Two Views of American Foreign Policy

by Glenn N. Holliman

Two intriguing takes on the course USA foreign policy should be taking.  Like it or not (and I do not) Mr. Trump is upending the world order that the United States and Western Europe has sought to offer the world since World War II.   Both articles below are worth a good read over your morning coffee.   -GNH

Judd Gregg: Has Trump wandered into a foreign policy for this century? (from the Hill newsletter, March 6, 2018)

In the late nineteenth century, there was a famous adage that “the sun never sets on the British Empire.” 

Today the claim could be adjusted to say: “The sun never sets on American troops.”

Below, an over extended US Army, 1969 in Viet Nam, photo by the author with the 1st Infantry Division.

This is a legacy of the place the United States found itself in at the end of the Second World War. 

We were then the only democracy capable of standing up to the threat of the Soviet Union. We carried the flame of freedom for the world. We had the ability, strength and wealth to do this.

The Soviet Union, of course, no longer exists. It was run into the ground by the determination of President Reagan, the resilience of our market economy, and the cause of liberty.

We still assume the burdens that arose out of our role as the only world power dedicated to promoting peace, democracy and freedom, however. 

It is an appropriate cause. But the process and means of its execution need to be reconsidered.

Ironically, as with some of his other basic impulses, President Trump has wandered into this arena and suggested potentially appropriate approaches.

Having America soldiers in every corner of the globe may no longer be the best manner of pursuing our purpose.

Trump has suggested, for example, that we withdraw totally from Afghanistan. His national security team seems to have tempered this policy.

The president’s impulses here are right.

There is no question but that in the wake of September 11, 2001, we needed to go into Afghanistan and deliver, with significant force, an important message: that we would not tolerate the Taliban allowing the country to be a sanctuary for terrorists.

But the time has come to leave. The effort at nation-building in Afghanistan, just as earlier in Iraq, has not worked well. 

There are many reasons for this. But it is a fact. We should admit it and not compound the failure by staying there.

In departing, we should leave behind a very clear message.

This message should state bluntly to whoever takes over Afghanistan that if they allow it to become a terrorist haven again, we will be back with devastating force — not to build up the country, but to destroy those who allow terrorism to fester there.

In fact, this should be the message that we send to all parts of the Middle East. Our focus should not be nation-building, but rather lethal retaliation against those leaders whose nations assist terrorist intent on harming us.

We do not need troops stationed all over the world to execute this policy. We have the technical and tactical ability to do it without such a commitment.

We should also appreciate the fact that China is not inherently an expansive military power. It wishes to have its sphere of influence, particularly in the South China Sea. It intends to have a massive military capability to make the point that it is a rising superpower. 

China should be a nation we work with at a variety of levels, recognizing that it is also our most capable competitor in many arenas, especially trade. 

This should not lead to confrontation.

China is the only power that can resolve the North Korean issue in a manner that does not involve force. Our policies should be directed at encouraging Beijing to do so for its own sake. 

We should not allow our concerns about China gaming our trade relations to dominate our relationship in a manner that diminishes the chances of solving the North Korean issue.

If China fails to act on North Korea, then we need to make it clear we will turn to Japan for help.   

This would involve encouraging Japan to change its constitution — written largely by General Douglas McArthur when he led the occupation — to allow Japan to rearm. 

It seems probable that if China needs to choose between having a rearmed Japan or a disarmed North Korea, they will choose the latter — and take action to make it happen.

There is also the major issue of how to manage the disastrous deterioration in the Middle East caused by the collapse of Syria and underwritten by Iran.

If there is a lesson from our engagement in Iraq, it is that massive use of American troops on the ground does not necessarily improve things in the region.

Our strategic interest there has been dramatically altered now that we are producing enough oil and gas domestically to take care of our needs.

The endless religious conflicts between Sunnis and Shiites, the Israelis and Palestinians, and numerous other subgroups have been only marginally affected by U.S. engagement.

We should rethink our purposes there.

The need to stifle the growth of terrorists who threaten us should again be our main objective.

The score-settling by nations such as Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Iran is not something that requires our direct involvement.

The fear that Russia will replace us as power in the region should hardly be the motivator that sets our course. We should send Moscow our condolences and move on.

The fact remains that we are not in a position to cure the causes of these conflicts or significantly impact them.

Times have changed.

We need to change our role in the world.

We need to recognize the new reality of a competitive China and an intractable Middle East that is no longer critical to our energy supply. 

We need to understand that there are limits on our ability to draw people of very different cultures and experience into forms of government they do not accept.

Trump may be on to something when he suggests that, essentially, we should carry a big stick to enforce our rights to protect ourselves.

He may also be on to something when he essentially suggests we should stop there. 

Judd Gregg (R) is a former governor and three-term senator from New Hampshire who served as chairman and ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, and as ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Foreign Operations subcommittee.

A Response to Senator Gregg by Terry Field, Englishman and Insightful Observer of the Human Race 

An interesting justification of a changed posture. Of course, the idea of using devastating, previously unavailable military capacity to project force allows you to leave a region - indeed all regions - and subsequently target an area infected with potentially non-compliant opposition groups and forces and destroy them will be cost -effective for you.

However, imagine the relationship you have with the world. You will sit there, with immense power, deliverable from an immense naval capacity, from homeland bases equipped with projectiles able to destroy anywhere in earth in much less than an hour after the decision is made, and from strategic bases able to deliver low blast high yield tactical nuclear weapons on the heads of any locally resurgent enemy.

You would have no relationship with the struggling governments of those regions. Yes, they would hate and fear such as the Muslin death-cults, the Taliban, etc, yet all you offer for your 'partners' is the reality of your comfortable dis-engagement, their eternal misery, and the prospect of a significant part of their territory being turned into a charnel house at a moment's notice.

Since 1945 America has been able to tie the world up in a web of obviously mutually beneficial economic, cultural, social and political relationships. All have benefited.

Sit in your castle and lob large lumps of stone onto the heads of the cottage dwellers all around, and you will be surprised at how little they will want to know you.

Add to this the uncomfortable reality that you can never effectively subdue from the air - to smash powerful local opposition you must BE THERE. If you are not there, gathering your gigantic military power on the way but only threatening devastation from afar, then you absolutely guarantee that the opposition to you will be total.

Why? Because you no longer offer the world anything at all.

HUBRIS

There is no conceivable condition where any level of potential force will subdue an enraged world. You can dream of such a thing; but you cannot ever achieve it. At least not by leaving the rest of the world alive.

There are now in existence weapons that can utterly destroy all mammalian life and leave the physical infrastructure completely intact. This is new. It does allow for new thinking but imagine the reality the thinking must accept.

If a large region of the world moved to a state where its population entirely opposes you, then you will cause chaos there by attacking it, and that will force others not into your orbit, but away from you (visa Kim in North Korea after your actions in Libya and Iraq).

You will not be able to dissuade others from opposing you unless you act with a new power and force. You will, for this new and truly Imperial global posture to work, have to utterly destroy a region - perhaps a number of regions - to ensure that all others comprehend the risk of disengagement with you is one of total annihilation. The widespread use of neutron bombs - tactically sized ones - is the cornerstone of this new thinking as described in this article.

This allows you now to control events on the ground entirely from the air.

And how have you done this? By ensuring that from the moment the air bursts happen and henceforth, there are NO events on the ground of any kind. All life there dies in hours. Then Pax Americana reigns.

The following day, of course, you have no friends anywhere. You have vassals. The American dream becomes the American nightmare.

LESSON  1 Hide behind a wall of death, and do not use it, and the world will get on with its business without you.

LESSON  2 Use the weaponry and you have no relationship with the world. And it WILL arm itself and one day do to you what you have done to it.

As for China, it is not a passive regional power. It is what it can become, as it grows and grows. In the 16th century, Britain was a little island in thrall to the Holy Roman Emperor, run by brutish warlords. It grew and grew and grew. And as a baby grows to an adult it became another thing. It is doing the same now but in reverse and very quickly indeed. 

The Chinese and Japans are, and they know it, the most intelligent people on earth. China has your population plus 1000,000,000 people. OF COURSE it will become an immense power. With no dysfunctional effete 18th century romanticism, it will deploy it forces and be willing to lose enormous numbers to defeat the West - you in effect - if the prize is big enough. IN a century, if you hem it in, then the prize will certainly be big enough.

This article is a reflection of all that is wrong. (President Jimmy) Carter said, at the end of his term, that America needs to become a humble partner nation. No arrogance, no excess, no violence, no destructiveness on a whim.

 And the response to this in America? Hatred and contempt. Yet he was correct. If America really wants to maintain its influence, protect its life, be loved as well as respected, then it must become the secular reflection of Christianity. That religion captured hearts by the offering of a weak, defenseless God, who was willing to destroy part of himself for the recovery - the redemption - of his creation.

To willingly suffer and die for others. Moral heroism is an overwhelming force. Nothing can stand against it.

If you are loved and admired for sharing the way you deploy your wealth, together with rational kindness then you will hold sway in the hearts of people. That is your insurance policy.

Not tactical neutron bombs, rail guns and hyper-sonic delivery systems. You cannot do any of that good stuff by hiding and periodically slaughtering. Neutron bombs are the things, together with digital control systems that give you a dangerous illusion.

You cannot be as free of the rest of us as you wish to be. And you are not as powerful as the article suggests you are.

Your only chance of long term success is to become responsible, slow to act, possessed of immense material power yet rational in your use of those assets, and morally upright.

The conundrum is the same as we had in India. We had military force but only when we used it at Amritsar did we lose all authority.

As a preference I much prefer the American to other powers. It is the place I really care for 

most, and yet am debarred from living in. But the cold reality is that other great powers will appear. You will become weaker. 

And an article that comes from out of Star Trek and the ghost of the Rand Corporation reflects hubristic ego, not reality. It is Trumpian, not Christian.

Comments?