The Foreign Service Journal, May 2004

overreaction to the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand by a Serbian Pan-Slav “terrorist” which, in turn, led to World War I and the destruction of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Empire Building The 9/11 attacks have been used to redefine U.S. foreign policy along neoconservative lines. The new poli- cies emphasize unilateralism, unlimit- ed objectives, and the use of military force as a primary adjunct to policy. This set of characteristics has little in common with historic U.S. policy, which until the 1940s emphasized iso- lationism, limited foreign policy objectives and an aversion to the use of military force outside the Western Hemisphere. In one respect, the neoconserva- tives do harken back to the past in their approach to foreign policy. Unfortunately, they do so by invoking the now-obsolete political-military premises of the Cold War, such as a perceived need for overwhelming military superiority. The administra- tion’s proposed military budget of $401 billion for FY 2004-2005 is as great as those of the next six powers combined. Where is the threat to jus- tify this expenditure? Ongoing efforts to expand the forward deployment of U.S. forces to areas such as Central Europe and South Asia can hardly be justified on the basis of a military threat to the territorial integrity or national existence of the United States or of our principal allies. There was a sound rationale for a forward projection of U.S. forces during the Cold War. But there is no basis for transforming forward defense into a strategy of unilateral global political- military imperialism, as we are in the process of doing. President Dwight Eisenhower’s farewell address, in which he warned of the dangers posed by the “military- industrial complex,” was perhaps the last example of a leadership vision coupling an emphasis on adequate power with an understanding of the dangers that excessive power creates. Since Eisenhower, American political leadership has actively sought an ever- expanding role on the world stage and an expansion of military presence into far-flung regions of the world where U.S. interests are marginal at best. For the sake of argument, howev- er, let us assume that the only way for the United States to remain secure in the post-9/11 environment is to forge an empire. The basic ingredients for success at such an enterprise are: skill- ful diplomacy to forge strong alliances; the ability to formulate and implement rational decisions based on realistic threat assessments; sound decisions about when to use military force; and the wherewithal to support the demands of running and defend- ing a global presence (e.g., a sound economic base, military hardware and human resources). Keeping Bad Company The long-term viability of any American empire will be based on the ability to make alliances with nations and leaders who support the long- term goals and values of American democracy while, to the extent possi- ble, avoiding alliances of convenience with known bad actors. Yet in the case of Iraq, we reversed that formu- la. Nearly all our major allies were strongly opposed to the war, and the few who stood with us did so despite strong domestic opposition. Thus, major by-products of the war have been a fundamental weakening of the NATO alliance, rifts in the longstand- ing unity of the West, and the under- mining of pro-American governments in the Arab and Muslim worlds. The war on terror demonstrates a similar inconsistency on the other side of the equation. In our zeal to acquire new allies against al-Qaida, the Bush administration seems willing to over- look the very same human rights vio- lations and brutal suppression of democracy that the State Department details in its latest set of worldwide country reports. Countries like Uz- bekistan, Turkmenistan and Pakistan were quick to learn that lesson, and others seem poised to follow in their footsteps. This phenomenon is nothing new, regrettably. In Afghanistan, U.S. covert operations in support of Islamic fundamentalists fighting the Soviets two decades ago paved the way for the Taliban to fill the vacuum created when Moscow withdrew. When we eventually turned to tribal surrogates to help us oust the Taliban, we conveniently overlooked the fact that some of them were major players in the international drug trade. The result? Afghanistan today is the world’s largest source of opium and heroin prices have fallen around the globe. It is, therefore, hard to make a convincing case that Afghanistan is any less a global danger to U.S. inter- ests now. Getting the Threat Right Whether or not one believes that the Bush administration politicized the findings of the intelligence com- munity concerning Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction programs, that debate underscores the need for sound analysis of often- 56 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / M A Y 2 0 0 4 In an era of half-trillion- dollar budget deficits, can we afford the empire we seem to be building?