Frustrated Empire: US Foreign Policy, 9/11 to Iraq

by David Ryan

Overview

Examining the broad contexts of US foreign policy and the lingering aftermath of the Vietnam War, David Ryan argues that these events created an opportunistic framing of 9/11, paving the way for the long-held neo-conservative desire for regime change and war in Iraq. He examines the construction of the cultural framework for war following 9/11, the legitimacy of military force in Afghanistan, the rise of anti-Americanism, within the broader contexts over the struggle over legitimacy, identity and leadership. Turning the 'clash of civilisations' thesis on its head, Ryan presents a careful analysis of the evolution of US foreign policy and its engagement with Iraq through the 1980s. While 9/11 provided the opportunity, the post-Vietnam context provides a more pertinent framework for this reflection on the Gulf War, the Iraq War and the strategic implications for US foreign policy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780745323893
Publisher:	Pluto Press
Publication date:	10/20/2007
Pages:	216
Product dimensions:	5.32(w) x 8.46(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

David Ryan is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of History at University College Cork. He is the author of US Foreign Policy in World History (Routledge, 2000) and Frustrated Empire (Pluto, 2007).

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CHAPTER 1

Broad Contexts

Shortly after 9/11 President George Bush explained to his audience in the National Cathedral, Washington DC, that the conflict began 'on the timing and terms of others'. He seemed certain that: 'It will end in a way, and at an hour, of our choosing.' He was wrong. He would not control the timing or the geographical scope of the new 'war on terrorism'. In a very short time the action and reaction would arouse forces and sentiments beyond US control and US strategies. The sense of limits to US engagement, deemed so crucial by US strategists after Vietnam, were elusive because US objectives were vague, broad and encompassed issues unrelated to 9/11 and because opponents, and the plural is important, had very different agendas. The defined limits in the US reaction were shunned because the Bush administration pursued a wider agenda. They sought nothing less than a thorough re-engagement of US power and the demonstration of its application in war. The strategies that embraced limits haunted and aggravated several people in his administration since the mid 1970s. US military power had been rebuilt after Vietnam. Beginning in the later years of the Carter administration, and accelerating under President Reagan, US military power and its disparity between that of its conventional rivals shaped US policy in distinct ways. With this re-militarisation power gravitated back to the executive branch, despite the lessons and adjustments after Vietnam. Buttressed by 9/11 such concentrations of power facilitated certain myopic and unwise opportunities.

The humiliating defeat in Vietnam placed a range of inhibitions on US foreign policy. Some constraints were lifted with the end of the Cold War, others after 9/11. For some of Bush's key principals war was a policy of choice; it could contain the pervasive Vietnam syndrome. For Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense, the reaction had to be broad. Bush began to conflate US problems and opponents. The rhetorical strategy was echoed in cultural discourse. Lumping disparate opposition was a familiar Cold War strategy. Al Qaeda was conflated with the Taliban, terrorism and Islamism, and the infamous phrase of the 'terrorists and the tyrants' led the United States into a myriad of conflict that will probably take decades to subdue. In the process all sorts of new forms of resistance were created. By August 2004, George Bush admitted that 'I don't think you can win it.' The Democrats were quick to make political hay during an election year, and the White House hurried in to limit the potential damage and signs of defeatism. But Bush was probably right. The breadth of US objectives lay beyond its capabilities. Just as the Cold War eroded the traditional sense of victory, the ends to these conflicts would be elusive. There was no clear line to cross or border to restore. When President Bush Sr decided to end the 1991 Gulf War on conventional terms, stopping short of the march to Baghdad, the Vietnam syndrome was compounded by that decision. Paul Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld's deputy, felt that frustration acutely. In 2004 Bush was quick to restore the narrative of victory: 'I think you can create conditions so that the – those who use terror as a tool are less acceptable in parts of the world.' Yet the US actions provoked and enhanced the violent responses that the US troops struggled to quell in Iraq since 2003 and again in Afghanistan in 2006. The application of such force was bound to provoke reaction and resistance. US troops were not welcomed as expected; internal resistance, external antipathy and anti-Americanism spread rapidly; political opposition and diplomatic resistance featured throughout the world and at the UN to anticipated US actions.

The narrative Bush advanced implied US innocence. They had been attacked out of the blue (a phrase that takes on new meaning after 9/11). That narrative obfuscated and deterred broader and deeper understandings of why 9/11 took place. Though the atrocities cannot be justified, understanding is important.

Narratives are important. They create the framework and the stories that help us understand how our world works. 'Our world' is often defined or understood to the extent that people share and assimilate the dominant cultural narratives. Narratives are important because they relate a story; they provide the audience with a framework, a beginning and an end. Narratives keep people together and they set them apart. They justify what we do and undermine and cast doubt on what others say and do. Ultimately, narratives or the cumulative stories we tell ourselves, our culture and our nations, sustain an international order that is often cruel and unjust. The stories of 'others' seem strange and incredible because they do not comport with our understanding and 'our' world.

LONG-RANGE US POLICY TOWARDS THE NEAR EAST (1958)!

Decades ago in 1959 William Appleman Williams wrote that a part of the tragedy of American diplomacy was that: 'If the United States cannot accept the existence of such limits without giving up democracy and cannot proceed to enhance and extend democracy within such limits, then the traditional effort to sustain democracy by expansion will lead to the destruction of democracy.' If one of the philosophical gambits of US diplomacy rested on James Madison's injunction to extend the sphere to ensure the survival of democracy in his tenth Federalist paper, Williams' reflections anticipated danger. Americans had to learn to live within limits. Their failure to do so would produce 'empire as a way of life'. US officials struggled with the proposition, with their identity, and more importantly for current purposes, with the perception of their identity. As they supplanted European powers in the Middle East, especially in the late 1950s, after Suez, the National Security Council identified a range of interests, issues and concerns. Metaphorical parallels are never as straight as geometric requirements, but there are remarkable parallels nonetheless. Even as Washington assumed the position of the pre-eminent Western power in the region it worried about its identification with its 'colonial' allies: 'Since the British-French-Israeli invasion of Egypt in November 1956, the United States has been the undisputed leader of Free World interests in the area', a National Securtiy Council strategic paper opined. There was tacit recognition of this by European powers. Still, Washington could not separate itself from these Europeans and an identification with 'the powers which formerly had, and still have, "colonial" interests in the area'. Thus, the 'Western alliance makes the United States a target for some of the animus which this situation generates'. It worried about a range of issues, the US stance and the local perceptions of it. The tragedy in many ways is that those issues, albeit without the Soviets, remain largely on the table, and little has been achieved to ameliorate the tensions across the Middle East, especially after the 1967 war. Given the history and consequences the further tragedy of the Bush administration's response to 9/11 is the myopic tendency to fall back into old ways and not to explore readjustments in policy. Old stories were forgotten.

In January 1958, just over a year after the Suez crisis, the National Security Council drew up an extensive document on 'Long-Range U.S. Policy toward the Near East'. Obviously, it identified that 'the Near East is of great strategic, political, and economic importance to the Free World. The area contains the greatest petroleum resources in the world and essential facilities for the transit of military forces and Free World commerce.' If the area fell under Soviet influence, US security would be jeopardised. Moreover, the 'strategic resources are of such importance to the Free World, particularly Western Europe, that it is in the security interests of the United States to make every effort to insure that these resources will be available and will be used for strengthening the Free World. The geographical position of the Near East makes the area a stepping-stone toward the strategic resources of Africa.'

The National Security Council was aware that their interests did not accord with much aspiration throughout the Middle East. It observed that the 'current conditions and political trends in the Near East are inimical to Western interests. In the eyes of the majority of Arabs the United States appears to be opposed to the realization of the goals of Arab nationalism.' The Arab-Israeli dispute was important and US opposition to 'Arab aspirations for self-determination and unity' while there was 'widespread belief that the United States desires to keep the Arab world disunited and is committed to work with "reactionary" elements to that end'. It is little wonder that after Arab nationalism was largely contained and options for free secular expression were so curtailed that eventually, and especially after 1979, 'the mosque and Islamic charitable organisations became the only sections of civil society that had not been bought or broken by dictatorial regimes'. Toby Dodge concludes, 'It is hardly surprising ... that rising resentment took a religious form,' which obviously benefited al Qaeda. The US support for the repressive regimes was clearly recognised in internal memoranda in the 1950s: 'Communist police-state methods seem no worse than similar methods employed by Near East regimes, including some of those supported by the United States.' The public and private narratives were at odds. The National Security Council was aware of its assets in the region. They made reference to the tradition of philanthropic and educational efforts, 'the respect which is engendered by our military power; our own revolutionary tradition and our identification with the principle of self-determination; the abundance of our wealth; the advancement of our science and technology', which all contributed to the positive views of the United States. Still, and perhaps more pertinent they recognised that:

The tendency in the area is to ascribe the blame for the gap between the present living standard and popular desires with respect to economic progress and development to external factors such as 'colonialism', unfair arrangements with the oil-producing companies, and a desire on the part of the West to keep the Arab world relatively undeveloped so that it may ultimately become a source of raw materials and the primary market for Israeli industry.

These words remain extraordinarily pertinent nearly fifty years later. Anticipating trends of our times its suggested policy guidance included: 'provide Free World leadership and assume, on behalf of the Free World, the major responsibility toward the area; acting with or in consultation with other Free World countries, particularly the United Kingdom, to the greatest extent practicable, but reserving the right to act alone'.

IRONIES OF 'OUR' TIME

Despite these acute observations we have lived with stories for decades now about the growth and dispersion of liberty, democracy, self-determination and the benefits of a particular socio-economic system based around capitalism. One US commentator, a former employee of the US Department of State, went so far as to proclaim the 'End of History'. There was, according to this account, no further possible ideological development. Liberal democratic capitalism represented the highest form of political maturity. Such notions were incorporated into the US National Security Strategy of September 2002, in which the United States was considered to be the sole surviving model of progress. This sense of superiority and orientalist outlook on others from afar and above resonates widely in Western culture and in the more ethnocentric North American political culture. The twentieth century was, to many commentators, following Henry Luce of Life magazine, the 'American Century'. It was characterised and sustained by the ideologies advanced in the meta-narrative of US history and foreign policy; creating a nation and a world in pursuit of life, liberty and happiness.

There are huge ironies in three broad themes that characterised the second half of the twentieth century, a period that coincided with the apogee of American power. After 1945 European empires collapsed. The rise of the Third World not only shaped the Cold War but also was devastatingly shaped by it. Often aspirations directly clashed. India's first Prime Minister and founding member of the Non-Aligned Movement, Jawaharlal Nehru, signalled, 'we propose to stand on our own legs. We do not intend to be the playthings of others.' Certain areas of the Third World were crucial for US strategic pre-eminence, especially Europe, the Far and Middle East; others were crucial in so far as they either contributed to or undermined US credibility. Guatemala in the early 1950s was an important symbolic case in point. The feigned hysteria concerning the communist threat in Guatemala in 1954 provides a distant echo in 2002. It was clear to many inside the belt of influence in Washington DC that the various orientations of the Third World countries 'might well determine the outcome of the Cold War'. Yet the US had a very ambivalent relationship towards the processes of decolonisation and Third World nationalism.

Second, since 1945 world population has exploded. The earth sustained over 2 billion people in 1945, and had grown to over 6 billion at the end of the century. Yet despite this phenomenal growth, and widespread use of narratives on democracy or of the use of the word 'democracy' or 'democratic' in country titles, most people have had a very poor experience of this phenomenon. While 'democratic transitions' are widely noted and rightly celebrated, Washington has too frequently sided with forces that have suppressed democratic aspirations. A central grievance throughout the Middle East stems from Washington's support for authoritarian and sometimes brutal regimes that have frustrated democratic aspirations since 1945.

Finally, since 1945 the world economy has developed rapidly. The magnitude of global wealth and the wealth of nations has grown exponentially. Yet the figures and the daily realities of global poverty are stark. Inequalities within and between nations have become more obvious and wider. The exercise of democratic rights and practices is inextricably linked to certitude on security and standard of wealth. The connections with and between various forms of freedom are important. Political freedoms can promote economic freedoms, which in turn can contribute to social freedoms; 'freedoms of different kinds can strengthen one another', Amartya Sen argues. His 'freedom-centred' understanding of economics and development is very much focused on individual agency. 'With adequate social opportunities, individuals can effectively shape their own destiny and help each other. They need not be seen primarily as passive recipients of the benefits of cunning development programs', he contends. Yet too often individuals are treated as subjects for development rather than as autonomous active agents. One often hears of the need to 'pacify' their collective desires and objectives. How bitter it must be to hear the words, 'freedom', 'democracy', 'self-determination', repeated – mantra like – in US rhetoric when direct encounters with US force, military or economic, or with that of the so-called 'national security states' and authoritarian regimes it supported and supports, would suggest other conclusions. How does one restore the narratives of liberty, democracy and self-determination or reconcile them with the growth and spread of US power? How does one restore agency to these meta-narratives of US diplomacy that would move the masses to the ideological and teleological terminus associated with the 'End of History'?

When the US occupation of Iraq in 2003 and its extension of military bases throughout the region and into Central Asia after 2001 was characterised as a new form of colonialism or at least imperialism, many Americans blanched. How could the United States be considered in such terms? Were they not the first in the modern period to break their colonial ties with Britain, declare their independence, and form a new system of government 'deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed'? Were they not the nascent power to enunciate the Monroe Doctrine in 1823, precluding European colonialism from the Western hemisphere? Were they not the nation created by Abraham Lincoln, constituting a government of, for and by the people? Were they not the nation that had advanced the prospects for self-determination through the policies and rhetoric of President Wilson's Fourteen Points? Or down through to Franklin Roosevelt's promotion of the Four Freedoms, as the 'arsenal of democracy' and the champion of decolonisation during the Second World War and through the benign agenda of the Atlantic Charter? Had the United States not led the way through its decolonisation of the Philippines in 1946 and then secured the West through Soviet containment? Warren Kimball writes:

Historical memory is part of what nations are all about, and a visceral dislike of colonialism is part of the American self-image. The conventional wisdom in the United States has long been that colonialism, with its suppression of political freedom, has generated discontent, conflict and eventually revolution.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Frustrated Empire"
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Copyright © 2007 David Ryan.
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Table of Contents

1. Broad Contexts 2. Framing September 11: Rhetorical Device and Photographic Opinion 3. Orientalism and the Anti-American Sentiment 4. War and Just War: Terrorism and Afghanistan 5. The United States and Iraq: 'One Can do Nothing About the Past' 6. Iraq and Vietnam: The Unbearable Weight of Defeat 7. The Tipping Point: Between Bring 'em on and Going South 8. Imperial Frustrations Bibliography Notes Index

Editorial Reviews

'A brilliant meditation on the nature of the American empire. Few books I've read on recent US foreign policy cut both as deep and as broadly as this one' - Professor Marilyn Young, New York University 'A fine example of how to write contemporary history. His book spans the years of our new longest war with insight and, by making essential connections between politics and culture, provides readers with a real understanding of the dilemmas of the American empire' - Professor Lloyd Gardner, Rutgers University 'A majestic work, moving from the Cold War to now, to explore how our narratives of 'history', 'justice', and 'freedom' are manipulated by the US Government in the pursuit of its global objectives' - Professor William S. Lucas, University of Birmingham

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