Download Manage War on Terrorism Coalition

Themes
 Reactions to 9/11
 Approaches to War on Terrorism
 Recommendations for Approaching War on Terrorism
 Lessons Learned from 9/11
 Effects and Contexts of Globalization with Regard to
National Security
 Accounting for US Reaction to 9/11 and Approaches to
War on Terrorism
 Different types of scholars
Stephen Walt, Beyond Bin Laden
Walt a realist providing proscriptions for what Bush
administration should do to combat terrorism. Written in
immediate aftermath of 9/11.
Basically a plan based on an understanding of the realities of
a globalized world, with the restraints on the US and the
problems such a world generates.
Understands the world in terms of states, and in terms of
order and threats to order. Starts with an understanding of
the international contexts, then moves to considerations of
US policy.
Walt: Lessons of 9/11
 Maintaining US predominant position in the world is expensive
 The US is not universally liked.
 The most important threats to order and security are from failed
states. As such, failed states are not just a humanitarian problem.
 The US must have allies in order to operate effectively in the
world.
Observations:
 As “lessons,” these are new realizations; their opposites wre
assumed previously.
 But why? Were these not obvious before 9/11? Previous
experiences with terrorists, Somalia and other failed states,
criticisms of US in Middle East, Muslim world, elsewhere.
Goals:
 Manage War on Terrorism Coalition, which includes
conferring with allies, partnerships with less than
desirable regimes, compromise on various treaties,
dialogue with PRC and closer relationship with Russia
Action: Move into Iraq, coalition of the willing, rejection
of Global Warming and ICC treaties
 Get Control of WMD’s, including dealing with loose
nukes in Russia and elsewhere, arms control treaties.
Action: Iraq as source of WMDs
Goals:
 Rebuild ties with Arab and Muslim World: pressure on
Israel to settle Palestinian problem
Action: Dealing with Iraq as spreading democracy,
Roadmap for Palestinian state
 Reconstruct Afghanistan
Action: Weak still, still US presence 10 years after
invasion
Problems:
 Difficult to rebuild Afghanistan
 Difficulty of resolving Palestinian question
 More active the US is, the more likely it is to stir
further resentment.
Are these the reasons why the Administration did not
pursue the goals Walt provides or were unable to
achieve those goals?
Leffler: Bush Doctrine After 9/11
Leffler is an historian of American history
General argument is that Bush Doctrine:
 Has in its component parts deeper roots in past
policies than critics allege, and is also more nuanced
and potentially more effective than critics charge
 But, nevertheless, as a whole it is a radical departure
from the past, and as such is not a bold or particularly
effective policy.
Articulation vs. Reality of Bush
Strategy
Articulation:
 Emphasis on values (freedom and democracy) not interests
 Emphasis on alliances (but not necessarily multilateralsim)
 Emphasis on addressing global injustice as a normative
goal through the mechanism of market capitalism
Reality:
An attempt to meld an emphasis on values with a realpolitik
focus on interests
Question: why? A sign of the inevitability of realpolitik? A
sign that realpolitik must be cloaked with a rhetoric of
values and justice?
Components of Bush Doctrine
 Pre-emptive action as both acceptable and necessary
based on threat of terrorism
 Attempt to deter threats by maintaining a
preponderance of power
 Use power to promote democracy and freedom as well
as deter threats and keep peace
 Articulated as “a balance of power that favors peace”
(and thus as a mixture of realist with Wilsonian
conceptions)
Historical Roots of Bush Strategy
 Cold War policy really not of containment, but of
gaining and maintaining a predominance of power
that would lead to the transformation of the Soviet
Union.
 Cold War and other instances of unilateral actions
 Long history of pre-emptive actions to eliminate
threats, particularly in Latin America, and articulation
of doctrine of preemption in Clinton administration.
 Emphasis on democratic peace that goes back to the
1980s.
Question: accurate understanding?
Critique of Bush Doctrine
 Wilsonian and subsequent pursuit of democracy and freedom
linked to a community of power that emphasized selfdetermination and international institutions, as well as
international law, not unilateral predominance and hegemony.
 Balance of power implies equilibrium rather than hegemony and
predominance, and assumes US balancing, not being balanced
against
 Balance of power also assumes states, not the transformation of
states or engagement with failed states.
 Threatens existing community of power without putting
anything positive in its place.
Thus it does depart from historical policies as a whole and is not
coherent.
Pateman: Globalization and
American Exceptionalism
Pateman a New Zealand scholar
Argument: 9/11 showed that the US, due to globalization, not exception in
its security; as with everyone else, it is vulnerable to terrorism. But
Bush responded with an articulation of American exceptionalism that
emphasized unilateral rather than multilateral approaches to the
problem. In doing so, he followed a developing trend in US foreign
policy that emphasized unilateral exceptionalism and was unable to
fully digest the implications of globalization.
Thus:
 American policies incorporate an understanding of exceptionalism
 The question is whether that understanding will lean toward unilateral
or multilateral approaches.
 Affected by development of policies and incomplete American
globalization
Roots of Exceptionalism
 American creed that asserts that as nation embracing
liberal values, the US has a unique role to play in the
world
 Geography and wealth
 Continuing influence from early history forward of
moral and particularly Christian principles.
Effects of American Exceptionalism
 US understood as not just unique, but exemplary– an
example and role model for everyone else.
 US has a duty to spread American values
 Nationalism expressed as national pride and belief
that US best nation in the world.
 Provides a lens for understanding foreign policy, in
that roughly before WWII, exceptionalism grounded
an isolationist reluctance to become involved in the
world, and after WWII grounded a policy of
involvement in ordering and transforming the world.
Globalization
The contemporary understanding of exceptionalism is
being deployed in world that is undergoing
globalization and has seen the end of the Cold War:
 Globalization may have had as much to do with the
end of the Cold War as US actions
 No more superpower conflict
 Unipolar world
 Great links among countries and citizens; porous
bounaries, shrinking distances
Early Responses to End of Cold War
and Globalization
Bush I administration: between a skeptical view of
globalization (it changes nothing important) and a
transformational view (states still important, but they
must operate differently than before).
 Strategy was to further globalization in the understanding
it meant Americanization and the spread of American
values. Operated on the basis of a generally inclusive and
multilateral approach to spreading freedom, democracy,
human rights, market capitalism and international
cooperation.
 Iraq war generally multilateral, approved UN intervention
in Somalia to restore order and for humanitarian purposes.
Problems of Globalized World that
were revealed by Somalia:
 Weak/failed states the main sources of instability and
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threats
Lack of legitimate governance is what causes civil
conflict
New wars are driven by tribal, ethnic identities
Media have the ability to internationalize conflicts
National boundaries are porous with regard to security
threats
Responses by the international community are largely
determined by the US position
US Reaction to Somalia incidents
 Criticism that such interventions, because they are not
linked to vital US interests, should stop
 Clinton administration changed strategy
 More unilateral approach
 Blocked UN interventions in Bosnia and Rwanda
 When it did intervene, it did so through NATO and by
using air power
 Moves in multilateral direction blocked by Republicans
in Congress
Project for New American Century
Group of neo-conservatives who were influential in Bush
II campaign and administration whose writings
reinforced unilateral understanding of exceptionalism:
 Prevent rise of any rival superpower
 Use force preemptively against potential threats
 Confront rather than contain rogue states such as Iraq
 Use power and ideas to spread American values in post
Cold War world just as US did in winning the Cold
War
Reactions to 9/11
 US vulnerable despite military power and status as
superpower
 Not everybody admires US values or thinks US
hegemony benign
George Bush
Responded with characteristic exclusivist, moralist,
Christian understanding of exceptionalism:
 World divided between good and evil
 Multilaterial action only on US terms
Afghanistan and Iraq: Differences
Afghan War: multilateral approach that led to military
success– non-exclusivist understanding of
exceptionalism
Iraq: unilateral approach and exclusivist exceptionalism
that demonstrates the ascendancy of the neoconservatives and the problems of that approach. Also
demonstrated general trend of Bush policy:
 React aggressively to failed states
 Exceptionalism conceptualized in terms of values
 Seek international support on own terms and reserve
right to act unilaterally and preemptively
Why this policy and why does
public accept it?
Policy:
 Bush’s religious views
 Administration’s desire for moral and intellectual clarity
and decisiveness over debate and weighing of costs and
benefits
 Belief that US policymakers create reality rather than react
to it
Public acceptance:
 Identity as Christians
 Unevenness of US globalization: US citizens still isolated
an do not experience globalization as others do
Problems with policy
 Inability of administration to clearly define enemies
 Willingness to cooperate with any state against
terrorists– neglect of civil rights, return of Cold War
cooperation with authoritarian regimes.
 Emphasis on military means
 Neglect of rule of law and liberal values in fighting
terrorism
Desch: Illiberal Liberalism
 Generally conservative American political scientist
Argument: Both the origins and problems of post 9/11
approach not influence of 9/11 nor the displacement of
liberal values by religion or security concerns, but the
influence of liberalism itself. Left unchecked, the
internal workings of liberalism turns into an illiberal
hostility to pluralism and civil rights.
Follows in footsteps of Hartz and others that there is a
“tyrannical compulsion” in liberalism, that it responds
“hysterically” to alien motives and that liberal analysis
tends to see the world in either/or terms.
Lockean and Kantian Liberalism
Lockean liberalism assumes rationality, easy political and economic
development, favors democracy over order and condemns revolutions.
Makes liberal policy at times utopian, counter-revolutionary and
arrogant.
Kantian liberalism
 privileges the notion of democratic peace (that democratic nations will
not go to war unless forced because citizens will restrain officials).
 Privileges international organization
 Argues for political uniformity (republican democracy) rather than
pluralism for purposes of peace
 Thus holds that states have a moral duty to enter a world order and that
states in such an order may make the amoral decision for coerce other
states to change their regime to accord with the liberal democratic
ideal, just as individuals have the right to create a state and force others
to obey it.
Effects of Kantian Understanding of
Democratic Peace
 A liberal foreign policy could morally force states to accept
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a liberal democratic government even if its citizens did not
want it. The imperative of democratic peace trumps selfdetermination
While will probably remain at peace with other
democracies, will be likely to engage in conflicts with
weaker non-democracies
Can combine with non-liberal analyses to produce
understandings of benign hegemony and altruistic
imperialism
Can lead to aggressive efforts at democracy promotion
Leads to activist and expansionist policies.
Illiberal Responses to Terrorism
 Neo conservatives are generally liberals, differing from
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Wilsonians only in their preference for unilateralism. So
neo-conservative agenda really a liberal agenda
Overstate the threat posed by terrorism
Prefer eliminating to containing threats
Aggressive democracy promotion
Use force in humanitarian interventions
Domestically:
 Curtail civil liberties based on hostility to what is not liberal
 Hysteria in the face of what is not understood. Opponents
who condemn liberalism must be crazy or evil because liberal
precepts are rational and self-evident.
Solution
 If the problem is liberalism, making policy more
liberal will not eliminate the illiberal elements.
 Must have none-liberal understanding to check
liberalism.
 Best solution is to have liberal view for domestic
affairs, but realism for foreign policy.
Comparisons
 Lessons of globalization: learned in 2001 or earlier?
 US rejects globalization or is not globalized?
 What are the roots of the Bush approach? In past
policies, in American culture or in ideology?
 Are the problems with American policy due to its
adherence to the past or is break with the past? With
its incoherence or in its liberal coherence? In its
realism or lack of realism?