Worldmaking (3 page)

Roosevelt juggled and used whatever ideas best served his goals at a particular time. And from 1939 to 1945, the most original foreign-policy ideas came from outside his administration, which is why I devote a chapter to the journalist Walter Lippmann. The most read, revered, and trusted print journalist in America from Calvin Coolidge to Lyndon Johnson, Lippmann performed multiple roles during the Second World War. Lippmann helped FDR formulate a persuasive rationale for providing Great Britain with material support—so much so that a journalist from the
St. Louis Post Dispatch
threatened to investigate Lippmann's role in “this plot to get America into the war.”
26
From 1939, he identified through his syndicated “Today & Tomorrow” columns a compelling strategic rationale for facing down Germany and Japan. Then in 1943 Lippmann published
U.S. Foreign Policy: Shield of the Republic
, a book that sold close to half a million copies and was syndicated in
Reader's Digest
. Lippmann drew inspiration from Mahan, repudiated Wilson's idealism, and shot down Beard's isolationism with élan. Roosevelt needed a shaper of public opinion more than he needed a grand strategist. While there was no overt collaboration between the two men, Lippmann and Roosevelt's goals happily overlapped.

Kennan and Lippmann shared many views, but it was a bitter dispute that first brought them together. Lippmann believed that the continuation of a strong U.S.-Soviet alliance was essential to maintain postwar stability. In 1946, George Kennan made a strong case that such views were naïve. From his post at the U.S. embassy in Moscow, Kennan cabled Washington his view that Stalin was determined to expand his nation's power at the expense of American interests; thus it was essential to resist Soviet adventurism that was fueled by nationalism, deep-rooted fears of vulnerability, and a messianic Marxist-Leninist ideology. This nearly six-thousand-word “Long Telegram” is the most famous communication in the history of the State Department, and its impact in Washington was profound. A year later, writing anonymously under the letter “X,” Kennan published an essay in
Foreign Affairs
titled “The Sources of Soviet Conduct” that elaborated on this “containment” strategy, comparing the Soviet Union to a wind-up toy that would move relentlessly in a particular direction unless a barrier was placed in its way. His authorship was soon revealed, and Kennan was met with acclaim from most and scorn from some.

In a series of articles that were subsequently published as a book titled
The Cold War
—a phrase that caught on—Lippmann attacked Kennan's “containment” as a “strategic monstrosity” that would imperil the United States through the accumulation of unsustainable obligations in areas of low importance. Kennan was stung by Lippmann's assault, but he subsequently came to agree with most of what he wrote. Kennan believed a sagacious foreign policy requires flexibility and intuition, but somehow or other he bequeathed an ambiguous document—it looked a lot like a blueprint—ripe for misinterpretation. Kennan was a principal author of the central strategy America pursued through the Cold War—containment—and one of the most powerful dissenters from the decisions made in its name.

Kennan's successor as chair of the Policy Planning Staff, Paul Nitze, figured that he was simply fleshing out his predecessor's ideas when he chaired a committee that authored the top secret NSC-68 (its official title: “United States Objectives and Programs for National Security”), a seminal policy document signed by President Truman in 1950, which Kennan disliked intensely. Throughout his career, Nitze believed that a combination of psychology and systems analysis could be used to accurately assess Soviet capabilities (and hence intentions) and this could be weighed against America's military ability to discourage any Soviet attack. He described this calculation as the “correlation of forces,” and Nitze usually believed that this tilted more in Moscow's favor than was generally recognized. NSC-68 identified the Soviet Union's principal goal as “the complete subversion or forcible destruction of the machinery of government and structure of society in the countries of the non-Soviet world” and recommended a huge military buildup combined with a greater willingness to combat communism in the “Third World” as the appropriate American response.
27
When North Korea invaded South Korea two months after NSC-68 was completed, Nitze appeared vindicated.

A central figure in the final years of the Truman administration, Nitze was also a significant presence throughout the 1950s, when he lambasted the Eisenhower administration for allowing the Soviets to develop a lead in nuclear and nonnuclear military capabilities. John F. Kennedy used Nitze's identification of a “missile gap” to devastating effect against Nixon, and the logic of NSC-68 helped propel Kennedy's and Johnson's foreign-policy activism. JFK's inaugural promise to “pay any price … to assure the survival and the success of liberty” was a fair précis of NSC-68. These significantly expanded foreign-policy parameters gave individuals like Walt Rostow (an influential adviser to Kennedy and Johnson, and the subject of my first book) the space to thrive—he operated in the Age of Nitze. Though he was deeply ambivalent about Johnson's decision to Americanize the Vietnam War, a perspective shared by Lippmann and Kennan, Nitze's foreign legacy cannot be disentangled from the calamitous war in Southeast Asia.

Henry Kissinger believed that America had to step sharply back from the unsustainable commitments that Nitze's NSC-68 had encouraged. Throughout his tenure as national security adviser and later secretary of state, Kissinger encouraged a policy of détente (a relaxation of tensions) with the Soviet Union, a reduction in America's overseas commitments by delegating roles to regional powers, and formally recognizing the People's Republic of China. Kissinger was a polarizing figure: George Kennan applauded his efforts and advised him to ignore his detractors; Paul Nitze abhorred his worldview and questioned his patriotism.

Yet the foreign-policy value that Kissinger revered above all others was “credibility.” He recognized that the United States had to withdraw from Vietnam, but in a way that communicated to enemies and allies alike that the nation remained a force to be reckoned with. This was achieved through bombing and launching an “incursion” into Cambodia as well as bombing North Vietnam (with fewer qualms about civilian casualties than the Johnson administration), while at the same time withdrawing American troops and reallocating primary defensive responsibilities to the Army of the Republic of (South) Vietnam. Elsewhere, Kissinger launched a destabilization campaign against the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende in Chile, supported a Pakistani government perpetrating terrible crimes against Bengalis in the 1971 Indo-Pakistani War, and invested American credibility in a tangential though bloody conflict against communist proxies in mineral-rich Angola. Kissinger's legacy is highly controversial, combining genuine insight with reckless bellicosity, seminal diplomatic achievements, and vivid illustrations of how an amoral worldview can lead to immoral outcomes.

Like Kissinger, Paul Wolfowitz is a Jewish intellectual with a political science Ph.D. from an Ivy League college—but the similarities end there. Wolfowitz believed that Kissinger's service to the Nixon and Ford presidencies was tactically and morally deficient. Wolfowitz drew from Woodrow Wilson the exceptionalist notion that the United States was a uniquely moral, democratizing force in world affairs, and that to believe otherwise was to betray its ideals. Through his service to Presidents Carter, Reagan, and both Bushes, Wolfowitz was consistent in his view that his nation had a duty to lead the world in the direction of democracy and liberal capitalism, and that merely serving as a beacon was not enough.

During George H. W. Bush's presidency, Wolfowitz argued strongly against reducing defense spending following the collapse of the Soviet Union, and made the case, unheeded, that regime change in Iraq should have followed the ejection of Saddam Hussein's forces from Kuwait. In the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Wolfowitz forcefully remade the case that removing Saddam Hussein from power was imperative. But this was simply a first step. Mimicking Woodrow Wilson's vaulting ambitions in 1918—and showing a similar lack of respect for Mahanian historical precedent—Wolfowitz called for a wholesale transformation of the Middle East. He observed that the United States had successfully occupied Japan and Germany after the Second World War and transformed these societies into high-performing democracies. Without reference to the historical context of those nation-building campaigns, he provocatively extended his analysis to ask: What was stopping the United States from doing the same in Iraq? Though costly in human and financial terms, such a move could ultimately pacify not just Iraq but also a restive and dangerous region. With Saddam gone and Iraq thriving, its neighbors would inevitably tilt in the direction of representation, accountability, and economic competence. A democratic wave would redound to the advantage of all.

Wolfowitz's campaign did not end well. On December 18, 2007, Barack Obama, then a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, observed, “I am running to do more than end a war in Iraq. I am running to change the mindset that got us into war.”
28
He had identified that mind-set in his most significant speech on foreign policy prior to his winning the presidency, delivered at an “antiwar rally” in Chicago in 2002. Obama lambasted the move to war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq as a “dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics…” “What I am opposed to,” said Obama, “is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne.”
29

President Obama's foreign policies have been shaded by this aversion to ideology. The president is opposed to declaring allegiance to a fixed foreign-policy principle, and it seems highly unlikely that he will bequeath a presidential foreign-policy “doctrine”—unless the absence of one counts as one. He declined to consult Congress over the intervention in Libya in 2011, but did so in regard to Syria in 2013. He ordered a troop surge in Afghanistan in 2009—which he now seems to view as his gravest foreign-policy error—and then retreated from further commitments with alacrity. Obama drew a red line on Syria regarding the use of chemical weapons, invited Congress to decide what to do when Assad crossed it, and then ceded a starring role in finding a solution to Vladimir Putin. “Folks here in Washington like to grade on style,” Obama told ABC News. “I'm much more concerned about getting the policy right.”
30
More than any other individual surveyed in this book, Obama believes that foreign policy is an imperfect art, that consistency is not a virtue in and of itself. The president appears to concur with Ralph Waldo Emerson (and FDR) that “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.”

*   *   *

These nine individuals are difficult to pigeonhole using the conventional terminology favored by scholars of international relations. This book challenges the oft-cited distinction between realism and idealism as an imperfect expression of the principal divide in U.S. foreign policy. There is insight to be gleaned in interrogating diplomacy through this prism, clearly. But it has also become a little tired. Instead, I suggest that another binary reveals something different about America's interactions with the world: art versus science.

Each of the individuals in this book approached foreign policymaking with contrasting manners of thought and expression—their education and subsequent disciplinary preferences were quite different. Some—like Mahan, Kennan, and Kissinger—were drawn primarily to history, philosophy, and literature, which tended to impart a sense of tragedy and caution, and a reluctance (unless the fate of the world was deemed to be at stake as per Kennan and the H-bomb) to depart from observed historical precedent. But others, including Wilson, Nitze, and Wolfowitz, were trained in the social sciences—political science, economics, psychology, and later the fledgling discipline of international relations—and were more inclined to view the world as “makable” following the identification and application of the appropriate patterns and theories. Individuals possessed of such ideas often seek to transcend history rather than operate within its observed confines—to do things that have never been tried.

This was certainly the case with Wilson at the Paris Peace Conference and Wolfowitz in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. Both believed that the world (or significant parts of it) had to be remade to suit American interests—which in the long run was best for everyone—not that America should regard the world's complexities with clearer eyes and work with what could be seen. Or as George W. Bush asserted in his second inaugural address, “The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world.”
31
Shapers of such sentiments often have a strong sense that history is heading in a particular direction, which brings firmness and consistency in the application of policy. But those who claim to have discerned the world's final destination often possess undue certainty about the quality of their counsel and are unwilling to accept errors in conception, only in implementation.

Those who view foreign policy as an art, conversely, believe that the world cannot be treated as a laboratory, that the course of history is unknowable, that policymakers must rely upon intuition and creativity alone. Their recommendations address the world that actually rather than potentially exists. Precedent is essential, and policymaking based on abstract theorizing is dismissed as reckless. Foreign-policy artists view their job as to cope as best they can with a world that cannot be bent to the will of a single nation—no matter how powerful. They do not seek to produce new systemic knowledge; their artistry is applied to advancing American interests, protecting its borders, and preventing the world from blowing up in a million possible ways. To attempt more invites Nemesis.