Dispatches
On the need for integrity in foreign policy decision-making — a column from our military veterans.
America is rich and fat and very, very noticeable in this world. It is a forlorn hope that we should be left alone.1
On the 30th of August 2021, a C-17 carrying members of the 82nd Airborne Division departed from Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan. The departure of these soldiers marked the end of the longest war in American history, even as some 9,000 Americans were abandoned in a country now controlled by a hostile power.2 For almost two decades, the United States had sought to pacify the Taliban and bring stability to the region. Two weeks before America’s final withdrawal from the country, the Taliban had marched into Kabul and restored the Islamic Emirate that had governed the country until 1996.
Seven months later, the Russian Federation invaded Ukraine in an escalation of the conflict that has been festering since the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014. To an outside observer, these events may seem unrelated. This is mistaken. They are merely the most recent in a string of events that have become all too common, wherein America’s weak foreign policy serves to embolden her enemies on the world stage.
On the 8th of August 2012, about one year after American military advisors were pulled out of Iraq, President Obama told members of the White House press corps, “We have been very clear to the Assad regime... that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized.”3 One year following the speech, which threatened the use of direct military force against the Assad regime if weapons of mass destruction were used, the Syrian government murdered one thousand four hundred and twenty-nine of their own citizens using sarin nerve gas.4 Military intervention was proposed before the United States Congress. It was never approved.
Four months after Syria crossed the “red line,” and with no proportional response from the American government, Russia annexed Crimea. This was widely condemned by the international community. The United States brought a proposal before the Security Council of the United Nations to condemn Russia’s actions (a proposal that was vetoed, to widespread shock and dismay, by Russia). That is as far as the American response went. There was no outpouring of military aid. There was no direct involvement. There was just a proposal that was vetoed by the very nation it would have condemned.
In contrast, after the conclusion of the Second World War, the United States maintained armies of occupation in both Japan and Germany. Commanding the Army of Occupation in Japan was General Douglas MacArthur, who felt the need for an active American foreign policy so strongly that he became the primary architect of the Constitution of Japan, which was adopted in 1947. This constitution remains in force today. The decisions MacArthur and his European counterparts made paved the way for the “post-war economic miracles” witnessed by both countries. The United States, by the strength of her foreign policy, turned two former enemies into economic powerhouses and close allies.
The occupation of Afghanistan could have yielded similar benefits. The people of that nation could have, with the protection and assistance of the United States, been allowed to develop the political and civil institutions necessary for a modern and functioning democracy. Instead, the occupation was cut short before it could have similar results to those seen after the longer occupations of Germany and Japan. It is easy to blame the culture of a nation like Afghanistan for this developmental failure, but statistics from the United Nations illustrate that in 2020, Afghanistan’s Human Development Index was at its highest point in forty years. It dropped precipitously in 2021.5 The withdrawal from Afghanistan is the equivalent of a farmer chopping down an apple tree shortly after planting it because he is upset that it has yet to bear fruit.
When testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Ryan Crocker, who served under President Obama, stated that the greatest failure of US policy in the nation was “strategic patience, or in our case, the lack thereof.” He went on to detail the successes we had achieved in our two-decade occupation, notably among them the establishment of schools by USAID, improving educational enrollment from 800,000 to almost 8 million in only the first decade of our occupation.6 We also virtually guaranteed the safety of female Afghanis. That we were able to find such success in a relatively short time illustrates the benefits of an American occupation.
In all the aforementioned cases, the American government made threats and promises that were later walked back or ignored. Her enemies—those states and nations that threaten or attack America, her interests, or her allies—responded to the slack they were given by taking up more rope. After the Second World War, however, the United States was fully committed to both her promises and her threats. Her enemies knew this and acted accordingly.
That said, one ought not simply equate a strong foreign policy with interventionism. Truly strong foreign policy is not inherently interventionist; it simply requires following through on both promises and threats. For instance, during the Trump-era military buildup, there were no major failures of American military policy, and because of that, there were no major instances of aggression against American allies or potential allies. It is no coincidence that the Russian invasion of Ukraine instead occurred during a period of American military decline. It was a strategic decision made by a foreign leader who believed the United States could now be bullied.
While interventionism is not always the best way for the U.S. government to serve the needs of American citizens, a strong foreign policy always is. When American leaders act with integrity, following through with both promises of assistance and threats of punishment, the world is a safer place. We do not retain the luxury of isolationism; in the twenty-first century, it is not a reasonable suggestion that America should leave the spotlight. With the eyes of the world upon her, America can do no better than to keep the promises she makes.
IGNATIUS
A version of this article originally appeared in Home Front, the February 2024 print issue of the Salient.
T. R. Fehrenbach, This Kind of War: The Classic Korean War History. Potomac Books, 2008.
James E. Risch, “Left Behind: A brief assessment of the Biden administration’s strategic failures during the Afghanistan evacuation,” The United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Feb. 2022.
Barack Obama, “Remarks by the President to the White House Press Corps,” National Archives and Records Administration, Aug. 20, 2012.
Ned Price, “Ninth Anniversary of the Ghouta, Syria Chemical Weapons Attack - United States Department of State,” U.S. Department of State, Aug. 21, 2022.
“Afghanistan: Human development,” TheGlobalEconomy.com, 2024.
Ryan Crocker, “Afghanistan 2001-2021: U.S. Policy Lessons Learned,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Nov. 17, 2021.
One cannot argue with the thesis of this essay, which is that the United States should honor its commitments if it expects its interests to be respected by potential aggressors. The question is, what kind of commitments ought the United States to make, and which should it avoid?
I suggest that the prudent defense of liberty around the world and an open global economy are in the United States' fundamental interest, with the emphasis on defense. The United States oversaw the establishment of democratic regimes in Germany, Italy and Japan after World War II and undertook to defend these countries. Throughout the Cold War, however, despite many outrageous acts by the Soviet Union, the United States and NATO never attempted to intervene by force in Eastern Europe, even though the countries of Central Europe could easily have become democracies and did so once liberated. This restraint was painful but prudent.
I don't think one can rope the American people into backing a long-term military commitment in fragmented, unfree countries. Americans don't have the patience to spend generations turning a riven, unfree society into a free one, and this reluctance is in my view wise. Afghanistan and Vietnam consumed immense American resources and lives. If America had persisted for 50 years in each country it may have brought about change, but the cost would not have been worth the erosion of America's defense resources and domestic morale. I note that South Korea and Taiwan were united domestically in opposition to an external aggressor, even though they were not democracies in the 1940s; liberty came later. As a resident of Israel, when Bush the younger declared his war against Iraq to be a campaign for democracy I was disturbed and pretty sure it would end in tears. The costs of democratic evangelism in countries that are neither internally stable nor democratic is so high that it represents an imprudent use of resources. Best to undertake a limited mission such as throwing Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait and then getting out, bringing Saddam's head back Stateside in a box.
The Obama-Biden disaster is of a different kind. Obama was sure that he was always the smartest man in the room and usually he was, but he had an irrational commitment to the thesis that anything America does, domestically or internationally, has to be bad and therefore America has no positive role to play in the world. Past and present Harvard affiliates are no strangers to this dystopic worldview. As to Biden, now engaged in appeasement of the Iranian dictatorship that would make Stanley Baldwin blush, he and the people who operate him are "spinal Obamas" (heard of spinal frogs in high school biology?). You could conduct the Michelson-Morley experiment between their ears - works best in a vacuum.
For better or worse the lack of strategic patience is endemic to American democracy. We are not the Roman Empire. Instead of lamenting this inescapable fact, the architects of our foreign policy should assume it. That is the essence of realism.