US National Defense for the Twenty-first Century

Grand Exit Strategy

Edward A. Olsen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781135308773
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

This provocative critique of Washington's current security policies, draws on the arguments made by an array of non-interventionist and conservative-nationalist scholars. It provides a blueprint for a more restrained and unilateral US role in global affairs.

1 Exit Strategy: An Introduction

When the phrase 'exit strategy' is used in American foreign policy circles it is routinely associated with criticism of a lack of an 'end game' goal in a specific set of circumstances. This type of criticism has been leveled against all post-World War II presidents, although post-Vietnam War presidents have borne the brunt of 'exit strategy' criticism. Much of this criticism can be attributed to the so-called Vietnam Syndrome, which embodies an American propensity to be both skeptical of their leaders' judgments and extraordinarily risk averse when it comes to putting US forces in harm's way.¹ Exit strategy criticism, which derived from the legacy of the Vietnam Syndrome, reached new heights during the Clinton administration, notable for its repeated - if half-hearted - interventionist exploits. Its military and diplomatic track record in Somalia, Bosnia, Haiti, Iraq, North Korea, Macedonia and Kosovo was replete with uncertainties and ambiguous results. It drew more than its share of exit strategy critics from across the political spectrum.²

In fact, the politically diverse nature of most of the criticism of postVietnam War US foreign policy, from Presidents Ford to Clinton, helps to illustrate one of its central characteristics. Usually exit strategy critics' animosity centers on their frustration with a given administration's failure to be sufficiently clear about US goals and objectives. They usually fear that Washington will so entrap the United States in an underdeveloped policy that it will endanger America's ability to meet its international responsibilities to preserve world peace and stability. In short, both the established policy's advocates and most critics of an inadequate exit strategy are internationalists to their core.

Not all the critics fit that description, however. Among the exit strategy critics are a relative handful of analysts who entertain a broader vision, perceiving Washington's lack of various specific exit strategies as a sign of national overextension and poor policy coordination. Embedded within that lot are an even smaller group of dissenting analysts who advocate rethinking the fundamental purposes of American foreign policy.

This volume is intended to build on the writings of various noninterventionist, isolationist and Libertarian foreign policy analysts³ to advocate another conceptual level of exit strategy. When one thinks of the phrase 'grand strategy' one usually encounters military or political strategists, asserting proactive measures designed to enhance a country's national power by relatively aggressive means.⁴ It is not a phrase which implies a narrowly defined war-fighting strategy. Rather, it is a phrase applicable to the broad foreign policy principles which are behind a country's defense policy. Grand Exit Strategy emphasizes this approach and stresses the foreign policy framework within which national security policy is devised. The main proposition of this volume is that it is both possible and desirable to make the concept of 'exit strategy' the central organizing principle of a US national strategy designed to extract the United States from unnecessary, costly and sometimes dangerous security obligations rather than a means to rectify marginal mistakes. In other words, the best way to pursue US national defense in the twenty-first century is to integrate the notion of an exit strategy into all facets of US foreign and defense policies, creating a grand exit strategy.

As the twenty-first century unfolds the United States finds itself an active participant in a number of alliances, agreements and coalitions bilateral and multilateral. Conventional wisdom among post-Cold War Americans - elites and masses - holds that these strategic relationships have intrinsic value and should be perpetuated. The end of the Cold War and collapse of the Soviet Union should have forced Americans to address an issue that was postponed at the end of World War II: what is the most appropriate peacetime role for the United States in international affairs? This situation should have compelled Americans to rethink the fundamentals of US foreign policy, but - despite claims to the contrary - they did not really do so.

Instead, American leaders in the 1990s stressed institutional continuity within alliances and goal restructuring to adapt to post-Cold War challenges. In that context many Americans are bent on retaining the United States' hegemonistic pre-eminence by stressing the unique capabilities of the United States to lead the world and intervene in far-flung countries. President Clinton encapsulated that view when he said 'America remains the indispensable nation, the world's greatest force for peace' and later added that Americans should resist 'minding our own business'.⁵ Prominent former Democratic Congressman and fervent internationalist, Lee H. Hamilton, elaborated on that strategic vision, 'If something important needs to be done in the world, the U.S. needs to play a leadership role. When we sit on the sidelines, the world is a more dangerous, unstable place'.⁶

This is a flawed interventionist vision upon which to base US foreign and national security policy. The goal of this volume is to persuade the reader that a non-interventionist foreign policy is preferable to the flawed assertive internationalism which has dominated US policy-making for decades. The chapters in this volume shall articulate what is wrong with existing policy, examine the reasons why Americans should return to the United States' non-interventionist traditions, and propose a new strategic framework for US foreign policy and outline an alternative vision. Next, a series of steps shall be offered suggesting viable means to disengage from anachronistic strategic burdens and move toward geopolitical independence. Finally, likely future international crises and political events are examined to demonstrate how a grand exit strategy would work in practice. Each of these chapters treats recurrent policy and historical themes from a particular perspective, necessitating some overlap in the themes across the chapters. Although some redundancy is unavoidable, it serves a purpose in underscoring the central theses of this volume.

Notes

1. For a very comprehensive listing of critical analyses stemming from the Vietnam War, see R. D. Burns and M. Leitenberg, The Wars in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, 1945-19X2 (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO Information Services, 1984) (especially chapter 4 'United States and The Politics of Interventionism' and chapter 9 'The War at Home').

2. In addition to the numerous contextual examples cited below, see the following overviews for analyses of the Vietnam Syndrome's lasting legacy: H. G. Summer, Jr, 'The Vietnam Syndrome and the American People', Journal of American Culture, Spring (1994), pp. 53—9; and G. Simons, Vietnam Syndrome: Impact on US Foreign Policy (New York: St Martin's Press, 1998).

3. Notable examples are R. W. Tucker, A New Isolationism: Threat or Promise (Washington, DC: Potomac Associates/Universe Books, 1972); R. H. Puckett, America Faces the World: Isolationist Ideology in American Foreign Policy (New York: MSS Information Corporation, 1972); J. D. Doenecke, The Literature of Isolationism: A Guide to Non-Interventionist Scholarship, 1930-1972 (Colorado Springs, CO: Ralph Myles, 1972); R. Radosh, Prophets on the Right: Profiles of Conservative Critics of American Globalism (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1975); E. C. Ravenal, Never Again: Learning from America's Foreign Policy Failures (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1980), and his 'The Case for Strategic Disengagement', Foreign Affairs, April (1973), pp. 505-21; M. Krauss, How NATO Weakens the West (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986); D. Calleo, Beyond American Hegemony: The Future of the Western Alliance (New York: Basic Books, 1987); A. H. Harrington (ed.), Putting America First (Washington: USIC Educational Foundation, 1987); P. J. Buchanan, 'America First - And Second, and Third', The National Interest, Spring (1990), pp. 77-82 and his A Republic, Not an Empire: Reclaiming America's Destiny (Washington, DC: Regnery, 1999); S. Van Evera, 'The Case Against Intervention', The Atlantic Monthly, July (1990), pp. 72-80; Special issue on 'America First', Chronicles, December (1991); T. G. Carpenter, A Search for Enemies: America's Alliances after the Cold War (Washington, DC: The Cato Institute, 1992), and his Beyond NATO: Staying Out of Europe's Wars (Washington, DC: The Cato Institue, 1994); W Blum, Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Intervention Since World War II (Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 1995); E. A. Nordlinger, Isolationism Reconfigured: American Foreign Policy for a New Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995); B. Kauffman, America First! Its History, Culture, and Politics (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1995), and his 'Don't Underrate Isolationism', The Nation, 6 June 1987, pp. 758-60; C. Johnson, Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire (New York: Owl Books, Henry Holt, 2000); and R. M. Ebeling and J. G. Hornberger (eds), The Failure of America's Foreign Wars (Fairfax, VA: Future of Freedom Foundation, 1996).

See, also, the far more cautiously neo-isolationist writings of W G. Hyland, 'The Case for Pragmatism', Foreign Affairs, 71, 1 (1991-92), pp. 38-52, and his 'Downgrade Foreign Policy', New York Times, 20 May 1991, p. 15; C. W. Maynes, 'America Without the Cold War', Foreign Policy, 78, Spring (1990), pp. 3-25; and O. Harries, 'Fourteen Points for Realists', The National Interest, Winter (1992-93), pp. 109-12.

The author participated in that debate over the years, first as a status quo oriented internationalist (as evidenced by a rebuttal to Earl Ravenal's article cited above, in the October 1973 issue of Foreign Affairs) and gradually switching sides as the Cold War matured and ended. Prior to this volume the author's most explicit advocacy for a non-interventionist US policy was 'Are Allies Necessary?', Chronicles, October 1995, pp. 43-4; 'In Defense of International Abstention', Strategic Review, 26, 3, Spring (1996), pp. 58-63 and 'A Northeast Asian Peace Dividend', Strategic Review, 26, 2, Summer (1998), pp. 17-23.

4. There are numerous examples of grand strategy writers. For significant examples which represent notable antidotes to the previously cited collection of noninterventionist views, see: J. S. Nye, Bound to Lead, The Changing Nature of American Power (New York: Basic Books, 1990); J. Muravchick, The Imperative of American Leadership: A Challenge to Neo-Isolationism (Washington, DC: The AEI Press, 1996); W Kristol and R. Kagan, 'Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy', Foreign Affairs, July-August (1996), pp. 18-32; D. M. Snow, The Shape of the Future: The Post-Cold War World (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1995); D.J. Caraley (ed.), The New American Interventionism: Lessons from Successes and Failures (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999); and A. B. Carter and W. J. Perry, Preventive Defense: A New Security Strategy for America (Washington, DC: Brooking Institution, 1999). See also, H. Evans The American Century (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998).

For background on the extent of, and justification for, US forward deployed bases, see R. E. Harkavy, Great Power Competition for Overseas Bases: The Geopolitics of Access Diplomacy (New York: Pergamon Press, 1982); J. L. Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982); J. R. Blaker, United States Overseas Basing: An Anatomy of the Dilemma (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1990); and J. Gerson and B. Birchard (eds), The Sun Never Sets ... Confronting the Network of Foreign US Military Bases (Boston: South End Press, 1991).

For a prominent foreign leader's very explicit advocacy of US global leadership, see V Havel, 'The World Can Find the Means of Coexistence', The Christian Science Monitor, 9 June 1995, p. 18.

5. The first Clinton quote is cited in the New York Times, 6 December 1996, p. 1. The second quote is from his 1999 State of the Union address, The Monterey Herald, 27 February 1999, p. Al.

6. L. H. Hamilton, 'A Parting Primer from a Global Thinker', The Christian Science Monitor, 19 November 1998, p. 9.

2 A Flawed Strategic Vision

The origins of the United States' post-Cold War strategic excesses are found in the strategy developed to wage the Cold War. It emerged in the wake of World War II. It was an aberrant by-product of a postwar evolutionary period when the United States was the only major power to escape the large-scale destruction of warfare, but Americans were highly sensitive to the human and infrastructure costs inflicted during the just ended war. Americans knew their country was fortunate to have avoided such devastation, and felt a sense of obligation toward those peoples who had borne the brunt of the war. The entire western postwar effort at economic reconstruction and alliance building, led by the United States, was aimed at creating Cold War allies in an anti-communist coalition, providing them with a military shield which would facilitate their recovery from war and its aftermath.

That Cold War alliance system is the focus of this critique. Before evaluating that system's flaws, it is important to provide a sense of perspective about that system's creators, implementors and defenders. The present analysis dissents from the conventional wisdom about the continuing soundness of the United States' Cold War strategy. However, it intentionally does not dwell on specific individuals who have contributed to the flaws in the United States' strategic vision. Although some specific examples of bureaucratic and political officials, scholarly theoreticians and journalistic pundits are cited as illustrations of the perceived flaws, they are mentioned solely as representative of a broader phenomenon. The strategic vision censured here encompasses a very wide swath of American society's understanding of what the United States' appropriate role in world affairs should be. It represents the conventional wisdom in the fullest extent of that phrase - across t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• List of Abbreviations
• 1 Exit strategy: an introduction
• 2 A flawed strategic vision
• 3 Non-interventionism revisited
• 4 A new strategic vision
• 5 Disentangling the United States from permanent alliances
• 6 Non-interventionism and the future
• Appendix A: US military installations overseas
• Appendix B: US military personnel assigned abroad, 30 September 2000
• Appendix C: US foreign military operations in non-alliance sites, 1975‒2001
• Appendix D: International military education and training programs
• Appendix E: Foreign military sales agreement conditions, 1998
• Index