FOREIGN POLICY JULY 21, 2010
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My last post, suggesting it might be morally problematic for a commander-in-chief to persist in waging a war to which he is less than fully committed, drew this response from Andrew Exum of the Center for a New American Security:
Bacevich wants us to consider foreign policy decisions black-and-white moral affairs. Bush, he argues, reliably chose the wrong option out of two available but was at least guided by a flawed moral compass. Obama, Bacevich argues, is amoral. This is absurd. In matters of war, leaders at all levels make hard moral choices involving sin and virtue. One could describe this as the hard moral economics of war....
[J]ust because you disagree with the Obama Administration on Afghanistan does not mean that the administration lacks a moral compass.... If Bacevich was serious, he would consider not just the strategic risks to a complete withdrawal from Afghanistan—which is what he is apparently advocating—but also the moral costs to be paid by the Afghan people we leave behind. In that light, the moral economics of war are no more black and white than the strategic economics of war. We're left with hard choices and trade-offs, and the public discourse is very poorly served by those who pretend they are easy.
In fact, it is Exum who simplifies the moral calculus, deploying “the moral costs to be paid by the Afghan people” as if it were some sort of irrefutable trump card. Exum is by no means the only observer to engage in this sort of posturing. It has become a staple of American political discourse: Advocates of launching or prolonging wars respond to anyone questioning war’s necessity by loudly insisting that the United States has a moral obligation to pursue the policy they happen to favor.
Let us note before exploring this matter further that the issue is almost entirely a theoretical one. There exists precious little evidence to suggest that moral considerations in practice figure substantially in the making of foreign policy. Americans readily accept that statement as true when applied to Beijing or Moscow or Paris (especially Paris). It’s long past time that they accept it with reference to Washington as well. Perhaps moral issues should influence the formulation of American statecraft. Yet they don’t, except perhaps as an afterthought. To imagine that Barack Obama and his lieutenants sit around the Oval Office anguishing over “sin and virtue” serves only to impede our understanding of how power actually gets exercised. (To imagine that members of the previous administration did so is risible).
That moral considerations affect public perceptions of policy (even in France) is undoubtedly true. Hence, the efforts of policymakers to justify their actions by citing some higher purpose. In the case of, say, a Franklin Roosevelt or Richard Nixon, this is almost entirely cynical. Yet there are also cases—Woodrow Wilson offers one example, George W. Bush another—where statesmen beguile themselves with their own rhetoric and genuinely come to believe what they find convenient to believe.
The problem—illustrated by Exum’s commentary—is that what passes for moral discourse is almost invariably superficial. While pretending to probe deeply, it actually serves to trivialize.
To illustrate my point, here are four questions to which I hope Exum (and other advocates of analyzing U.S. policy from a moral perspective) will respond:
To the extent that U.S. officials should take moral considerations into account, which comes first—the government’s obligation to provide for the well-being of the American people or the government’s obligation to provide for the wellbeing of people who are not Americans?
To the extent that the United States government has a moral obligation to people who are not Americans, why does the moral obligation to the people of Afghanistan qualify as a particular priority?
To the extent that the United States government has a specific and pressing moral obligation to Afghanistan, why does open-ended war qualify as the preferred way to acquit that obligation?
To the extent that fulfilling America’s moral obligation to the Afghan people requires the perpetuation of war, what should we make of the fact that responsibility for fulfilling that obligation falls on the backs of a small segment of our fellow citizens while the rest carry on as if there were no war?
On the first question, my own view is that U.S. officials have a moral obligation to the American people that takes precedence over all others. Those officials take an oath to the Constitution. That document does not commit the United States to saving or policing the world. It declares that the purpose of our union is to “secure the Blessings of Liberty to Ourselves and our Posterity.” Although not necessarily evident to those who make their living in well-heeled Washington think tanks, that obligation remains unfulfilled. (Were foreign policy analysts to set up shop in downtown Detroit or Cleveland, they might reach different conclusions.) Indeed, with military adventurism helping to swell our trillion dollar annual federal deficits, posterity is in for a rude awakening: By the time members of Exum’s generation get around to filing for social security and Medicare, there won’t be any. When the coffers are bare, that failure will be moral as well as fiscal.
On the second question, if the United States does have an obligation to others, it’s not at all clear why the Afghans should come first. Does anyone think that America’s moral debt to the Iraqi people has been paid in full? How about the Vietnamese? Iranians? Filipinos? Nicaraguans? Guatemalans? Cubans? The list goes on. On this score, my personal favorite is Mexico–a near-neighbor used and abused for most of two centuries. We stole Texas. We launched a war of naked aggression to seize California and the southwest. We’ve pillaged Mexico’s resources. We’ve meddled in their revolution. We’ve a long track record of siding with kleptocratic elites against the Mexican people. Today the American demand for drugs along with our lax gun laws is transforming Mexico into a violence-riddled narco-state. Sure, Mexican institutions (like Afghan institutions) are weak, inept, and thoroughly corrupt. But does that provide a moral justification for treating Mexico like a footnote? If the U.S. Treasury has extra billions available for nation-building, doesn’t simple justice demand that we ship the money south of the border before attending to Central Asia?
And even if Afghanistan deserves to be first in line, why does it follow that war provides the best means of doing right by the Afghan people? The truth is that few of the resources that Washington expends in Afghanistan actually benefit the people. Instead, most dollars go to arms merchants and private security contractors, a.k.a., mercenaries, who couldn’t care less about the people’s wellbeing. Meanwhile U.S. operations routinely kill and maim innocent civilians: our commanders may regret that fact, but regret hasn’t ended the practice. Were the United States serious about actually doing something for Afghans, we’d spend less on munitions and more on economic assistance and social development. Better still, we’d offer interested Afghans the chance to get out of Afghanistan altogether and pursue the American dream, welcoming any and all to settle in the Land of Liberty. Carving an Afghan enclave out of a few million unused acres of Montana and Wyoming would show that U.S. expressions of solidarity with suffering Afghans go beyond mere rhetoric.
And finally, even if perpetuating a war already nearly a decade old really does provide the best way to meet some overriding collective U.S. obligation toward Afghanistan, it would seem to follow that the burden of service and sacrifice should be equitably distributed among Americans. Rather than passing the bill to Exum’s children, the present generation of Americans should pay for the war through higher taxes or by reducing domestic spending. They should also pay by changing the socioeconomic composition of the American military, ensuring that the U.S. forces sent off to Afghanistan “look like” America itself. Surely, it cannot be moral to pursue a policy of endless war, when the burden of service and sacrifice falls on the shoulders of 0.5 percent of the population.
It is Exum who would simplify the moral issues raised by Afghanistan. He does so above all by ignoring them.
Andrew J. Bacevich is professor of history and international relations at Boston University. He is the author of, most recently, Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War.
11 comments
Knockout. my personal favorite is also Mexico. then Afghanistan, because we did abandon them after the Soviets withdrew. There just has to be a better way than what we are doing because Pakistan will be next while America rusts away. Our Marines should be rebuilding Detroit and Cleveland and Buffalo and Newark and New Orleans...
- K2K
July 21, 2010 at 12:24am
Yes. But I'd also say that we need to understand that adventures like Afghanstan lead to us being the upaid police force for regimes that have little legitimacy themselves. One of the reasons we defeated the communists in the Philippines in the late '40s was that there was a genuine effort to transform the economic relations of the country and not just shovel $$ to the local warlords.
- ironyroad
July 21, 2010 at 1:33am
Mr Bacevich starts his argument with Andrew Exum by constructing a straw man: "it is Exum who simplifies the moral calculus, deploying “the moral costs to be paid by the Afghan people” as if it were some sort of irrefutable trump card. " Exum does nothing of the kind; quite the opposite, in fact. He says that the costs to the Afghan people if we leave should be one factor among many we must consider when making the decision to say or go. These costs are real; life in Afghanistan without US troops might be far worse, particularly for women. They do not override all other considerations, but no reasonable person can ignore them.
- K_Wilson
July 21, 2010 at 11:09am
I felt confused in the way you explained some concepts Prof. Breitbart. You mentioned that Bush believed in Iraq's war and that Obama does not really believe in Afghanistan's war. You also argue that it is only the 'strategic' that counts in the execution of foreign policy power, and that the 'moral' is essentially posturing that serves to hide deeper moral questions that have other negative consequences (bring Afghans to Montana? billions more to Mexico?). The conclusion that follows is that Bush believed in Iraq for strategic reasons, and he believed in them deeply, and that Obama does not believe in Afghanishtan's war also for strategic reasons. So it seems to me that the argument you are trying to make is: "Obama lacks character [why the word moral in the first post if we have agreed that morality in public policy is essentially posturing?] to pull out of Afghanistan, given that he does not believe in the strategic reasons for war there." To which I respond: for strategic reasons, it would be the dumbest thing for Obama to leave Afghanistan right now, because the most powerful nation in the world cannot have a president that, in the world of public (and international) perception, bends backwards whenever there is difficulty. That is why there is a need for a timetable: to show that Obama is calling the shots and is not merely a lame duck president reacting to circumstances. The interesting question really is: what is strategic? If Obama is found at fault somewhere, is if his strategic, private considerations involve a considerable chunk of mere political survival. If he is willing to put his prospects for 2012 (strong polling, weak Republican attacks) ahead of what he genuinely considers the best for the U.S. (i.e. pulling out), then we should criticize him strongly. How to figure that out is perhaps impossible. What complicates this even more is whether Obama ties the welfare of the country post-2012 with a second Obama presidency. Then he is not really lacking character by deciding to stay in Afghanistan, but just calling the shots and furthening his vision.
- candela
July 21, 2010 at 12:02pm
Dr. Bacevich draws up an indictment of America for a multitude of sins, the whole of them powerful evidence that U.S. foreign policy is derived from something other than the genuine consideration of moral claims on our national conscience. It's certainly not an unprecedented charge. I've read enough of Ulysses Grant to know that he was withering in his criticism of our hostilities with Mexico, treating our actions as unjustified incursions into sovereign territory for a host of ignoble purposes, starting with land seizures. But having diagnosed a national ailment, one that has been persistent and systemic, Bacevich has only hinted at its sources, which are widespread and deep, stemming more from our unchecked national appetites than any particular individual or ideological movement. Maybe it is an inevitable casualty of our politically charged public sphere, but the fact is, we will never approach a meaningful solution to avoiding unnecessary conflict until we recognize that finger-pointing is not only counterproductive (and usually hypocritical), but totally misplaced. We all genuinely share in the blame for our failures, the most strident commentators on national affairs as much as anyone else.
- roqabs
July 21, 2010 at 5:16pm
What an insult! Prof. Bacevich, not Prof. Breitbart
- candela
July 21, 2010 at 5:18pm
These are some of the strangest assertions I've ever. State autonomy and moral illusion? Make no mistake, there is a moral consequence to everything we do or don't do. Claiming otherwise is an abrogation of individual cum collective. What shall a Dr. doctor?
- jacko
July 22, 2010 at 11:02am
This article is truly ludicrous and it illustrates the naïveté of a specific kind of liberalism that refuses to make the difficult moral calculations when they are needed and contents itself to look back with the comfort of hindsight to cast convenient moral judgements. Today Mr. Bacevich wants the U.S. to withdraw from Afghanistan entirely. One year from now, I predict he will condemn the U.S. for its abandonment of the Afghan people to the brutality of the Taliban. Here are some factors that he can plug into his moral calculus. In the nine years of U.S. involvement, 16,000 Afghan civilians have died; a horrendous fact, to be sure. In the nine years previous to 2001, however, 400,000 Afghans were killed. As the U.S. sends signals of withdrawal, the ethnic sectarians and warlords are no doubt gearing up for a bloodbath of catastrophic proportions. The opium trade will explode. Its international neighbors will use Afghanistan as a proxy against one another and against the U.S. Women will once again be subject to institutionalized brutality. Al Qaeda will find new refuge amongst this chaos and will exploit Pakistan's perpetual disarray to acquire nuclear material. To think that these possibilities ought not cast a moral dimension on our policy making is as absurd as thinking that Afghans do not rightly claim a special obligation on our national conscience.
- bdesplin
July 22, 2010 at 1:47pm
The problem is that we cannot afford to police Afghanistan on an open-ended basis for the foreseeable future. The wave of negative events that you describe are either happening already or are likely to happen if the Afghans can't get beyond their tribal loyalties and corrupt system (or non-system) of government. We are in a lose-lose situation, unfortunately, as we have to prevent the catastrophe happening and yet can't see a way beyond an endless cycle of prevention/crisis/prevention. To put it simply, if we are the only thing between the Taliban and the collapse of Afghanistan back into Islamic fundamentalist dictatorship and all that it'll bring with it, that's not a good place to be.
- ironyroad
July 22, 2010 at 5:28pm
Too late to the discussion for this to matter, but I'm adding it anyway. On Prof. Bacevich's first and last questions: readers of his work will recognize long-standing concerns of his, concerns that are sometimes associated with paleo-(not neo-)conservatism and its resistance to foreign entanglements (!). Which is NOT a mark against the concerns. The last one in particular, his opposition to a volunteer army (not to mention mercenaries) and the way it enables relatively cost-free (measured in blood not treasure) military adventures that a genuine citizen army would make politically far more difficult...well, as our generation (collegiate class of '69) knows, a draft-supported military is now a political impossibility, barring outright attack. Which of course is why he has argued that our military ought to serve exclusively defensive purposes, and most certainly not nation-building. On the first question, the one about the president's constitutional duty to provide for the defense of our liberty: isn't the over-riding argument in favor of the Afghan war to deny Al Qaeda the reconstitution of its Afghan haven? And in that sense a defensive reaction to 9/11? I don't find that argument compelling, please note, and to the extent that the argument does hold water, Prof. Bacevich's reference to non-military forms of aid and intervention have been made forcefully by numerous other commentators (don't ask for names, I don't keep a bibliography). Which is all a long-winded way of saying that I applaud his contribution here and find much to agree with in his jaundiced view of the real long-range driving forces in American foreign policy (thank you, U.S. Grant, for having told the truth in your memoirs about the Mexican War). The roots of which are indeed very deep: try reading Gordon Wood's new "Empire of Liberty", an oxymoron that says it all.
- mjhollerich@stthomas.edu
July 24, 2010 at 9:36am
There are real practical as well as moral reasons to fix mexico. Or at least make it better. We can't rely on ongoing poor job market here to stem the tide of illegal immigration and the associated problems. and the essential anarchy in a lot of mexico has already come north.
- miceelf
July 25, 2010 at 9:11am