The New Consensus

About a month ago, I caught a talk by Prof. Miroff on his new book (NYT review) on George McGovern’s failed 1972 campaign for presidency against Nixon. It was an obviously Democratic audience and comparisons to the current election were rife, and for good reason. Both McGovern and Obama defined themselves as antiwar candidates, the former opposing the Vietnam War while the latter opposed the ongoing Second Gulf War. However, I was left wondering how far such ‘dovish’ foreign policy similarities would extend to an Obama Administration, one that would have to finish the Iraq War, seriously commit to Afghanistan, and encourage the democratization of Pakistan.
As made clear by Miroff, McGovern has historically been remembered for his strong critique of American foreign policy in the Cold War, much of which was distorted by Nixon to paint him as soft on Communism and a threat to American security. As a ‘peacenik’, McGovern represents the left’s divorce from the traditional national security and foreign policy consensus of the post-war era, which was ultimately destroyed by Vietnam under LBJ. No longer was the country united in an interpretation of America’s position of the world that necessitated the United States containing the Soviet Union and embracing the mantle of hegemony. Despite the end of the Cold War, this consensus has never truly been repaired. We still do not have a common consensus on the necessity of American internationalism, nor a common rationale for engaging in (and sustaining) intervention abroad. Instead a broad range of foreign policy views have emerged in a continuous conflict for influence and control, from John Birch style isolationism, the failed ideology of neoconservatism, and of course left-wing isolationist critiques of American hegemony (embodied by the McGovern candidacy).
Nonwithstanding Obama’s position on Iraq, he has demonstrated himself to be hawkish on other potential threats to the United States, especially the original front of the Long War – the Afghan-Pakistan insurgency. Whereas both Vietnam and Iraq were wars of choice motivated by rationales that were flimsy at best (Gulf of Tonkin – WMD), the Afghan war is most certainly of a war of necessity, one begun in response to an already manifest existential threat to the United States, and the world for that matter.
There was also an ideological component to Vietnam and Iraq that is absent our involvement in Afghanistan. The first two wars were justified by anticommunism and neoconservatism, yet Afghanistan is driven by more immediate security interests and doesn’t fit neatly into traditional paradigms of American foreign policy.

In fact, the Afghan war is one that United States was the least prepared for in terms of our contemporary foreign policy thinking. Simply take W.’s expressed foreign policy preferences prior to 9/11. W wanted nothing to do with complicated policy objectives such as peacekeeping and nation-building, widely derided as liberal adventurism that should have been forgotten with the Clinton administration. During the 90s, Jesse Helms represented the traditional conservative antipathy to intervention, of which Pat Buchanan is also fond. With 9/11, conservative squeamishness with interventionism and long-term non-military commitments understandably is abandoned, yet no ideological transition is made that makes nation-building and low-intensity warfare the priority of the American foreign policy establishment. Instead, we were left with ‘nation-building lite’ or Douglas Feith’s ‘enabling’ theory of nation-building, which rationally expects people to organize democratically naturally, thus making grand, complicated, and tedious visions of social transformation unnecessary to foreign policy success. It is this understanding of the Afghan war has been truly dangerous to American national security, as it has let a single war evolve into a regional conflict, one in which we are currently in an undeclared war with our supposed ally Pakistan, which by the way, also has nuclear weapons.

Thus, the problem isn’t so much with the left as it is with what’s left of neoconservatism. Nothing in that ideology is compatible with the military innovations developed by Gen. Petreaus in the last two years, in fact, the administration only went that route when threatened with political annihilation in the 2006 midterm elections. Real leadership would have adopted a nation-building heavy approach in 2001 (not five years later) and keeping our eye on the war we had to fight (Afghanistan) as opposed to the war we wanted to fight (Iraq).

Which brings us back to the present, and the possibility of an Obama administration. While certainly his opposition to the Iraq war was McGovernesque, we can be fairly certain that a President Obama would fully commit to Afghanistan and Pakistan and support the strategic shift to counterinsurgency and heavy nation-building. The fact that Obama is being advised by heavyweights like Sarah Sewall (who wrote the intro to the UChicago edition of FM 3-24) and Samantha Power (the most prominent anti-genocide interventionist in the country) provides a good indication of the strategic, moral, and intellectual muscle that an Obama Administration brings to the table. It also suggests that President Obama will be more than receptive to the successful implementation of Petreaus’s vision of counterinsurgency strategy as the modus operandi by which the United States will conduct ongoing and future interventions. By stepping into office without any ideological baggage that could inform the future Obama Doctrine, the Senator from Illionis is well positioned to adopt and expand our best foreign policy practices and intervention strategies.

Most importantly, if Obama can direct the war in Afghanistan towards a democratic outcome for both Afghanistan and Pakistan (and don’t forget about Iraq), he could occupy the center of a new national security and foreign policy consensus, one that is comfortable with American intervention and based on the best successes of the past five years. In this way, Obama could be the anti-McGovern, and move the country past the ideological schism between isolationism and interventionism. If we are once again comfortable with the rationale for the use of American power abroad (both because we know why we are using our power and how we should go about using it), we can better configure our own resources and relationships with other states to achieve those goals.

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BTW, I know I have to find some ground on the debate between Ortho and Jay, as well as answer comments. Will do shortly, so stay tuned…

The Essential Question

“How many wars can we fight at once without finishing even one?”

Update: As I indicated in the last comment on this post, the answer to the question is three.  We are now in an undeclared war with Pakistan over attempts at striking the Taliban in the NWFP:

At least two American helicopters were fired on after crossing the Pakistani frontier near Angoor Adda in South Waziristan, Geo TV reported. “The U.S. choppers came into Pakistan by just 100 to 150 meters at Angor Adda. Even then our troops did not spare them, opened fire on them and they turned away,” an anonymous security official told Reuters.