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October 9, 2003

The consequences of current U.S. foreign policy betray its weakness.

Even if Americans accept the premise that the current United States “foreign policy of pre-emption” is sound, at least three of the policy’s consequences betray its weakness, said a former U.S. ambassador.

Current U.S. foreign policy is undermined because the United States is over-extended militarily, the country is going bankrupt, and the reputation of America as a beacon of freedom with democratic principles is rapidly and vastly deteriorating, according to Dan Simpson, associate editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and former U.S. ambassador to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Somalia and the Central African Republic.

Simpson spoke Oct. 2 on “Current Issues in U.S. Foreign Policy: What Are Our Objectives Now?” The lecture, part of International Week, was co-sponsored by the global studies program and the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs.

Simpson insisted his perspective was non-partisan, but he had few kind words for George W. Bush’s foreign policies.

“I worked for the State department starting in 1966, under every president since Lyndon Johnson, and including the current president,” said Simpson, who retired from State in 2001 to work at the Post-Gazette. “Our foreign policy is not in good shape and needs a new, hard look — but that’s not to say that we need a change in administration, because I think the suggestions I would make could be done within the context of the policies of the current administration. Nevertheless, I think we’re on the wrong track, and we’re going in the wrong direction.”

Simpson said current U.S. foreign policy stems from reactions to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. “The concept is that, given the events of Sept. 11 and given our power, particularly our military capability, the U.S. has the right to act, proactively if necessary, outside of traditional international frameworks to do what we consider to be in our security’s interests. Overseas, we’ve done this in an orderly, aimed approach” in Afghanistan, Iraq, the Philippines, Columbia and the former Soviet state of Georgia.

(Simpson noted smaller-scale examples of this strategy that pre-dated Sept. 11, such as sending troops to Colombia to fight drug lords, but said 9/11 codified the policy of pre-emption.)

“But it is clear that our military is overextended. We’ve got 129,000 troops in Iraq, with another 20,000 support troops in Kuwait and other surrounding areas. We’ve got 10,000 troops in Afghanistan, 37,000 in South Korea, 51,000 in Japan, and we’ve had up to 75,000 recently in Germany,” Simpson said.

“It’s a clear military principle that to calculate the number of troops you need to sustain any efforts you multiply by 3, because of issues of replacing, re-fitting, re-training, re-settling active troops, and so forth. All of this stuff takes more troops than we have.”

Simpson cited the $5 billion monthly cost to pay for continuing U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan — with no end in sight — and a current defense budget approaching a half-trillion dollars as examples of how the country’s economic problems are tied directly to foreign policy.

“The scary part is that, because of the tax cuts, it is all deficit spending. Not only did you spend money you don’t have, but now you have to pay interest, debt service, and it’s money, obviously you can’t spend on other things like supporting state and local governments, the national power network infrastructure, health care. What’s next? Would you like to strip Social Security of every nickel it’s got? It’s nuts to do all this with deficit spending,” he said.

Simpson sprinkled his talk with sound-bites on several countries (“Our Cuba policy is: Wait for Castro to die”; “It’s stupid to think you can stop drugs in the U.S. by sending troops into a three-way civil war in Colombia”; “It’s been 25 years since Iran held our hostages. It’s time we [re-opened our embassy there], and they should have representation in Washington”). But his main focus was on Iraq. “The best argument for the war is that we haven’t been attacked at home since Sept. 11, knock on wood. But are we really safer?”

Simpson said justifications to declare war were weak, including the justification that U.S. national security was threatened by Saddam Hussein.

“Not that the Iraqis are pussycats. Saddam Hussein was really bad news. But it’s a big jump from seeing someone we don’t like to deposing him and turning a country on its head, especially when the rest of the world was opposed to it.”

Simpson commented on other arguments supporting an Iraq invasion:

  • Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. “Well, we have the Kay report just coming out now saying that they really haven’t found anything much. And Bush is asking for $600 million more to keep looking.”
  • Iraq was supporting the terrorists who attacked us. “There’s no evidence of a link between al-Qaida and the Iraqis, which even Bush has now admitted.”
  • A democratic Iraq would be a stepping-stone to Middle East peace. “This is a particularly weak argument,” Simpson said. “What does a democratic Iraq, a Muslim state, look like? What gets to me most of all is that the U.S. is now in a colonial role: We chose the governing council, and we’re writing the constitution. Think back to America’s founding. Would we want foreigners writing our constitution?”

The crunch in Iraq now is two-fold, Simpson said: the ongoing attack on American soldiers and the growing cost of rebuilding Iraq, both of which are eroding the support of the war at home.
“Well, what do we do? We can’t just declare victory and walk away,” Simpson said. He suggested three strategies:

  1. Reorient foreign policy to fundamental American principles, including respect for international law and borders and human rights.

“We’ve put 10,000 Iraqis in prisons there. They have no lawyers. What happened to the American ideas of justice and due process of law? We’ve declared people in this country enemy combatants; no habeas corpus. We just say, ‘You’re no longer an American citizen. You have no access to normal rights.’ We’re doing a whole bunch of things that are not consistent with our ideals.”

  1. Take a more regional approach. “This is especially true in the North Korea area. I was encouraged by the recent talks that involved Japan, China, Russia, South Korea and us. North Korea’s neighboring countries should bear most of the responsibility,” for keeping North Korea’s nuclear program in check, Simpson said.

“This approach worked in Liberia. This was obviously a failed state that was imploding before our eyes with violence and humanitarian problems bordering on catastrophe. We brought a few ships there off the coast. We put a few troops in there and essentially pushed the surrounding countries to take charge of this problem. I don’t object to using our military forces to put out fires with the effect of mobilizing a region, but we need to move quickly from that and get regional and U.N. troops to enforce the peace. We can’t continue to be the policeman of the world.”

  1. Make peace with the United Nations. “The U.N. is there. If it weren’t there someone would have to invent it. In this age of economic globalization — and there’s not much point arguing about whether that exists, because it does: You see U.S. Steel in Serbia, Alcoa in Iceland, a Ford Motor Co. factory in China — our economy depends on foreign trade and investment,” Simpson said.

“To get the U.N. involved, we need to compromise, but that’s not particularly extraordinary: Bush’s father put together a viable coalition of support for the Gulf War, including radical Muslim states like Syria.”

Similarly, the United States should restore good relations with traditional allies. “In Iraq we acted pre-emptively and in defiance of, or at least without the sanction of, the international community. We’ve also issued non-competitive contracts to Halliburton, Bechtel, J.P. Morgan for the rebuilding of Iraq. Is it any wonder when we ask Germany for help, and they say, ‘Well, can we invest in Iraq banks? Can we rebuild Iraq’s oil industry?’ And we say, ‘No, we’ve already decided who is going to do that.’ Of course Germany’s not interested in helping.”
The effect of this change, Simpson said, would be to make American actions more palatable to other countries and lessen the overall burden on the U.S. military and economy.

“I think these three things, which could be done by this administration, will get us back to a sustainable U.S. foreign policy that squares with our principles. We need to behave like a democracy, where we respect the rule of law, instead of driving everything with a heavy-handed military. There’s no reason we should be hated and opposed. We should be respected in the world.”

—Peter Hart                     

 

Filed under: Feature,Volume 36 Issue 4

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