The Foreign Service Journal, November 2008

willing to take greater responsibility for managing the affairs of their own regions, even if they have been moved to do so mainly in reaction to per- ceived U.S. errors of commission and omission, should probably be seen as a positive development. But it is cer- tainly not a good thing for our govern- ment to be excluded from conversa- tions on major regional or global issues. The risk is that our interests will be misunderstood or ignored when actions are taken that affect us. U.S. policies since the end of the Cold War — particularly during the eight years of the George W. Bush adminis- tration — have tended to isolate the United States, take us out of the diplomatic game, and leave us at the mercy of decisions and arrangements that others increasingly craft in our absence. Lessons Learned One can learn more from catastro- phe and failure than from victory or success. So, students of U.S. foreign policy since the catastrophe of 9/11, rejoice! There is a lot of material from which to extract lessons for future for- eign policy. A good place to start might be 9/11 itself. Among other things, the shock- ing attack on our homeland that day showed that, in the post–Cold War world, if the United States launches or sponsors military operations in other people’s homelands, we should expect them to find a way to retaliate against ours. This caution remains relevant. Without intending to do so, we have installed a lot of incubators and creat- ed a lot of training opportunities for terrorists in Iraq, Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon, as well as in the border regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Meanwhile, we have repeatedly adjusted our military campaign plans in Iraq and Afghanistan. But we have yet to adjust our diplomacy. And we have not come up with a strategy to overcome the appeal of anti-Ameri- can terrorism, turn its adherents against it, slash the numbers of its re- cruits, or even capture its most notori- ous spokesmen. Those best qualified to accomplish these tasks are mainstream Muslims, acting out of their own self-interest and in concert with us. Cultivating support in the Islamic world should therefore be a principal focus of U.S. foreign policy. The struggle to outlaw and suppress terrorism cannot suc- ceed without the full cooperation of allies and friends around the world. Reinvigorating our alliances and partnerships is as essential to this task as it is to the renewal of foreign respect for American leadership in general. In this regard, a few of the lessons that might be drawn from the global and regional trends of recent years stand out. Three have to do with rediscovering diplomacy as an alternative to militarism. Two are more substantive. • Woody Allen was right: “Eighty percent of success is [indeed] show- ing up.” At the moment, the U.S. military shows up a lot more than any- one else at the regional level. We need diplomatic counterparts to our regional combatant commanders. They should be forward-deployed and endowed with the resources and authority to address regional as well as bilateral interests. They should have a mandate to implement strategies that integrate the political, economic, cul- tural and informational, intelligence and military elements of our national influence. • Our leaders at all levels and in all branches of government need to rediscover the art of listening. Listening is essential to successful relationship management. If we don’t pay attention to the opinions of oth- ers, they will be — as we have seen — less likely to find our views persuasive. If we don’t attend to their interests, they are unlikely to buy into ours. Diplomacy is not preaching to others about what they must do, an approach that neither builds partnership nor elicits cooperation. Diplomacy is per- suading others that they should serve our interests because their interests coincide with ours. • As that consummate realist, Otto von Bismarck, advised, “Be polite. Write diplomatically. Even in a declaration of war one observes the rules of politeness.” Only small boys, hicks and clueless speechwriters think it clever to call foreign leaders or countries names. Statesmen under- stand that insults just deepen the commitment of those they target to the error of their ways. Sometimes negotiated solutions are the only solu- tions available at an affordable price. Discourtesy closes the door to negoti- ated solutions and locks it shut. Getting others to do things our way is difficult enough. Denigrating their character or putting derogatory labels on them can make it impossible. • We need to clear the foreign policy decks as rapidly as we can. Our plunge into the quicksand of end- less warfare abroad has already done great damage to our prestige and influence abroad and considerable injury at home. These wars are not sustainable. We are ceding our civil liberties and mortgaging our posterity to for- eign bankers. The money that might rebuild crumbling American infra- structure is being squandered on the destruction and botched reconstruc- tion of vast areas of the Middle East. The wars there bring grief, pain and uncertainty to America, as well as to the places where they are fought. They confer no benefits and divide Americans from each other and from the world, diverting us from urgent tasks of vital importance to our future. We have no plan for ending them, yet we cannot afford to let them con- tinue if we wish to recover our domestic tranquility and internation- al standing. 50 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 8