A Groundhog Day Foreign Policy

No, not Punxsutawney Phil; I mean Bill Murray's classic Groundhog Day  -- in which he's trapped in days and events that repeat themselves again and again.  Unlike Nick Payne's Constellations, which Ann and I saw last night at the Rep -- don't miss it --  which movingly explores a loving relationship through the quantum mechanics concept of co-existent, multiple universes and an infinity of possible outcomes, our foreign and defense policies appear to have only one, universal outcome -- more, more, again and again.  Like Bill Murray, we are condemned to re-live it.

Despite Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter's call (Feb 2nd) "Today's security environment is dramatically different than the one we've been engaged with for the last 25 years and it requires new ways of thinking and new ways of acting" here's what's up:

• The Pentagon is calling for more advisors and trainers in Iraq. Please, go re- read Frances Fitzgerald's Fire in the Lake on how we got sucked ever deeper into Viet Nam after Dien Bien Phu.  
• No boots on the ground.  Oh, don't worry; those aren't boots, just a few special forces units doing black ops around Damascus and Raqqa.  What -- are they wearing tennies?
• Feb 3rd: Secretary Carter names Russia our number one threat. Uh, about those ISIS guys who want to behead me . . . .
• Last July, both Putin and Carter hinted at new nuclear arms development and Carter talked of "affordable" nuclear encounters. OMG!
• Yesterday, the Administration announced a 25% build up of NATO forces and equipment in Eastern Europe.  Dr. Evelyn Farkas,  Dep. Asst. Secretary of Defense for Russia, Ukraine & Eurasia, said on NPR today "We're still in the game and we're putting more in."  Uh, that's the cold war game, right, like Kennedy/Khrushchev and  Reagan/Brezhnev?
• And where's that $3.4billion expense coming from?  Why, the Iraq/Afghanistan pot of money, of course. And where's it going to be spent?  In Romania and Poland. Huh?
• Doesn't that contravene the 1997 NATO - Russia Founding Act, prohibiting NATO bases in Russian's adjacent, neighboring countries?  No, these are just rotating deployments, not permanent bases, so they don't count. What the . . .!?!
• DOD Secretary Carter also asked Congress for more billions to counter China's initiatives in the South China Sea. Remember Quemoy and Matsu and the 7th Fleet?

  

". . . new ways of thinking and new ways of acting . .  ." ??? 

Nine smart friends of mine -- they get together once a month to discuss foreign affairs -- spent yesterday afternoon dissecting NATO.  I learned a lot.  First, how bureaucratic and far-flung its structure; how ambiguous its decision making process (no votes, no majority rule.)  Second, a new way of thinking about NATO's eastward expansion -- not to thwart (and alarm) Russia but as one WWII vet said "to spread the blanket of non-aggression over more of Europe." That view posits NATO as the EU's Defense Department, not withstanding that we pay for 3/4ths of it, and the prime vehicle through which Europe has enjoyed 70 years of peace.  To them, NATO is an asset.

The group's younger members (that's a relative term) see NATO as a potential entanglement, a liability in the sense that countries like Turkey and Estonia hold us hostage; they have a call on us.  And, it was pointed out, there is a co-dependency between our military - industrial complex and Russia's military - industrial complex; they each need the other to scare the bejeezus out of their citizenry so as to be granted ever larger budgets.

I conclude, in the end,  that NATO is all of the above -- asset, entanglement, liability, and self-perpetuating burden -- all at the same time.

The group strongly agreed that unilateral expansion of NATO is old thinking.  Such expansion must be accompanied by, if not replaced by, candid summit talks about intentions and goals, common interests, collisions of interests, and conflict avoidance.  Candid talk and active listening generates empathy and new options.  Out of such talk come deals. Such talk and listening must take place. 

Two of my smart friends, one a seasoned internationalist, the other a Russian now naturalized US citizen, proposed that Presidents Putin and Obama go on three week exchange tours of each other's country.  That might be a start.  Premier Khrushchev spent two weeks touring the US in September of 1959, changing both his and Eisenhower's views of each other.  And, in 1961, it was Eisenhower that called out the military - industrial complex.  (The original, more accurate phrase was military - industrial - congressional complex, but "congressional" was removed so as not to incite Congressional ire.) 

And now it's Obama's turn, who said of the Pentagon's proposed "McChrystal surge" into Afghanistan “So what’s my option? You’ve given me only one option.”  

One option: that's the tyranny of the military -- what C. Wright Mills in 1956 called “military metaphysics”, that "cast of mind that defines international reality as basically military.”  When our only option is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail; we must have other options.

 

Today, God knows, "new ways of thinking and new ways of acting" are long overdue.  Let's not trap ourselves in a Groundhog Days Foreign Policy any longer.

(I'm going to resist the temptation to speculate on the quanta of possible outcomes under the next administration. I leave that for you to imagine; it's too scary for me.  But I am going to send this to my Congressional Representative and Senators.  If you agree with any of it, please send it to yours, share it and ask your friends to do the same.)