Actually, more than cogent. Beinart, a chastened former liberal hawk who supported George’s W. Bush’s massively flawed and fraudulent invasion of Iraq, has learned his lesson pretty well, setting forth his conviction that “America Needs an Entirely New Foreign Policy for the Trump Age”, though I would much prefer another term for “the present” than “the Trump Age”.1
Beinart provides an extensive take on how America has gone so wrong following the end of the Cold War, though he doesn’t stress nearly enough, in my opinion, the extent to which our foreign policy simply reflects the determination of the mighty military industrial complex to maintain itself even though it’s no longer necessary. But in arguing that it’s time for Democrats to get off the Hillary horse, which has taken us to disasters in both Libya and Ukraine, where our over-reaching provoked Putin to play Czar, something he unfortunately is very fond of doing, Beinart supplies music for my ears.
As Beinart points out, without acknowledging his own role, for decades, Democratic foreign policy specialists pursued the same world transforming goals as the Republicans, with the single exception that the Democrats usually sought to work through international organizations, as opposed to the Republican preference for chest-thumping dominance. Alternative voices were never heard. Bernie Sanders had an excellent foreign policy record—one of instinctively avoiding conflict and resisting the unending calls for tighter security (tighter security and fewer freedoms)—but he rarely talked about it, because he rarely talked about foreign policy at all. He had no overall framework for analyzing foreign affairs. He wasn’t interested in it, and his voters weren’t interested in it. If the voters don’t care, the politicians won’t care.
Beinart points out that our constant determination to enforce our will throughout the world has brought us continued failures, most spectacularly in the Middle East and Afghanistan, but also in Eastern Europe, where we have made things worse rather than better. Furthermore, if we attempt to treat China as badly as we have treated the unlovable Putin, we will be picking a fight with a nation four times our size, an absolute guarantee for disaster.
People like Daniel Larison at the American Conservative and a whole raft of writers at Reason magazine have been arguing against American adventurism and bloated defense budgets for decades. It’s nice to see mainstream liberals like Peter Beinart starting to catch up. It’s about time.
Wait a minute! What about the caveat?
The caveat comes with regard to the war in Iraq, that horse from which Mr. Beinart silently dismounted. At one point, he writes as follows:
The Bush administration greased public support for invading Iraq by insisting that within months the U.S. would withdraw most of its troops. But as those predictions proved untrue—and the war grew ever costlier and bloodier—public opinion soured. George W. Bush held out against the demand to withdraw troops for a few years, even sending reinforcements in the 2007 “surge.” By 2008, however, with violence down but Iraq still extremely fragile, he caved to popular opinion and agreed to withdraw all U.S. troops by the end of 2011. Obama carried out that agreement and Iraq plunged back into civil war.
“[H]e caved to popular opinion and agreed to withdraw all U.S. troops by the end of 2011”? If by “he caved” Beinart means “President Bush had no choice but to make a firm commitment to the quick withdrawal of American troops from Iraq because the Iraqi government demanded it,” well, yeah, because that would be accurate. But Beinart sounds like he’s saying “if Bush had only stayed the course and ignored public opinion, ISIS never would have happened.” Maybe a bit of hawk think was still left in the stew.
Afterwords
In the text I quoted, Beinart links to a “real time” account in the New York Times, “Draft Accord with Iraq Sets Goal of 2011 Pullout”, which says the following:
Iraq’s Shiite-dominated government demanded a withdrawal timetable as the price of legalizing the American military presence in the country after the expiration of the United Nations mandate at the end of this year. Security gains in recent months also made the prospect of a winding down of military operations more palatable to the White House and top military officials, said people involved in the talks.
- And I’m not at all picky. Any alternative would be an improvement. ↩︎
