{"id":75957,"date":"2015-10-02T06:57:10","date_gmt":"2015-10-02T14:57:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=75957"},"modified":"2015-10-02T07:45:01","modified_gmt":"2015-10-02T15:45:01","slug":"follies-and-fiascoes-why-does-us-foreign-policy-keep-failing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=75957","title":{"rendered":"Follies and Fiascoes: Why Does US Foreign Policy Keep Failing?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Stephen M. Walt, Robert and Ren\u00e9e Belfer Professor of International Affairs, discusses US foreign policy since the end of the Cold War at IDEASpHERE at Harvard Kennedy School on May 16, 2014.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><iframe width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ivFTIh5i38A\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Stephen Walt: &#8220;Almost all the senior members of the Obama administration, first term, with the exception of Obama himself, supported the invasion of Iraq in 2003&#8230; There&#8217;s an imbalance of power between [American] organizations that favor a lot of global activism and those that might favor restraint&#8230; There are few groups that favor a restrained view. The one I can think of is the CATO institute&#8230; You have a powerful tendency for the US to get over-committed because most groups in our foreign policy world favor greater involvement. If each group gets some of what it wants, the US ends up very busy&#8230; People get interested in foreign policy because they want to do something to make the world better. Nobody seeks a position in Washington to do nothing. Global activism is in their self-interest. The more ambitious American foreign policy is, the more influence, power and money these organizations are likely to get. This community is more supportive of foreign activism than the American people at large.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><A HREF=\"http:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/2015\/08\/21\/neoconservatives-so-wrong-for-so-long-iraq-war-iran-deal\/?wp_login_redirect=0\">Stephen Walt writes<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p>Over the past few weeks, proponents of the nuclear deal with Iran &#8212; from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.whitehouse.gov\/the-press-office\/2015\/08\/05\/remarks-president-iran-nuclear-deal\">President Barack Obama<\/a> on down &#8212; have marshaled a powerful attack on some of the deal\u2019s most prominent opponents. Specifically, they\u2019ve been pointing out an indisputable fact: Many of the individuals and organizations that are most actively lobbying and speaking out against the deal helped dream up the idea of invading Iraq or worked hard to convince Congress and the American people to go along with the idea. The logic of the pro-deal camp is simple: Given that the opponents were so catastrophically wrong about the Iraq War, no one should listen to their advice today.<\/p>\n<p>I agree with this basic argument, of course, but opponents of the deal do have one line of defense against the \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/bravenewfilms\/videos\/10152688634747016\/\">Wrong on Iraq, Wrong on Iran<\/a>\u201d meme. It is possible someone could have been dead wrong about the wisdom of invading Iraq in 2003, but nonetheless be correct to oppose the nuclear deal with Iran today. None of us is infallible, and it is at least conceivable that Bill Kristol, Elliott Abrams, James Woolsey, Fred Hiatt, Max Boot, et al. could have blown it big-time in 2002 &#8212; but be absolutely right this time around.<\/p>\n<p>Conceivable, I suppose, but highly unlikely. Why? Because their views in 2002 aren\u2019t independent from the views they\u2019re expressing today. On the contrary, their earlier support for the Iraq War and their opposition to the Iran deal stem from the basic neoconservative worldview that informs their entire approach to foreign policy.<\/p>\n<p>To be more specific, the problem isn\u2019t that these people just happened to be embarrassingly wrong about Iraq. After all, plenty of other people were equally misguided back then, including <a href=\"http:\/\/www.biography.com\/people\/hillary-clinton-9251306\">many people<\/a> who <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/blogs\/fact-checker\/wp\/2013\/09\/10\/kerrys-claim-that-he-opposed-bushs-invasion-of-iraq\/\">now support<\/a> the deal today. Nor is the problem the neocons\u2019 stubborn and morally dubious refusal to admit they were wrong and take responsibility for the lives and money they squandered.<\/p>\n<p>No, the real problem is that the neoconservative worldview &#8212; one that still informs the thinking of many of the groups and individuals who are most vocal in opposing the Iran deal &#8212; is fundamentally flawed. Getting Iraq wrong wasn\u2019t just an unfortunate miscalculation, it happened because their theories of world politics were dubious and their understanding of how the world works was goofy. <span class=\"pull-quote\">When your strategic software is riddled with bugs, you should expect a lot of error messages.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>What are the main flaws that consistently lead neoconservatives astray?<\/p>\n<p>For starters, neoconservatives think balance-of-power politics doesn\u2019t really work in international affairs and that states are strongly inclined to \u201cbandwagon\u201d instead. In other words, they think weaker states are easy to bully and never stand up to powerful adversaries. Their faulty logic follows that other states will do whatever Washington dictates provided we demonstrate how strong and tough we are. This belief led them to conclude that toppling Saddam would send a powerful message and cause other states in the Middle East to kowtow to us. If we kept up the pressure, our vast military power would quickly transform the region into a sea of docile pro-American democracies.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;Fourth, as befits a group of armchair ideologues whose primary goal has been winning power inside the Beltway, neoconservatives are often surprisingly ignorant about the actual conditions of the countries whose politics and society they want to transform. Hardly any neoconservatives knew very much about Iraq before the United States invaded \u2014 if they had, they might have reconsidered the whole scheme \u2014 and their characterizations of Iran today consist of scary caricatures bearing little resemblance to Iran\u2019s complicated political and social reality. In addition to flawed theories, in short, the neoconservative worldview also depends on an inaccurate reading of the facts on the ground.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;Last but not least, the neoconservatives\u2019 prescriptions for U.S. foreign policy are perennially distorted by a strong attachment to Israel, which Max Boot (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/They-Knew-Were-Right-Neocons\/dp\/140007620X\">and others<\/a>) have described as a \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.cfr.org\/united-states\/think-again-neocons\/p7592\">key tenet<\/a>\u201d of the entire movement. There\u2019s nothing wrong with such attachments per se, of course, but it has crippled their ability to give sensible policy advice to U.S. politicians. In particular, neoconservatives tend to believe that what\u2019s good for Israel is good for the United States &#8212; and vice versa &#8212; which is why they see no conflict between their attachment to Israel and their loyalty to the United States. But no two states have identical interests all the time, and when the interests of two countries conflict, people who feel strongly about both are forced to decide which of these feelings is going to take priority.<\/p>\n<p>Over the past few weeks, some proponents of the deal have pointed out &#8212; correctly &#8212; that some opponents don\u2019t like the deal because they think it is bad for Israel and because the Netanyahu government is dead set against it. As one might expect, pointing out these obvious facts has led some <a href=\"http:\/\/www.weeklystandard.com\/blogs\/obama-and-amen-corner_1007346.html?page=2\">opponents of the deal<\/a> to accuse proponents (including President Obama) of anti-Semitism. But as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/lara-friedman\/cheap-claims-of-antisemit_b_7985440.html\">Lara Friedman<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/forward.com\/opinion\/319025\/how-anti-obama-zealots-have-gone-off-the-rails-on-iran-deal\/\">J.J. Goldberg<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.haaretz.com\/opinion\/.premium-1.671930\">Peter Beinart<\/a> have made clear, this charge is absurd, even laughable. Among other things, it appears a majority of American Jews support the deal &#8212; and so do plenty of distinguished figures in Israel\u2019s own national security establishment. If anything, it is Netanyahu\u2019s efforts to persuade American Jews that it is their duty to support him, rather than their own president, that echoes those hateful anti-Semitic canards about \u201cdual loyalty.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Instead of being a serious criticism, this familiar smear is really just a way to change the subject and to put proponents of the deal on the defensive for pointing out the obvious. Fortunately, in this case the charge just doesn\u2019t seem to be sticking, and its appearance is just another sign that opponents don\u2019t have rational arguments or solid evidence to justify their opposition.<\/p>\n<p>The bottom line: The fact that the neoconservatives, AIPAC, the Conference of Presidents, and other groups in the Israel lobby were wrong about the Iraq War does not by itself mean that they are necessarily wrong about the Iran deal. But when you examine their basic views on world politics and their consistent approach to U.S. Middle East policy, it becomes clear this is not a coincidence at all. Support for the Iraq War and opposition to the Iran deal flow from the same flawed premises, and that\u2019s why following their advice today would be as foolish as it was back in 2003.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Stephen M. Walt, Robert and Ren\u00e9e Belfer Professor of International Affairs, discusses US foreign policy since the end of the Cold War at IDEASpHERE at Harvard Kennedy School on May 16, 2014.&#8221; Stephen Walt: &#8220;Almost all the senior members of &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=75957\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21791,37,29611],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-america","category-israel","category-neoconservatives"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t<!-- All in One SEO 4.9.10 - aioseo.com -->\n\t<meta name=\"description\" content=\"&quot;Stephen M. 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