You will perform research and write a 3-4 page (750-1000 words) must analyze a military operation that failed due to poor alignment between foreign policy

Ali Wyne (/the-bridge?author=5853381ce6f2e1c36a18eed5) · July 25, 2017 (/the-

bridge/2017/7/25/slow-and-steady-wins-the-race-embracing-incrementalism-in-us-foreign-policy)

Slow and Steady Wins the Race: Embracing Incrementalism in U.S.

Foreign Policy

“It is not surprising…that many [Americans] are confused and unhappy about our foreign

relations, and that some are tempted to seek refuge from their confusion either in retreat to

isolationism or in suggested solutions whose simplicity is only matched by their folly. In the

main, our difficulties arise from unwillingness to face reality.”

—Henry L. Stimson, “The Challenge to Americans,” Foreign Affairs, 26:1 (October 1947):

p. 5

TO D AY ’ S L A N D S C A PE

Every generation of postwar Americans has contended that the number and complexity of challenges

it confronts abroad are without precedent. The present generation is no exception; as with its

predecessors, its conclusion is exaggerated in some respects and plausible in others.

First, the world has been more dangerous. While a great-power conflict may not be as inconceivable

as it was at the start of the century, it remains difficult to imagine another conflagration on the scale

of World War I, in which some 20 million perished, or of its successor two decades later, wherein

three times as many died. And while the danger of nuclear confrontation is growing—witness North

Korea’s trajectory—the possibility of a superpower atomic exchange in which hundreds of millions

die—a possibility that U.S. and Soviet policymakers countenanced with unnerving composure

during the Cold War—has decreased significantly.

. . .TO DISCUSS A GIVEN ORDER PRESUPPOSES THE POSSIBILITY FOR—INDEED, THE LIKELIHOOD OF—

SIGNIFICANT DISEQUILIBRIUM…

Richard Haas: "…‘order’ is not the same as ‘orderly’….One can have world orders that are anything but stable or

desirable.”(TargetLiberty.com)

Second, while the erosion of the post-World War II order is indeed concerning, disorder is hardly a

novelty; it is inbuilt into world affairs. Indeed, to discuss a given order presupposes the possibility for

—indeed, the likelihood of—significant disequilibrium: Council on Foreign Relations President

Richard Haass explains that “‘order’ is not the same as ‘orderly’….One can have world orders that

are anything but stable or desirable.”[1] While the Cold War, for example, may have constituted “a

long peace” at the highest level of analysis, it also witnessed proxy wars, civil wars, and genocides

that killed tens of millions.

Still, it remains difficult to think of a postwar analogue to the present confluence of strategic

circumstances, at least four of which merit mention. First, the United States no longer confronts the

kind of singular nemesis that might stir some semblance of national unity. Former British diplomat

Jonathan Clarke argued (https://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/politics/foreign/clarke.htm) almost

a quarter century ago that “[t]oday’s discretionary problems simply do not carry the same weight as

yesterday’s life-threatening dangers.” He elaborated: “Those used to the daily red meat of the Cold

War and looking for fresh sources of provender will be disappointed. Today’s wars…and today’s

problems…do not provide the all-encompassing challenge that was inherent in totalitarian fascism

and communism.”

That assessment remains valid. While China is a redoubtable competitor-cum-partner, it is neither

embarking on an arms race with the United States nor attempting to export a “Beijing Consensus.”

Terrorism, meanwhile, continues to shift from an infrequent, mass-casualty phenomenon to a more

routine, low-scale occurrence; while the Islamic State poses a grave danger to certain Middle Eastern

countries, it is far from an existential threat to the United States. Were North Korea to succeed in

mating a nuclear warhead to an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), it would certainly pose a

threat to the homeland—again, however, not an existential one.

U.S. President Donald Trump and China's President Xi Jinping in Palm Beach, Florida, in April 2017. (Carlos

Barria/Reuters)

At least since the emergence of fascist Japan and Nazi Germany, the United States has paradoxically

been uneasy about both the presence and absence of existential threats, real and perceived: when

they exist, they inspire a commensurate fear for survival but also a seeming coherence of purpose;

when they disappear, Americans take comfort in their relative security but express anxiety over the

prospect of national drift (in that regard, the United States has never “recovered” from the Soviet

Union’s dissolution).

Second, each of the three core regional orders is undergoing fundamental realignments. For instance,

there are serious questions about the viability of the European project and the resilience of

transatlantic ties. The disintegration of large swathes of the Middle East continues apace, with few

credible speculations about the kind of regional order that will prevail. Meanwhile, China’s

resurgence and the acceleration of pan-Asian economic integration, among other phenomena, are

substantially altering the current strategic balance in the Asia-Pacific.

Third, the postwar order is under growing duress, in considerable measure owing to populist

movements within its architect countries. While the United States has often oscillated between over-

extension and retrenchment, no administration over the past 70 years has challenged the conclusion

that contributing to that order advances U.S. national interests—excepting the present one. With its

rejection of trade agreements such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP); its frequent derogations of

the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and longstanding U.S. alliances in Europe and Asia; and its

preference for bilateral, transactional diplomacy over multilateral, positive-sum interactions; the

Trump administration would appear to be harkening back to a 1930s-era conception of U.S. foreign

policy.

Fourth, there has probably never been a greater incongruity between the qualities that are essential to

the conduct of U.S. foreign policy—temperance, restraint, and patience—and the impulses that are

likely to tempt current and future policymakers. Our digital era prizes action over deliberation and

demands success as impatiently as it pronounces failure: policymakers are more likely to be rewarded

politically for taking a tactical step that demonstrates “leadership” than taking a strategic pause that

appreciates complexity.

T H E L I M I TS TO U . S . I N F LU E N C E

The aforementioned quartet of circumstances has left the United States with considerably less scope

for maneuver than it possessed at the turn of the 21st century, when the Economist famously

observed (http://www.economist.com/node/250970) that America “bestrides the globe like a

colossus.” Zooming in on the world’s three principal theaters helps illuminate both the limits to U.S.

influence and the challenge of formulating a compelling case for sustained engagement.

Europe

Transatlantic ties have been central to America’s role in the world as well as to the resilience of the

postwar order. Increasingly, however, they are under strain. Prospects for the Transatlantic Trade and

Investment Partnership are dim. Princeton political scientist Andrew Moravcsik notes

(https://www.ft.com/content/b50b456e-41ed-11e7-82b6-896b95f30f58) that “the two sides of the

Atlantic remain deeply divided on a fundamental issue: whether the Europeans should spend more

on defense.” They are comparably split on the appropriate balance of sticks and carrots for dealing

with Russia, which has demonstrated a sustained ability to undermine the cohesion of the European

Union (EU)—whether by hiving off territory, interfering with elections, or supporting populist

parties. Finally, traditional European concerns about U.S. unilateralism have yielded to more

fundamental uncertainties about the direction of U.S. foreign policy. Witness the alarm that

European capitals expressed when the Obama administration announced its “rebalance” to the Asia-

Pacific in early 2012. Former Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta observed

(http://www.politico.eu/article/what-will-define-barack-obamas-european-legacy-eu-us/) that the EU

reacted “as jealous lovers would, and overlooked the fact that Obama made a natural and

fundamental choice in a country that is just as Pacific as it is Atlantic.” Regarding the Trump

administration, the EU’s worry is not so much that the United States is focused on Asia, but that the

principal drivers of U.S. engagement are difficult to discern.

U.S. President Donald Trump with European leaders. (Christian Hartmann/Reuters)

While the preceding paragraph suggests some ways in which the United States might work to shore

up transatlantic ties, there is little it can do unilaterally to increase the EU’s heft; the union’s

declining weight, after all, is borne principally of organic challenges. A recent report concludes

(https://ec.europa.eu/commission/sites/beta-

political/files/white_paper_on_the_future_of_europe_en.pdf ) that its “role as a positive global force”

“belies a simple reality: Europe’s place in the world is shrinking.” In 1960, it accounted for 11

percent of the world’s population; along current trend lines, it will account for only four percent by

2060. Its share of gross world product, roughly 22 percent today, will likely fall to “much less than

20 percent” by 2030. Its median age is forecast to reach 45 that year, at which point Europe’s people

will be the oldest in the world.

It is not only longstanding structural difficulties such as anemic growth and demographic decline

that challenge the EU; more recent issues, including resurgent populism and refugee integration,

raise questions about the body’s cohesion. It is logical to conclude that the EU must strengthen itself

from within before it can enhance its external position. One could also contend, however, that its

internal woes are more proximate than fundamental—that is, that they are better understood as

being symptomatic of, and in turn reinforced by, the union’s increasingly evident inability to define

its role in world affairs.

After the Cold War, the EU had hoped to—and many analysts believed it would—serve as an

exemplar of integration that transcended the ruinous great-power politics of the 19th and 20th

centuries. Indeed, up until the global financial crisis of 2008-09, one often encountered analyses that

encouraged the Asia-Pacific to emulate the EU’s economic integration and institutional

coordination. Today, however, it projects an image of disarray. The Chairman of the Center for

Liberal Strategies, Ivan Krastev, contends that countervailing forces of integration may yet prevail:

…the union’s various crises, much more so than any of Brussels’s “cohesion policies,” have

contributed to the sense that we Europeans are all part of the same political community. In

responding to the euro crisis, the refugee question, and the growing threat of terrorism,

Europe has ended up more integrated than ever before, at least when it comes to economics

and security.[2]

His argument is compelling, and the annals of postwar strategic analysis are rife with premature

obituaries for Europe (and, of course, for the United States). Still, the longer the EU proves

incapable of articulating a vision for its place in the world that rouses its inhabitants to a

transcendent purpose, the more powerful the forces of disintegration are likely to become. The

United States cannot furnish that concept; the EU alone can, and must.

The Middle East

Perhaps the only prognostication one can issue about the Middle East with any measure of

confidence is that its evolution is uncertain. In Afghanistan, the clash between government forces

and Taliban fighters has grown so protracted that it has become difficult to distinguish current news

stories about the conflict from those written a decade earlier. Reflecting on the massive bombing in

Kabul at the beginning of June 2017, the New York Times noted

(https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/01/world/asia/peace-talks-with-taliban-may-be-another-

casualty-of-bombing-in-afghanistan.html) that it “has continued unabated well into its second

decade.” It strains credulity to suppose that a significant increase in the pace of drone strikes or

another surge of troops would do more than temporarily alter the course of the stalemate there.

Meanwhile, according (http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-40101639) to UN

Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Stephen O’Brien, Yemen faces “total social,

economic, and institutional collapse” on account of internecine fighting between the Hadi

government, backed by the Saudi-led coalition, and Houthi rebels, with no termination of the

conflict in sight. Close to seven million people are at risk of starvation, a cholera outbreak is raging,

and al-Qa’ida affiliates have retaken parts of the country’s southeast.

Jordan's King Abdullah II, Saudi Arabia's King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, U.S. President Donald Trump, and Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan pose for a photo during Arab-Islamic-American

Summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia May 21, 2017. (Reuters)

In Iraq and Syria, the Islamic State has wreaked havoc. One can accordingly sympathize with U.S.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis’s position (http://thehill.com/homenews/sunday-talk-shows/335477-

mattis-us-shifting-from-attrition-to-annihilation-tactics-in-isis) that the United States has “shifted

from attrition tactics, where we shove them from one position to another in Iraq and Syria, to

annihilation tactics.” Even if it is defeated, though, there is little reason to believe that mutations of

the organization will not incubate in the power vacuums that engulf much of the Middle

East. Moreover, the group’s diminishing foothold could well prove a Pyrrhic victory in both

countries. Iraq’s “complex ethnic make-up,” the Financial Times explained

(https://www.ft.com/content/6eedad00-1f66-11e7-a454-ab04428977f9) in early May, “means

conflicts, many of which predate ISIS, are hard to resolve and relatively easy to reignite.” In Syria,

meanwhile, an over-six-year war of attrition between government forces and assorted rebel outfits

raises serious doubts about the possibility of reestablishing a coherent polity: “With Russians and

Iranians in control in Damascus,” concludes (http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/05/19/syria-has-ceased-

to-exist-rebels-airstrikes-isis-russia-iran/) the director of IDC Herzliya’s Rubin Center, “the U.S.

bolstering rebels, and no one powerful enough to press for unification, the breakup of Syria is a fait

accompli.” The destruction of ISIS would simply consolidate the Assad government’s grip on power.

Reflecting on the Middle East’s ongoing devolution, one specialist of the region shared this

assessment with me: “On virtually every indicator, Arab countries are at greater risk of experiencing

internal upheaval than they were in 2010. Even Tunisia, the purported poster child of a successful

post-Arab Spring government, is barely surviving.” Egypt no longer commands nearly as much

influence in the Middle East as it did at the start of the decade, and Saudi Arabia is increasingly

concerned about the prospect of domestic tumult. To avoid having to implement significant political

reforms at home, it is attempting to counter U.S. shale producers by slashing oil production. Given

how precipitously the price of crude oil has fallen, though (it has been hovering around $50 per

barrel), and how quickly the kingdom is burning through its foreign-exchange reserves—they fell

below $500 billion in April, for the first time since 2011 (http://stepfeed.com/saudi-arabia-s-foreign-

reserves-dropped-to-the-lowest-level-since-2011-8982)—Saudi Arabia cannot pursue that tack

indefinitely.

So long as the Middle East’s present convulsions continue to reverberate, America’s influence in the

region is likely to be constrained. The upheavals that began seven years ago were largely the product

of internal dynamics—frustration with autocratic governance, chiefly—not outside interventions,

however misguided they have been. The region’s destructive reordering has spawned a bewildering

array of actors and realignments, well beyond America’s ability to comprehend fully, let alone mold

significantly. Meanwhile, contends the aforementioned specialist, the United States confronts a