Maggie's Farm

In the fall of 1971, in grad school, I did a 60-page analysis of the Nixon/Kissinger détente policy. I concluded it was largely a holding action meant to slow down what otherwise was believed by its primaries as the inevitable declining power of the West in the face of  rising Soviet and Chinese power. I termed it “existential defeatism”. Although pragmatic coping in many ways, defeatism or its better cousin called nuance, has not been terribly beneficial to US interests since.

There isn’t a linear relationship from 1971 to now, but rather a trend. This trend is toward restraint in asserting our interests, with the confused interruption of our Iraq experience. It is increasingly coupled with deference to the alternate or contrary interests of other countries, called internationalism.

These policies can take little credit for the fall of the Soviet Union, under the weight of its own internal contradictions, in 1989. On the other hand, China kept ascending, US fecklessness in Indochina is touted by Islamist radicals as encouragement for their causes, and Russia is following its old path contrary to Western interests. Meanwhile, many of today’s foreign policy gurus tout international law and international organizations, usually most often in play to hinder or attack Western interests.

Restraint in foreign engagements, particularly military, is certainly to be prized unless clear US national interests, mechanisms, and follow-through plans are pretty clearly present, and articulated by our national political leaders so necessary to domestic support. However, instead, what we’ve increasingly seen is muddling and disparagement of the very concept of US national interests, substituting outright negativity, conceptual distractions, and refusal to actively engage unless elusive or impossible international consensus is reached, to include Russia and China who aren’t shy about exerting themselves actively in opposition to US or Western interests. In effect, as well, the US and Western Europe have too often abandoned its moral core, as well, to the favor of those who don’t share it or deride or hate it.

All that said, this critique must face the serious real-world problems we face immediately in the Middle East and coastal Asia, and the influence of financial problems.

Understandably nervous and hesitant to confront crazies in the Middle East, we have defaulted influence to Iran and to Russia.

Not wanting to indiscriminately support or arm possible future foes, as we did in Afghanistan to chase out the Soviet Union, there is little effort to discriminate and strengthen those not antagonistic to the West. Syria has been a cat’s paw of Iran to ferment conflict. Our non-action furthers this, rather than decrease it, aside from the humanitarian toll on Syrians with Iranians on the ground adding to the murders and Russian arms arriving in torrents. The US is rightly seen in the region and elsewhere as ineffectual, hardly worth allying with. Meanwhile, enough said, Iran continues its steady march to nuclear weapons, stirring others in the region to possibly also do so, further destabilizing international order and security.

One would hope that the US is doing more behind the scenes than is apparent, but no observers have seen such which is telling in the usually open sieve of reporting and NGOs. The US should be doing more in Syria, and more openly and assertively, including arms to those less problematic. The US should announce a date certain in 2012, after which all informed analysts recognize it will be too late, by which the US will devastatingly bomb—as only the US could --  Iran’s nuclear installations if there is not a convincing abandonment of Iran’s nuclear war-making capacities. Neither in Syria nor Iran are US military forces necessary on the ground. But short of that we have done far too little to influence the outcomes, leaving the threats to grow and to undermine confidence in the West, and influencing Middle East countries and citizens to accommodate or ally themselves with Iran.

The primary rationale for the US Senate to ratify its decades-pending Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST) may be to strengthen the hand in an international forum of the states in coastal Asia against the expansiveness of China. However, all, including China, have long since joined LOST, and that hasn’t slowed China’s claim of virtually the entire South China Sea as its own. China’s navy is expanding, often acting aggressively toward other states, and its oil and gas exploration is reaching into deep waters near other countries. See this map, the red lines far away from China being ocean borders that China wildly claims.