With all due respect, you really need to do a bit more research on Ukraine before commenting on the situation any further. When you are talking about the "cultural genocide against his fellow Russians", you are parroting Putin's propaganda that's being swallowed whole by all the Trump supporters (including Trump himself), hence the invitation to comment on this conflict on Fox News. I am a Russian speaking Ukrainian-American and I am a Republican. My whole family lives in Ukraine. There has always been plenty of intermarriage between Russian- and Ukrainian-speaking Ukrainians and both languages are often spoken at home interchangeably (at least in my home). Since 2014, Putin has been weaponizing the Russian language via his propaganda machine resulting in the strengthening of the Ukrainian nationalism with the Russian language suffering as a result. This was Putin's plan in the fist place: financing ultra-right nationalistic parties in Ukraine stoking fear into Russian speakers via pro-Russian TV channels showing Ukrainian speaking skinheads beating up Russian speaking babushkas etc... As a result, pro-Russian parties ratings have been going up consistently until recent developments (their popularity plummeted recently). I don't support the Ukrainian government's limiting the use of the Russian language in the media, but not because it somehow hurts my feelings of a Russian speaker. I speak both Russian and Ukrainian, so does the rest of my family (and most Ukrainians can speak and understand both languages for that matter). Most of us didn't really give a damn about which language is spoken on TV (at least not until the language issue was weaponized by Putin). I don't support the limits on the Russian language because this plays right into Putin's propaganda and allows him to justify yet another invasion under the pretext of saving people like myself from, as you put it, "cultural genocide". Young Russian-speaking Ukrainians are, for the most part, pro-western. Most Russian speakers over the age of 50 are quite fond of Putin with his grandiose goals of resurrecting the Soviet Union in all of its (albeit Frankensteinian monster's) glory. This propaganda works quite well on this part of the population as, unfortunately, they were getting their news mostly from Russian language TV channels that have been pouring Russian propaganda down their throats since at least 2014. This is the reason why those channels were banned in the first place recently (interestingly, Putin started to gather his forces around Ukraine VERY shortly after these propaganda channels were shut down). Now, Putin's propaganda machine is spinning the ban as "cultural genocide", exactly like you put it. I am not a fan of foreign interventionism. I am certainly biased being a Ukrainian and with my family living there. That being said, if you have not watched Putin's 1hr address to the nation two days ago, please do. The biggest chunk of it is a history lesson with his own spin on it. After that, I would encourage you to give it some thought and to speculate on how far he could go if he were not stopped in Ukraine. How well did appeasement work on Hitler after his taking Sudetenland? I will quote the cliché saying here: history does not repeat itself but it often rhymes....
I am a big fan of yours, but your reporting on Ukraine is quite a disappointment...
Yes, his musings on Syria are equally propagandistic.
We're blamed for arming - effectively for creating - ISIS, an Islamist threat that justifies Assad's atrocities. In fact, our intervention in Syria mainly fought ISIS, not Assad.
The notion that "the only meaningful opposition to the government had always been Islamist" is noxious and wrong - but repeated loudly by defenders of the regime to justify their continued rule. Assad leads one of the world's great dictatorships. There is plenty of non-Islamist opposition to his regime, because his regime is an evil dictatorship. It also is widely understood, domestically and abroad, to have failed - to no longer have justification for its existence, to have caused/furthered Syria's economic stagnation (if not ruin) by maintaining one of the last remaining Stalinist economies long after the main they were copying had given up the ghost, and its social and diplomatic deterioration/isolation.
I don't know if Assad would have been happy being a mild-mannered eye doctor. But once he was in power, he sat atop a regime full of evil, brutal people who understood what the consequences would be for them if they were deposed. So, when protests and then armed opposition to the regime broke out, they did not hesitate to do whatever they had to do to stay in power - all else be damned.
The notion this was motivated by Christians' fear of being raped by Islamists is lunacy and furthering of an evil lie.
I don't mean to discount the alliance between the Alawites and the country's Christian minority, the role the regime played in fighting Islamism and protecting the Christians, and the fear many Christians had (and always will have) of Islamist extremists over-running the country. But the notion the regime is fighting for their wives and daughters not to be raped by Islamists - rather than they are fighting to perpetuate their own dictatorial rule, including, yes, lots of rape of the country's vulnerable populations by regime forces - is misleading, and in a disgusting way.
Finally, the essay protests it's not anti-American, but I don't see how it avoids the charge. Somehow the crimes of Assad regime are being laid at America's feet because we posted 500 - 2,000 troops in the country over a few years - a small force swamped by the number of troops from other countries operating in the theater, including Russian forces, who strangely are absolved of this sin.
Small interventions focused on stopping regional security threats (Syria); targeted and limited interventions focused on deposing God-awful dictators (Libya); full-on regime change (Iraq) - they all are equally worthy of condemnation in this essay, and lumped together as American foreign policy disasters, as if we are the only force in the world causing anything to happen, and were it not for us everything would be peace and roses. It's a cousin of the asinine anti-colonial/Western literature which seems to assume that, absent European intervention (however insignificant), nothing bad would have happened to or arisen from any society elsewhere in the world, and whatever the European powers did was necessarily bad - regardless of the options they faced and actual counterfactuals that would have resulted.
Each of these policies can be criticized. But it's not clear to me what the U.S. could do that would not draw the author's ire - and what other countries could do that would draw condemnation.
This last question hangs over things, because we're supposed to accept that greater Russian and Chinese influence will be less evil than American - ignoring that a main reason American policy often fails is we are facing evil and don't have any good options to deal with it, often because said evil is actively promoted or propped up by China or Russia. We've supported ostensibly democratic revolts on several occasions, support which resulted in tragedy when the strongman in power prevailed - to the delight of his Russian or Chinese backers. Again, how only the U.S. is blamed for these results is beyond me or any logic I can discern than rank anti-Americanism.
The essay tries to avoid this charge by attributing our foreign policy to a small cadre of American foreign policy elites. However, the narrowness of the attribution unravels the claim of influence. Yes, America's foreign policy elite have power. But creating and protecting the post-World War II security and economic order isn't some backroom deal the elites struck without the rest of us knowing, and it's not "elites" manning multiple military bases around the world with thousands of troops each.
That post-WW II security and economic order is what is unraveling right now and being replaced by Chinese and other regional influences - not Ben Rhodes' whims of interventionist fancy (we'll be able to send 500 troops to try to intervene in local conflicts for decades more - the "disasters" discussed in the essay are not at risk or issue), but the security order that allowed Western Europe, Central and Eastern Europe, and most of Asia, to rebuild and prosper - on a scale almost unimaginable at the time, and for decades - following the war. We made the world safe for liberal-democracy, American business, and Western propaganda, to the great benefit of ourselves, yes, but also to many other countries and peoples. As it unravels, it's not going to be (and is not being) replaced by a similar order only sans American foreign policy entanglement. It's being replaced by regimes and systems hostile to our interests and values - or by nothing at all, chaos and tumult filled by venile regional actors, invariably autocratic, with prosperity and long-term peace rarely following.
There are sound reasons that world is unraveling beyond our fickleness, and to oppose it may not be inherently anti-American. However, to ignore what we built and why - and the good it has done many people and countries around the world, for decades - in favor of cheap propaganda doing apologetics for creeps like Assad, is anti-American, anti-intellectual, and badly mistaken.
Gee, maybe Russia was absolved of the "sin" of having troops in a country since they were the ones actually invited by that country's leader. The Russian "swamping" is the only reason ISIS was meaningfully defeated. The US was there to ensure Assad was ousted by any means necessary because he didn't want the Turkey/Qatar pipeline. I fully realize I've become more reductionist in some of my views, but sometimes it is that simple.
If the U.S. was there to ensure Assad was ousted by any means necessary, Assad would have been ousted.
The notion the U.S. did anything in Syria/ME to advance the Turkey/Qatar pipeline is absurd. Qatar is a LNG seller and doesn't have excess gas to supply such a pipeline. It also has no right or ability to build a pipeline across Saudi land; Syria is not the obstacle and in fact desperately wants a more dependable gas supply.
Finally, the U.S. has a natural gas interest it promotes - its own. By the time of the intervention the fracking revolution had peaked in the U.S. We were not going to fight a war for a Qatari pipeline regardless (when Qatar does just fine with LNG anyway), but if we were going to use the military for that purpose it would be to advance our own interests, and those of our producers, not this bum-eff idea.
I stand corrected on the gas issue. My views were pretty outdated on that and I found a few more recent articles that back up your position. However, I'll stick with my other position that the US was never serious about defeating ISIS.
If you are indeed a Ukrainian who speaks Russian, and you believe Putin is merely dissembling to cover for his preferred policy outcomes, can you explain please, why over 81% of the civilian casualties in the conflict between Ukraine and the breakaway republics have been incurred by the Russian side? (https://ukraine.un.org/sites/default/files/2022-02/Conflict-related%20civilian%20casualties%20as%20of%2031%20December%202021%20%28rev%2027%20January%202022%29%20corr%20EN_0.pdf) This source is the UN - that is, not some Putin propaganda outlet. Unless you wish to claim otherwise? There is also video evidence of indiscriminate shelling and bombing of civilian areas by the Ukrainians. Look, I'm ethnically Romanian, and have served in the US armed forces - which is to say I am instinctually suspicious of Russians, but I'm with Rich, Putin seems far more rational than our performative-virtue foreign policy elite. Indeed, I anticipate Nancy Pelosi leading the US Congress in an interpretative dance of the Russian invasion at any moment.
Yeah, the insurgent side is more likely to die because they're in the contested region.
Putin may be a rational actor by some definition of the term, but it's for aims that violate norms established in the post-WWII and particular the post-USSR era.
Our current crop of foreign policy elite haven't been invading other countries of late. Closest we came was under Trump when we nearly went to war with Iran.
You left out the part about Ukraine repeatedly failing to carry out its responsibilities in the Minsk Agreement. Russians are tired of their brethren being shelled and killed in Eastern Ukraine.
Well put. Until now, AmeriKa has been the cancer metastizing clandestinely inside America for 100 years. Today, the malignancy has taken over the host and on the hot seat as it struggles to survive at all costs. Fortunately, cancer abhors heat and oxygen.
> I remember in the run-up to the Iraq War, everyone who opposed the invasion had to premise their argument with the disclaimer, “Yes, Saddam is a bad guy, but…” Of course, beginning every conversation by asserting that the US is good and everyone it might invade or bomb is evil puts the opponents of intervention in an untenable situation.
The problem with the invasion of Iraq were primarily two things:
1. Saddam did not in fact have a WMD program that was a threat and our intelligence community botched the analysis and let the Bush administration walk all over it with bad assumptions and motivated reasoning in the absence of any actually good intelligence (see also: any connection to 9/11)
2. More unforgivably, the planning for the invasion was fine and the planning for the occupation was almost nonexistent. The invasion went great and the aftermath was a bloodbath, mostly as Iraqis massacred other Iraqis.
The true sin in both cases was incompetence, not being good or bad
>Ukraine is either going to be run from Washington or Moscow
I feel like this is not actually the choice Ukraine, or its neighbors, has had and that Washington isn't interested in running Ukraine the way Moscow is...
>If the US had less power in the world, a lot of stupid and destructive things – like comprehensive sanctions on defenseless countries, invading and occupying Iraq, or trying to bring affirmative action to France – would simply not be done, because such policies represent unique pathologies of American politics. And this would be a good thing.
People who oppose sanctions often accuse them of being both damaging and ineffective. Let's pick one shall we?
The US trying to export its unique pathologies is mostly just pointless because it doesn't land in places where it's way beyond the existing norms. Of all our sins, that's the most harmless because it's mostly just ineffective signaling.
>Nonetheless, as a more general matter, it is worth considering whether we would rather have a world order that is American-led, Chinese-led, or – in what I think is the most likely scenario and one we are already starting to see emerge – multipolar. If that is the question, I would argue that the US is a uniquely destructive force, and multipolarity is a much more desirable state of affairs than what we currently have. Coming to this conclusion requires some comparison of the moral status and decision-making ability of the people who run American foreign policy relative to those who would replace them. It does not imply a comparison, for example, between how the US and China treat their people at home; throughout history, we have seen states that give their own citizens a high degree of freedom while being vicious towards foreign adversaries, and others that are brutal at home but largely passive abroad. To think in terms of countries as “good” or “evil” in a way that can explain both domestic and foreign policy is a mistake.
I really wonder how you would have felt about the Cold War say 50 years ago. Generally speaking, I think there is in fact a correlation between how a nation treats its own citizens and how well it treats other humans. It's not always a strong correlation necessarily (the Soviets were brutal at home and abroad, the Nazis were pretty nice to Germans, so long as they weren't Jewish...), but the US actually does pretty well here compared to every adversary we've fought with in at least the last century. The US is a uniquely powerful force and has been uniquely restrained in the use of its power relative to basically every other empire throughout history (so much so that the US is not really an empire).
>Regarding the question of whether the US is morally superior to its enemies abroad, we can think about it by way of analogy. Imagine you are trying to judge the moral worth of two men. A has a dispute with his neighbor, so he goes and burns down his house. That seems like a pretty bad thing to do, and we should judge him for that.
B, in contrast, faces no threat from those closest to him, but decides for no conceivable reason to go two blocks over, arm the weaker party in an ongoing dispute, and watch the two sides start killing each other in large numbers. All the while he brings women’s studies majors into the neighborhood to lecture the children about “toxic masculinity.” If the people of the neighborhood reject B, he places them under an economic blockade and destroys their livelihoods, starving some of the children to death. B does this while patting himself on the back for being the defender of the “rules-based neighborhood order.”
This whole analogy falls pretty flat as soon as you gain any awareness of the foreign policy of China or Russia re: their near abroad, where they can project power currently. Note again that sanctions are effective in this scenario.
I feel like an unconsidered issue here is ignoring how much the US has done to push the "Washington consensus" and increase global wealth for the last 70+ years. The "decides for conceivable reason" is a fun example of being maximally uncharitable to US foreign policy while being highly if not maximally charitable to Russian/Chinese foreign policy--and without correcting for power differentials.
>This is why, when I oppose American intervention in Ukraine, I’m not going to preface it by saying how bad Putin is, at least until those in favor of being involved have to answer for Iraq, Syria, Libya, and the other disasters that have characterized American foreign policy over the last several decades. I can at least understand why Putin does not like missiles, troop deployments, and bases on his borders, or why he would not want a neighbor to engage in cultural genocide against his fellow Russians.
Good god. American foreign policy misadventures in the MENA region in fact do nothing to justify thinking Putin invading Ukraine under false pretenses is defensible--not to mention "intervention" in the ways listed from those cases is not on the agenda. We invaded Iraq because we were stupid, supported Syrian rebels because Assad's regime opposes our interests in the Middle East, and supported rebels in Libya because our European allies really wanted to. I can think all three were very bad ideas and still be nowhere near thinking "the US-dominated global order is way worse than one potentially dominated by Russia/China, given their history, ideologies, and demonstrated behavior with lower levels of power."
Reversed stupidity is not intelligence and hypercriticism of US foreign policy for the last few decades without accurately projecting the counterfactuals of how a more powerful Russia/China will act has historically led leftists to poor stances and now apparently the right wants to get in on the horseshoe theory.
"Just because the people who make American foreign policy are dumb and their motivations banal does not mean they’re not evil. The less power they have in the future, the better the world will be."
You actually, honestly, believe that Chinese and Russian foreign policy elites will, on average, make less evil decisions as their power relative to the US grows?
Yes, because as Richard has pointed out, they are more likely to stop being evil when it no longer is serving their interests. The US blob is evil even when it makes no sense. FFS they’re trying to starve Afghans to death for no other reason than being butt hurt. They operate under the same moral framework as a drug kingpin.
That's an awfully kind, some might say naïve, interpretation of how the Chinese and Russians view the concept of evil and what serves their interests. Certainly I can see no reason to think "if they become more powerful they'll be less likely to repress their own people or be aggressive towards weaker states."
I think the problem with the Afghanistan situation is that giving the funds to the Taliban is not exactly an easy moral alternative either. Afghans are fucked either way, but realpolitik would say we shouldn't empower our rivals.
I didn't say I want to do anything and I'm in no position to make such choices.
But talking about Afghans starving as if that somehow makes whatever Putin is going to do in Ukraine better by comparison is laughable. (And defenders of Putin like to say he's doing it for justifiable realpolitik reasons...)
The MORE somebody criticizes dumb US foreign policy misadventures the MORE they should also decry Russia having dumb foreign policy misadventures.
Russia was tired of 8 years of Ukraine failing to meet its obligations under the Minsk Agreement. Ethnic Russians were dying and being terrorized by constant shelling. Putin said enough! And he also wants to make sure NATO is never in Ukraine. Good for him.
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
Historically, superpowers have had a tendency to impose their ideologies on other countries. Before the US was a superpower, it was much more 'realist' and was guided mainly by the desire to keep European powers out of its backyard. I don't buy this view that the US is uniquely pathological. Powerful nations tend to want to spread 'civilization' as they define it around the world; the Soviets, the European colonial powers, the caliphate, the Romans, Greeks, etc. all did this. If Russia and China confine themselves to mere narrowly defined self-interest if they become more powerful, it would be exceptional rather than normal.
The last time we had a multipolar world - pre-WW2 - was not a peaceful time. I don't think there's anything that can be done that's worth the cost to stop it from happening, but I don't share your optimism. I have to add: the idea of 'cultural genocide' seems ridiculous. It echos the 'woke' notion that assimilation of ethnic minorities is somehow genocide, which I'm guessing you'd find ridiculous. I'd also speculate you wouldn't agree with characterizing Chinese treatment of Uighurs as genocide (I don't think it is, at least); maybe I'm wrong, but in that context, throwing the g-word at the Ukrainian government seems like pretty frivolous usage of it.
Small nitpick and something else that demolishes Richard’s essay: The Cold War was a bipolar world for ~50 years and American foreign policy was not “less evil/interventionist” (though it did have more a “grand strategy”) then and neither was Soviet foreign policy less evil. So even if we assume a ~bipolar world with China rising—even if China is somehow less evil than it appears to be—it seems US foreign policy is likely to get worse, not better, if we feel more threatened.
I wanted to reply to your first post, but I think your argument here perfectly sums up what I take issue with: your analysis takes no note of the moral and spiritual degradation, which in turn has led to an intellectual, political, economic, and military diminishment. It will not be another 50 years of Cold War between America and China because China's rise is not simply due to China's own virtues and strengths, but due to our vices. Our elites will indeed lash out, for to understand what has gone wrong in order to course correct is to admit that they, for fundamentally selfish reasons, have despoiled and immiserated their own people. This they are psychologically incapable of grasping. Moreover, as their global and economic failures compound, they will attempt to shore up their control and will act with increasing tyranny and brutality at home.
The moral/spiritual degradation of the US--whatever you think that might be--is not particularly relevant to the question of relative merits of a US-dominated global system one vs. a Chinese/Russian/contested one. I would completely accept the argument that US foreign policy has gotten dumber in the last 20 years in particular, but it hasn't gotten more interventionist compared to the Cold War and isn't likely to anytime soon.
You can bang on about our dumb elites all you want and it's simply not a relevant variable here because Chinese and Russian elites remain far worse on any relevant dimension.
I was thinking of multipolar as distinct from 'bipolar.' I think >2 hegemons is probably more unstable than just 2, though it's possible the cold war era was more peaceful than the era of the great European powers preceding only because of nuclear weapons.
Thank you -- FYI -- that is why Biden was so bellicose on Ukraine:
ukrainegate.info nice summary of Bidens' corrupt rule in Ukraine -- found the link in Comments – never seen it before – looks well-researched and an outstanding analysis of US corruption in Ukraine
My friends overseas constantly resort to piracy and bootlegs because of US sanctions. There's no nation on earth that should be allowed to easily abuse that power.
Great post, Richard. The most obvious example of the multipolar world being more humane is Central Asia: it is between Russia, China, and Iran, yet, none of these countries have any conflicts over them at all. It is only the US when it sticks its nose in that causes trouble.
Richard, you are spot on. The US/NATO begged for this. Now they have it and they'll whine for a while, deluding themselves that Putin has made a mistake and that the Russians will lose or somehow be hurt by this. Russia will make money on the energy facet alone. And, frankly, they need to idiot proof their financial system insofar as it is possible even if it jeopardizes the dollar as reserve currency. The Ukrainian pipelines will be secure and Russia will control Ukrainian grain exports as well. Europe is and will become more dependent on Russia economically. This is a big win for Putin and Russia, regardless of what the West does.
Can you name someone who disagrees with you about the proper uses of American power, but who you think is interesting, well-informed and worth listening to?
These issues hinge on a lot of complicated questions of fact, and yet the vibe you project is that your views are unequivocally decided and your mind is closed.
It is important to remember that despite our reliable record of picking terrible allies in the Middle East, this is not a foregone conclusion. In Iraq, Syria, Turkey, and many other battlefields, there **are** 'good guys' ready and willing to work with us, no matter how many times we betray them (which we have, over and over). This doesn't apply to Afghanistan, and probably not to Yemen either, but in many places the Kurds are a relevant, well-trained force, and one which is consistently ideologically aligned. And they have never been seen to abuse their power in regions where they grew preeminent - and they _have_ had the opportunity. Arming the Kurds has _never_ gone badly - they aren't Western liberal democrats, but they're close enough for government work.
Unfortunately, we care too much about oil moving through the Sea of Marmara to anger Turkey. And so we're committed to backing Erdogan's travesty and denying Kurdistan's right to self-determination. And therefore to betraying them repeatedly, to the point that they expect it of us now, and say so to our faces. Some day when we no longer rely on Turkey economically, I hope we will start treating them as well as they have treated us.
You forgot the Eastern Ukrainians who wanted no part of the new anti Russian regime. And you forgot about the lack of any resistance in Crimea. The Crimeans were overjoyed to return to Russia.
With all due respect, you really need to do a bit more research on Ukraine before commenting on the situation any further. When you are talking about the "cultural genocide against his fellow Russians", you are parroting Putin's propaganda that's being swallowed whole by all the Trump supporters (including Trump himself), hence the invitation to comment on this conflict on Fox News. I am a Russian speaking Ukrainian-American and I am a Republican. My whole family lives in Ukraine. There has always been plenty of intermarriage between Russian- and Ukrainian-speaking Ukrainians and both languages are often spoken at home interchangeably (at least in my home). Since 2014, Putin has been weaponizing the Russian language via his propaganda machine resulting in the strengthening of the Ukrainian nationalism with the Russian language suffering as a result. This was Putin's plan in the fist place: financing ultra-right nationalistic parties in Ukraine stoking fear into Russian speakers via pro-Russian TV channels showing Ukrainian speaking skinheads beating up Russian speaking babushkas etc... As a result, pro-Russian parties ratings have been going up consistently until recent developments (their popularity plummeted recently). I don't support the Ukrainian government's limiting the use of the Russian language in the media, but not because it somehow hurts my feelings of a Russian speaker. I speak both Russian and Ukrainian, so does the rest of my family (and most Ukrainians can speak and understand both languages for that matter). Most of us didn't really give a damn about which language is spoken on TV (at least not until the language issue was weaponized by Putin). I don't support the limits on the Russian language because this plays right into Putin's propaganda and allows him to justify yet another invasion under the pretext of saving people like myself from, as you put it, "cultural genocide". Young Russian-speaking Ukrainians are, for the most part, pro-western. Most Russian speakers over the age of 50 are quite fond of Putin with his grandiose goals of resurrecting the Soviet Union in all of its (albeit Frankensteinian monster's) glory. This propaganda works quite well on this part of the population as, unfortunately, they were getting their news mostly from Russian language TV channels that have been pouring Russian propaganda down their throats since at least 2014. This is the reason why those channels were banned in the first place recently (interestingly, Putin started to gather his forces around Ukraine VERY shortly after these propaganda channels were shut down). Now, Putin's propaganda machine is spinning the ban as "cultural genocide", exactly like you put it. I am not a fan of foreign interventionism. I am certainly biased being a Ukrainian and with my family living there. That being said, if you have not watched Putin's 1hr address to the nation two days ago, please do. The biggest chunk of it is a history lesson with his own spin on it. After that, I would encourage you to give it some thought and to speculate on how far he could go if he were not stopped in Ukraine. How well did appeasement work on Hitler after his taking Sudetenland? I will quote the cliché saying here: history does not repeat itself but it often rhymes....
I am a big fan of yours, but your reporting on Ukraine is quite a disappointment...
Yes, his musings on Syria are equally propagandistic.
We're blamed for arming - effectively for creating - ISIS, an Islamist threat that justifies Assad's atrocities. In fact, our intervention in Syria mainly fought ISIS, not Assad.
The notion that "the only meaningful opposition to the government had always been Islamist" is noxious and wrong - but repeated loudly by defenders of the regime to justify their continued rule. Assad leads one of the world's great dictatorships. There is plenty of non-Islamist opposition to his regime, because his regime is an evil dictatorship. It also is widely understood, domestically and abroad, to have failed - to no longer have justification for its existence, to have caused/furthered Syria's economic stagnation (if not ruin) by maintaining one of the last remaining Stalinist economies long after the main they were copying had given up the ghost, and its social and diplomatic deterioration/isolation.
I don't know if Assad would have been happy being a mild-mannered eye doctor. But once he was in power, he sat atop a regime full of evil, brutal people who understood what the consequences would be for them if they were deposed. So, when protests and then armed opposition to the regime broke out, they did not hesitate to do whatever they had to do to stay in power - all else be damned.
The notion this was motivated by Christians' fear of being raped by Islamists is lunacy and furthering of an evil lie.
I don't mean to discount the alliance between the Alawites and the country's Christian minority, the role the regime played in fighting Islamism and protecting the Christians, and the fear many Christians had (and always will have) of Islamist extremists over-running the country. But the notion the regime is fighting for their wives and daughters not to be raped by Islamists - rather than they are fighting to perpetuate their own dictatorial rule, including, yes, lots of rape of the country's vulnerable populations by regime forces - is misleading, and in a disgusting way.
Finally, the essay protests it's not anti-American, but I don't see how it avoids the charge. Somehow the crimes of Assad regime are being laid at America's feet because we posted 500 - 2,000 troops in the country over a few years - a small force swamped by the number of troops from other countries operating in the theater, including Russian forces, who strangely are absolved of this sin.
Small interventions focused on stopping regional security threats (Syria); targeted and limited interventions focused on deposing God-awful dictators (Libya); full-on regime change (Iraq) - they all are equally worthy of condemnation in this essay, and lumped together as American foreign policy disasters, as if we are the only force in the world causing anything to happen, and were it not for us everything would be peace and roses. It's a cousin of the asinine anti-colonial/Western literature which seems to assume that, absent European intervention (however insignificant), nothing bad would have happened to or arisen from any society elsewhere in the world, and whatever the European powers did was necessarily bad - regardless of the options they faced and actual counterfactuals that would have resulted.
Each of these policies can be criticized. But it's not clear to me what the U.S. could do that would not draw the author's ire - and what other countries could do that would draw condemnation.
This last question hangs over things, because we're supposed to accept that greater Russian and Chinese influence will be less evil than American - ignoring that a main reason American policy often fails is we are facing evil and don't have any good options to deal with it, often because said evil is actively promoted or propped up by China or Russia. We've supported ostensibly democratic revolts on several occasions, support which resulted in tragedy when the strongman in power prevailed - to the delight of his Russian or Chinese backers. Again, how only the U.S. is blamed for these results is beyond me or any logic I can discern than rank anti-Americanism.
The essay tries to avoid this charge by attributing our foreign policy to a small cadre of American foreign policy elites. However, the narrowness of the attribution unravels the claim of influence. Yes, America's foreign policy elite have power. But creating and protecting the post-World War II security and economic order isn't some backroom deal the elites struck without the rest of us knowing, and it's not "elites" manning multiple military bases around the world with thousands of troops each.
That post-WW II security and economic order is what is unraveling right now and being replaced by Chinese and other regional influences - not Ben Rhodes' whims of interventionist fancy (we'll be able to send 500 troops to try to intervene in local conflicts for decades more - the "disasters" discussed in the essay are not at risk or issue), but the security order that allowed Western Europe, Central and Eastern Europe, and most of Asia, to rebuild and prosper - on a scale almost unimaginable at the time, and for decades - following the war. We made the world safe for liberal-democracy, American business, and Western propaganda, to the great benefit of ourselves, yes, but also to many other countries and peoples. As it unravels, it's not going to be (and is not being) replaced by a similar order only sans American foreign policy entanglement. It's being replaced by regimes and systems hostile to our interests and values - or by nothing at all, chaos and tumult filled by venile regional actors, invariably autocratic, with prosperity and long-term peace rarely following.
There are sound reasons that world is unraveling beyond our fickleness, and to oppose it may not be inherently anti-American. However, to ignore what we built and why - and the good it has done many people and countries around the world, for decades - in favor of cheap propaganda doing apologetics for creeps like Assad, is anti-American, anti-intellectual, and badly mistaken.
Gee, maybe Russia was absolved of the "sin" of having troops in a country since they were the ones actually invited by that country's leader. The Russian "swamping" is the only reason ISIS was meaningfully defeated. The US was there to ensure Assad was ousted by any means necessary because he didn't want the Turkey/Qatar pipeline. I fully realize I've become more reductionist in some of my views, but sometimes it is that simple.
If the U.S. was there to ensure Assad was ousted by any means necessary, Assad would have been ousted.
The notion the U.S. did anything in Syria/ME to advance the Turkey/Qatar pipeline is absurd. Qatar is a LNG seller and doesn't have excess gas to supply such a pipeline. It also has no right or ability to build a pipeline across Saudi land; Syria is not the obstacle and in fact desperately wants a more dependable gas supply.
Finally, the U.S. has a natural gas interest it promotes - its own. By the time of the intervention the fracking revolution had peaked in the U.S. We were not going to fight a war for a Qatari pipeline regardless (when Qatar does just fine with LNG anyway), but if we were going to use the military for that purpose it would be to advance our own interests, and those of our producers, not this bum-eff idea.
We were there for Israel.
I stand corrected on the gas issue. My views were pretty outdated on that and I found a few more recent articles that back up your position. However, I'll stick with my other position that the US was never serious about defeating ISIS.
If you are indeed a Ukrainian who speaks Russian, and you believe Putin is merely dissembling to cover for his preferred policy outcomes, can you explain please, why over 81% of the civilian casualties in the conflict between Ukraine and the breakaway republics have been incurred by the Russian side? (https://ukraine.un.org/sites/default/files/2022-02/Conflict-related%20civilian%20casualties%20as%20of%2031%20December%202021%20%28rev%2027%20January%202022%29%20corr%20EN_0.pdf) This source is the UN - that is, not some Putin propaganda outlet. Unless you wish to claim otherwise? There is also video evidence of indiscriminate shelling and bombing of civilian areas by the Ukrainians. Look, I'm ethnically Romanian, and have served in the US armed forces - which is to say I am instinctually suspicious of Russians, but I'm with Rich, Putin seems far more rational than our performative-virtue foreign policy elite. Indeed, I anticipate Nancy Pelosi leading the US Congress in an interpretative dance of the Russian invasion at any moment.
The side that just initiated an full-scale invasion of Ukraine without a clear reason is rational?
"The Russian side"
Yeah, the insurgent side is more likely to die because they're in the contested region.
Putin may be a rational actor by some definition of the term, but it's for aims that violate norms established in the post-WWII and particular the post-USSR era.
Our current crop of foreign policy elite haven't been invading other countries of late. Closest we came was under Trump when we nearly went to war with Iran.
Are you and your family from Kiev?
You left out the part about Ukraine repeatedly failing to carry out its responsibilities in the Minsk Agreement. Russians are tired of their brethren being shelled and killed in Eastern Ukraine.
Who has violated the Minsk Agreement more?
He's going to delete your comment--no matter how well-informed it may be--for mentioning Godwin's Law.
That's alright, the Sudetenland part is in the very end, so he might actually read the whole thing before deleting it...
Oh boy...
The truth is hard to hear sometimes
Well put. Until now, AmeriKa has been the cancer metastizing clandestinely inside America for 100 years. Today, the malignancy has taken over the host and on the hot seat as it struggles to survive at all costs. Fortunately, cancer abhors heat and oxygen.
> I remember in the run-up to the Iraq War, everyone who opposed the invasion had to premise their argument with the disclaimer, “Yes, Saddam is a bad guy, but…” Of course, beginning every conversation by asserting that the US is good and everyone it might invade or bomb is evil puts the opponents of intervention in an untenable situation.
The problem with the invasion of Iraq were primarily two things:
1. Saddam did not in fact have a WMD program that was a threat and our intelligence community botched the analysis and let the Bush administration walk all over it with bad assumptions and motivated reasoning in the absence of any actually good intelligence (see also: any connection to 9/11)
2. More unforgivably, the planning for the invasion was fine and the planning for the occupation was almost nonexistent. The invasion went great and the aftermath was a bloodbath, mostly as Iraqis massacred other Iraqis.
The true sin in both cases was incompetence, not being good or bad
>Ukraine is either going to be run from Washington or Moscow
I feel like this is not actually the choice Ukraine, or its neighbors, has had and that Washington isn't interested in running Ukraine the way Moscow is...
>If the US had less power in the world, a lot of stupid and destructive things – like comprehensive sanctions on defenseless countries, invading and occupying Iraq, or trying to bring affirmative action to France – would simply not be done, because such policies represent unique pathologies of American politics. And this would be a good thing.
People who oppose sanctions often accuse them of being both damaging and ineffective. Let's pick one shall we?
The US trying to export its unique pathologies is mostly just pointless because it doesn't land in places where it's way beyond the existing norms. Of all our sins, that's the most harmless because it's mostly just ineffective signaling.
>Nonetheless, as a more general matter, it is worth considering whether we would rather have a world order that is American-led, Chinese-led, or – in what I think is the most likely scenario and one we are already starting to see emerge – multipolar. If that is the question, I would argue that the US is a uniquely destructive force, and multipolarity is a much more desirable state of affairs than what we currently have. Coming to this conclusion requires some comparison of the moral status and decision-making ability of the people who run American foreign policy relative to those who would replace them. It does not imply a comparison, for example, between how the US and China treat their people at home; throughout history, we have seen states that give their own citizens a high degree of freedom while being vicious towards foreign adversaries, and others that are brutal at home but largely passive abroad. To think in terms of countries as “good” or “evil” in a way that can explain both domestic and foreign policy is a mistake.
I really wonder how you would have felt about the Cold War say 50 years ago. Generally speaking, I think there is in fact a correlation between how a nation treats its own citizens and how well it treats other humans. It's not always a strong correlation necessarily (the Soviets were brutal at home and abroad, the Nazis were pretty nice to Germans, so long as they weren't Jewish...), but the US actually does pretty well here compared to every adversary we've fought with in at least the last century. The US is a uniquely powerful force and has been uniquely restrained in the use of its power relative to basically every other empire throughout history (so much so that the US is not really an empire).
>Regarding the question of whether the US is morally superior to its enemies abroad, we can think about it by way of analogy. Imagine you are trying to judge the moral worth of two men. A has a dispute with his neighbor, so he goes and burns down his house. That seems like a pretty bad thing to do, and we should judge him for that.
B, in contrast, faces no threat from those closest to him, but decides for no conceivable reason to go two blocks over, arm the weaker party in an ongoing dispute, and watch the two sides start killing each other in large numbers. All the while he brings women’s studies majors into the neighborhood to lecture the children about “toxic masculinity.” If the people of the neighborhood reject B, he places them under an economic blockade and destroys their livelihoods, starving some of the children to death. B does this while patting himself on the back for being the defender of the “rules-based neighborhood order.”
This whole analogy falls pretty flat as soon as you gain any awareness of the foreign policy of China or Russia re: their near abroad, where they can project power currently. Note again that sanctions are effective in this scenario.
I feel like an unconsidered issue here is ignoring how much the US has done to push the "Washington consensus" and increase global wealth for the last 70+ years. The "decides for conceivable reason" is a fun example of being maximally uncharitable to US foreign policy while being highly if not maximally charitable to Russian/Chinese foreign policy--and without correcting for power differentials.
>This is why, when I oppose American intervention in Ukraine, I’m not going to preface it by saying how bad Putin is, at least until those in favor of being involved have to answer for Iraq, Syria, Libya, and the other disasters that have characterized American foreign policy over the last several decades. I can at least understand why Putin does not like missiles, troop deployments, and bases on his borders, or why he would not want a neighbor to engage in cultural genocide against his fellow Russians.
Good god. American foreign policy misadventures in the MENA region in fact do nothing to justify thinking Putin invading Ukraine under false pretenses is defensible--not to mention "intervention" in the ways listed from those cases is not on the agenda. We invaded Iraq because we were stupid, supported Syrian rebels because Assad's regime opposes our interests in the Middle East, and supported rebels in Libya because our European allies really wanted to. I can think all three were very bad ideas and still be nowhere near thinking "the US-dominated global order is way worse than one potentially dominated by Russia/China, given their history, ideologies, and demonstrated behavior with lower levels of power."
Reversed stupidity is not intelligence and hypercriticism of US foreign policy for the last few decades without accurately projecting the counterfactuals of how a more powerful Russia/China will act has historically led leftists to poor stances and now apparently the right wants to get in on the horseshoe theory.
The germans were not good domestically either, to be fair. They crushed the trade unions, and executed a lot of dissidents.
"Just because the people who make American foreign policy are dumb and their motivations banal does not mean they’re not evil. The less power they have in the future, the better the world will be."
You actually, honestly, believe that Chinese and Russian foreign policy elites will, on average, make less evil decisions as their power relative to the US grows?
Yes, because as Richard has pointed out, they are more likely to stop being evil when it no longer is serving their interests. The US blob is evil even when it makes no sense. FFS they’re trying to starve Afghans to death for no other reason than being butt hurt. They operate under the same moral framework as a drug kingpin.
That's an awfully kind, some might say naïve, interpretation of how the Chinese and Russians view the concept of evil and what serves their interests. Certainly I can see no reason to think "if they become more powerful they'll be less likely to repress their own people or be aggressive towards weaker states."
I think the problem with the Afghanistan situation is that giving the funds to the Taliban is not exactly an easy moral alternative either. Afghans are fucked either way, but realpolitik would say we shouldn't empower our rivals.
You want to starve millions to achieve some delusional "realpolitik" victory lmao
I didn't say I want to do anything and I'm in no position to make such choices.
But talking about Afghans starving as if that somehow makes whatever Putin is going to do in Ukraine better by comparison is laughable. (And defenders of Putin like to say he's doing it for justifiable realpolitik reasons...)
The MORE somebody criticizes dumb US foreign policy misadventures the MORE they should also decry Russia having dumb foreign policy misadventures.
Russia was tired of 8 years of Ukraine failing to meet its obligations under the Minsk Agreement. Ethnic Russians were dying and being terrorized by constant shelling. Putin said enough! And he also wants to make sure NATO is never in Ukraine. Good for him.
Weird to leave out the context of Russian incursions into Ukraine and historic domination of Ukrainians.
"Good for him to invade a weaker but uppity neighbor. I support him as a proud Russian nationalist."
Have you ever read a full book?
Many actually. I'm in the middle of Hanania's in fact.
Have you ever had a coherent thought?
Giving funds? It's their OWN money!
Yes.
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
I do! Russian elites saved Syria from AQ and ISIS. Ours were trying to destroy Syria and Libya with AQ and ISIS
Historically, superpowers have had a tendency to impose their ideologies on other countries. Before the US was a superpower, it was much more 'realist' and was guided mainly by the desire to keep European powers out of its backyard. I don't buy this view that the US is uniquely pathological. Powerful nations tend to want to spread 'civilization' as they define it around the world; the Soviets, the European colonial powers, the caliphate, the Romans, Greeks, etc. all did this. If Russia and China confine themselves to mere narrowly defined self-interest if they become more powerful, it would be exceptional rather than normal.
The last time we had a multipolar world - pre-WW2 - was not a peaceful time. I don't think there's anything that can be done that's worth the cost to stop it from happening, but I don't share your optimism. I have to add: the idea of 'cultural genocide' seems ridiculous. It echos the 'woke' notion that assimilation of ethnic minorities is somehow genocide, which I'm guessing you'd find ridiculous. I'd also speculate you wouldn't agree with characterizing Chinese treatment of Uighurs as genocide (I don't think it is, at least); maybe I'm wrong, but in that context, throwing the g-word at the Ukrainian government seems like pretty frivolous usage of it.
Small nitpick and something else that demolishes Richard’s essay: The Cold War was a bipolar world for ~50 years and American foreign policy was not “less evil/interventionist” (though it did have more a “grand strategy”) then and neither was Soviet foreign policy less evil. So even if we assume a ~bipolar world with China rising—even if China is somehow less evil than it appears to be—it seems US foreign policy is likely to get worse, not better, if we feel more threatened.
I wanted to reply to your first post, but I think your argument here perfectly sums up what I take issue with: your analysis takes no note of the moral and spiritual degradation, which in turn has led to an intellectual, political, economic, and military diminishment. It will not be another 50 years of Cold War between America and China because China's rise is not simply due to China's own virtues and strengths, but due to our vices. Our elites will indeed lash out, for to understand what has gone wrong in order to course correct is to admit that they, for fundamentally selfish reasons, have despoiled and immiserated their own people. This they are psychologically incapable of grasping. Moreover, as their global and economic failures compound, they will attempt to shore up their control and will act with increasing tyranny and brutality at home.
The moral/spiritual degradation of the US--whatever you think that might be--is not particularly relevant to the question of relative merits of a US-dominated global system one vs. a Chinese/Russian/contested one. I would completely accept the argument that US foreign policy has gotten dumber in the last 20 years in particular, but it hasn't gotten more interventionist compared to the Cold War and isn't likely to anytime soon.
You can bang on about our dumb elites all you want and it's simply not a relevant variable here because Chinese and Russian elites remain far worse on any relevant dimension.
I was thinking of multipolar as distinct from 'bipolar.' I think >2 hegemons is probably more unstable than just 2, though it's possible the cold war era was more peaceful than the era of the great European powers preceding only because of nuclear weapons.
Outstanding essay. I would be interested in reading anyone willing to write a rebuttal to see how it stacks up.
Thank you -- FYI -- that is why Biden was so bellicose on Ukraine:
ukrainegate.info nice summary of Bidens' corrupt rule in Ukraine -- found the link in Comments – never seen it before – looks well-researched and an outstanding analysis of US corruption in Ukraine
https://ukrainegate.info/short-part-1-a-not-so-solid-prosecutor/
https://ukrainegate.info/summary-part-2-not-so-dormant-investigations/
https://ukrainegate.info/summary-part-3-a-not-so-noble-president/
https://ukrainegate.info/summary-part-4-shokin-strikes-back/
My friends overseas constantly resort to piracy and bootlegs because of US sanctions. There's no nation on earth that should be allowed to easily abuse that power.
Great post, Richard. The most obvious example of the multipolar world being more humane is Central Asia: it is between Russia, China, and Iran, yet, none of these countries have any conflicts over them at all. It is only the US when it sticks its nose in that causes trouble.
Richard, you are spot on. The US/NATO begged for this. Now they have it and they'll whine for a while, deluding themselves that Putin has made a mistake and that the Russians will lose or somehow be hurt by this. Russia will make money on the energy facet alone. And, frankly, they need to idiot proof their financial system insofar as it is possible even if it jeopardizes the dollar as reserve currency. The Ukrainian pipelines will be secure and Russia will control Ukrainian grain exports as well. Europe is and will become more dependent on Russia economically. This is a big win for Putin and Russia, regardless of what the West does.
Can you name someone who disagrees with you about the proper uses of American power, but who you think is interesting, well-informed and worth listening to?
These issues hinge on a lot of complicated questions of fact, and yet the vibe you project is that your views are unequivocally decided and your mind is closed.
I wish I could figure out how any of this isn’t exactly correct.
What is "gender mainstreaming in IR"? Do you have those powerpoints? I'd love to flip through that deck.
Good article.
It is important to remember that despite our reliable record of picking terrible allies in the Middle East, this is not a foregone conclusion. In Iraq, Syria, Turkey, and many other battlefields, there **are** 'good guys' ready and willing to work with us, no matter how many times we betray them (which we have, over and over). This doesn't apply to Afghanistan, and probably not to Yemen either, but in many places the Kurds are a relevant, well-trained force, and one which is consistently ideologically aligned. And they have never been seen to abuse their power in regions where they grew preeminent - and they _have_ had the opportunity. Arming the Kurds has _never_ gone badly - they aren't Western liberal democrats, but they're close enough for government work.
Unfortunately, we care too much about oil moving through the Sea of Marmara to anger Turkey. And so we're committed to backing Erdogan's travesty and denying Kurdistan's right to self-determination. And therefore to betraying them repeatedly, to the point that they expect it of us now, and say so to our faces. Some day when we no longer rely on Turkey economically, I hope we will start treating them as well as they have treated us.
Our elites trash the US just fine.
Then why did Ukrainians elect a pro-Russian president who the US chose to overthrow?
You forgot the Eastern Ukrainians who wanted no part of the new anti Russian regime. And you forgot about the lack of any resistance in Crimea. The Crimeans were overjoyed to return to Russia.
What if Mexico wanted in the Chinese orbit? I doubt you would be willing to let Mexico have a military alliance with China.