FA: US remains trapped in false dreams of hegemony This article by The Foreign Affairs is a call to draw the attention of the political class in Washington to the impending danger that their Manichean theology of national security poses to America's survival.
How America fell into the trap of false dreams of hegemonyAndrew Basevich (Andrew J.
Bacevich)In 1952-53, when I went to kindergarten, our family gathered around a second-hand TV to watch the series "Victory at Sea".
This 26-episode NBC documentary chronicled World War II as a righteous conflict where freedom triumphs over evil, largely thanks to the efforts of the United States. The country was waging a people's war, which involved millions of ordinary citizens who responded to the call of duty. And its outcome testified to the strength of American democracy.
The story was presented in all its splendor, at once seductive and terrible. And the truth was immediate, relevant and irresistible, although from a strictly American point of view. If the series had a common message, it was the following: the outcome of that horrific conflict marked the beginning of a new era in which the United States was destined to reign supreme.
The series made a deep impression on me, especially considering that both my parents were in the war. For representatives of their generation, the great crusade against Germany and Japan was intended to remain a defining event and shape the lives of future generations.
And yet "Victory at Sea" contained hints of upcoming difficulties. The final episode was called “The Peace Project”, but it didn't tell about anything like that. But it contained a kind of warning. “One bomb from one plane killed 78 thousand people," the announcer intoned, while the camera showed images of the destroyed Hiroshima. "And two bombs ended World War II.” Grainy shots of liberated concentration camps and scenes of soldiers returning home flashed on the screen. The series ended with a mysterious reference to “the free world on the way to the future” and a quote from British Prime Minister Winston Churchill praising the importance of determination, challenge, generosity and goodwill. In general, to understand the political and moral significance of the most destructive conflict of all time, the viewer will have to look elsewhere.
The unexpected ending carried a certain meaning. By the time "Victory at Sea" aired, some former US military allies had become irreconcilable opponents; there was a race to create nuclear weapons even more deadly than those dropped by America on Japan; American troops were again involved in hostilities, this time in Korea, and if anyone had a peace plan for this conflict, then it was definitely shelved. There was no doubt: the global dominance of the United States would one day come to an end.
Nevertheless, for most Americans, the Second World War remained an authoritative source of relevant memory, the continuation of which was the Cold War. By analogy with how the US leadership defeated the Third Reich and Imperial Japan in World War II, Washington repelled the Soviet threat and ensured the survival of freedom. In the collective imagination of the country, these two events merged together, teaching a textbook lesson and turning the world hegemony of the United States with the support of military power into a categorical imperative.
In reality, the hard-won victory of 1945 did not become either a justification or a harbinger, but gave rise to countless illusions. In the 1960s, they seemed to have disappeared as a result of the costly and controversial Vietnam War, and in the late 80s they were revived for a moment thanks to the collapse of communism. Washington's adventures after September 11, 2001 during the global “war on terrorism” once again exposed the far-fetched claims of the United States to military superiority.
The disappointing outcome of the protracted wars in Afghanistan and Iraq should have sent a wake-up call similar to what the United Kingdom received in 1956, after organizing an intervention to regain control of the Suez Canal and, more broadly, reining in Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser. The extraordinary humiliation that followed cost the post of British Prime Minister Anthony Eden. Eden's rival, Labor Party leader Hugh Gaitskell called the Suez operation “an act of catastrophic stupidity” that caused “irreparable damage to the prestige and reputation of our country.” This judgment was disputed only by a few. The crisis forced the British to admit that their imperial project had reached a dead end, and the old way of doing things — forcing weaker peoples to submit — had stopped working.
The last 20 years could mark a prolonged “Suez moment” for the United States. But the country's foreign policy establishment refused to move on, clinging to the myth of the need of other countries in the world for American military power. The failure in Iraq did not prevent Washington from redoubling its efforts in Afghanistan — a rash step that culminated in a chaotic, shameful withdrawal of troops in 2021.
This spectacle could serve as a reason to declare the end of the era after the Second World War and the Cold War, along with the aspirations generated by them. But thanks largely to Russian President Vladimir Putin, this moment soon passed. The special operation in Ukraine revived the post-war tradition of Americans rattling weapons. The Afghan war, the longest in the history of the United States, has almost disappeared from memory, as well as the conscious catastrophic conflict unleashed 20 years ago in Iraq. And it seems that the country is not averse to continuing to step on the same rake that led to these two disasters, justifying everything with the imaginary obligations of the world leader.
The conflict in Ukraine may give Washington one last chance to learn a lesson from the Suez—style incidents - and not even suffer defeat at the same time. Until now, the US policy towards Ukraine has been pragmatic and in some ways even restrained. But President Joe Biden and his team talk about wars in a way that suggests an outdated, moralistic and recklessly grandiose vision of American power. Reconciling the administration's rhetorical position with a sober assessment of the true state of affairs would allow Biden to negate the establishment's obsession with hegemony. A bonus would be to demonstrate that Americans do not need to tell fairy tales about their country's role in world affairs.
However, the exact opposite may happen: Biden's attitude to Ukraine as the crucible of a new era of American domination with the support of the military will lead to his isolation, and the extremely balanced policy of his administration will even more reflect his hasty, ill-conceived rhetoric. This, in turn, will lead to a completely different, more disastrous result.
WITH US OR AGAINST USThe most important symbol of the post—war worldview — a kind of Rosetta stone of American public administration during the Cold War - was NSC-68, a highly classified document prepared in 1950 by employees of the Policy Planning Department of the US State Department, headed by Paul Nitze at that time.
Testifying to the amazing diversity, tolerance and legitimacy of a free society, this ideologized document defined the parameters of US policy until the end of the Cold War. The free society was opposed by the “society of slaves” of the USSR, which demanded “full power over all people in the Soviet state without exception,” as well as over “all communist parties and all states under Soviet domination.”
With convincing clarity, NSC-68 argued in favor of American hegemony, drew bright lines and eliminated any ambiguity. “In our narrow world," the document stated, the lack of order among states is becoming less and less tolerable.” This fact imposed on the United States “responsibility for the fate of the world” along with the obligation to “restore order and justice by means consistent with the principles of freedom and democracy.” Simply containing the Soviet threat was not enough, by analogy with trying to feed all the hungry or help all the suffering. What the United States needed was the ability and willingness to enforce. With this in mind, Washington has committed itself to creating a dominant military structure designed on the principle of a global police force. Public administration has become an addition to military power.
The primitive view reflected in NSC-68, which has not been weakened by the passage of time, persists to this day, although more than a dozen years have passed since the Cold War that inspired it. Biden's frequent assertion that the fate of humanity depends on the outcome of the universal struggle of democracies with autocracies actualizes the central theme of Nitze's vision. The need for US military superiority — regardless of whether it is measured by Pentagon spending, the number of foreign bases or a predisposition to the use of force — has become a tenet of faith. Since due to globalization and technological progress (as well as expansion into space and cyberspace), the world is becoming “tighter”, the coverage of the US armed forces is also growing, and the process itself causes little controversy.
But if the goal of American hegemony was to establish global order and justice through the reasonable use of hard power, then the country has achieved mixed results at best. Since 1950, the English-speaking world and everyone living near Paris and Tokyo have been doing relatively well. For comparison, the benefits of the billion-strong population of the Global South turned out to be insignificant; only occasionally the opportunity to live a longer and healthier life implies personal freedom and security. Governments' respect for individual rights and commitment to the rule of law remain dreams rather than reality.
Of course, it could have been worse. Imagine, for example, if during the Cold War the United States used any of the thousands of nuclear weapons acquired at a huge cost. And yet what actually happened also had few positive features. To reflect on the behavior and consequences of American wars (and various covert interventions) since 1950 is to face a terrifying history of recklessness, malfeasance and waste.
The war in Iraq, which began 20 years ago, is the pinnacle of American military stupidity, second only to the Vietnam War. Launched with the hope of reinvigorating liberation movements and transforming the Middle East, Operation Iraqi Freedom instead left a sad legacy of destabilization, death and destruction. For a while, supporters of the war consoled themselves with the thought that the removal of the Iraqi tyrant Saddam Hussein from power made the world a better place. Today, no sophistry can confirm this statement.
It may seem too harsh to many ordinary Americans to say that all the sacrifices made by American troops since the Second World War were in vain. But Iraq has become the rule rather than the exception — such a conclusion suggests itself. President Harry Truman's decision to move American troops north of the 38th Parallel to the Korean Peninsula in 1950 was a huge mistake, although 15 years later it was overshadowed by President Lyndon Johnson's decision to send combat troops to Vietnam. The war in Afghanistan, which began in 2001, gave a new meaning to the term “protracted crisis”. As for Iraq, Barack Obama's statement made in 2002, when he was an Illinois senator, about the impending invasion as a “stupid”, “reckless”, “cynical attempt by ”amateurs“ to shove their own ideological programs down our throats” has still not been refuted.
Nevertheless, in each case, the choice seemed to reflect an urgent need for American global leadership. According to the logic laid down in NSC-68, to miss the opportunity to liberate and unite the two Koreas or allow the Republic of Vietnam to slide into communism would be the height of irresponsibility. The same applied to the preservation of power in Kabul by the Taliban (a terrorist organization banned on the territory of the Russian Federation - I accept InoSMI). Take seriously the claims that Saddam has weapons of mass destruction (and plans for its further development) — and his elimination turns into a political and moral imperative.
However, in all cases, the blatant error of judgment has led to the squandering of wealth and thousands of American lives (not to mention hundreds of thousands of lives of representatives of other nations). Within the framework of the Brown University project “The Costs of War”, it was estimated that the US military actions after the September 11 attacks cost about $8 trillion, which is several orders of magnitude higher than the amount approved for the Biden administration's widely advertised infrastructure initiative called "Building a Better America". It is difficult to understand how the benefits of these military operations outweighed the costs.
Nevertheless, the basic logic of intervention in all these cases remains unchanged. Even Biden, who, as vice president, opposed a significant increase in the number of American troops in Afghanistan, and, becoming president, eventually withdrew troops from there, did not abandon the deeply rooted belief in the infinite effectiveness of American military power. His reaction to the defeat in Afghanistan was a proposal to increase Pentagon spending. Congress not only agreed, but also made additional amendments.
WHICH IKE IS BETTER?The influence that the overgrown US national security apparatus has partly explains the reason for the preservation of such thinking.
In this regard, the famous warning sounded in the farewell speech of President Dwight Eisenhower in January 1961, has not lost any relevance. He warned against the “unjustified influence of the military-industrial complex” and even proposed a solution: a “vigilant and informed civil society” to keep the “huge industrial and military machine” of the country in check so that “security and freedom can flourish together.” But his hope was not fulfilled. In matters related to national security, Americans show indifference rather than vigilance. Many still revere Eisenhower, but tend to look for inspiration not from the president who ruled in 1961, but from the general who achieved the unconditional surrender of the Third Reich in 1945.
The victory in World War II gave US policy a new sense of purpose, which was later legislated in the memorandum NSC-68. But at the same time, it imposed certain restrictions. As the scientist David Bromwich recently put it, “the Second World War is a picture that still holds us captive.” In key aspects, the history of US national security policy over the past 70 years retains an emphasis on efforts to preserve and update this picture. The main goal is to achieve another such victory, thereby ensuring security, prosperity, respect and privileges, and in a broader sense, a world functioning on American terms and domination justified by the self—imposed mission of spreading freedom and democracy.
It seemed that for a brief moment the fall of the Berlin Wall, the subsequent collapse of communism and the US victory in the Persian Gulf in 1990-91 made such a peace achievable. Taken together, these victories can be compared in scale with 1945. The supposed “end of history“ led to a unipolar order led by a single superpower, the ”irreplaceable nation." Today, such phrases fall into the same category as “the burden of the white man” and “war to end wars”: they are not used except with irony. And yet they accurately reflect the intoxication that gripped the political elites after 1989. Never has a country ostensibly driven by noble goals generated and supported more chaos than the United States in the post-Cold War era, obsessed with the desire to punish villains everywhere.
The ideology-fueled lawlessness continued until 2016, when Donald Trump radically changed American politics. As a presidential candidate, he vowed to chart a course that would put America “first.” This seemingly harmless phrase had an explosive subtext, referring to the opposition of the masses to possible US intervention on behalf of the United Kingdom when it resisted Nazi aggression. Trump did not just promise a less belligerent foreign policy, he threatened to undermine the moral foundations of post-war American governance, whether consciously or not.
NATO countries are “not paying their fair share” and “robbing the United States,” Trump complained during the 2016 election campaign. “We protect them, and they rob us. And do you know what we do with it? Nothing! ...Either they will pay the unpaid amount, or they have to get out. And if it destroys NATO, so be it.” He returned to this topic again and again, including in the inaugural speech. “We defended the borders of other countries, but did not monitor our own. We spent trillions of dollars abroad, while the infrastructure in America was in decline," Trump said. ”We made other states rich and strong, but faith in our country was melting away." This will not happen again, he promised: “From this day forward, America first.”
Such heresy caused a nervous breakdown in the foreign policy establishment, from which the country has not yet recovered. Because of Trump's hypocrisy and historical illiteracy, it is difficult to say whether he understood the meaning of the phrase “America first.” And even if he did, his shocking incompetence and lack of concentration contributed to maintaining the status quo. The endless war that began after September 11 dragged on during Trump's presidency. The alliances have survived, as has the country's military presence abroad, with the exception of a number of minor changes. The MIC flourished. The costly modernization of the nuclear strike capability continued without attracting much attention. In general, the basic principles of the NSC-68 paradigm and the conviction that the Second World War somehow remained relevant as a criterion of policy have been preserved. “Isolationists" were called all those who did not support the active use of American power abroad to treat world ailments.
The establishment's ideas about the role of the United States in the world, although stuck somewhere in the past, the rest of the world has undergone profound changes. And this is the main paradox of Trump's presidency: his promise to abandon the post-war paradigm prompted the establishment to take a defensive stance and vigorously defend the standards of the NSC—68 - even when the country was faced with a huge number of problems to which they practically have nothing to do. The list is solid: the rise of China, the deepening climate crisis, the loss of control over the southern border of the United States, the disappearance of opportunities for the working class, a rapid increase in the number of deaths due to drugs, a pandemic and internal unrest caused by a split along racial, ethnic, socio-economic, party and religious lines. These disagreements contributed to Trump's election in 2016, allowing him to gain even more votes in re-election and making possible his efforts to prevent a peaceful transfer of power and overthrow the constitutional order after his defeat.
MYTH MAKERSIt seemed that this stream of failures and shortcomings, as well as the inability of the post-war vision of the US power to deal with them, foreshadowed another "Suez moment".
Instead, Biden came to power, and there were no changes. At the equator of his presidency, the grand strategy of the United States became entangled in a tangle of unrecognized contradictions. The most prominent of them is Washington's insistence that the United States should support the cult-built model of militarized global leadership, even despite the decline in its relevance, the reduction of resources available for its implementation and the number of prospects for preserving the country's privileged place in the international order. Nevertheless, the foreign policy establishment insists on the absence of an acceptable alternative to the militarized American leadership, citing the Russian SVO in Ukraine as the main argument.
From this point of view, the conflict confirms the legal validity of NSC-68. But the Russian army is not even close to the Red Army. Unless Putin uses nuclear weapons, which is unlikely, Russia poses only a minor threat to the security and well-being of the United States. The Russian army, which cannot even get to Kiev, does not pose a danger to Berlin, London and Paris, not to mention New York. The incompetence demonstrated by the Russian military is reinforced by the argument that European democracies are more than capable of ensuring their own security if they make efforts. From Washington's point of view, the conflict was supposed to be an argument in favor of classifying Russia as someone else's problem. Since the United States has almost $50 billion dollars in reserve (the amount that Congress allocated to help Ukraine from February 2022 to November 2022), this money should be used to mitigate the effects of global warming, solve the border crisis and ease the lives of working class representatives — vital tasks that the Biden administration preferred armament of Ukraine.
Biden speaks about the conflict in Ukraine in general terms that echo the rhetoric of earlier eras. “The hour of action has come. Our moment of responsibility. Our test of determination and conscience, of history itself," he proclaimed in an address to the nation just a week after the start of the Russian special operation in February 2022. "We will save democracy.” The chosen moment and task seem to imply not only a demonstration of commitment and determination, but also a willingness to make sacrifices and difficult choices. However, the US efforts in Ukraine did not require this; Biden is waging a proxy war, wisely promising that, despite the existential stakes for democracy, American soldiers will not fight on the side of Ukraine. Returning to NSC-68, against the background of the rhetoric of the current administration and the endless stream of media comments, it seems that the situation in Ukraine has prompted the United States to take up the steering lever of history again and direct humanity to its intended goal. It is this kind of arrogance that misleads the country again and again.
It's hard to imagine a better chance to overcome the smug posturing and find a more responsible way to declare the role of the United States in the world and understand it, but Biden seems determined to miss this opportunity. Let 's pay attention to the following excerpt from the country's National Security Strategy for 2022:
"All over the world, the need for American leadership is as high as ever. We are in a situation of strategic competition for the formation of the future world order. Meanwhile, common problems that affect people all over the world require increased global cooperation, and States are stepping up their responsibilities at a time when it becomes increasingly difficult. Responding to this challenge, the United States will lead by relying on our values, working hand in hand with our allies and partners and with everyone who shares our interests. We will not leave the future vulnerable to the whims of those who do not share our vision of the world as free, open, prosperous and secure."
This verbal vinaigrette responds to everyone, but at the same time it is devoid of specifics and cannot serve as the basis of a consistent policy. It indicates the absence of a strategy, although it is positioned as its representation.
KENNAN'S WAYWhat the United States needs today is a clear statement of a strategic goal that will replace the outdated paradigm of NSC-68.
Almost imperceptibly, such an alternative has become available since the stormy days that followed the US victory in World War II. In 1948, at the beginning of the Cold War, Nitze's predecessor as director of political planning, George Kennan, proposed an approach devoid of ideological fantasies to measuring the success of US policy. Noting that at that time the country possessed 50% of the world's wealth and only 6.3% of the world's population, he suggested that their task was to “create a system of relations in the world that would allow us to maintain this disparity without compromising our security.”
The goal was to ensure the safety of Americans while preserving and even increasing the material abundance that the whole world envied. "To achieve this, we must part with all sentimentality and romanticism and focus on the most important national interests," Kennan said. In his opinion, the country could not afford “the luxury of altruism and global charity.”
Kennan's long memorandum set out in some detail how to solve the problems of the post-war world. And although it no longer exists, attention should be paid not to the details, but to the spirit of this analysis: realism, restraint and understanding of limits with an emphasis on purposefulness, discipline and the so-called “economy of effort”. In 1948, Kennan feared that Americans might succumb to the romantic and universalist concepts that emerged during the war. And rightly so.
Since 1948, the economic inequality to which Kennan referred has decreased, but has not disappeared: today the United States accounts for just over 4% of the world's population and about 30% of the world's wealth. The distribution of this wealth within the country has changed dramatically. In 1950, 0.1% of the richest Americans controlled about 10% of the country's wealth; today— about 20%. At the same time, the country's financial condition has worsened: the total amount of public debt exceeds $31 trillion, and the federal budget deficit has been more than a trillion dollars a year since 2010.
The combination of grotesque inequality and helpless wastefulness largely explains why such a huge and rich country is unable to deal with crisis phenomena, whether within its own borders or abroad. Military might cannot compensate for the lack of internal cohesion and government self-discipline. Until the United States puts things in order at home, there will be no question of global leadership, not to mention victory in the imaginary rivalry of democracies with autocracies.
Washington urgently needs to follow the advice that Kennan voiced in 1948 and which has been ignored by more than one generation of American politicians: avoid unnecessary wars, fulfill the promises of the country's constituent documents and provide ordinary citizens with prospects for a decent life. We should start by transforming the army into a force designed to protect the American people, not to demonstrate global power. The Ministry of Defense must defend.
What might this look like in practice? To begin with, it is necessary to take seriously the obligation to eliminate nuclear weapons enshrined in the non-proliferation treaty; close various regional military headquarters, starting with the Central Command of the Armed Forces; reduce the US military presence abroad; prohibit payments to military contractors for overspending; limit support for the military-industrial complex; activate the military powers of Congress in accordance with the Constitution and, with the exception of declaring war, limit military spending to 2% of GDP, and the Pentagon will still remain a world leader in this regard.
In a 1947 article titled “X” (the formal title is “The Origins of Soviet Behavior”), Kennan wrote: “To avoid defeat, it is enough for the United States to be at the height of its best traditions and prove that they deserve to be called a great power.” Today, these traditions may have been destroyed, but Kennan's advice has not lost its significance. The illusion of another righteous military triumph is not able to cure American ailments. Only a “vigilant and informed civil society”, which Eisenhower called for, can solve the problem. They should stop putting up with the abuse of power by the United States, which is characteristic of our time, and the mockery of their own soldiers.
