A perpetual declaration of war

The extraordinary combination of arrogance and ignorance displayed by our Very Serious Foreign Policy Elite is intensely depressing to many of us; I can only imagine how it looks abroad (eg. among the potential recipients of our “beneficent” use of force). But these people will continue to be in control, regardless of which party is in power, as long as their message is what most of our people want to hear. I wish I knew how to even begin changing that situation. To Middle America any dissent from the “right” of the US to throw its weight around as its sees fit is heresy that rises to the burning-at-the-stake level of offense.

My understanding is that the interventionist principle has been in place, at least latently, since 1941, and that it has never been seriously challenged. There have been various Presidential candidates who seemed as though the were rejecting the principle, but most of them did very poorly and some of them were just lying (e.g. LBJ, the 1964 peace candidate. Jimmy Carter in Afghanistan is another example, though he didn’t invade.)

Preponderance in a monopolar world is just a stronger statement of the principle. “National interest” can mean anything.

The “unitary president” is the domestic counterpart. The people for whom intervention at will is an absolute value have no patience at all with the idea that public opinion should have any influence at all on foreign and military policy, and their not completely comfortable with the idea that public opinion should affect domestic policy.

So we’re in Nader-Chomsky territory, and probably we have been all along.

Isn’t part of the problem that the specific form of expertise that members of the American ‘foreign policy elite’ claim for themselves is relevant (to a large degree) only in a world that finds itself in a state of perpetual (hot or cold) war?

These people must maintain that war is sometimes necessary (and always possible), and that this will always remain so. The whole discourse they’re engaged in would be quite irrelevant in a world that reliably functioned on the basis of the “central founding principle of international law”. In that sense, they’re essentially professional warmongerers.

What is this ‘Foreign Policy Community’, exactly? Is it, by chance, just the marketing arm of the military-industrial complex.

I believe that the Imperial Empire of Japan used the resources justification for attacking the British in Singapore and Malaysia – the British were threatening Japan’s supply of rubber. At the time, the US condemned this. Of course, at the time the US condemned the bombing of civilian targets by airplanes. The US changed its mind a lot since then.

I really think t’s a done deal, though. None of the major Democrats seems likely to jump ship. Hillary is very forthright about her hawkish convictions, but the other two fudge so much that you shouldn’t expect anything from them.

sometimes access to resources can be in the vital interests of a country… restriction of resources can be an aggressive act as well

Didn’t the Imperial Empire of Japan also use the resources justification for attacking Pearl Harbor? The US had been supplying oil to Japan, then stopped in protest against Japan’s war-making, then Japan attacked the US fleet prior to striking at oilfields in Malaysia, no? Perhaps this provides a useful reference for FP hawks: when you’re more aggressive than Japan in 1941, you’re definitely too aggressive.

The US government is acting on behalf of the population. In many cases this is the unstated wishes of the public. It’s the old not wanting to see how the sausage is made dynamic.

The public wants cheap foreign goods and resources, we want low gas prices and to be able to drive SUV’s. We want to be able to heat and cool our McMansions. We just like to pretend to ourselves that this doesn’t require engaging in unfair relationships with other states.

But the people know this and that’s why the vast majority still favors a “strong” military and a muscular foreign policy. Are there those profiting from this, perhaps even unfairly or illegally? Of course, but that is an inevitable consequence.

As Pogo said: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

Whenever the smallest degree of sacrifice is suggested people go ballistic. Just look at the discussion over raising the gas tax as an example.

I’ve decided that I’m going to start acting like a belligerent a**hole when I suspect my own vital personal interests might be threatened (regardless, of course, of whether anyone else agrees with my suspicion). Apologies ahead of time.

To attempt to answer John’s original questions: I think the definition of “vital national interests” is precisely what divides members of the foreign policy elite from each other–what makes “liberals” different from “conservatives” different from “neocons,” etc. Some people see “vital national interests” as promoting democracy; some people see it as preventing genocide; some people see it as preserving access to cheap oil; some people see it as enforcing extraterritorial drug laws; some people see it as rescuing expatriate medical students. It is these heartfelt differences on which political campaigns, think tank reports, and journal articles are based.

Second, of course this “right” is seen as applying only to “us.” “Us” certainly includes the United States, but may include other countries as well, as long as they are mostly white, mostly Christian, and liberal, capitalist states.

Third, I think I’d argue that Vietnam is the example on which all this rests. The US may have lost the war in a literal sense, but it won the larger war of controlling access to the world system. If all our defeats could be as successful as Vietnam, foreign policy “experts” could rest easy.

Interesting in this context to hear Bush and Canadian PM Harper disagreeing about whether the northwest passage is an international waterway.

Drezner’s formulation reminds me of this passage from Lippman’s Public Opinion. It would seem that exceptionalism is the easiest, if not the only, way to render coherent the concept of the national interest . . .

Now it happened in one nation that the war party which was in control of the foreign office, the high command, and most of the press, had claims on the territory of several of its neighbors. These claims were called the Greater Ruritania by the cultivated classes who regarded Kipling, Treitschke, and Maurice Barres as one hundred percent Ruritanian. But the grandiose idea aroused no enthusiasm abroad. So holding this finest flower of the Ruritanian genius, as their poet laureate said, to their hearts, Ruritania’s statesmen went forth to divide and conquer. They divided the claim into sectors. For each piece they invoked that stereotype which some one or more of their allies found it difficult to resist, because that ally had claims for which it hoped to find approval by the use of this same stereotype.

The first sector happened to be a mountainous region inhabited by alien peasants. Ruritania demanded it to complete her natural geographical frontier. If you fixed your attention long enough on the ineffable value of what is natural, those alien peasants just dissolved into fog, and only the slope of the mountains was visible. The next sector was inhabited by Ruritanians, and on the principle that no people ought to live under alien rule, they were re-annexed. Then came a city of considerable commercial importance, not inhabited by Ruritanians. But until the Eighteenth Century it had been part of Ruritania, and on the principle of Historic Right it was annexed. Farther on there was a splendid mineral deposit owned by aliens and worked by aliens. On the principle of reparation for damage it was annexed. Beyond this there was a territory inhabited 97% by aliens, constituting the natural geographical frontier of another nation, never historically a part of Ruritania. But one of the provinces which had been federated into Ruritania had formerly traded in those markets, and the upper class culture was Ruritanian. On the principle of cultural superiority and the necessity of defending civilization, the lands were claimed. Finally, there was a port wholly disconnected from Ruritania geographically, ethnically, economically, historically, traditionally. It was demanded on the ground that it was needed for national defense.

In the treaties that concluded the Great War you can multiply examples of this kind . . .

Psychobabble. No normal person wants to be misled. Not even a normal child.

Wouldn’t a good analogy be the people that believe their own country only behaves (more or less) honourably and correctly in international politics (and every other country is just following it’s own self interests) are similar to the children that cling to the belief in Santa Claus even given repeated evidence from their friends that is actually their parents that put the presents under the tree?

Also, I find the often-repeated “to be able to drive SUVs” line kinda ridiculous. Yeah, right – we fight to be spared from having to built a modern high-speed mass-transit system in our country. Yeah, we cherish our way of life that involves sitting in our SUVs in stop-and-go traffic for hours and hours every week, breathing from exhaust pipes and not being able to read a newspaper. Yeah, that makes a whole lot of sense.

abb 1, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me either, nevertheless I know lots of people here in suburbia who are most definitely of the “you’ll take my SUV [or gigantic pickup truck] keys away from me when you pry them from my cold dead hands” stripe. It’s all about Personal Freedom and Our Way Of Life, or something. (Probably also about “The kids and I need room for our supersized butts”.) The human capacity for cognitive dissonance being what it is, that of course will in no way prevent them from bitching about their commutes.

(Full disclosure: I drive an elderly Saturn and live a few miles from my workplace.)

QV, could you describe the mechanics of how invading and attacking other countries adds to your prosperity, please.

Just a typical military budget with veterans care and stuff like that costs every US resident about $2,000/year. That’s $8K to a family of four, so you’ll have to climb up from $8K/year hole first.

@32

No. See my note on competence in comment 15.

Some people see “vital national interests” as promoting democracy; some people see it as preventing genocide; some people see it as preserving access to cheap oil; some people see it as enforcing extraterritorial drug laws; some people see it as rescuing expatriate medical students.

What definition of the word “vital” could any of these possibly satisfy? That’s the problem. The word “vital” has been expanded beyond all reasonable recognition.

The argument could be made that war is the very to tou heneka of the state.

‘net translation: War is the state’s killer app.

Not original with me, but I can’t find the reference.

As self-perpetuating institutions, I believe that “nations” as currently conceived will be naturally drawn to this mode of behavior. The interesting thing is how the indivduals (and sub-groups and organizations) who comprise the nations feel about it. To that end I was always intrigued/repelled by the US Army ad slogan “My country is the deepest part of me.” Well, maybe, sorta. I think this is the “interesting” nexus of the current world and “foreign policy” – you have the emerging powerful institutions of business corporations and the declining traditional religious ones (which have been separated from states in most of the world) duking it out.

abb1,

Now be honest with yourself. Was that a generous reading of my original post or not?

By the way, what do you call it when people want their unreflective held beliefs confirmed because they find critical assessment of these beliefs distressing and threatening?

Abb1,

Are you saying that American citizen’s don’t bare some responsibility for their government’ international behavior because media propaganda has made them simply the victims of a government that is not acting in their interests at all?

One factor to consider, I think, in deciding how much to blame Americans at large for distrusting deals that promise them some loss of comfort in exchange or future gains….a lot of workers and bourgeoisie know perfectly well that people like David Frum exist, who really want the masses poorer and less secure for the sake of a particular social vision. It’s not irresponsible to say “I’m tired of being dicked over just to make the other guy better off. If this is something you want my help with, explain it slow and careful, and if you can’t make your pitch, I don’t care.”

“The absence of any reference to self-defence, collective or otherwise, in Drezner’s formulation is what differentiates it from the stated policy of US governments in the last sixty years or so, which has given actual or spurious justification to lots of wars.

But wars justified on this basis haven’t necessarily been very successful.”

Clearly the last sentence is correct, but I don’t think the rest will get you very far.

The reason I don’t like lumping together self defence with defense of others is that it obscures how the rationalization often comes down to exactly what Drezner is writing about–a perception of national interest. The US clearly doesn’t come to the defence of ALL others. There are lots of goings ons in Africa to attest to that. The defence of others concept makes it very easy to hide national interest questions. Drezner is trying to distill what he sees as the actual practice rather than focus too much on the rationalizations. This may or may not be a good idea, but you have to take it for what it is.

“I don’t think governments ever do this kinda things.”

Which is why you agree with Drezner.

Of the three large-scale wars the US has fought, two (Indochina and the current Iraq War) have been bloody failures and one (the first Iraq war) an equivocal success. The smaller wars and interventions (Lebanon, Haiti, Somalia to name a few) have not been much better.

On the other hand, the record in recent times (say 1990 onward) is somewhat better. Kosovo and Afghanistan have also been equivocal successes as well, though Afghanistan is far from over and the large number of refugees from Kosovo has been disheartening. Nevertheless, what would these places have looked like now had the US not intervened? On the balance, I can’t avoid the conclusion that intervention was probably the right thing to do on these occasions, as well as in Iraq in 91.

Response to deleted troll comment from Miss Luis

The analogy of the ‘policeman’ is hardly precise, as the police are also subject to the law. A ‘law enforcer’ who is not bounded by law is a different kind of actor. Perhaps necessary, perhaps not, in the system in which it acts, but different, nonetheless

So is it a US-only rule?

#35- “Sorry, irrationality and self-deception is the norm…”
Superficially, yeah. But irrationality can be and most often is used to obscure a deeper biological rationale, whose attributes are usually antithetical to the local moral system and can’t be exposed without weakening that system. Hypocrisy works.
Thus self-interest for some will demand support for a cohesive social environment alongside predatory or parasitic relationships with and within that same environment, where an accurate honest readout of those relationships would be ultimately detrimental to self-interest. It seems irrational, the way fundamentalism can seem irrational, while obviously working just fine.
Thus abb1’s SUV driver and passengers, stuck in traffic, looking down their 8-cylinder noses at Steve LaB in his little elderly Saturn (or me in my even littler GeoMetro). The payoff for the SUV family isn’t the elapsed time in-vehicle, it’s the moment of recognition in the parking lot or at home, when they relive that first getting-in, possession, ownership, power. Biologically the SUV people are more fit, or the base organism will see itself so – and that’s the selling point, bio-superiority.
The war-as-necessary-for-self-interest thing proceeds out of the same non-abstract organic logic. Morality becomes a means of maintaining social cohesion at home so that ever-greater resource hierarchies can be developed and exploited, as well as a way to hamstring your enemies. This is morality that’s essentially about what’s good for me is good and what’s bad for me is bad.
There’s a solvent at work there invisibly and silently that’s reducing everything back to the tooth and claw. And there’s no logical defense of higher things available, it has to be supra-logical, aesthetic – the seemingly rational rest is already all proprietary, arguing those points becomes dancing to the tunes of swine.
Moral and ethical systems that are founded and valenced on the self will always be like this. Moral and ethical systems that are not founded and valenced on the self must perforce have some externalized center – thus fundamentalism and its more sophisticated but still theocentric ecumenical children. The higher and more humanly noble moral center would be up there in the always nebulous and therefore insubstantial future, carried in the very real yet not yet real people who will inhabit that future, and who will receive the gifts we leave for them, such as they are.

#55 – amusing how all the belligerents here don’t answer that point…

abba1

while I sometimes think it is all a kubuki dance, all of the establishment candidates and commentary on the talk shows takes as a starting point that Iran is a threat to the US. From the perspective of an outsider this seems to be an indication of a mass delusion and ignorance so profound it is difficult to explain in rational terms.

“The problem is that ‘national interest’ encompasses a wide range of issues. The question is, where is the bar set, what’s the point at which ‘national interest’ can only be served by military action?”

Absolutely. The weird thing is that it sounds like you think you’re disagreeing with me. You are right. That is exactly the most important difficulty with the national interest test. My point is that for the most part the “defense of others” discussion plays out along those same dimensions–as a national interest test with defense of others rhetoric.

“First, is this rule supposed to apply only to the US? Second, can the elastic phrase “vital national interest” be spelt out?”

p1. Yes, this rule is supposed to apply only to the United States.

p2. Yes, the elastic phrase can be spelled out, but it isn’t required [or desirable] for members of the “serious foreign policy community” to do so.

This has been another edition of S9’s Short Answers To Easy Questions, provided as a public service of MojoHaus. (MojoHaus. Fine journalism. Afflicting the comfortable since 1988.)

I was asking s. holsclaw and alex–is it a US-only rule or not?

ragout, was it the bombing of the slums, or the fact that victory was assured, which made Panama such a success?

And is there anything to be learnt from the fact that all the “successes” you list were such incredibly one-sided contests that anything but complete success would be a sign of staggering incompetence?

“National interest” seems like a complex concept, but I’m sure a political scientist could come up with a crude formula. It would have, obviously, a bunch of weighted statistics in it: the GDP, crime rate, life expectancy, equality index, political stability index, etc. Maybe even an index of “decent opinion of mankind” in there somewhere. Gasoline price in there somewhere too, maybe indirectly. It’ll be heavily parameterized and subjective, but nevertheless a lot of people would accept it, I’m sure.

The problem is that some other people, powerful people, including this ‘Foreign Policy Community’, don’t define ‘national interest’ this way. They are concerned with Iran’s influence over Iraq, political Islam’s strength in Egypt and stuff like that. I highly doubt that their definition of ‘national interest’ has any positive correlation with what an ordinary person assumes the ‘national interest’ is.

ed_finnerty,
how is all of the establishment taking as a starting point that Iran is a threat to the US an indication of a mass-delusion?

The establishment via opinion makers is trying to form a public opinion that is considered useful. That seems to me like the most obvious interpretation.

It’s not like the public is asking the opinion makers to feed them a bunch nonsense in order to shield them, the public, from some awful truth they refuse to face. That’s the interpretation I objected to.

Actually, the words missing from the initial reference to invading other countries, in the original post, are “as a very last resort under desperate conditions”. That is, when all other options are exhausted and when the nation is in danger, you sometimes have to go to war. Now, nobody would disagree with that, and I think this is the gist of what Mr. Holsclaw is on about.

The big problem is when you have a country which invades other countries because it can. That is the problem with U.S. foreign policy. It squashes snails because it has a great big foot and doesn’t have to mop up the sidewalk afterwards. Enlivened by the feel of squashing snails, it crushes kittens. Gradually it works its way up to sodomizing and murdering toddlers. It all feels so good.

But meanwhile, a lot of other people are looking on in horror, because none of this stuff is very reassuring. If they can invade Panama and then move on to Iraq and hire mercenaries to destroy Somalia, reasons everybody, how long before they attack us? And so people everywhere get busy with the Great Equaliser, Pu-239.

I have nearly half my life left to live. I don’t want to live it in a cave grubbing for roots because a bunch of half-wits in Washington watched one too many war movies.

As I said in a comment on another site exceptionalism is the rule and model among Americans on all sides. The debate began this time over over the relation of experts to amateurs not exceptionalism itself.
US military intervention outside the UN even in the best cause sets a bad precedent. Its vigilantism, but vigilantism is our model.
Greenwald simply pointed that out and look at the response he got from Robert Farley.

And is there anything to be learnt from the fact that all the “successes” you list were such incredibly one-sided contests

Yes, we should learn is that these are the best kind of wars. That was one of my main points. It isn’t fair, or glorious (is that really what you’re criticizing?) but achieving our objectives at small cost is the very definition of success.

Now you might also ask the items on your list of “successes”: Which ones had ultimate or proximate causes which included various prior US actions or positions?

None? At least not in a bad way. Building the Panama Canal was a good thing, and I don’t blame the US for the Iran-Iraq war, the break-up of Yugoslavia, or Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait.

Oh, and on the list of good things achieved mainly by US military might, let me add: free access to the Panama and Suez canals, the generally low level of piracy at sea, and the continued independence of Taiwan and Singapore.

Congratulate myself for anticipating Prof. Drezner’s remarks. 1. Vital National Interest is what the superpower says. Libraries of books have been written about the fuzzy concept “national interest”; think “public interest”. 2: Force is always an option. 3.”It’s just that gaining that support is not viewed as a necessary condition for the use of force. It never has been in the United States — or for any great power. ” I would add “international law is not viewed as a necessary condition…” As Kant said in “Perpetual Peace” about the ancestors of “International Law”, Vattel and Grotius. “sorry comforters”.

So ragout (81): what much of the rest of the world derides as wrong and cowardly is to you right and sensible?

Since,

you deleted Miss Luis’ comments we’ll never know if he was trolling or not, we’ll we? If I know Luis, what you might consider trolling is just his dogged enthusiasm for all things right of center and while he can be a royal pain I’m sure the comments were respectful in their disagreements. Please reinstate Miss Luis and his comments. He’s pretty shook up about the whole affair. Honest!

Thanks in advance…

follow up to 90: sorry, “generally low level,” not “relatively” – although I got your term wrong, my critique of its vagueness stands.

what much of the rest of the world derides as wrong and cowardly is to you right and sensible?

You’ll have to be more specific about these things the rest of the world thinks is wrong before I can answer.

But I laugh at accusations of “cowardly” behavior. I’m guessing that you mean that killing our enemies by bombing them is cowardly. As I see it, US troops don’t deserve to die, and if they can stay 20,000 feet above the enemy, I’m all for it. Do you really think that it’s better to be killed by a brave soldier than a cowardly one? That there’s some noble or glorious way to fight a war?

Whenever I read one of Alegria’s “Mr. X” posts I can’t help thinking they’re from Phillipe.

Citizens are subject to the laws of their nation, but nations are not subject to international law.

The nation-state is the highest order of sovereign body. But many use the phrase “international law” to imply there is some authority higher than the nation-state, or some enforcement body above the nation-state.

Intead, international laws should be better understand as the outcome of the treaties a nation becomes party to. Of course, any nation may unilaterally renounce any treaty at any time. Otherwise, they would not be the absolute sovereigns that they are.

ragout, in case you haven’t noticed much of the rest of the world is not actually very taken with the “noble” aims of US intervention, and doesn’t generally believe that the ends (whatever they may have turned out to be) justified the means.

As to cowardly, yes, it is in fact cowardly for the world’s most powerful military to go to war with a nation like Panama. Whether it’s troops on the ground or bombs from space, bullying nations who have no defense against your might is cowardly.

wouldn’t we have an obligation not to spank our children? But what kind of a nation would we have if we didn’t spank children who misbehaved?

Current thinking, as espoused in child-rearing books, is that you should never spank children (yours or others’). I suspect most parents find it hard to live up to this ideal, and there’s still quite a bit of spanking going on, but many, many people will find your line of argument offensive rather than obvious.

ragout: yes, the Straits of Malacca are beyond the official, normal reach of the US Navy: that’s not the only reason they’re such a prime target for piracy, however; a high volume of poorly-registered shipping is also a factor. Long-haul transoceanic ships tend to be bigger and better tracked, fewer in number and have a harder time docking in placed where there’s no control. International law and bilateral treaties are a big part of preventing piracy elsewhere: the US Navy’s efforts shouldn’t be exaggerated in keeping the seaways safe.

I’ll grant that there’s little piracy on the US coast. The Caribbean is another story, but with all those islands around, I guess your territorial waters exception excuses that.

j thomas, your irony has put my case much better than I could. Thank you!

Oh. That would include me. Sorry about that. I did think you’d captured the tone of the discussion here remarkably well…