A Non-Mainstream Perspective
on the United States Foreign Policy
An Essay
(A Draft: Under Revision)
Mohan R. Limaye
Professor Emeritus at Boise State
University
Abstract
The intent of this paper is to induce
the readers to think for themselves about the United States Foreign Policy
(USFP) and not let the “experts” do it for them and, in the process, help get
our country out of the foreign policy morass it has been in for the last at
least seventy years. It may be generally agreed that the
ideological roots of USFP and the drivers of this nation’s actions in the
global arena have been the constructs of Manifest Destiny and American
Exceptionalism. These ideas have led the
US over the course of its history to pursue expansionist policies and engage in
many military interventions in other countries.
American foreign policy has indeed been expansive, gaining for the
United States vast territories (for instance, half of Mexico) during the 19th
century. In the 20th century
and during the last 15 years of the 21st century, the US has not
been motivated by a desire for new territory but inspired by an ambition for
political, economic and cultural hegemony, particularly after the fall of the
Soviet empire. Limaye, the author of
this piece, finds very little evidence to substantiate the often-made claims
that the US always fights for democracy and freedom. The author would like the US to see itself as
others see it – particularly, as many people from the developing countries see
it. Limaye maintains that, during the
last six decades or so, the US has mainly relied on its “hard” (military) power
but, in most cases, has gained little return on its investment. A major reason why the US has recently failed
to achieve its goals is that, like other empires before it, it lacks empathy
for the nationhood of other peoples. The
US as a nation does not comprehend that people elsewhere also love their own
countries. The imperial path the US has
followed has engendered of late a good deal of animosity toward it in several
parts of the world. If the US were to abandon
its imperial dream and employ carefully more of its “soft” power, the dangerous
situation the world and the US itself are now in might get at least somewhat
ameliorated.
(Note: The bibliography is not complete, and I
still need to arrange the Works Cited
alphabetically.)
Introduction
I’m going to
propose and elucidate a critique of the United States foreign policy (USFP) from
a non-establishment, non-insider, and a third- world perspective. Seeing America through the eyes of a person
born and brought up in a developing country (In India) will, most likely, be a beneficial
experience for most of this country because it will force many Americans to
reorient their thinking about themselves and, especially, their perception of
the other. What does USFP look like
through one non-Western lens? Not very
pretty! In this case, the lens and the worldview
are of a US citizen of East Indian descent who has lived for five decades in
the United States. Though I’ll be
critical of USFP in this essay, I need to emphasize that I’m proud to be an
American citizen and thoroughly admire many aspects of this country, just not
its foreign policy.
A Caveat/Reservation
Let me start
with a caveat: Whenever I refer to the United States in this essay, I mean exclusively the government of the United
States, not the American people. I’m only talking about the official policy
and actions of this nation, not about
the opinions and protests of its citizens. It’s well known that, from the beginning of
this Republic, American citizens (admittedly a small number) have expressed
their disapproval of the US government’s foreign policy – from the time of the Monroe
Doctrine (1820s) to the Iraq War starting from 2003. Let me cite three famous examples: The first dissenter
is Henry David Thoreau (the author of Civil
Disobedience and Walden) who
courted jail in protest of the Mexican War.
The second is Mark Twain who (during the Spanish-American War, involving
the Philippines, in 1900) sarcastically said, “I thought it would be a great
thing to give a whole lot of freedom to the Filipinos, but I guess now it’s
better to let them give it to themselves” (quoted in Prof. Susan Brewer’s Why America Fights, 2009, p. 14). The third is Senator LaFollette who asked (during
WWI), “If the United States really was going to fight for democracy, why not
fight for the dissolution of the British Empire and home rule for Ireland,
Egypt, and India, as well as for the end of German autocracy?” (Brewer, p.55).
I thus
recognize the necessity and value of being aware of the dissenting voices in
any democracy. But, having said that,
one must recognize that generally speaking the media, Congress, and a large
majority of American people have historically gone along with the initiatives
in foreign policy of US presidents, big corporations, and American elites. If I may speculate, no more than 100,000
Americans are actively engaged today in shaping, influencing and initiating US
international relations. And a large
number of these work in the Departments of State and Defense, in the armament
industries, in spy agencies, as faculty in various Ivy League Political Science
departments, in numerous think tanks, and as lobbyists engaged in “educating”
Congressional members in international relations and global affairs. I’m convinced that the principal reason why
we have been in such a foreign policy mess is that we average US citizens have
left the determination or shaping of our country’s international relations into
the hands of these “experts” who have huge stakes in an aggressive and
meddlesome foreign policy.
Ideological Sources of
USFP
It is
generally agreed that the roots of USFP lie in this nation’s ideologies of Manifest
Destiny and American Exceptionalism, in the conviction of many leaders and
opinion shapers of the colonists that they were building a shining city on the
hill and in their abiding sense of moral superiority over the other nations of
the world. Excess of hubris has been
haunting America for a long time: Reinhold Niebuhr is cited as remarking, “We
(The United States) must resist our dreams of managing history” (Ellis). “Many Americans imagined a new and better
world emerging, a world, they said, of ‘greater perfection and happiness than
mankind has yet seen’” (Wood, p. 106). An
expansionist impulse went hand in hand with a strong belief among early
Americans that they were establishing a new kind of republic not seen before on
this planet. The Declaration of
Independence is permeated with this consciousness of most Founding Fathers and
a sense of superiority of their race over the Native American race. The
document calls for expansion in the territories of Native American. CITE. In
this context, Ivan Eland notes (p. 28), “The urge to be civilizing missionaries
was transplanted to the United States in the breasts of the first English
colonists in the new world.” Incidentally,
that conviction in a modified version and that perception (We are here to
spread freedom and democracy in the world) persist in the U.S. even today.
USFP Mirrors American
Democracy (Revise/Edit)
In my
judgment, some aspects of USFP reflect three of the structural and conceptual
flaws in American democracy: (1) Presidential veto power finds its mirror image
in the demand of the United States that the world community of nations grant it
immunity from war-crimes prosecution, while reserving for itself the right to prosecute
other countries for their war crimes. (2)
The Electoral College, a relic from its past, serves as a model for America’s
unaccountability in its international relations. (3) And the Constitution-enshrined practice
of small states sending two persons in the US Senate, the same number as the
bigger-population states, is reflected in the US refusal to support a
permanent-member status in the United Nations Security Council for countries
such as India and Brazil or Indonesia – nations with large populations.
Goals of USFP
American
belief in the ideologies of Manifest
Destiny and American Exceptionalism easily
led to three American goals: 1. to maintain America’s exceptional status in the
world; 2. to maintain its military strength superior to any other country’s
power; and 3. to maintain a high level of prosperity. These goals have remained constant throughout
recent US history. As Joseph Stiglitz
says (Vanity Fair, January 2015, P.
40), “Americans want very much to be No. 1 –we enjoy having that status.” These ideologies historically evolved into different
forms and assumed different names, such as the Monroe Doctrine (1823) and “White
Man’s Burden.” The chief impulses behind
the US foreign policy have demonstrably been territorial expansionism – “Sea to
shining Sea” -- (until the end of the nineteenth century) and a sense of
entitlement to natural and human resources worldwide, in the name of free trade.
Economic and Psychological Motives behind USFP
In my analysis of the United States
foreign policy, I’ve tended to assign the psychological and the political
motives of America the prime role in accounting for its expansionism right from
its birth (in fact, right from the first permanent Anglo settlement at
Jamestown in 1607). However, I’m
conscious of the existence of other motives behind this imperial
enterprise. For instance, several other
analysts, among them William Appleman Williams (The Tragedy of American Diplomacy, Revised in 1972), attribute that
role to the economic interest of America (After all, “the business of America
is business”).
Speaking of
the economic aspect of USFP, big business interests quite often drive our
foreign policy decisions. President
Eisenhower had warned the nation about the Military Industrial Complex. An example of the big stake American weapons
manufacturers have in the conduct of USFP is provided by William Hartung,
Director of the Arms & Security Project at the Center for International
Policy. He reports, “From October 2010
through 2015, the U.S. has approved sales of $111.3 billion of arms to Saudi
Arabia” (Bloomberg Business News,
January 11-17, 2016). Keeping the world
conflict-ridden seems to be in the interest of some sections of American business—for
instance, the armament industry.
It seems, therefore, reasonable to state
that all these motives – political, psychological and economic -- together
explain more satisfactorily and more thoroughly why America expands and
intervenes so frequently in other countries.
Analyzing motives is a delicate affair, a balancing act, because average
Americans and quite a few elites get upset whenever they sense even a hint or a
whiff of the ethics of US motives and behavior in the international arena
questioned in USFP critiques. But even assuming
the purity of US motives in its international relations, as Andrew Bacevich
says, “--- yet in the end it is not motive that matters but outcome” (The New American Militarism, OUP, 2005, p.
207).
On the positive side of US economic
hegemony, one should give credit to American policy of the last several decades
(in the trade and monetary spheres) for preventing a major war on the scale of
WWI and WWII by linking its economy to those of China and several emerging
nations in recent years. Many Western
Europeans mention another earlier successful effort: The US poured huge sums of
money in Europe in the form of Marshall Aid in the aftermath of WWII and,
arguably, stopped a potential Soviet expansion in that part of the world.
However, when it came to the liberation
of the Western powers’ colonies in the Third World, the US was quite
indifferent to the issue. In fact,
because of the fear of Communism and in favor of the stability and peace that
empires promise, the US turned quite hostile to the cause of the freedom of
these European colonies. In this context, Thomas Meaney observes, “Fear of
revolution was the most primal instinct of American foreign policy in the
decades” of the early and mid-twentieth century (Meaney, p. 47).
Though
the US is the first modern democracy born out of a revolution and even though
many contemporary Americans believe that the US fights abroad for democracy and
freedom, the truth is it does not spread either of the two, elsewhere. On the whole, historically, we
Americans have been cool toward the independence struggles of the former
colonies of the imperial West. At best, we
have exhibited a policy of benign neglect.
In this context, a reporter for ABC News, John K. Cooley, wrote in The Christian Science Monitor, “In 9
cases out of 10, the US either sided with the colonial powers or sat on a
neutral fence. Politics in the mother country (General de Gaulle’s accession to
power in France, for example, or the collapse of General Franco’s dictatorship
in Spain), third-world or Communist-world help – not American rhetoric –
brought liberation.” India, for
instance, gained its freedom from the British and became a democracy without
assistance from any country. I’m told
that FDR put pressure on Churchill to liquidate the British Empire. My reaction to this “folktale” is the same as
that of Jean Paul Sartre -- “Commitment is an act, not a word.” The U.S. supported the French in Indochina
(today’s Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam), the Dutch in Indonesia, and the British
in East Africa -- today’s Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania -- when the people in
those countries were fighting to gain their independence. Lest I be misunderstood, let me emphasize
that I’m not suggesting we Americans should have stepped in or intervened in
any of these cases to win independence for others. On the contrary, I believe that every country
has to achieve its freedom for itself.
When it comes down to the nitty-gritty
of things (besides the dubious record of the United States in liberating
erstwhile colonies and establishing democracies there), here is an undeniable
fact that democracy cannot be bestowed as a gift. Good intentions aren’t enough. Nations themselves have to want democracy
fervently and must work hard to establish and maintain it in their lands. Of all the countries that became independent
recently, India is one of the few shining examples where democracy has taken a
firm root. (In fact, I may venture to
say that the US democracy can learn a thing or two from India’s democracy; but
that’s not the subject here).
There is a belief among some academic
circles that ignoring the counsel of our Founding Fathers (to stay out of the
conflicts and affairs of other countries) has created the mess we have been in
for many decades. I, however, do not
agree with the premise underlying this observation. For one thing, not all early leaders of the
newly founded republic were anti-interventionist. Though the first president George Washington
advised against foreign entanglements, Thomas Jefferson had his covetous eye on
the Caribbean islands. Secondly, within
forty years of American independence, President Monroe was already declaring
the new nation’s right to interfere in the Americas and warning the old world
from further colonization in the new continent.
That means, the generation in power in the early 1820s, when some
Founding Fathers like Adams and Jefferson were still alive, was already
thinking in an “expansive” mode. Their
national interest and their sense of national security spanned and encompassed
the whole hemisphere. That the early
counsel in this country was of constraint and non-intervention does not,
therefore, hold water. In fact, in my
judgement, the seeds of imperialism and expansionism were sown in the United
States from even before its inception (Witness the incursions of white settlers
in Native American territories from long before the War of Independence). However, even though some scholars, like
Prof. Williams (The Tragedy of American
Diplomacy), believe that the US was always an expansionist country, they
begin their analysis and critique of American foreign policy only from the time
of the Spanish-American War, that is, roughly from the end of the 19th
century.
I’d like to venture one probable reason for
the exclusion of America’s 19th century expansion of the original
thirteen colonies into the present-day coast-to-coast United States of America:
Such exclusion allows Americans to remain silent about that period. Then they don’t have to face up to the moral
issues raised by US activities in the 19th century – particularly the
US-Mexican War. However, there are some
welcome exceptions: Historian Foner mentions that some Americans with a
conscience like Ulysses S. Grant, U.S. President after the Civil War, called
the Mexican-American war one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger nation
{the U.S.} against a weaker nation {Mexico}.
However, by and large, ignoring the 19th century is the
standard ploy used by many Americans writing on USFP. To me, American exploits of the 19th
century are a legitimate USFP issue.
This is about United States foreign
policy, not about domestic or internal affairs.
The often unspoken premise of these scholars is: it was the birth right
of the United States to expand from sea to shining sea. The Native Americans already living in this
continent didn’t matter. Jefferson had
already labeled them as “savages” in the Declaration of Independence. The grab of Mexican territory doesn’t count. European leaders (such as Napoleon, Hitler, or
Stalin) wanting to expand from coast to coast, say, in Europe have been
demonized and denounced as wicked dictators.
American expansion is the will of God.
When “democracies” build empires, it is “manifest destiny” or “white
man’s burden.”
For me, American hyper-patriotism
explains a good deal of USFP. I have a
hard time believing some Americans’ claims that the United States does no
wrong, it is always there to defend liberty and democracy, and “We don’t
conquer; we liberate.” (Rush Limbaugh, a Conservative radio commentator). Tom DeLay, a former Congressman from Texas,
recently made similar comments, “We are the leader that defends freedom and
democracy around the world” (Brewer, P. 241).
However, there is just no evidence to sustain such noble claims. The facts of US history simply do not support
such grandiose notions. I’m afraid that the
critics of USFP, particularly those who are foreign-born Americans like me,
hailing from the Third World, are entering dangerous territory: They will be immediately
branded as insolent and ungrateful leftists, and their patriotism will be
questioned.
Talking
about American rhetoric, even as far back as during WWI, US President Woodrow
Wilson had held out a promise of self-determination for the subjects of these
empires. But this promise “was not
applied to Egyptians demanding the end of British rule” (The Economist). In fact, a
third-world perspective can interpret both the world wars as a struggle between
the well-established empires of the time, on the one hand, and the aspiring or
would-be empires, on the other. From
that perspective, there was not much to choose between the two parties. Through my lens, neither of the two wars had
anything to do with democracy. For
Britain, sitting on a vast empire, to make such claims is at once tragic and
comic, and highly absurd and hypocritical. Some Americans have maintained that getting
rid of Hitler, the menace, was so urgent a priority during the WWII years that
it was not diplomatic or real-politick for the US to insist that European
powers give up their empires. The US could
not risk the support of its allies by pushing them too hard or by alienating
them. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt
(FDR) could not afford to provoke Winston Churchill, though he put some
pressure on him. I presume that the
communist Soviet Union (the lesser of the two evils – Nazism and Communism) was
also needed as an ally to combat Hitler’s Germany. Hitler’s win would have been a disaster. This is how expediency trumps principles,
ethics and values.
Except
for a couple of decades, during the last one hundred years or so, the US has
been engaged in constant warfare – directly or by proxy. American empire, though informal, is
ubiquitous and unlike most other earlier empires is burdened by its own
rhetoric. The earlier empires were
unashamedly self-aggrandizing, openly expansionist. They did not even look for justifications or
any fig leaves for the wars they engaged in.
On the other hand, the claims of a moral high ground and noble purposes
always made the United States scramble for an inspiring veneer and stirring propaganda
for the consumption of the domestic as well as foreign audiences. The declared purposes for engaging in these
wars have varied from fighting communists to bestowing democracy and fighting
terrorists. But all these wars are
fought, we have been told, to
establish peace. However, in this context,
it would be good for us to remember what Mahatma Gandhi once said: “There is no 'way to peace,' there is
only peace”.
During
the Cold War, the U.S. became addicted to propping up third world dictators as
long as they were perceived to be anti-communist. Even some democratically elected leaders who
were perceived by the U.S. as left-leaning and too independent to toe the US
line were overthrown (Examples: A
CIA-backed coup dissolved the last fairly elected parliament of Syria in
1949. There is also considerable
evidence to suggest that Iran’s Mossadegh in 1953 and Chile’s Allende in 1973 –
both democratically elected -- were disposed of with covert help from the CIA. When the Arab Spring resulted in the election
of Morsi in Egypt, we were not happy and closed our eyes as the military took
over the reins there and killed Egyptian democracy). The successors in all these cases were
dictators who suppressed democracy. The
United States supported all these right-wing autocrats even when they were hated
by the populace: the Shah of Iran, Pinochet of Chile, Marcos of the
Philippines, Thieu of South Vietnam, and Suharto of Indonesia are some more examples.
The United States often uses
self-determination as an excuse to intervene in other countries on the side of
one faction or another. If the nations
so embroiled get split in the process, so be it. For instance, the present day Iraq is
virtually (de facto) split into three
autonomous, almost sovereign, nations – Southern Iraq as a Shia country, middle
Iraq as a Sunni country, and Kurdistan in the North – apparently with the
blessings of the US. Dexter
Filkins (in the same article) also refers to the longtime American diplomat Peter
Galbraith’s role when East Timor and Croatia became separate states.
However, I cannot forget that a brutal
civil war was fought in the U.S. in the 1860s which kept it as “one Nation
under God, indivisible.” The hypocrisy
here will not be lost on anyone except on American hyper patriots. Critics may be excused if they maintain that
splitting other nations is America’s pastime.
More recently, some U.S. leaders supported
Iraq’s Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war.
Later, in the 1980s, they “created” the Taliban with the active support of
Pakistan under the excuse of forming a force to fight against the Soviet Union
(“Your enemy’s enemy is your friend” seems to have been their mantra). Apparently, these American leaders did not foresee
that they were creating a “fundamentalist” monster that would turn against this
country. Today, we are cooperating with Iran in our fight
against ISIS (the Islamic State of Iraq and al Sham/Syria) while, at the same
time, we are at odds with that
country in our support of the rebels fighting Assad, the dictator of Syria. Such contradictions occur when foreign policy
is pursued in an ad hoc and unprincipled manner rather than being based on
justice, fairness and equity. There may not
be permanent friends or permanent enemies, but there ought to be permanent
values that should be guiding a nation.
Speaking of Iran, some Republicans are harshly
criticizing President Obama’s “nuclear deal” with that country because they are
convinced Iran cannot be trusted. One
could argue that, back when our War of Independence was winding down and talks
were going on in early 1780s for a peace treaty, “the new nation double-crossed
its ally” (Kingsbury, p. 48). France, whose
friendship was assiduously cultivated by Benjamin Franklin, had helped the Colonists
financially and militarily during the Revolutionary War. Our country, however, concluded a separate treaty
with Britain without consulting the French, thus breaking our pledge to them (Wood,
p. 87) and resumed trade with Britain soon after the war ended. Joyce Appleby, professor emerita of history
at UCLA, remarked in this context that the family (the English and the American
colonists) made up and left the French out (Kingsbury, p. 48). So our own (diplomatic) record from the birth
of our nation isn’t spotless. With the history
of some of our Founding Fathers behaving in a rather questionable, duplicitous
manner still accessible, we’d better curb our audacity in accusing other
countries of (potential) untrustworthiness.
In the context of the United States
taking on misadventures in lands and among people it hardly knows and
understands, Graeme Wood, a contributing editor for The Atlantic, in its March 2015 issue, observes that “we (the
United States) have misunderstood the nature of the Islamic State” – a new
threat -- on several dimensions (p. 80).
And we seem to be rushing headlong into battles there in Mesopotamia.
After Russian bombing in Syria began,
relentless pressure was building up on Obama to develop a swift and adequate
response to this serious
situation. The Cold War mentality raised
its ugly head again. It is not just
small countries (like Sweden, Zimbabwe or Chile) who are not planning a
response; even big countries like China are, presumably, not planning to respond to the civil war in Syria. We, American citizens, need to ask questions
like “Why do we have to react? Is it
really our concern?” In light of the
recent news item (The Idaho Statesman,
October 9-10, 2015), “US ends effort to train rebels in Syria”, which reported
that close to half a billion dollars from our taxes resulted in fewer than ten
rebel soldiers ready to fight the Assad regime, one wonders: Are we ever going
to learn? Will we ever stop intervening
in affairs far away from our shores?
The lessons to be drawn from these events
and from our international activities are that far-sighted statesmanship rather
than expediency or contingency actions, and the purity
of ideals as well as the purity of means, employed to achieve them, are
paramount and cannot be sacrificed. The
contradictions in USFP are too numerous and too unwise to be good for our
future. We treat, for instance, Saudi
Arabia, an authoritarian regime that has been a breeding ground for
fundamentalism and terrorism, as our friend and client. By supporting such regimes, the U.S. makes
enemies of those around the globe who are repressed, seemingly with its
blessings. The world is thus dismayed
when it sees the U.S. supporting various despotic regimes while preaching
democracy in the same breath.
As a young man growing up in India and as
a student of international relations, I remember that, during Kennedy’s
presidency, the United States was willing to risk a third world war to get some
Soviet missiles off Cuban soil. Today,
however, I witness American eagerness to co-opt the former Soviet satellites into
NATO to encircle Russia. It appears that
the U.S. cannot put itself in the shoes of the other. If we Americans didn’t like enemy missiles in
our backyard, how do we expect Russia not to react negatively at the prospect
of being surrounded by NATO countries? In
this connection, one can argue that NATO should have been disbanded right after
the collapse of the Soviet Union. Since,
in fact, it was an alliance formed mainly to defend against aggressive Soviet
intentions – regardless of whatever other claims are made as the reasons for
its founding -- it has no raison d’etre (no reason for existence) any more,
unless we continue to equate Russia with the Soviet Union and desire to carry
on with the Cold War mentality. In fact,
NATO militates against that other international body, the United Nations, by
intervening in conflicts everywhere, even outside its geographic sphere. Thus it undercuts the authority of the UN.
I can understand the temptation for the
United States to capitalize on the love some of these newly independent nations
have found for it. After the rather cool
but proper relations India has had with the US for several decades during the
era of third-world neutrality, it too has recently fallen in love with
America-the-Charmer. The Indian Prime
Minister, Narendra Modi, has called India and the US as “natural allies.” In light of this new development, many
Indians might find my strictures against the US foreign policy
unpalatable. Of course, many Indians do
not read US history, and those Indians who are born and educated here (like
other Americans) are only exposed to air-brushed, white-washed US history.
A
lack of empathy and an inability to see the world as someone else sees it
(unawareness or cluelessness about other countries’ sensibilities) have been
the hallmarks of US international relations.
It is perhaps how one can define all
empires. As the Scottish poet Robert Burns (the title of the poem?)
chimes:
To see ourselves as others see us!
It would from many a blunder free us ---.
It seems that the United States as a
nation cannot understand that other people also love their countries and resent
superpowers meddling in their affairs.
The US has treated Latin America as its legitimate sphere of influence
and put in dictators or removed dictators there, at will. A friend of mine cites a Mexican saying,
“Alas, so far from God, so near the United States!” I admit, though, that interventions on
humanitarian grounds and to prevent human rights abuses raise complex moral and
realpolitik issues that have no simple answers.
In my view, another defining
characteristic of an empire is its wide range of “national” interest, which
tempts it to intervene everywhere. Cite
Bacevich (P. 176). US administrations define national interest
too broadly. That explains American
interventions in the Middle East of the last several decades. Eland categorically claims, “The September 11
attacks resulted because the United States has become involved in a civil war
within Islam” (P. 90). In this context,
it is noteworthy that Sherle R. Schwenninger ventures to guess (in The Nation, June 22/29, 2015, P. 33) “it is likely that there would have been no Benghazi, no civil
war among competing Islamic militias, no spread of weapons or chaos in Libya,
if Washington had refrained from militarily intervening against Qaddafi.”
Some defenders of empires maintain, with
some truth, that imperial powers develop their colonies bringing in new
capital, new technologies, and more modern administrative systems into
unsophisticated regions of the world.
However, these innovations were rarely brought in on the terms of the
colonized. Prof. William Appleman Williams
makes a similar observation in his book, The
Tragedy of American Diplomacy (1972).
Often, the costs for the ruled have outweighed the benefits to
them. And, even more important, there is
a deeply fulfilling psychological or emotional component to freedom, to
self-rule. Nothing else can take its
place: “Give me liberty or give me death.”
An Indian political leader said around 1900 regarding the British Empire
in India that, even assuming the British regime to be a good administration, no
rule can match self-rule.
Many British
scholars and diplomats claim that the British rule civilized the colonies by bestowing
on them “a common rule of law and governance” during the heyday of the British
Empire. Niall Ferguson, for instance,
makes such a claim in his Empire
(Reprint, 2004). The reason to allude to
British claims in this essay on USFP
is that, similarly, some Americans claim how wonderful it is that the US also confers
such benefits on the countries it invades. Incidentally, all empires in human history
imposed their universal law and order
on the people they conquered. In
addition, I may however humbly point out that such a claim absolutely makes no
sense. Every society, civilization, or
nation has law and order. No society,
worth the name, can last or persist even for a few decades without law and order, let alone for centuries. The Philippines
and Cuba had law and order (Currently, Somalia may be lawless, Nigeria or Sudan
may be lawless; but they have been in the midst of civil wars). The world has had Mosaic Law, Manu’s (Hindu) Law,
Hammurabi’s Law, Sharia Law, etc. Some
of us may not like those legal systems, and some of those systems may be unjust
and oppressive; but they are “law and order”, nonetheless.
Reform must come
from within, not imposed from outside by aliens. In this context, however, we have to admit
that the almost-universally accepted doctrine of the sacrosanct nature of the
nation- state does pose ethical and diplomatic dilemmas.
Most Americans of all political persuasions,
from Tea Party conservatives to left-leaning liberals, agree on the principal
contours and aims of USFP, leading to its continuity. Consequently, notwithstanding the party
affiliation of the President and regardless of which party holds a majority in
Congress, the neo-imperial character of USFP changes little, with a few exceptions
– like the opening to China under President Nixon and, maybe, the very recent
overtures toward Cuba during Obama’s administration However, I’d like to raise
a legitimate question: Isn’t it time to revise these goals in a considerably
changed world of today?
The
awareness that the world is in the 21st century is dawning upon the
United States rather too slowly. This is
not the 18th or the 19th century when Native Americans
were pushed out of their lands rather easily by white American settlers through
their superior arms and superior numbers (not to mention, the aid of small
pox). This is also not the century when
territorial gains occurred through negotiated buying (like the Louisiana
Purchase) and through conquest and annexation (like a half of the then Mexico). This is not even the first half of the 20th
century (when the sun did not set on the British Empire). The lessons of nationalism and patriotism
taught by the West have now been thoroughly learned and absorbed by the Third
World. Another factor which has resulted
in this American intellectual inertia is that paying attention to the
historical and cultural influences in foreign countries is hard work and
requires long, nuanced studies of those regions. Instead, promoting simplistic, easily
understood and rhyming slogans like “Better dead than red” is easy. For several decades, US administrations
refused to grasp and acknowledge the distinctions between civil wars and nationalist
struggles (for unification, for instance) on the one hand and communist
aggressions on the other. Mechanistic lumping
together of all conflicts as communist-inspired had been the norm. Now similar perceptions, for instance, like
labeling all conflict and unrest in the Moslem world as Islamic terrorism, continue
to land the United States into unnecessary and doleful wars.
In fact,
even before the buzz words of the West -- nationalism and patriotism – were
known in Asia, ethnic groups with strong self-identity were not easily
controlled by their imperial masters; their rebellions often resulted in their
freedom. Most Americans, who may not know
Indian history, will find the following example quite interesting and
instructive in the context of US interventions: A mighty Mughal/Moslem emperor named
Aurangzeb, whose empire then stretched from today’s Afghanistan to
South-Central India, descended from Northern India into Western India around
the last decades of the 17th century to crush a newly founded
Maratha kingdom (a rebellious act in the eyes of the emperor). He had huge resources at his command –
soldiers, weapons and other materials -- many times more than what the Marathas
could muster. Aurangzeb stayed and
fought in the Deccan/South-West India for over 25 years. Finally, he died there; his son -- exhausted
and discouraged – gave up the campaign and left for the North.
Some of our
leaders seem to be reluctant to accept that the world today is neither bi-polar
nor uni-polar, that the rise of regional powers has rendered it multi-polar. One would expect the US to
have learned from its Vietnam experience and, particularly, Senator John McCain,
who was in Vietnamese prison for a number of years, to have learned a lesson
too. Instead, he has turned into a hawk,
eager to jump into wars. People like him
and Senator Lindsay Graham of South Carolina now want the US to fight ISIS in
the Middle-East and to tighten the sanctions against Iran. The pressure on President Obama is steadily
increasing. However, fighting stateless
agents (on their turf), who are stirred by rigid fundamentalist doctrines of
monotheistic religions and obsessed by apocalyptic visions, is most likely to be
painfully unsuccessful and, indeed, quite disastrous for the United States. It seems to me that the hawks in this country
are inspired by the likes of President Teddy Roosevelt who thought that a
nation needed wars periodically; otherwise, it would lose its sap, its
manliness. That is why I’d like to
repeat: This is not the world of President Teddy Roosevelt anymore.
Again, I cannot overemphasize that I’m
fully aware of the fact that quite a few Americans are conscious of the flaws
in the USFP and are striving to bring about a healthy change in it. Many American scholars at various
universities and area-study institutes have been active in educating their
students and the public at large. But,
at the same time, it’s also true that many entrenched interests with a good
deal of clout and wealth are hard at work to influence those in power and to
maintain the status quo.
I’m also fully aware that a perfect
nation does not exist because we humans are not perfect. Hence, the concepts of Manifest Destiny and American
Exceptionalism need to be taken with a grain of salt. Good is mixed with evil, everywhere. There are skeletons in every closet. Therefore, continuous and deliberate striving
toward improvement should be everybody’s goal.
One step toward an honest self-analysis would be for us Americans to
stop pretending that we intervene in the civil strife of other nations to
spread democracy and freedom. Other more
powerful motives (like fighting a proxy war with Russia in Syria) sometimes
take precedence. Besides, we need to be
at least somewhat skeptical about holding American democracy as a model for all
to follow because of the plutocratic undertones behind our mask of democracy. Democracy everywhere in the world is a work
in progress. Moreover, as I mention
elsewhere in this essay, democracy and freedom cannot be gifted; people have to
earn and constantly maintain these blessings themselves. We can locate one example supporting my
assertion in US history itself: The Civil War only nominally, de jure, granted freedom to African
Americans. They had to win it in spirit for themselves, 100 years
later, with blood, sweat and tears – through the Civil Rights movement of the
1950s and 1960s.
One thing that has struck me all along
is how apt, fitting and still timely the recommendations (I made for the U.S. to
follow in an article written in 2001-02 and published in 2004, Limaye, p.438)
are even today, after a lapse of almost fourteen years. Let
the readers of this essay/Op Ed decide for themselves. Here are the recommendations I made then:
(1) Pursue genuine attempts to promote
democracy in those areas of the world where presently authoritarian or
dictatorial regimes rule.
(2) Be a good, well-behaved citizen of the world
community of nations.
(3) Call its troops home from abroad. In other
words, close down its military bases on foreign soil.
(4) Serve as a model of human rights protector for
other nations by protecting human rights here at home.
(5) Share its wealth with the poorest nations of the
world, just because it has more.
The crux of the matter for me is that we
as a nation must forsake the imperial ambitions that many of our political leaders
and foreign policy experts entertain.
Though power will be exercised and will justify itself, there are
choices between military/hard power and persuasive/soft power. Many in the US call themselves Christian; the
choice for such a nation should be soft power, the path followed by Jesus
Christ two millennia ago and by Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Nelson
Mandela and Walesa in our time.
As I come to close this analytical
narrative, I’d like to mention two positive chapters in this otherwise dismal tale:
As many scholars have noted, American soft power has been doing remarkably well
all over the world. American “can do”
creative spirit is admired everywhere. Though
America’s hard power, the use of its military muscle, of late, has led to
disasters for the US itself and the world, America’s cultural influence (from
movies to fast food, from literature to education) is spreading around speedily
and effectively. The Economist of February 21, 2015, for instance, refers to a fast
growing “yearning for American higher education.”
As the other
positive aspect of American soft power (several students of American history
and culture have emphasized this point too), let me mention the assimilative
knack of the United States. This goes
beyond the often-referred-to “melting pot”: That phase mainly covered the
assimilation of white European
elements into the demographics of this country.
What I have in mind is a relatively recent phenomenon – the assimilation
of non-white immigrants into American
life. When one hears about the turmoil
and the simmering discontent among the immigrant populations of Europe, one comes
to deeply appreciate this strong and positive aspect of American soft power. I only hope we, as a nation, realize that
soft power is more enduring and appealing for the very reason that it is
non-coercive.
In conclusion, let me humbly suggest that the U.S. explore
whether, for all its investment of money and people over the last 60 years from
the Korean War to the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars, it has had appreciable
returns. America should ask itself
whether it has created a positive image for itself around the world and whether
its policies and actions have been serving its long-term interests and
well-being. While the US is quick to
insert itself into conflicts everywhere, outsiders notice the growing
perceptions of unease in some quarters of the United States regarding the still
unaddressed problems here like police racial bias and the increasing inequality
of incomes. As they say, charity begins
at home. Some humility, introspection, and
insight are in order for our nation -- the United States of America.
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Acknowledgements
Michael Allen,
Mark Buchanan, Robert Cornwell, Hema Haller, Vishwas Kolhatkar, Nisha Limaye, Jim
Stephens, Chaitram Talele, Shelton Woods, Chanda Yadavalli, Michael Zirinsky,
Isaac Castellano, Erin Hern
