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June 20, 2013
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 Foreign Policy Review Suggests a Losing EffortPosted on Dec 21, 2010It is possible to think that the great campaign to create a new Middle East and Central Asia, defeat the Taliban, slay Islam’s violent extremists, capture or kill Osama bin Laden and build a radiant new world of democracy and capitalism may be closer to being called off than one might think. The campaign has failed. It is not working now, but going backward, as in the case of politically chaotic and sectarian-divided Iraq, recently “liberated” by the United States at the price of more than 100,000 civilian casualties, the flight of 2 million of its people from their country, and nearly 2 million more driven out of their homes or otherwise having their lives uprooted. According to The New York Times, the forces opposing the new Nouri al-Maliki government may demand America’s total withdrawal from Iraq, abandoning what currently is supposed to be an “enduring” U.S. deployment there. In mid-December, the Obama administration revealed the conclusions of the Afghan policy review, which was supposed to fine-tune a grand war-winning strategy in Afghanistan. They offered no fundamental change in the American program and reported that the war against the Taliban goes a little better in some respects, and rather worse in others, and that relations with Pakistan, which supports the Taliban, are bad and getting worse. A U.S. National Intelligence Estimate, published almost simultaneously, said the American intelligence community is unanimously convinced that the war is being lost. The U.S. said it will fulfill its Afghanistan troop withdrawal commitments, starting in July, thereby trying to “Vietnamize” America’s war, leaving the Afghans to look after their own country, which is what more than half the American public already wants. (Sixty percent of all Americans, according to a recent Washington Post poll, say the war is not worth fighting.) Some suggest that if the Taliban sweeps up power as the Americans leave—if they indeed leave—Washington will simply blame the Hamid Karzai government, noting its corruption and incompetence. President Barack Obama—the foreign affairs novice who was cynically bounced into escalating this war with a troop “surge” by Gen. David Petraeus, the ambitious clique of “surge-plus-counterinsurgency” enthusiasts in the Pentagon, and the Washington foreign policy community, plus the neoconservative claque in the Washington press—could say in July that he did exactly what the supposed experts told him to do and it failed. Advertisement So satisfactory an outcome is nonetheless unlikely. The Pentagon and America’s foreign policy community are determined that the U.S. must continue its effort permanently to control the region. The democracy-building mind-set, with which all of this began during the Clinton years, confirmed after 9/11 by George W. Bush, still prevails, even in the camp of American foreign policy “realists.” John J. Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago has a major article in the latest issue of The National Interest magazine, which provides a lucid critique of how the U.S. got into these dangerous Asian entanglements, but ends by asserting that to assure its own security Washington must continue to possess Asian domination, blocking any rival (meaning China). He asserts that “no American leader will accept” a Chinese effort to turn its economic power into military power in order to impose its own hegemony in Northeast Asia. Washington should adopt an “offshore” policy, he writes, that keeps American military power “over the horizon” from East Asia, but ready to intervene against China. This seems to me to rest on highly exaggerated assumptions about China’s ambitions, and about the ease with which a Chinese economy that currently remains a satellite of the advanced European and American economies can be turned into a military giant capable of dominating Asia and challenging the U.S. It also ignores the existence of the world’s third-largest industrial economy, that of Japan, a nation of highly advanced technology and demonstrated military capacities, should it be threatened. India is another neighbor of China’s, as is South Korea. Finally, this supposedly “realistic” policy recommendation makes vague and controversial assumptions about the American interest in all of this. What, exactly, is China’s threat to the United States? Mearsheimer is reformulating the same policy of global domination that the American “realists” have opposed in the Middle East, Central Asia and now in Afghanistan/Pakistan. If it is a bad policy there, why is it a good policy in Northeast Asia? Visit William Pfaff’s website for more on his latest book, “The Irony of Manifest Destiny: The Tragedy of America’s Foreign Policy,” at www.williampfaff.com. © 2010 Tribune Media Services Inc.  TAGS:
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By TAO Walker, December 24, 2010 at 7:57 pm Link to this comment
And a very merry unbirthday to “radson.” Here in Indian Country many of us observe the changing of the Seasons with some Ceremony.
Visiting family near the Sunset Coast, this Old Man sat with The Pipe that Day.
HokaHey!
Report thisBy omop, December 23, 2010 at 5:50 pm Link to this comment
Whether one calls it the denoument or the continuum the realties of US “Foreign
Policy” tend to belong to the continuum first propounded way back in 1914 by
one Paul Warburg a German banker and associate of Kuhn, Loeb of Wall Street
and one of the Federal Reserve Board Members.
Speaking before a commirree of the US Senate Mr. Warburg stated: _
“We shall have World government whether or not we like it. the only
questionis whether World Government will be achieved by conquest or comment”.
Given the events since 1914 Barak Obama is following that dicta.
Report thisBy radson, December 23, 2010 at 5:20 pm Link to this comment
Tao Walker
Merry x-mas to you ,or should I have said Happy-Holidays,nevertheless take care .
hoka
Report thisBy TAO Walker, December 23, 2010 at 3:54 pm Link to this comment
The plea by “gerard” below falls (besides on probably deaf-ears) well within the realm of not being careful enough about what one wishes-for. Anyhow, William Pfaff, however well-intentioned, exhibits the same symptomology as the rest of the subspecies homo domesticus, in neither grasping nor being able to describe with adequate accuracy the common predicament.
The relentless deterioration of all those things listed by “gerard” is, in-and-of itself, not the “problem.” It is, rather, the “civilization” disease process initiated here by a retro-viral “invader” that sustains and propagates its own un-dead “self” by degrading Natural Vitality into the various types of degenerate “energy” upon which it subsists.
So simply redirecting the operations of the “military/industrial” apparatus to less immediately destructive ‘projects’ can only slightly put-off the inevitable DEAD END toward which the thing is headed….taking us All with it. If there were no Viable Alternative, that desperate prolonging of the agony might make some sense.
As it happens, though, we can still BE The Medicine we need. As a vital component in Her immune system, Humanity has innately the capacity to respond to this otherwise fatal CONdition. By getting free of their suffocating shroud of “self,” presently artificially “individual”-ized Humans can recover their Natural Person-hood, coalesce spontaneously into the organic communities that are our Natural Form, and respond in mutually beneficial ways to the “global” sickness whose symptoms are the subject of so much anguished attention here and everywhere these days.
We don’t have to settle-for nothing but a little more hair-of-the-“god” that’s right now tearing-out our throats.
HokaHey!
Report thisBy ocjim, December 23, 2010 at 11:31 am Link to this comment
Anyone with a modicum of intelligence can see our various foreign wars as failures. The image of the schoolyard bully comes to mind, one who thinks that everything can be gained with brawn not brains. The Bush image can be characterized that way but Obama seems to be borrowing that same bankrupt mantra.
To top that off, our love affair with goods of pleasure has helped to fund the Chinese military.
Foreign policy? Rather masturbation on foreign soil.
Report thisBy Jim Yell, December 23, 2010 at 10:45 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
There has only been one war that we could not avoid and that was WWII. The rest of the Wars have been fought for private Corporate reasons. Businesses that want a priveleged access to wealth of other countries and are willing to manipulate the government into spending more money than they will make getting the job done. These same Corportions add insult to injury by not paying their taxes, by manipulating and destroying everything and excusing it as well we can’t do anything else, we must make profit.
We are slaves making our own slave collars.
Report thisBy radson, December 23, 2010 at 12:10 am Link to this comment
Taikan
Mr. Pfaff is commenting on John Mearsheimers’ recent articles and does not agree with the China part .Now if you have the time -go to the National Interest website ,there is a rather interesting article by Mr.
Mearsheimer ;although it is lengthy it does convey an interesting critique .Although I would not go insofar as giving Pres . Clinton the immunity that the Professor does . Mr. Mearsheimers’ Sydney Australia
speech in Sept. of 2010 is worthy of debate ,although I do not agree with his strategic assessment ,if it were the case the Chinese would be fools.
cheers
Report thisBy taikan, December 22, 2010 at 10:05 pm Link to this comment
The “democracy-building mind-set” did not begin during the Clinton years. Or has Pfaff forgotten Reagan’s efforts on behalf of “democracy” in Nicaragua?
In any event, if Pfaff believes it is possible for someone to think that “the great campaign” may in any way be close to being called off, he is delusional. Unless General Petraeus himself publicly states that his original strategy was in error and we should get out of Afghanistan, Obama will be too afraid of the political consequences of “losing” a war even though it was one we never could win.
Report thisBy radson, December 22, 2010 at 5:44 pm Link to this comment
American Foreign Policy is very similar to Polygamy,but in Americas’ case there are a lot of Pissed off Wives out there .So as John Mearsheimer says ‘Offshore Balancing may help to ease the situation,but his
Report thisparanoia of China is far fetched.
By frecklefever, December 22, 2010 at 3:34 pm Link to this comment
GREAT ARTICLE WILLIAM..IF OBAMA WOULD TAKE THE ADVICE OF YOUR SIXTH PARAGRAPH..HE
Report thisWOULD BE WISE..BUT DOES HE HAVE THE GUTS..NOPE..HE IS TIMID PERSONIFIED..AND THAT IS
OUR LOSE…
By gerard, December 21, 2010 at 9:35 pm Link to this comment
Mr. Pfaff: Please—because you have the ability to reach millions—come on stronger on how to get rid of this sick domineering conceited foreign policy. Be specific about how to get the military/industrial complex off the neck of the government. Suggest ways to shift that vast job-creating machine into an organization that concentrates on real problems like rotting infrastructure, degrading public schools, poor public health care, disintegrating cities, stale-mated rural communities—the whole vast population of scared, confused people in a democracy going to pot from the top down.
Report this