AMERICAN FUTURE

2006 hasn’t been a vintage year for the U.S. It hasn’t been as bad as 1941 or 2001, but this year, unlike those, hasn’t witnessed a surprise attack killing thousands of Americans. Instead, it’s been a year filled with events that have produced a malaise not unlike the one that afflicted America in 1979. I use the word “malaise” purposely, as it’s the label that was given to Jimmy Carter’s July 15, 1979 speech, during which he said:

I want to talk to you right now about a fundamental threat to American democracy . . . The threat is nearly invisible in ordinary ways. It is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation.

Later in his address, Carter complained about politicians’ excessive partisanship and avoidance of sacrifice:

The gap between our citizens and our government has never been so wide. The people are looking for honest answers, not easy answers; clear leadership, not false claims and evasiveness and politics as usual. What you see too often in Washington and elsewhere around the country is a system of government that seems incapable of action. You see a Congress twisted and pulled in every direction by hundreds of well-financed and powerful special interests. You see every extreme position defended to the last vote, almost to the last breath by one unyielding group or another. You often see a balanced and a fair approach that demands sacrifice, a little sacrifice from everyone, abandoned like an orphan without support and without friends.

One wonders what Carter’s speech would have been like if it had been delivered at the end of 1979. By that time, Americans were being held hostage in our embassy in Tehran and the Soviet Union had invaded Afghanistan. The repercussions of those events are still being felt.

Our economy is in far better shape now than in 1979—both unemployment and inflation are markedly lower. But partisanship is worse than it was then, and our government, unwilling now as it was then to level with the people regarding the need for sacrifice, is fighting a war that has meant the ultimate sacrifice for nearly 3,000 Americans. Add to this the concerns—justifiable or not—of many Americans that some of the measures taken in 9/11’s aftermath threaten their civil liberties and the widely-publicized decline in America’s international reputation, and it’s hardly surprising we’re experiencing a crisis of confidence that bears some similarity to the one Carter spoke of 27 years ago.

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Iraq—more specifically, the mismanagement of the war in Iraq—accounts for the current crisis of confidence. Numerous books, scholarly articles, and op-eds have described the Bush Administration’s mistakes, and my purpose here isn’t to summarize or dispute what others have said. Nor is it to critique the various recommendations—from the Iraq Study Group and others—regarding what should be the constituent elements of a revised American strategy to ameliorate the worsening situation in Iraq and, thereby, to create the conditions that will allow the U.S. to begin to reduce its footprint.

In my view, regardless of the ultimate outcome of our misadventure in Iraq, there are a number of long-term consequences, all of them negative, that are virtually certain to be felt. To a greater or lesser extent, all of them are the result of a war that has lasted far longer than the Bush Administration anticipated. These consequences, not the well-documented and analyzed reasons for the Administration’s lack of foresight, are my focus.

The several elections that took place in Iraq prior to 2006 provided the illusion of progress and hid the centrifugal forces that were unleashed by the war’s mismanagement. This illusion was shattered in 2006, as the elections were followed by more, not less, violence. In so far as the holding of free and fair elections is equated to democracy, the events of 2006 showed that, at least in Iraq, the road to democracy is littered with the debris of growing violence.

Perhaps the most unfortunate consequence of the war’s faulty prosecution is that we’ll never know whether a properly managed effort would have resulted in a stable, democratic Iraq that could have served as a role model for other Middle Eastern states that have endured decades of authoritarian rule. Accordingly, we’ll never know whether a central tenet of the Bush Doctrine—that the transformation from authoritarianism to democracy would drain terrorism’s swamp—is true or false.

I purposely use the word “never” because I believe that our failure in Iraq is the death knell for the Bush Doctrine. It’s most unlikely that the question of the soundness of the Doctrine can be separated from the failure of its first application. It would take an extraordinarily convincing and brave future president to attempt to persuade the American people that the failure in Iraq was exclusively a failure of execution.

Speaking of the public, polls conducted between the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 and the present show that more than half of those who now believe the invasion was a mistake initially supported it. While the initial erosion of support was probably the result of the failure to find weapons of mass destruction, it’s my view that the unexpectedly long duration of the war—and the resulting unexpectedly large number of American casualties—accounts for the bulk of the disillusionment. While it’s true that the Abu Ghraib scandal had a significant impact on American public opinion, it’s essential to keep in mind that that scandal wouldn’t have happened if the war’s length had been as short as Washington anticipated. The mismanagement of the war caused Abu Ghraib both directly—through the lack of oversight and improper training of the guards—and indirectly—by extending the war’s duration.

In the U.S., then, the mismanagement of the war resulted in a crisis of confidence in the spread of democracy as the antidote to the disease of terrorism and in the claims of the Bush Administration regarding the war’s progress. The repercussions haven’t been limited to the U.S.

By late 2003, had the war gone as planned, the American troop level would have been roughly half of its level at the time of the invasion and the lives of the Iraqi people would have been at least reasonably secure. Instead, the American footprint was—and has remained to this day—essentially unchanged, and security has worsened. Most importantly from the perspective of both European and Muslim opinion, the elongation of the war allowed Abu Ghraib to happen. With the publication of pictures of American soldiers humiliating Muslims, whatever chance there was to stop the growth of anti-Americanism vanished. The Bush Administration was trashed throughout the world for betraying American values. The mismanagement of the war intensified the crisis of confidence in America that had been rising since the second half of 2002, when it started to be apparent that the U.S. was intent on toppling Saddam.

Earlier, I noted that elections held prior to 2006 provided a facade of progress, keeping the mistakes of Bush Administration at least partially hidden from view. The least violent days in Iraq have been days when voters were casting their ballots. If I were an Iraqi, this would make me wonder: if American and Iraqi forces can provide for my security on voting days, why can’t they do so on all other days? I would lack the knowledge that there are too few soldiers to provide security on a sustained basis. Because of the war’s mismanagement, the political (elections) and military (security) tracks have been out of synch. In the absence of a military footprint large enough to provide security, Washington hoped that elections revealing the Iraqis’ desire for and commitment to democracy would reduce the level of violence. Exactly the opposite has happened, creating a crisis of confidence among the Iraqis—in both their and our government, and in democracy.

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Even if President Bush decides to stick by his guns (literally and figuratively) and manages to pull a rabbit out of his hat, I believe that the doctrine that bears his name will be jettisoned by his successor, be he (or she) a Republican or a Democrat. The doctrine’s demise will mean there will be no further efforts to defeat terrorism by using force to spread democracy. Chastened by the cost in lives and treasure, a majority of Americans want to withdraw our troops from Iraq, a preference indicating a willingness to accept an ill-defined stalemate (or even defeat) in Iraq. As in the early 1970s, the spirit of our time is “Come Home America.” In the view of at least one pundit, “With hindsight we may see 2006 as the end of Pax Americana.”

Where does this leave us after Bush’s term in office is over? Barring an unpredictable event—in particular, a terrorist attack on the scale of 9/11 or greater on U.S. soil—the signs point to a retreat to neo-isolationism, as happened after the Vietnam war.

No administration will use neo-isolationism to describe its foreign policy. Whether the next administration is Republican or Democratic, some other word or phrase will be invented to describe a policy that will amount to neo-multilateralism. Whatever it’s called, this policy will eschew military interventions carried out unilaterally or by ad hoc coalitions of the willing.

The central feature of neo-multilateralism will be an American rapprochement with the UN, a process that will be made easier by Kofi Annan’s departure. Many observers—here and even more so in Europe—will cheer this development, as Gulliver will be chained.

I won’t be among them. As most recently evinced by its inaction over Darfur and the watered-down sanctions against Iran (Security Council Resolution 1737), the UN Security Council is structurally incapable of confronting threats to humanity. Whether the issue is genocide carried out by Khartoum or Tehran’s nuclear weapons program, the Security Council epitomizes ineffectiveness. Given the agendas of Russia and China, there is no reason to hope that this will change.

Terrorist and militant groups, not just certain governments, will be among the primary beneficiaries of American neo-multilateralism. An America that’s tightly-bound to the UN will feel compelled to abide by the rules of international law. These rules are supposed to apply to all parties to a conflict but, in reality, don’t. The most recent example of the asymmetric application of international law was this past summer’s war between Israel and Hezbollah. The vocal, widespread claim that Israel used “disproportionate force” wasn’t matched by outrage over Hezbollah’s installation of its rocket-launchers in civilian areas and its intentional targeting of civilians in northern Israel.

Like the UN Charter, the rules of war—in particular, rules of engagement—were agreed upon at a time when warfare meant fighting among states. That isn’t the type of conflict present in today’s world, nor is it likely to be in the foreseeable future. Instead, asymmetric warfare pitting a state against terrorist and militant groups will continue to be the most frequent type of violence.

As I discussed in considerable detail in an earlier post, the U.S., in order to minimize civilian casualties in Iraq, has conformed to strict rules of engagement. I concluded that post with these words:

Without maintaining that our forces have never deviated from these rules of engagement, it’s clear that our intent has been to fight a “civilized” war. From a humanitarian standpoint, this objective is commendable. However, fighting with one hand tied behind our back (to borrow a phrase from the Vietnam era) has undoubtedly resulted in greater American casualties and made it more difficult to prevail against an enemy that obeys no rules. The limitations, by enhancing the ability of the insurgents and terrorists to carry on the fight, have probably resulted in more, not fewer, civilian casualties. If our rules of engagement were formulated, in part, to present a better face to the “international community,” they have failed. Nobody has commended us for our good behavior.

The rules of engagement we’ve followed in Iraq raise an issue than couldn’t be more fundamental. If our twenty-first century conflicts are going to pit us (or, I might add, Israel) against extremist groups whose tactics know no bounds and we allow our conduct to be constrained by the dictates of international law, as defined by such multilateral institutions as the UN, we are condemning ourselves to fighting protracted conflicts that erode American willpower, as has happened with Iraq. If we give precedence to conforming to international norms over winning, it won’t escape the notice of militants, who will use every opportunity to weaken us.

The neo-multilateral foreign policy I foresee, because it will exclude unilateral American military interventions, means that interventions against terrorists and militants will rarely, if ever, take place. And when and if they do, the “international community” will employ rules of engagement that are advantageous to the instigators of violence.

Because the Iraq war has been so terribly mismanaged, the “Pax Americana”—a phrase that implies the ability and willingness of the United States to act unilaterally—may indeed be over. If it is, the only possible replacement is a “Pax United Nations.” Those who favor this change may live to regret it.