America in Retreat

jkThe 6 years of Barack Obama’s foreign policy have seen American influence and power decline across the globe. Traditional rivals like China and Russia are emboldened and on the march in the South China Sea and Ukraine. Iran, branded as the world’s deadliest state sponsor of terrorism, is arrogantly negotiating its way to a nuclear bomb. Bloody autocrats and jihadist gangs in the Middle East scorn our president’s threats and behead our citizens. Countries in which Americans have shed their blood in service to our interests and ideals are in the process of being abandoned to our enemies. And allies like Israel and Saudi Arabia are bullied or ignored. All over the world, a vacuum of power has been created by a foreign policy sacrificed to domestic partisan advantage, and characterized by criminal incompetence.

How we have arrived at this point, the dangers to our security and interests if we don’t change course, and what must be done to recover our international prestige and effectiveness are the themes of Bret Stephens’ America in Retreat. The New Isolationism and the Coming Global Disorder. Stephens is the Pulitzer-prize winning foreign affairs columnist for the Wall Street Journal, and in his new book he analyzes our current retreat from global responsibility with the same stylistic clarity and analytic rigor that make his weekly columns indispensible reading.

A clear sign of American retreat is the precipitous decline in military spending. “In the name of budgetary savings,” Stephens writes, “the Army is returning to its June 1940 size,” and “the Navy put fewer ships at sea at any time since 1916.” The Air Force is scheduled to retire 25,000 airmen and mothball 550 planes. Our nuclear forces are being cut to meet the terms of the 2010 New Start Treaty with Russia, even as its nuclear arsenal has been increasing. Meanwhile Obama––whom Stephens likens to Canute, the Danish king who in legend attempts to stop the tide––issues empty threats, blustering diktats, and sheer lies that convince world leaders he is a “self-infatuated weakling.”

Unfortunately, 52% of the American people agree that the U.S. “should mind its own business internationally,” and 65% want to “reduce overseas military commitments,” including a majority of Republicans. This broad consensus that America should retreat from global affairs reflects our age’s bipartisan isolationism, the centerpiece of Stephens’ analysis. This national mood is not a sign of decline, according to Stephens, who documents the enormous advantages America still enjoys globally, from its superiority in research and entrepreneurial vigor, to its healthy demographics and spirit of innovation. But it does bespeak a dangerous withdrawal from the policies that created the postwar Pax Americana––even though this global order policed by the U.S. defeated the murderous, nuclear-armed ideology of Soviet communism, and made possible the astonishing economic expansion that has lifted millions from poverty all over the world.

Stephens first traces the history and causes of America’s distrust of military engagement abroad. The left, of course, committed to a universalist ideology challenged by national sovereignty and self-interest, promoted isolationism once the threat of Nazism had been destroyed. Henry Wallace, FDR’s third-term vice president who was “willfully blind to the reality of Stalinist Russia,” vigorously opposed the Truman Doctrine, which saved Greece from a communist takeover in 1947, as a “disaster” and “reckless adventure.” Like progressives today, Wallace believed that America was a global “sinner,” as Stephens puts it. As such, the U.S. should meet aggression with appeasement, and consider those who protect our security to be a greater danger than foreign aggressors.

On the other end of the political spectrum, isolationists like Republican Senator Robert Taft feared the “enemy within,” the “’infiltration of totalitarian ideas from the New Deal circle in Washington,’” more than foreign aggressors. He believed that American foreign policy should be limited strictly to fending off obvious threats to the security of and interests of the American people, which Taft narrowly defined as a military attack on our soil. America’s success in waging and winning the Cold War proved both critics wrong.

For Stephens, isolationism has not been the only danger to American foreign policy success. What he calls “the overdose of ideals,” specifically the “freedom agenda” of the sort George W. Bush tried in Iraq and Afghanistan, has misdirected our efforts and squandered our resources in the pursuit of impossible goals. The success of the Cold War and the subsequent spread of democracy and free-market economies suggested that the world could be not just protected from an evil ideology, but “redeemed” by actively fostering liberal democracy even in countries and regions lacking the necessary network of social mores and political virtues upon which genuine liberal democracy rests. But in attempting to redeem the world, Stephens notes, policy makers “neglected a more prosaic responsibility: to police it.”

The failures to create stability, let alone true democracy, in Iraq and Afghanistan have enabled what Stephens calls the “retreat doctrine,” one to be found in both political parties. Barack Obama is the master of this species of foreign policy, incoherently combining idealistic democracy-promoting rhetoric with actions that further withdraw the U.S. from its responsibility to ensure global order. Under the guise of “nation-building at home,” and in service to traditional leftist doubt about America’s goodness, Obama has retreated in the face of aggression, and encouraged cuts in military spending in order to fund an ever-expanding entitlement state. Meanwhile, “Republicans are busy writing their own retreat doctrine in the name of small government, civil liberties, fiscal restraint, ‘realism,’ a creeping sense of Obama-induced national decline, and a deep pessimism about America’s ability to make itself, much less the rest of the world, better.”

The “retreat doctrine” is dangerous because global disorder is a constant contingency. The remainder of Stephens’ book approaches this topic first from the perspective of theory and history, and then from today’s practice. History teaches us that all the substitutes for a liberal dominant global power have failed to prevent the descent into conflict and mass violence. The ideas of a balance of power, collective security, or the presumed peaceful dividend and “harmony of interests” created by global trade did not prevent World War I or its even more devastating sequel. Nor are they any more useful in our own times.

As for today, Stephens identifies several challenges to a global order fragilely held together by the commitment to liberal democracy, open economies, and the free circulation of ideas and trade. The “revisionists” attack this model from various perspectives. Iran sees it as a fomenter of godlessness and hedonism, Russia is moved to oppose it by “revanchism and resentment,” and China believes that it “is a recipe for bankruptcy and laziness,” lacking a “sense of purpose, organization, and direction.” All three see evidence for their various critiques in the failure of the U.S. to exercise its massive power in the face of challenges, and in the willingness of American elites to revel in guilt and self-doubt. These perceptions of national decline invite rivals and enemies to behave as if the U.S. is in fact declining.

The other international players that could worsen disorder are “freelancers” and “free radicals.” The former include those countries like Israel or Japan who, convinced that America will not act in its own or its allies’ interests, will understandably take action that necessarily entails unforeseen disastrous consequences. Much more dangerous are the “free radicals,” the jihadist gangs rampaging across 3 continents, and the nuclear proliferators like Iran, North Korea, and Pakistan’s A.Q. Khan, whose collaboration with each other and rogue regimes like Venezuela endangers the world through provoking even further proliferation on the part of rivals, or by handing off nuclear weapons to terrorist organizations. And then there are “free radicals” like Edward Snowden and Julian Assange, who have undermined global order by publicizing the necessarily covert tools, practices, and institutions that undergird and protect it.

Finally, there are the structural weaknesses of the globalized economy and its continuing decline in growth, which may create “breaks” in national economic systems that “will be profoundly disruptive, potentially violent, and inherently unpredictable.” Add America’s retreat from world affairs and reductions in military spending, and in the “nearer term,” Stephens warns, “terrorists, insurgents, pirates, hackers, ‘whistleblowers,’ arms smugglers, and second-rate powers armed with weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles will be able to hold the United States inexpensively at risk,” provoking further American retreat from world affairs and the inevitable increased aggression by our enemies and rivals.

Stephens ends with an imagined “scenario” of how a serious global disruption could occur, one grounded in current trends and thus frighteningly believable. So what can be done? In his conclusion Stephens applies to foreign affairs the “broken windows” tactics of urban policing that caused rates of violent crimes to plummet over the last few decades. Thus “the immediate goal of U.S. foreign policy should be to arrest the continued slide into a broken-windows world of international disorder.”

This foreign policy would require increasing U.S. military spending to 5% of GDP, with a focus on increasing numbers of troops, planes, and ships rather than on overly sophisticated and expensive new weapons. It would mean stationing U.S. forces near global hotspots to serve as a deterrent and rapid-reaction force to snuff out incipient crises. It would require reciprocity from allies in military spending, who for too long have taken for granted the American defense umbrella. It would focus attention on regions and threats that really matter, particularly the borderlands of free states, in order to protect global good citizens from predators. It means acting quickly and decisively when conflict does arise, rather than wasting time in useless debates and diplomatic gabfests. Finally, it would require that Americans accept that their unprecedented global economic, cultural, and military power confers on us both vulnerability to those who envy and hate us, and responsibility for the global order on which our own security and interests depend.

America in Retreat is a must-read for any citizen and politician worried by our current foreign policy failures and what they portend for our security and interests. No matter how understandable our traditional aversion to military and political entanglements abroad, history has made us the global policeman, one committed to human rights, accountability, and political freedom. If we abdicate that position, there is no country powerful, or worthy enough, to take our place.

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  • Agnieszka Maryniaczyk

    Looks like very interesting position, reflecting on actual global problems. I would deffinitely read it. zdobimycialo.pl

  • http://libertyandculture.blogspot.com/ Jason P

    Stephens initiates an adult dialog on our foreign policy. His rejection of Bush’s utopian nations-building is a good start. I have doubts about his faith in our interventionist policies.

    During the Cold War many underdeveloped nations choose socialism and there was little we could do about it. By the 1980s it was clear that socialism failed. The neo-liberal revolution saw the turn towards capitalism–an incomplete turn but still there was much progress around the world.

    I suggest that there is little we can do as Islamic nations sink into 7th century barbarism. Containment is important. Keeping Muslims out of the West helps us. But their cultural dynamic has to play itself out. The best we can do is keep our powder dry and not spend ourselves into bankruptcy fighting utopian crusades.

    Taft had a point … our internal enemies are greatest. Look at the leftist take over of our universities and media.

  • Carla Chamorro

    The best we can do is keep our powder dry and not spend ourselves into bankruptcy fighting utopian crusades.

  • Henrik Nielsen

    Comparing Obama to “Canute, the Danish king who in legend attempts to stop the tide” is meaningless. Canute the Great (c. 985-1035), king of England and Denmark, did not believe he could stop the tide. What he did was show his courtiers that he was unable to do so. This was intended to illustrate that his power was nothing compared to that of God.

  • cree

    From the consequences of the world wars, America’s rise in superpower status did not become aggressive although its power enabled it to do so. Conquest was not our intention. Even in Korea and Viet Nam our involvement was wanted and needed by them because they had not the ability on their own. Should we have gotten involved? S. Korea remains free; our retreat from Viet Nam resulted in the slaughter of millions and Viet Nam is not free is the answer to our becoming not involved.

    America’s hegemonic power to a great extent maintained a balance of power for the intent of peace and world-wide free trade which was and is a recognition of every country’s self interests of export/import needs and coexistence with other nations.

    And this history has become and is why we are hated and become to other nation’s an enemy? America’s vast wealth and innovation spread world-wide, enriching other countries to much better degrees like are own is reason to hate? An envy of our position of vast wealth and benevolent power at great expense is being taken for granted, exploited, denounced, challenged and turning other peoples against us on false testimonies as we being over dominant and aggressive.

    From proof of trust, from ultimate and blood sacrifice, from benevolent expense freely given, it is for many of us: we have justified resentment from unwarranted insults and we now get betrayal rather than gratitude. Shall we get involved for the moral right thing to do. Hope so.

  • carpe diem 36

    All the nations of the world can see that Obama as the “leader” (sic) of the free world is weak and basically is nothing but a scarecrow, and that gives them the permission, as if they need one, to do to America what they want, they find no resistance because our “president” is busy with his little strictly local agenda to destroy America from within, and they find it easy to that from without.

  • Mladen_Andrijasevic

    Here is a paragraph from Bret Stephens’s book which should catch Bibi’s, Bogie’s, and as of today, Gadi Eisenkot’s attention.

    In early April 2018, a series of seismic events, each at precisely one o’clock in the afternoon on four successive days, were detected in the desert of southern Iran. The Islamic Republic announced that I had tested four nuclear devices, and that it would not hesitate to share them with Hezbollah. The scale of the test suggested that Iran’s total arsenal was several times larger, and that it had fielded it over the space of several years even as it pretended to abide by the terms of the nuclear agreement

    http://www.madisdead.blogspot.co.il/2014/11/bret-stephens-scenario-for-global.html

    • http://twitter.com/#!/DavidWLincoln David W. Lincoln

      In “The Twelfth Imam”, by Joel Rosenberg, a nuclear bomb was detonated as a test, and that got the ball rolling for the rest of the book, and the two subsequent ones in that series.

      Right now the most effective weapon against the Iranian drive for nuclear weapons is the Saudi engineered drive for the price of oil to go down.

      This isn’t the first time that oil was used as a weapon. During the Reagan administration, there was an agreement between the US and the Saudis to keep the price of oil down, to punish the then Soviet Union.

  • Pericles

    “If we abdicate that position, there is no country powerful, or worthy enough, to take our place.”

    Of those to whom much has been given much is expected. The world is not yet ruled by God or even an international secular power. Order, sanity and stability must be provided by the United States until God intervenes to rule this chaotic and wicked world.

  • http://geoffreybritain.wordpress.com/ Geoffrey_Britain

    To those who suggest that we not, “spend ourselves into bankruptcy fighting utopian crusade”, I suggest they do a bit more research into their premises, as they have the cart before the horse..

    “Since the beginning of the War on Poverty, government has spent $19.8
    trillion (in inflation-adjusted 2011 dollars) on means-tested welfare.

    In comparison, the cost of all military wars in U.S. history from the Revolutionary War through the current war in Afghanistan has been $6.98 trillion (in inflation-adjusted 2011 dollars).*

    The War on Poverty has cost three times as much as all other wars combined.”

    Stephen Daggett, “Costs of Major U.S. Wars,” Congressional Research Service, June 29, 2010. The CRS report counts the cost of wars through FY2010; the additional cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in FY2011, at $159 billion, was added to the CRS figures.
    http://budget.house.gov/uploadedfiles/rectortestimony04172012.pdf

    “Total US Debt Rises Over $18 Trillion; Up 70% Under Barack Obama”
    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-12-01/total-us-debt-rises-over-18-trillion

    • John Pallyswine

      Obese is obese. What’s the point?? If the US Central Bank System, never came into existence, the world never would have seen WW1, WW2, Korean War, Vietnam War and Iraq War1 and Iraq War2. All financed by barren Central Banks.

  • John Pallyswine

    BUDGETARY SAVINGS???? is this writer on crack??? The US National debt ( what these criminals cannot hide) is over 18 trillion dollars: 18,000,000,000,000 or 18 with 12 zeros next to it!!! What is to save??

    Isolationism??? THE WORLD WISHES!!!!! Since WW2, American military has lost everything!!!! lost North Korea, lost Vietnam, Iraq is a disaster, Afghanistan is a disaster.

    How much worthless dollars has admin after admin spent bombing Iraq????

    All the lies about rebuilding Iraq into a functioning democracy while the typical Cuban makes $22 a month.

    The only countries who need to be invaded and their leaders hung are Saudi Arabia, Iran, North Korea and Cuba.

    Countries, except for Cuba, the US is afraid to invade!!!

    YANKEE STAY HOME!!!

  • John Pallyswine

    Sir, how are Republicans any better regarding the invasion of Islam into America and the West??????

    And what are the comments from Orrin Hatch, McCain and all the other parasites in the GOP regarding this issue?? If there are any comments, apart from their debates over their compensation?