
Given this split, the pundit and pseudo-journalist class will feed off each other, self-congratulating and helping each other come up with names (for groups of people and situations) and theories, each angling for a sensationalist viewpoint, and heaping “snark” upon those who disagree.
Without a moment’s dissonance, you would argue that “the soviet bloc collapsed because life in the west is sweeter”, and the radical portion of the muslim word is at war with us because of the evil things we have done to them, as we spread our evil US-style democracy.
Try telling a teenager, “Do as I say, not as I do.” LOL. Good luck.
Try telling crooked politicians, of all political persuasions, to clean up their act and become more honest. But, we reserve the right to preserve our intellectual dishonesty, and our ability to demonize the personalities who disagree with us (have you heard RUSH is fat, Obama is BLACK, Palin is stupid, Barney is Gay and Godless?).
You prop up Bacevich by appearing to disagree with him, but insisting that his minor utterances are worthy of our attention.
Well maybe. But some people don’t have the fundamentals right yet.