Reading George Fox

American Parties & Foreign Policy

By Bruce Steinberg 2023-07-16 Politics

I’m deliberately avoiding any more arguments in this post to present the most conservative argument that the Republican Party has been a mess on the foreign policy front.

I had a conversation today about political polarization in our country. My friend was on the “both sides” spectrum, which I think overstates how much the Democrats have contributed to it. I’m going to leave aside the domestic side of the debate and focus on which party has had a better foreign policy. My friend argued that the Democrats were terrible, listing Kennedy, LBJ, and Carter, while contrasting them to Bush I’s multilateralism (which I think boils down to the Gulf War). Given the immense change that was the end of the Cold War, I don’t know if one can actually make a fair comparison without a lot of background research. Also, there’s the question of: “Does the Gulf War happen if the Reagan administration doesn’t arm Iraq during its war with Iran?” It seems a bit off to credit Bush for positive foreign policy if he helped create the underlying crisis in the first place.1

Of course, the bigger argument is how bad a catastrophe was Iraq Part Duex. I’d argue it was at least as big of a disaster as Vietnam. Probably worse given the chaotic fallout across the Middle East over the past decade plus. My friend argued that it was worth it for humanitarian reasons. When I asked why Saddam and not the numerous other dictators, he replied it was because of the oil. That the real problem was W fucked up the reconstruction. Now, let’s also leave aside the morality of lying the country into a war without a just cause2 and think about it from a broader strategic perspective.

What were the downsides of going into Iraq? Well, we certainly shattered our international support much more quickly than otherwise and shifted all our money and attention away from Afghanistan. Now, Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires, but if there was ever a chance to pull a Germany/Japan after WW2, it was in 2002 with the full backing of our allies and world opinion. Moreover, staying focused on Central Asia opens up a major missed opportunity—detente with Iran. Despite their years of Anti-American rhetoric3, they did put out feelers post 9/11. After all, the Taliban (a Sunni Theocracy on their eastern border) was a threat to them too. On a broader scale, Wahhabism is just about as anti-Shia as it anti-Western. They too were no friends of Saddam; that was enough common interest to at least talk.

More importantly, where did the terrorist threat actually come from? At least ideologically and monetarily—Saudi Arabia. In a pure realist sense, the last thing we should have done is rely more on them. And Iran is the Saudi’s natural enemy; it was a prime Nixon goes to China moment, balance one opponent against another. There’s even the comparison of letting down an ally (Taiwan/Israel) for our national interest. We had managed to deal with China for 30 years without them invading Taiwan, which is a much harder feat than preventing Iran from actually threatening Israel’s existence.4 Just the possibility of warmer relations with Iran would have given us leverage with the Saudis.5 Maybe pressure them to stop funding Wahhabi schools and mosques? A friendly Iran also reduces our dependence on Pakistan—the country that harbored bin Laden for years! In 2002, Iran was actually the most logically strategic ally in the Middle East—it was estranged from its Islamic neighbors by religious and strategic tensions and, pre-Axis of Evil, was probably willing to trade security guarantees for oil. A much simpler and far less risky method than invading a powder keg of a country that had no historic reason to exist other than British colonialism.6

Now there is the argument that the Ayatollah is a crazy religious nut who can’t be trusted. But is he really that much less reliable than Mao? There’s been no Great Leap Forward causing a famine that killed millions. Iran hasn’t started any wars since its revolution. Yes, it has sponsored terrorism, but that has been driven just as much by strategic reasons7 as ideological. Even its pursuit of a nuclear weapon is decidedly a realist goal. The most powerful country in the world has been vocal about regime change and listed it as one of three targets. We invaded the target without nukes (Iraq) and have not invaded the country with them (North Korea). Iran’s government has every reason in the world to create a viable deterrent.8 9

I think it’s clear going into Iraq was a major mistake on a pure strategic level: it placed a major drain on our economy, strained our alliances, and there were potentially better ways to achieve our goals. So, what if there were no hanging chads and President Gore10 was in charge on 9/11? Do we still pivot to Iraq? While it’s possible, I doubt he would have filled his administration with people who had been advocating for invading Iraq since the late ’90s. I think it’s much more likely he continues the emphasis on NATO unity from the intervention in the Balkans. While Bush I may have been a multilateralist, his son certainly was not11 and the rest of the party has abandoned that approach, while the Democrats at the very least still use multilateral rhetoric.

So, I think a plausible alternate history would be: a more stable Afghanistan;12 no sectarian civil war in Iraq->no Al’Qaeda in Iraq->no ISIL->a much different Syria->a more constrained (w/o a Shiite Iraq) and potentially more friendly Iran->less death13 and chaos in the Middle East. And the fallout from that would have led to a very different and probably more stable world.

For my generation at least, the likelihood that the Democratic Party doesn’t make that horrendously bad decision is reason enough to rate them as far better at foreign policy.14 15

  1. There’s also the question if any US President has had a good foreign policy? Probably FDR, but fighting WW2 wasn’t that hard of a decision. Before that? Washington? Most of our Presidents have been bad, immoral, or both when dealing with foreign countries. ↩
  2. I actually think the “Because oil!” argument is unfair to W’s administration. At least some of them actually believed invading Iraq would bring democracy to the Middle East. Now that belief was absurd, but some of them held it. (Other than Germany/Japan post-WW2, I don’t think any military invasion has successfully created a democracy and I don’t think you can separate that example from the beginnings of the Cold War). ↩
  3. Which was well deserved: we had assassinated their Prime Minister, installed a dictator, and backed their opponent in a war shortly after their revolution. If Iran had ended up a secular democracy, they’d still have plenty of reasons to hate our country. Imagine if Britain had assassinated George Washington after the Revolution then funded an eight year war by a confederation of Native American nations. How do you think we’d have thought about them in 1800? ↩
  4. Hezbollah does not have the capacity to invade and destroy Israel. China’s a massive country sitting right across a strait from Taiwan and has both ideological and strategic reasons to invade. Iran gains more by distracting its populace with the bloody shirt than it would waging a full scale war. And how would it get an army to Israel? Iraq under Saddam wouldn’t have let them much through and Jordan still wouldn’t. ↩
  5. And there’s no moral or ideological reason to favor the House of Saud—it’s a religiously fundamentalist absolute monarchy. While Iran is also a dictatorship, it at least has political institutions that could evolve into a democracy. Structurally at least, it looks more like England under Henry VIII than France under Louis XIV. The elected government does have some control over policy, within the limits set by the ruling religious authorities. There’s a plausible path for the Ayatollah to gradually cede power until they become the ceremonial Head of State. In Saudi Arabia, it would probably take a bloody revolution. ↩
  6. Going back to the Germany/Japan example, the idea of a German and a Japanese people went back centuries, if not millennia. “Iraq” dated from the 1920s and was created without thinking about the identities of the people that lived there. Changing governments is hard enough; creating a Nationality at the same time is probably impossible. ↩
  7. Before we did Iran the favor of removing Saddam, the only other countries where Shiites held political power were Lebanon and Syria. Of course, Iran supported the Shi’a forces in those countries. ↩
  8. And if one thinks they would use a nuke aggressively against Israel, one needs to posit that the Ayatollah is suicidal. Unless Iran manages to completely disable Israel’s arsenal, a ton of missiles are going to come right back. I doubt the current regime is valuable enough to Russia or China for them to veto a UN resolution against the first state to launch a nuclear attack since 1945. The United States instantly declares war along with most of Europe. The Sunni world would not be a fan of a Shiite state that has aggressively used nuclear weapons—at best they remain neutral. India certainly would be worried, so Iran would have to rely on Pakistan to deter any action on their part. While the two nations are close, Pakistan going against worldwide opinion seems unlikely. In short, there’s no better way to ensure regime change than to actually use a nuclear weapon. For medium-sized states, nukes are a much better deterrent than offensive weapon. ↩
  9. Which is also why it was pure madness to pull out of JCPOA. At the same time it built trust, it also preserved our leverage. Once Iran has a nuclear weapon, any military action becomes much more risky. Simply slowing them down was to our advantage. ↩
  10. Let’s leave aside the likelihood that he would have continued the Clinton administration’s focus on Al’Qaeda, which would probably have some effect on what happened. ↩
  11. You’re either with us or against us. ↩
  12. This is a pretty low bar. ↩
  13. At the very least, less American deaths ↩
  14. And, if you add the few years in, it’s inarguably that a President Clinton would not be attempting to undermine the post WW2 liberal order. My friend acknowledged that Trump was an end product of our recent history (if not simply the Republican Party’s recent history), so if Trump represents the future of the American right, the left is pretty much the only sane option on the foreign policy front. ↩
  15. In terms of my own views, I dislike both parties’ policies. A never ending, ever more abstract war is bad for our country and the world. In less than a year, there will be adults who have lived their entire lives during wartime. That’s a first in American history and a terrible sign for the future. It is no more possible to win a war against “Terror”, than it’s possible to win the one on “Drugs”. Abstract concepts don’t have a capital to occupy. ↩
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