America’s Place in the World (More Discussion)

With my temporary return to my blog, I posted my exchange with Eric Offner of Manhasset Hills, NY, in a blog entitled "America’s Place in the World." Subsequently, I posted discussions with Janet Cooke of Philadelphia, PA, Nancy Vierra of Silver Springs, Maryland, and Herb Reiner of Cedar Grove, NJ in my blog post entitled "America’s Place in the World (Discussion).

Since the discussion with Reiner has continued, I now want to share that with you, and also add a rather lengthy analysis, which came from Albert Nekimken of Vienna, Virginia.

Herb Reiner countered my last repost with:

Yes, Emil, I am not unsympathetic to your point of view. In fact I believe we are now giving substantial military aid to groups we believe are secularist. But the situation on the ground is so chaotic and confusing that I doubt our government is flexible and smart enough to insure our weapons won’t end up in the hands of our enemies. This country has been hurt many times because of our failure to understand the limits of our power and the unintended consequences of military action. 

To which I responded with:

I don't agree that we have been hurt primarily by "our failure to understand the limits of our power and the unintended consequences of military action". We have been hurt most when we act in our primary interests; when we are obsessed by a narrow view of our interests. In Iraq, Bush I acted on principle. It served us and the world well. Bush II was obsessed with power. Even when the UN inspectors said "no weapons of mass destruction", he was determined to proceed and then he destroyed the institutions that made governing possible. We should not learn the wrong lessons from that debacle, or from Vietnam where we kidded ourselves that we were fighting Communism, when we were in fact fighting to maintain French colonial interests.

When we act on our "better angels of our nature" to quote Lincoln, we actual serve our national interests best.

Our actions in Syria and elsewhere must be directed by our best humanitarian instincts, and not by a narrow view of National Interest, or at least that is my view.

I doubt that we disagree on principle, but isolationist voices have been loud and have found lots of reasons to support their narrow view. Obstacles can always be found for not doing what one has no interest in doing.

And finally Albert Nekimken set forth his views as follows:

Your commentary arrived yesterday and I received it with great pleasure. 

  

I have been hopelessly behind in attending to my e-mail and other correspondence for some time. I did realize that you were frustrated by your inability to establish any kind of regular, timely dialogue with your correspondents, but the best I was able to do was to set up a dedicated mailbox in my Outlook program to capture and save all of your commentaries. My plan was to reply to them when possible, even if after a rather long delay. It was certainly never my intention to ignore them. 

  

Due partly to the weight of my sense of guilt over this prior neglect and the gravity of the Syrian issue, however, I did want to take a few minutes to send an immediate reply. 

  

I found myself agreeing with most of your reply to Eric Offner, even while remembering that FDR's record was not unblemished: despite all of the admirable decisions that he made, which you summarize. He also refused to admit boatloads of desperate Jewish refugees, such as the ship St. Louis, that was ordered to turn around and return to Europe. Also disappointing, recent biographical scholarship has revealed the extent to which he shared the general anti-Semitism of people of his class and times. 

  

Your rejection of Eric's list of historical sins of America on the world stage was justified insofar as it has been used as a justification for refusing to take action in Syria today. Nevertheless, it reminds us that nations, including America, make geopolitical and diplomatic decisions based mainly on contemporary perceptions of national interest, not according to high principals of morality. 

  

More troublesome was your conclusion that the world needs a policeman and the U.S. should accept the mantle of that role because it can. 

  

While I accept and even applaud some of our recent interventions, such as in Bosnia that were a relative success, or in Somalia, which failed, overall I think your conclusion is flawed for the following reasons: 

   

1.) As Eric's comments suggested, the reputation of the U.S. has been tarnished. The rest of the world is quite suspicious of American motives and tends to fly into a frenzy of conspiracy speculation about them rather than admire us for spending money and taking risks to "do the right thing" wherever that motive takes us. 

  

2.) We also can't undertake the responsibility of being the world's policeman because most of the world rejects our authority in this role, even if a minority welcomes it. This ambivalence results in a high potential that our efforts will continue to have unintended, or counterproductive results. 

  

3.) We can't afford to be the world's policeman in terms of either money or manpower. Expensive foreign interventions risk pushing our debt to arguably unsustainable levels while our economy remains weak and the need for domestic spending rises due to demographic changes, globalization, automation and other factors that are shrinking the size of the tax-paying workforce to historic lows. 

  

4.) Also important, we can see from the results of the Iraq and Afghanistan interventions that the detrimental effects on our own military--individual soldiers, preparedness infrastructure and stockpiles--have been considerable and were likely understated. At least one-third of the soldiers returning from those battlefields bring with them serious, lifetime mental and physical disabilities that will require expensive attention for many decades. 

  

5.) For this reason, new initiatives that put the U.S. in the role of world policeman will inevitably catalyze the trend now underway to replace human soldiers with increasingly automated drones and other robotic equipment.  

   

6.) Even if this trend shows some success on financial and tactical grounds, it exposes us to very dangerous moral dilemmas. Automated drones are being now prepared for global deployment that will either not require human direction, or will prevent it as a measure to counter cyber terrorism. As this trend accelerates, so does the probability of error, collateral deaths and anti-American agitation. Only a Defense Department order prohibiting the use of self-piloted drones has prevented their deployment for now. However, this prohibition will not last indefinitely and it has no effect on the rest of the world where the cost of conducting ever more deadly terrorist operations continues to fall along with fading moral scruples against launching strikes with inexpensive drones or chemical weapons. 

  

7.) Worse, automated drone warfare risks depriving attacks of any identifiable geographical address. We attacked Afghanistan and Iraq because they were perceived to be harboring terrorists. In the future, we may not be able to identify either the source location or even the identity of the sponsors of terrorist activity. It's difficult to be an effective policeman when you can't locate the criminals. 

  

8.) Returning to Syria, there seems to be general agreement that, if it had been possible for the U.S. to use military force to quickly eliminate Syria's chemical weapons, we probably should have done so. However, to attempt to do this without a U.N. mandate, without good intelligence about the location of the weapons (which have already and obviously been dispersed or hidden), there was a high probability that our effort would have failed and only worsened the situation. 

       

9.) Even Israel next door was ambivalent about the wisdom of a unilateral attack on Syria's chemical stockpiles by the U.S. Such action would only have pleased Saudi Arabia, which continues to sit on its hands and treasure, refusing to risk either--and Turkey whose president, Erdogan, has deployed only his big mouth and volunteered the U.S. to undertake all the risks and costs. 

       

10.) Erdogan complains with justice that no country has even stepped up to help the refugees who have fled Syria and are living under desperate situations in neighboring countries. (Apparently, such spending doesn't pump money into the hands of defense contractors or create many jobs in American congressional districts, so it has little appeal.)

Next time I will set forth my response to Nekimken. And then once again ride into the sunset.

I no longer invite comments! 

All good things must come to an end and so this discussion too must end.