Immanuel Wallerstein, Commentary No. 265, Sept. 15, 2009
In the last few weeks, there has been a marked increase of calls, coming from both liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans, for some kind of early “exit strategy” from Afghanistan. This is coming at the very moment that Gen. Stanley McChrystal, U.S. commander in Afghanistan, and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates are about to recommend formally to President Obama an increase in U.S. troop commitments there.
Nothing is certain, but the general expectation is that Obama will agree to this. After all, during the elections, Obama had said that he considered U.S. intervention in Iraq a mistake and wanted an early withdrawal. One of the reasons he gave was that it had prevented sending enough troops into Afghanistan. This was a version of the “bad war, good war” concept. Iraq was a “bad” war, Afghanistan a “good” one.
There has apparently been much debate in the inner circle of President Obama about the wisdom of escalating U.S. military commitments in Afghanistan. It is reported that the leading opponent of troop escalation in Afghanistan is none other than Vice-President Biden. Biden has always been considered somewhat of a Democratic hawk. So how come he is now opposing troop escalation? The reported reason is that he now considers Afghanistan a hopeless quagmire, and that investing troops there will prevent the United States from concentrating on the really important zone, Pakistan. So we have a new version of the “bad war, good war” doctrine. Afghanistan has become a “bad” war; Pakistan is the “good” one.
Why is it so difficult for the United States to extricate itself from military interventions it is so patently losing? Some left analysts, in the United States and elsewhere, say it is because the United States is an imperialist power and therefore engages in such military interventions in order to maintain its political and economic power in the world. This explanation is quite insufficient, for the simple reason that the United States has not won a single major military confrontation since 1945. As an imperialist power, it has shown great incompetence in achieving its goals.
Consider the five wars in which the United States has committed large numbers of troops since 1945. The biggest – in terms of numbers of troops, economic costs, and political impact – was Vietnam. The United States lost the war. The other four were the Korean War, the first Gulf War, the invasion of Afghanistan, and the second invasion of Iraq. The Korean War and the first Gulf War were politically draws. The wars ended at the exact point that they began. The United States is clearly losing the war in Afghanistan. I believe that history will judge the second invasion of Iraq a draw as well. When the U.S. finally pulls out, it will be no stronger politically than when it went in – probably indeed the opposite.
So what drives the United States to engage in such politically self-defeating actions, especially if we think of the United States as a hegemonic power trying to control the entire world to its advantage? To answer that, we have to look at the internal politics of the United States.
All great powers, and especially hegemonic powers, are intensely nationalist. They believe in themselves and in their moral and political right to assert their so-called national interests. The overwhelming majority of their citizens consider themselves patriotic, and take this to mean that their government ought indeed to assert itself vigorously, and if necessary militarily, in the world arena. In the United States, since 1945, the percentage of the population who are principled anti-imperialists is politically insignificant.
U.S. politics is not divided between supporters and opponents of imperialism. It has been divided between those who are strongly interventionist and those who believe in “fortress America.” The latter used to be called isolationists. Isolationists are not anti-military. Indeed, they tend to be strong supporters of financial investment in military forces. But they are skeptical about using these forces in far-off places.
Of course, there is a whole gamut of intermediate positions between the extremes in this cleavage. The crucial thing to see is that almost no politician is ready to call for a serious reduction in U.S. military expenditures. This is why so many of them engage in the “bad war, good war” distinction. They justify reducing the use of military in the “bad” wars by suggesting that there are other, better uses for the military.
At this point, we have to analyze the differences between the Republican and Democratic Parties on these questions. The isolationist wing of the Republican Party was very strong before the Second World War, but since 1945 it has become rather small. The Republicans since 1945 have regularly tended to call for increased investment in the military, and have usually argued that the Democrats have been too “soft” on military questions.
The fact that the Republicans have been very inconsistent in this matter hasn’t seemed to affect their public image. For example, when President Clinton wanted to send troops to the Balkans, the Republicans opposed it. It didn’t matter. The U.S. public seems to take the Republicans at their word as patriotic hawks, no matter what they do.
The Democrats have had the opposite problem. There have been large numbers of books arguing, credibly, that Democratic administrations have been readier than Republican administrations to engage in military interventions abroad (for example, in both Korea and Vietnam). Nonetheless, the Republicans have constantly denounced the Democrats for being “doves” in their military views. It is true that a large minority of Democratic voters have in fact been “doves,” but not a large number of Democratic politicians. Democratic politicians have always worried that the voters will consider them to be “doves” and turn against them for that reason.
The Democrats have therefore almost always used the “bad war, good war” line. It hasn’t done them all that much good. The Democrats seem to be stuck with the label of being less macho than the Republicans. So it’s very simple. When Obama makes his decisions on these matters, it’s not enough for him to analyze whether or not troop escalation in Afghanistan makes any military or political sense. He worries above all that he himself, and more broadly the Democratic Party, may be labeled once again as the “sell-outs,” the “doves,” the ones who “lost” countries to the enemies – to the Soviet Union in the old days, to the “terrorists” today.
Obama will probably therefore send in more troops. And the Afghanistan War will go the way of the Vietnam War. Only the outcome for the United States will be worse, because there is no cohesive, rational opposing group to whom to lose the war – one that will allow U.S. helicopters to withdraw the troops without shooting at them. When Bertold Brecht got cynical or angry at Communist regimes, he told them that, if the people were rebelling against their wisdom, they should “change the people.” Perhaps that’s what Obama needs to do – change the people, his people. Or maybe, in time, the people will change themselves. If the United States loses too many more wars, its citizens may wake up to the realization that U.S. military interventions abroad and incredibly large military expenditures at home are not the solution to their problems, but the greatest impediment to U.S. national survival and well-being.
[Copyright by Immanuel Wallerstein, distributed by Agence Global. For rights and permissions, including translations and posting to non-commercial sites, and contact: rights@agenceglobal.com, 1.336.686.9002 or 1.336.286.6606. Permission is granted to download, forward electronically, or e-mail to others, provided the essay remains intact and the copyright note is displayed. To contact author, write: immanuel.wallerstein@yale.edu.
These commentaries, published twice monthly, are intended to be reflections on the contemporary world scene, as seen from the perspective not of the immediate headlines but of the long term.]
Peace and Justice Post 
Opportunity Lost: Obama in Oslo
December 17, 2009By Daniel C. Maguire , Consortiumnews.com, Dec 16, 2009
Editor’s Note: In his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech in Oslo, President Barack Obama downplayed the bloodshed caused by scores of U.S. military interventions and covert operations over the past six decades – and sought to justify his own escalation of the eight-year-old war in Afghanistan.
In this guest essay, Daniel C. Maguire, a Professor of Ethics at Marquette University, found Obama’s effort disappointing and disingenuous:
Whether Obama deserved the Nobel Peace Prize is not the point. He didn’t. The fact is he got it, and was gifted with the chance of a lifetime to make a classic speech on the politics of peace-making, a speech that in the glare of Nobel could have attained instant biblical standing.
He failed miserably, producing a hodge-podge that resembled the work of a bright but undisciplined sophomore.
He hoisted his petard on the classical “just war theory,” a theory that, properly understood, condemns his decision to send yet more kill-power into Afghanistan.
This theory which is much misused and little understood is designed to build a wall of assumptions against state-sponsored violence, i.e. war. It puts the burden of proof on the warrior where it belongs.
It gives six conditions necessary to justify a war. Fail one, and the war is immoral. The six are:
(1) A just cause. The only just cause is defense against an attack, not a preemptive attack on those who might someday attack us. Obama flunked this one, saying our current military actions are “to defend ourselves and all nations from further [i.e. future] attacks.” President Bush speaks here through the mouth of President Obama.
(2) Declaration by competent authority: Article one Section 8 of the Constitution which gives this power to the Congress has not been used since 1941. Congressional resolutions instead yield the power to the President.
Obama: “I am responsible for the deployment of thousands of young Americans to battle in a distant land.” Sorry. Not according to the Constitution.
On top of that we are bound by treaty to the United Nations Charter. Article 2, Section 4 prohibits recourse to military force except in circumstances of self-defense which was restricted to responses to a prior “armed attack” (Article 51), and only then until the Security Council had the chance to review the claim.
Obama fails twice on proper declaration of war. He violates the UN Charter by claiming the right to act “unilaterally” and “individually.” Again, faithful echoes of President Bush.
(3) Right intention: This means that there is reasonable surety that the war will succeed in serving justice and making a way to real peace.
Right intention is befouled by excessive secrecy, by putting the burdens of the war on the poor or future generations, by denying the right to conscientious object to soldiers who happen to know most of what is going on, and by a failure to understand the enemy’s grievances.
Obama declares gratuitously: “Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda’s leaders to lay down their arms.” So all we can do is send soldiers to kill them? Really? What negotiations have been tried to find out why they hate us and not Sweden, or Argentina, or China?
A pause for reflection might show that those and other countries are not bombing and killing civilians in three Muslim countries simultaneously. That could generate a little resentment. None of those countries not targeted by al Qaeda are financing Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian lands in violation of UN resolutions.
The processes of negotiation allow light to shine in dark corners. Realpolitik eschews the light.
(4) The principle of discrimination, or non-combatant immunity. The science of war has made this condition so unachievable that only the policing paradigm envisioned by the UN Charter could ever justify state-sponsored violence.
Police operate within the constraints of law, as a communitarian effort, with oversight and follow-up review to prevent undue violence. Obama’s allusion to “42 other countries” joining in our violent work in Afghanistan and Iraq mocks the true intent of the collective action envisioned by the UN under supervision of the Security Council.
It is a mere disguise for our vigilante adventurism.
(5) Last resort. If state-sponsored violence is not the last resort we stand morally with hoodlums who would solve problems by murder. Obama fails to see that modern warfare, including counterinsurgency, is not the last or best resort against an enemy that has four unmatchable advantages: invisibility, versatility, patience, and the ability to find safe haven anywhere.
The idea of a single geographic safe haven is a myth and an anachronism reflecting the age of whole armies mobilizing in a definable locus.
Obama’s speech showed no appreciation of the alternative of peace-making. A Department of Peace (which would be a better name for a revitalized and better-funded State Department) would have as its goal to address in concert with other nations tensions as they begin to build.
Neglected crises can explode eventually into violence. This is used to assert the inevitability of war when it is only an indictment of improvident statecraft.
(6) The principle of proportionality: Put simply, the violence of war must do more good than harm. In judging war the impact on other nations and the environment must also be assessed in the balance sheet of good and bad results.
This is a hard test for modern warriors to pass. Victory in war is an oxymoron. No one wins a war: one side may lose less and may spin that as victory. Obama’s faith in the benefits of warring in three Muslim countries is delusional.
President Obama in Oslo was more a theologian than a statesman. He gave a condescending nod to nonviolent power but his theology of original sin tilted him toward violence as the surest and final arbiter for a fallen humanity.
It is “a pity beyond all telling” that the “just war theory” he invoked condemns the warring policies he anomalously defended as he accepted the Nobel Prize for Peace.
Daniel C. Maguire, a Professor of Moral Theological Ethics at Marquette University, is the author of The Horrors We Bless: Rethinking the Just-War Legacy.
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