Day: July 25, 2012
Conserving American dominance
Mitt Romney’s foreign policy speech at the Veterans of Foreign Wars is getting slammed on both the right and left. There are two problems with Romney’s approach. One is the absence of specific ideas about how he would approach foreign policy issues, including Iran, China, Afghanistan, Egypt and other serious challenges. The other is his one big idea: that good old American resolve and strength will be sufficient to meet any challenge.
The poverty of specific ideas is profound. Nowhere does Romney tell us how he would do what he claims to be capable of. Iran will not get a nuclear weapon or even uranium enrichment. But there are no hints as to how this will be achieved. China must stop exploiting an artificially weak currency, but how they are to be convinced (and the fact that China has revalued its currency dramatically during the Obama administration) is omitted. The war in Afghanistan will be pursued to a successful conclusion in the same time frame foreseen by Barack Obama, but what is to be done differently? Aid to Egypt is to be made conditional, but on what is not clear.
The one big idea is even more troubling. I would be tempted to call it “triumph of the will” if that rubric had not already been used by others:
It’s a mistake — and sometimes a tragic one — to think that firmness in American foreign policy can only bring tension or conflict. The surest path to danger is always weakness and indecision. In the end, it is resolve that moves events in our direction, and strength that keeps the peace.
Without hints as to how they will be applied to specific issues, vague appeals to American strength and resolve are almost guaranteed to lead America into the kind of over-extension of its power that the George W. Bush administration indulged in. The budget-draining eight years of occupation in Iraq and thirteen years of war in Afghanistan were the unfortunate consequences. Romney’s implication that more defense spending will somehow improve America’s economic position is just hogwash.
Mitt Romney and those who write his foreign policy speeches have not faced up to the facts of life: resolve is a virtue only under particular circumstances, costly military power is less important in much of the world than it once was, power today takes many non-military forms and American dominance will persist for most of the next century no matter who is president come January 2013. The question the next president faces is not so much about where to use American power, but rather how to husband and preserve it for instances in which our national interests are truly at stake.
I confess to thinking that Barack Obama has understood this rather better than Mitt Romney, who shows every sign of being willing to be drawn into prolonged displays of American resolve against adversaries who do not threaten vital American interests. The country is in no mood for that: across the political spectrum, Americans are looking forward to containing defense expenditures, not expanding them in a time of budget stringency.
Flag-waving has great virtue in American political campaigns. No doubt Obama will indulge as much as Romney. But we need foreign policy restraint and limits on defense commitments today more than we need to set out bold claims to a century of American dominance. That dominance will last longer if we show restraint. Resolve needs to be reserved for the instances in which there are real threats to vital American interests. Certainly that is not the case with Iran’s enrichment of uranium to the levels required for commercial reactor operations. Nor are China’s currency manipulation and software piracy causes that requires military mobilization.
Romney needs to learn to modulate his excessive enthusiasm for the exercise of American power. Dominance requires that America conserve, not waste, its considerable strength.
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Bad chemistry
Regular readers will have noticed that I am not overly exercised about the risk of Syrian use of chemical weapons. There are a number of reasons why I think the press hype about this is excessive, though obviously it is a legitimate international concern. I agree with those who say we should warn Syria explicitly that use of chemical weapons will cross a redline and precipitate an external military intervention. I just don’t think the Syrians are likely that dumb.
Why? First, because use of chemical weapons really would be likely to precipitate intervention, including by the U.S. The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which includes 188 states notes:
Syria is not a Party to the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) and hence is not legally committed to the Convention’s prohibitions against the development, production, stockpiling or use of chemical weapons. Therefore, the OPCW currently has no legal mandate to conduct inspections in the country to verify the possible existence of chemical weapons or related activities.
Conversely, Syria is a party to the 1925 Geneva Protocol, which bans the use of chemical and bacteriological methods of warfare. It ratified the Protocol in 1968 without reservations, except for the proviso that the protocol did not represent recognition of Israel. Thus, Syria has formally renounced both first and retaliatory use of chemical or biological weapons against any State.
The prohibition on use of chemical weapons is by now so deeply engrained that only the most heinous pariah states are even suspected of planning to use them, as Saddam Hussein notoriously did against the Iraqi Kurds in 1988 and against Iranian forces before then. That did not precipitate international intervention, but there are lots of people who wish it had.
Syria’s announcement, quickly retracted, that it would use chemical weapons only against foreigners is bozotic (look it up–good word!). If there is ever foreign intervention in Syria, it is far more likely to be from the air than on the ground. In any case, American ground troops come equipped for defense against chemical weapons, which seemed a real possibility in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. It isn’t fun to wear the equipment required in 110 degree heat, but our troops can and do if necessary.
I have my doubts that the Syrian troops asked to use chemical weapons would feel confident the equipment provided would prevent the stuff from felling them all. Nor can I think of anything more likely than a chemical attack to precipitate a mass uprising aimed at tearing Bashar al Asad limb from limb.
The only overt foreign military intervention we are seeing in Syria so far is by Russia and Iran, both of which are supporting the regime. Iran declined to use chemical weapons even after Saddam Hussein had used them against Iranian forces during the Iran/Iraq war. That may have been a reflection of their utility as well as moral revulsion. The Russians, already on the wrong side of history in Syria, are not likely to want their putative allies crossing an international community redline.
It is true of course that you can kill a lot of people quickly with chemical weapons. What you can’t do is control whom they kill. Bashar al Asad is already in the 100-200 people per day range. He could well boost his totals to 1000 per day, but it would likely do his cause little good.
The chemical weapons talk seems to me more a sign of desperation, and over-estimation of the likelihood of foreign military intervention, than serious military planning. But if I am wrong–rumint suggests that bad people are being trained to use the stuff–I will not be surprised if someone decides to strike hard and long against not just the chemical weapons but also against the command and control structure that orders them used.
We’ve got other things to worry about in the meanwhile: the Syrian air force has sent its fighters into action against the rebellion in Aleppo. This is in addition to the frequent use of helicopters in recent weeks. I’m not a big fan of no-fly zones, which require a lot of military action to achieve a marginal result. But I’m not a fan at all of aircraft targeting civilians. Once again I’d rather see it taken out on the command and control, not on the pilots.
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