Republicans Rally Behind the Stupidest Possible War

The “peace president” is at it again:

Now a candidate, Trump is reviving his hawkish instincts toward the drug lords. He has already vowed to deploy US special forces to take on drug cartels, “just as we took down ISIS and the ISIS caliphate.”

In one policy video released by his campaign, Trump said that if reelected, he would “order the Department of Defense to make appropriate use of special forces, cyber warfare, and other overt and covert actions to inflict maximum damage on cartel leadership, infrastructure and operations.”

As I have said before, attacking the cartels would achieve nothing. Anyone that calls for military action as a “solution” in this case automatically discredits himself. It is telling that Trump and many other Republican hawks have latched on to one of the stupidest policy ideas available. Some of the cheerleaders for a cartel war are the usual reflexive hawks , and some cosplay as antiwar politicians, but they are united behind the absurd belief that the drug war needs even more militarism. Even if you knew nothing else about their foreign policy views, this would be enough to confirm that their judgment is abysmal.

Trump likens a cartel war to fighting terrorists, but this ignores how terrorist groups have often flourished and spread during the “war on terror.” Look at the Sahel to seehow militarized “solutions” have contributed to making the region much less stable and much more violent. Countries that used to have Military action can weaken and even destroy a certain group, but it does nothing to address the conditions that cause people to join radical armed groups. It would be even less effective in stopping the supply of illegal narcotics, since it can’t do anything about the demand that drives the drug trade. The drug war is already an endless failure, and the introduction of US forces into Mexico would just make it more destructive.

When otherwise hawkish politicians feign skepticism about US involvement in a war somewhere, it seems as if they have to compensate for this by jumping on the bandwagon for even more reckless and indefensible interventionism. We saw a lot of this in the ‘90s when Republicans that were generally a lot more hawkish than Clinton used the Balkan interventions as occasions to complain that he was ignoring the “real” threats, by which they usually meant Iraq or Iran. We see some of it again today when quasi-skeptics of US policy in Ukraine are quick to remind us that they want the US to gear up for a much bigger direct conflict with China. They are deeply concerned about being in the frying pan because it will prevent the US from jumping straight into the fire.

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Daniel Larison is a weekly columnist for Antiwar.com and maintains his own site at Eunomia. He is former senior editor at The American Conservative. He has been published in the New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, World Politics Review, Politico Magazine, Orthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and Culture11, and was a columnist for The Week. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter.

Biden’s Lackluster Diplomatic Record

Stephen Walt is underwhelmed by the Biden administration’s diplomatic performance to date:

I raise this issue because the Biden administration took office vowing to put diplomacy at the center of U.S. foreign policy, yet it has relatively few diplomatic achievements to show for its first two-plus years. On the plus side, US allies are far more comfortable with Biden and Blinken than they were with former President Donald Trump and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and they’ve been willing to forgive some of the administration’s early blunders (such as the unnecessary snub of the French during the AUKUS submarine deal in 2021). But apart from improved optics, the administration’s diplomatic record is unimpressive.

The Biden administration wanted the public to see the “return” of diplomacy one of the major differences between them and the Trump administration, but in practice Walt is right that they haven’t delivered very much on that score. It’s true that the administration has done well in coordinating with European and other allies in providing assistance to Ukraine, but this has been a bit like pushing on an open door. The US has not had to do much arm-twisting or persuading to convince allied governments to get on board with supporting the war effort, since they have all been willing to do this at least to some degree. When it comes to getting fence-sitting countries on board, there has been much less success. Almost everywhere else, the Biden administration’s diplomatic efforts have either foundered or haven’t even begun.

Walt mentions ineffective or non-existent diplomacy in the Middle East, and he also notes that diplomacy has been notably lacking in US dealings with China over the last two years. The reflexive decision to cancel Blinken’s visit to Beijing over the balloon incident looks even worse now than it did at the time. Instead of taking the incident in stride and pressing ahead with diplomatic contacts, as a confident administration would do, the administration overreacted and sabotaged its own effort to begin repairing relations. The fear of appearing weak in the eyes of domestic hawkish critics has been the administration’s real weakness, and it keeps tripping them up.

One could add several other regions to the list of places where US diplomacy has largely been MIA. Take our own hemisphere for starters. The widely-panned 2022 Summit of the Americas was a high-profile embarrassment for the US that resulted from inadequate planning and the misguided decision not to invite Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Cuba to the summit. There was not much of an agenda for the other attendees to endorse, and what little there was had not been coordinated with the other governments. The issue of snubbing the authoritarian states became a bigger headache for the US when other governments boycotted the event or sent lower-level representatives in protest. The failure of the summit underscored both US neglect of our own neighborhood and the poor execution of the administration.

The Biden administration has been making more of an effort in Africa, Southeast Asia, and the South Pacific over the last year, but it has mostly been falling short because of a lack of follow-through. Top US officials may say many of the right things to local audiences, but when it comes to backing up those words the US simply isn’t putting its money where its mouth is. Take the vice president’s recent Africa tour, for example. The tour itself went fairly well and garnered lots of positive headlines, but the scale of the promised US assistance – $100 million spread across five West African countries – was meager. As Chris Olaoluwa Ògúnmọ́dẹdé noted in his review of Harris’ tour, “At a time when Washington has directed tens of billions of dollars to support Ukraine since it was invaded by Russia, Harris’ announcement of $100 million from the US for five West African states – $20 million for each country – is a telling indication of its priorities.”

The administration’s efforts in these parts of the world follow decades of neglect, and it is being spurred to such a large extent by fear of Chinese influence that it has been less effective than it might otherwise be. When so many other governments see the US suddenly playing catch up after paying little or no attention for ages, they are naturally unimpressed with empty US boasts that “diplomacy is back.” The inconsistency in US diplomatic efforts over time makes other governments reluctant to rely on US promises, since they can see how quickly Washington’s priorities can change and how easily distracted our government can be by the latest crisis. Many governments across the so-called Global South may conclude that if their problems and concerns can’t be shoehorned into some larger US obsession they are unlikely to hold Washington’s interest for very long.

Other states can see that US diplomats always take a distant second place to the military, and it is mainly through the military that the US deals with much of the rest of the world. US diplomacy is like a plant that is so starved of sunlight because it is trying to grow up in the shadow of a giant tree. As long as the military wields such outsized influence in Congress and commands so many more resources, there is little chance that diplomacy can flourish.

Read the rest of the article at Eunomia

Daniel Larison is a weekly columnist for Antiwar.com and maintains his own site at Eunomia. He is former senior editor at The American Conservative. He has been published in the New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, World Politics Review, Politico Magazine, Orthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and Culture11, and was a columnist for The Week. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter.

Get US Troops Out of Syria Now

The White House says that Biden is “absolutely” committed to keeping US troops in Syria:

Kirby added that Biden is “absolutely” committed to keeping American troops in Syria, where they are stationed to fight back any remnants of ISIS forces.

US troops have no business being in Syria, and Congress has never authorized a military mission in Syria for any purpose. The problem with the illegal US military presence in Syria isn’t just that its official justification no longer makes sense, but that they have been sent into Syria and kept there for years solely on the president’s say-so. The original mission was unauthorized by Congress, and everything since then has likewise been unauthorized. The US also has no international mandate for operating on Syrian territory, and it definitely doesn’t have the permission of the Syrian government to be there. When the White House says that Biden is absolutely committed to keeping troops in Syria, they are saying that he is absolutely committed to violating both the Constitution and international law.

Keeping US troops in Syria also makes no sense as a matter of policy. There is no threat in Syria today that the US is plausibly defending itself against, but then there never was. If the US left Syria tomorrow, it would not compromise US or allied security in the slightest. To the extent that the fight against ISIS served any US interests, the main fight was done years ago and there is no need for US forces to hang around indefinitely to prevent some possible future resurgence. US troops and contractors are being put at risk for no good reason, and that ought to be a cause for outrage in Washington. Instead, it mostly goes unnoticed until one of them is killed, and even then there is not much of a reaction.

Read the rest of the article at SubStack

Daniel Larison is a weekly columnist for Antiwar.com and maintains his own site at Eunomia. He is former senior editor at The American Conservative. He has been published in the New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, World Politics Review, Politico Magazine, Orthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and Culture11, and was a columnist for The Week. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter.

Daniel Larison on China and ‘Our African Friends’

Near the end of an Associated Press report on Vice President Harris’ visit to Africa this week, John Kirby, a national security spokesman for the White House, was quoted saying this:

John Kirby, a White House national security spokesman, said this past week that African leaders are “beginning to realize that China is not really their friend.”

“China’s interests in the region are purely selfish, as opposed to the United States,” he said. “We are truly committed to trying to help our African friends deal with a spate of challenges.”

Kirby’s comment is an example of the mindset that explains why the U.S. struggles to improve its relationships with so many other states in Africa and elsewhere in the world. It is this mixture of self-righteousness, arrogance, and a patronizing attitude toward the other states that keeps alienating other governments instead of giving them reasons to want to cooperate with Washington. It is never a good idea to tell other governments what their real interests are, and it is usually a mistake to lecture them about their dealings with other states.

Kirby’s implication is that African leaders have previously been foolish or duped into thinking that China is their “friend,” but he suggests that they are wising up now. Claiming that African leaders are “beginning to realize that China is not really their friend” is remarkably condescending and insulting. African leaders are obviously able to understand that outside major powers are self-interested, and they would know as well as anyone else that there are no “real” friends in international politics. Even states with a long history of good relations are not really friends, but they have enough interests in common that they are able to work together constructively for their mutual benefit.

Then there is the insulting pretense, or delusion, that the US isn’t motivated by selfish concerns and wants to “help our African friends” out of some general benevolence. To cite just one example of how ridiculous this is, the US wasn’t so interested in helping our “friends” with access to vaccines at the height of the pandemic. Washington has tended to neglect their concerns and interests except when they can be shoehorned into either the “war on terror” or “great power competition.”

One of the biggest recurring problems in US relations with African states is the tendency to view them as means to some other end, and African governments are understandably wary of being used by great power rivals as part of a contest that will not benefit them. Pretending that the US is there to help “our African friends” while China is just out for its own selfish ends is not credible, and no African government is going to buy what the White House is selling. If the US wants to improve relations with African governments, it needs to stop insulting their intelligence and show them the respect that is owed to equal partners.

Read the rest of the article at SubStack

Daniel Larison is a weekly columnist for Antiwar.com and maintains his own site at Eunomia. He is former senior editor at The American Conservative. He has been published in the New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, World Politics Review, Politico Magazine, Orthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and Culture11, and was a columnist for The Week. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter.

Abandon the Pursuit of Primacy Before It’s Too Late

The AUKUS deal for nuclear-powered submarines has come under a lot of fire in Australia this week:

Stephen Wertheim makes a compelling case that the Iraq war was the result of pursuing a strategy of primacy, and the US has still not abandoned that pursuit:

After the 9/11 attacks, the architects of the invasion sought to shore up US military preeminence in the Middle East and beyond. By acting boldly, by targeting a galling adversary not involved in 9/11, the United States would demonstrate the futility of resisting American power.

As “shock and awe” gave way to chaos, insurgency, destruction, and death, the war should have discredited the primacist project that spawned it. Instead, the quest for primacy endures. US power is meeting mounting resistance across the globe, and Washington wishes to counter almost all of it, everywhere, still conflating US power projection with American interests, still trying to overmatch rivals and avoid curbing US ambitions. The results were damaging enough during the United States’ unipolar moment. Against major powers armed with nuclear weapons, they may be much worse.

When the US has waged disastrous, unnecessary wars in the decades since WWII, supporters of primacy will later dismiss the wars as “mistakes” that tell us nothing about the larger strategy that they were serving. These wars have been written off as unfortunate aberrations rather than the predictable results of pursuing dominance. Though they were once promoted by the government as central to the strategy of their time, wars in Vietnam and Iraq in particular are now conveniently remembered as blunders that have no implications for the larger US role in the world. This works out nicely for defenders of the status quo, since they don’t have to revisit any major assumptions and they feel no need to make adjustments to the strategy. Even though the pursuit of primacy keeps leading the US into one ditch after another, the pursuit continues because its supporters cannot imagine giving it up.

One reason why so many policymakers and analysts refer to the Iraq war as a mistake rather than calling it a crime is that they don’t really believe that the US is or should be bound by the same rules that constrain others. According to this view, other states may wage aggressive wars that demand universal condemnation, but the US only ever makes “mistakes” while “leading” the world. As far as its supporters are concerned, a strategy of primacy can’t be discredited because it is deemed necessary for the sake of world order. The fact that it routinely produces instability and disorder does not trouble them. Primacists take it as an article of faith that the world would fall into chaos if the US abandoned the strategy. However much harm it causes to the US and the world, that is viewed as the cost of doing business.

Read the rest of the article at SubStack

Daniel Larison is a weekly columnist for Antiwar.com and maintains his own site at Eunomia. He is former senior editor at The American Conservative. He has been published in the New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, World Politics Review, Politico Magazine, Orthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and Culture11, and was a columnist for The Week. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter.

The Trouble With AUKUS

The AUKUS deal for nuclear-powered submarines has come under a lot of fire in Australia this week:

Ex-Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating condemned the center-left Labor government’s deal with the US and UK to obtain nuclear submarines, saying the nation’s military sovereignty was being surrendered to the “whim and caprice” of Washington.

Criticism of AUKUS in Australia has been steadily growing, and it’s not surprising that there would be significant resistance to a major policy commitment that was made with so little deliberation beforehand. It is an expensive, decades-long commitment with substantial implications for Australia’s relations with all its Asian neighbors, and it is questionable whether there is enough of a political consensus behind it to keep it going. The massive price that Australia will have to pay for these submarines raises obvious questions of whether this is a wise and efficient use of their resources. The New York Times reports:

Although the AUKUS agreement was announced a year ago, the current debate has in part been sparked by the revelation that the deal is projected to cost $246 billion (368 billion Australian dollars) over the next three decades, said James Curran, a professor of Australian-U.S. history at the University of Sydney. That hefty price tag effectively asks whether China’s threat to Australia is worth that much money, he said – and the answer is unclear.

As I look at it, it seems to be a very big gamble that the Chinese threat to Australia is much greater than it really is, and they will be paying a steep price to guard against an exaggerated danger. There may be agreement between the major parties right now, but that could easily break down if the costs come to be seen as outpacing potential benefits. An arrangement that is meant to solidify the alliance with the US could very well end up straining and damaging it a decade or two from now.

Read the rest of the article at SubStack

Daniel Larison is a weekly columnist for Antiwar.com and maintains his own site at Eunomia. He is former senior editor at The American Conservative. He has been published in the New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, World Politics Review, Politico Magazine, Orthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and Culture11, and was a columnist for The Week. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter.