76. Drezner notes several other discredited rationales for military predominance, including claims that it can provide a Keynesian stimulus, that military R & D is an efficient source of technological innovation, or that dominant powers can extract wealth by controlling an “informal empire.” In his words, these arguments “can be dispatched quickly.” See his “Military Dominance Doesn’t Pay (Nearly as Much as You Think),” International Security 38, no. 1 (Summer 2013), pp. 57–58.
77. Thus, the 2010 trade agreement between the United States and South Korea is no more favorable than South Korea’s trade deal with the EU, even though South Korea is a formal U.S. ally and protected (in part) by thousands of U.S. troops. See Drezner, “Military Dominance Doesn’t Pay,” pp. 64–65.
78. An exception is Carla Norrlof, America’s Global Advantage: U.S. Hegemony and International Cooperation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), which argues that U.S. security commitments have “purchased goodwill and provided Great Powers with an interest in preserving an American-centered world order” (p. 10).
79. See in particular G. John Ikenberry, Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012); and Stephen G. Brooks, G. John Ikenberry, and William C. Wohlforth, “Don’t Come Home, America: The Case against Retrenchment,” International Security 37, no. 3 (Winter 2012/13).
80. See Robert Gilpin, The Political Economy of International Relations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987).
81. The academic theory of “hegemonic stability” argues that open economic orders require a single dominant power that can provide liquidity or generate demand after a slump, but subsequent research has cast significant doubt on this theory. See Charles P. Kindleberger, The World in Depression, 1929–1939 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973); and Robert O. Keohane, After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984). For various critiques see Duncan Snidal, “The Limits of Hegemonic Stability Theory,” International Organization 39, no. 4 (1985), and Timothy McKeown, “Hegemonic Stability Theory and 19th Century Tariff Levels in Europe,” International Organization 37, no. 1 (Winter 1983). Drezner concludes that “the literature rejects the notion that hegemony is a necessary condition for an open global economy,” and adds “the existence of a liberal hegemon alone is not a sufficient condition” either. See “Military Primacy Doesn’t Pay,” p. 70.
82. In recent years the United States has devoted as much effort to sanctioning oil producers such as Iraq, Libya, Iran, and Russia as it has to keeping oil and gas flowing. These policies remind us that there is still ample slack in global energy markets and suggest that U.S. officials were not very concerned about access to Middle East energy supplies.
83. On this general point, see Eugene Gholz and Daryl G. Press, “Protecting the Prize: Oil and the U.S. National Interest,” Security Studies 19, no. 3 (2010).
84. On the role of liberal ideology in shaping U.S. foreign policy goals, see Tony Smith, America’s Mission: The United States and the Worldwide Struggle for Democracy in the 20th Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994).
85. The evolution of Francis Fukuyama’s views on this subject is instructive. A learned and influential public intellectual, Fukuyama argued in the early 1990s that the entire world would eventually converge on some version of liberal democratic capitalism. By 2016 he was writing increasingly dark and sober essays on U.S. political dysfunction and suggesting that addressing the ills of U.S. democracy would require far-reaching reforms. See in particular “America in Decay: The Sources of Political Dysfunction,” Foreign Affairs 93, no. 5 (September/October 2014).
86. Brooks, Ikenberry, and Wohlforth, “Don’t Come Home, America”; Steve Coll, “Global Trump,” The New Yorker, April 11, 2016.
87. See Sarah E. Kreps, Taxing Wars: The American Way of War Finance and the Decline of Democracy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018).
88. See Thomas Oatley, The Political Economy of American Hegemony: Buildups, Booms, and Busts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014).
89. Fareed Zakaria, “The New American Consensus: Our Hollow Hegemony,” The New York Times Magazine, November 1, 1998.
90. See “The Obama Doctrine,” The Atlantic, April 2016.
91. “An Oral History of the Bush White House,” Vanity Fair (February 2009); Eric Schmitt, “Threats and Responses: Pentagon Contradicts Army General on Iraq Occupation Force’s Size,” The New York Times, February 28, 2003.
92. Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes, The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq War (New York: W. W. Norton, 2008); and Linda Bilmes, “The Financial Legacy of Iraq and Afghanistan: How Wartime Spending Decisions Will Constrain Future National Security Budgets,” HKS Faculty Research Working Paper Series RWP13-006, March 2013 at https://research.hks.harvard.edu/publications/ workingpapers/citation.aspx?PubId=8956&type=WPN.
93. Dwight D. Eisenhower, “The Chance for Peace,” Speech to the American Association of Newspaper Editors, April 16, 1953.
94. Haass admits that a smarter foreign policy would yield domestic benefits, but the central focus of his book is the need to preserve the foundations of U.S. global power. He also points out that focusing on the need for domestic reform “borders on heresy” within the foreign policy establishment. See Foreign Policy Begins at Home: The Case for Putting America’s House in Order (New York: Basic Books, 2013), pp. 1, 8.
95. See The All-Volunteer Military: Issues and Performance (Washington, DC: Congressional Budget Office, 2007), pp. 8–9.
96. See Pew Research Center, “The Military-Civilian Gap: War and Sacrifice in the Post 9/11 Era” (Washington, DC: Pew Social and Demographic Trends, October 5, 2011).
97. See Michael C. Horowitz and Matthew S. Levendusky, “Drafting Support for War: Conscription and Mass Support for War,” Journal of Politics 73, no. 2 (April 2011).
98. See Jeffrey Record, “Force Protection Fetishism: Sources, Consequences, and (?) Solutions,” Aerospace Power Journal 14, no. 2 (Summer 2000).
99. See Tim Harper, “Pentagon Keeps War Dead Out of Sight,” Toronto Star, November 5, 2003; and “Pentagon Lifts Media Ban on Coffin Photos,” Associated Press, February 26, 2009. Harper’s original story mistakenly claimed that the Pentagon had replaced the term “body bag” with the euphemistic “transfer tube”; see Ben Zimmer, “How Does the Pentagon Say ‘Body Bag’?” Slate.com, April 4, 2006, at www.slate.com/articles/life/the_good_word/2006/04/how_does_the_pentagon_say_body_bag.html.
100. See Christopher Gelpi, Peter Feaver, and Jason Reifler, Paying the Human Costs of War: American Public Opinion and Casualties in Military Conflicts (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009).
101. U.S. Department of Army, Field Manual 100-5 (Operations), pp. 1-2; downloaded from www.fs.fed.us/fire/doctrine/genesis_and_evolution/source_materials/FM-100-5_operations.pdf.
102. General Tommy Franks’s failure to deploy sufficient U.S. troops at the Battle of Tora Bora in Afghanistan, which allowed Osama bin Laden to escape, is an obvious example. See Senator John Kerry, Tora Bora Revisited: How We Failed to Get Bin Laden and Why It Matters Today, Report to Members of the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, 111th Congress, 1st sess. (Washington, DC: U.S. G.P.O., 2009); and Peter Bergen, “The Account of How We Nearly Caught Bin Laden in 2001,” The New Republic, December 30, 2009.
103. See Mearsheimer and Walt, Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, pp. 65–67.
104. The published report mentions bin Laden’s oft-repeated complaints about U.S. support for Israel, the U.S. military presence in Saudi Arabia, and U.S.-led sanctions against Iraq, but it suggests that his opposition “may have started in reaction to specific U.S. policies but quickly became far deeper.” The cochairs of the commission, Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, later admitted that protests from other commission members led them to downplay the connection
between U.S. support for Israel and bin Laden’s anti-Americanism. Moreover, by linking bin Laden and Al Qaeda to anti-Western thinkers such as Sayyid Qutb and tracing its emergence to broader social, economic, and political trends in the Arab world, the report minimizes the extent to which the 9/11 plot was a direct response to specific U.S. policy choices. See The 9/11 Commission Report (New York: W. W. Norton, 2004), pp. 48–54; Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, Without Precedent: The Inside Story of the 9/11 Commission (New York: Knopf, 2006), pp. 284–85; and Ernest May, “When Government Writes History: The 9/11 Commission Report,” History News Network, at http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/11972.
105. See Murtaza Hussain and Cora Currier, “U.S. Military Operations Are Biggest Motivation for Homegrown Terrorists, FBI Study Finds,” The Intercept, October 11, 2016, at https://theintercept.com/2016/10/11/us-military-operations-are-biggest-motivation-for-homegrown-terrorists-fbi-study-finds/.
106. Chalmers Johnson, Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2000), pp. 8–11.
107. As Tim Arango and Eric Schmitt of The New York Times noted in August 2014, “Mr. Baghdadi’s rise has been shaped by the United States’ involvement in Iraq—most of the political changes that fueled his fight, or led to his promotion, were born directly from some American action.” See Tim Arango and Eric Schmitt, “U.S. Actions in Iraq Fueled Rise of a Rebel,” The New York Times, August 10, 2014. On the origins of the Islamic State, see Will McCants, The ISIS Apocalypse: The History, Strategy, and Doomsday Vision of the Islamic State (New York: St. Martin’s, 2015).
108. See John Tirman, The Deaths of Others: The Fate of Civilians in America’s Wars (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).
109. See Phil Stewart and Warren Strobel, “U.S. to Halt Some Arms Sales to Saudi, Citing Civilian Deaths in Yemen Campaign,” Reuters, December 13, 2016.
110. See John M. Broder, “A Nation at War: The Casualties; U.S. Military Has No Count of Iraqi Dead in Fighting,” The New York Times, April 2, 2003; and Mark Thompson, “Should the Military Return to Counting Bodies?” Time, June 2, 2009.
111. Quoted in Anna Badkhen, “Critics Say 600,000 Iraqi Dead Doesn’t Tally,” San Francisco Chronicle, October 12, 2006.
112. See Sabrina Tavernise and Andrew Lehren, “A Grim Portrait of Civilian Deaths in Iraq,” The New York Times, October 22, 2010.
113. Gilbert Burnham et al., “Mortality After the 2003 Invasion of Iraq: A Cross-Sectional Cluster Sample Survey,” The Lancet, October 11, 2006. For a summary of conflicting totals, see C. Tapp et al., “Iraq War Mortality Estimates: A Systematic Review,” Conflict and Health 2, no. 1 (2008).
114. See Azmat Khan and Anand Gopal, “The Uncounted,” The New York Times Magazine, November 16, 2017.
115. See Rob Malley and Stephen Pomper, “An Accounting for the Uncounted,” The Atlantic, December 16, 2017, at www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/12/isis-obama-civilian-casualties/548501/.
116. See Tim McGurk, “Collateral Damage or Civilian Massacre in Haditha,” Time, March 19, 2006. One U.S. Marine was eventually prosecuted for the incident; he was convicted of “dereliction of duty” but served no jail time. See Tirman, Deaths of Others, pp. 302–07.
117. Washington also rejected a demand by Médicins sans Frontières for an independent international inquiry into the incident. See Siobhan O’Grady, “Washington and Kabul Stand in the Way of International Probe into Kunduz Attack,” Foreign Policy, October 14, 2015, at https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/10/14/washington-and-kabul-stand-in-the-way-of-international-probe-into-kunduz-attack/.
118. See Matthew Rosenberg, “Pentagon Details Chain of Errors in Strike on Afghan Hospital,” The New York Times, April 29, 2016.
5: IS ANYONE ACCOUNTABLE?
1. Quoted in Eric Bradner, Elise Labott, and Dana Bash, “50 GOP National Security Experts Oppose Trump,” August 8, 2016, at www.cnn.com/2016/08/08/politics/republican-national-security-letter-donald-trump-election-2016/index.html.
2. As Kenneth Waltz pointed out in 1967, “We are misled by the vision of dominoes. States in the area of the fighting lack the solidity, shape, and cohesion that the image suggests. Externally ill-defined, internally fragile and chaotic, they more appropriately call to mind sponges; and sponges, whatever their other characteristics, do not from the transmission of impulses neatly fall down in a row.” See his “The Politics of Peace,” International Studies Quarterly 11, no. 3 (September 1967), p. 205.
3. See Jerome Slater, “The Domino Theory and International Politics: The Case of Vietnam,” Security Studies 3, no. 2 (1993); idem, “Dominos in Central America: Will They Fall? Does it Matter?” International Security 12, no. 2 (Fall 1987); and Ted Hopf, Peripheral Visions: Deterrence Theory and American Foreign Policy in the Developing World, 1965–1990 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994).
4. Thus the pro-war Wall Street Journal approvingly quoted Pakistani foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi’s 2009 prediction that a U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan “will be disastrous … you will lose credibility … Who is going to trust you again?… Why did you send so many billions of dollars and lose so many lives? And why did we ally with you?” U.S. troops were still fighting in Afghanistan when Obama left office. See “U.S. Credibility and Pakistan,” The Wall Street Journal, October 1, 2009, at www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704471504574443352072071822.
5. See Elliott Abrams, “Haunted by Syria,” Weekly Standard, January 13, 2014. Barack Obama used military force in many countries throughout his presidency, yet François Heisbourg maintains that his decision not to intervene in Syria did “enormous, perhaps irretrievable” damage to U.S. credibility. Quoted in Celestine Bohlen, “A Turning Point for Syria, and for U.S. Credibility,” The New York Times, February 22, 2016.
6. See Carmen M. Reinhart and Kenneth S. Rogoff, This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009).
7. As enunciated by former JCS chairman and secretary of state Colin Powell, the Powell Doctrine consists of a series of eight questions that must be answered in the affirmative before committing U.S. forces to battle: (1) Is a vital national security interest threatened? (2) Do we have a clear attainable objective? (3) Have the risks and costs been fully and frankly analyzed? (4) Have all other nonviolent policy means been fully exhausted? (5) Is there a plausible exit strategy to avoid endless entanglement? (6) Have the consequences of our action been fully considered? (7) Is the action supported by the American people? and (8) Do we have genuine broad international support?
8. See Paul D. Miller, “Obama’s Failed Legacy in Afghanistan,” The American Interest 11, no. 5 (February 2016); Rick Brennan, “Withdrawal Symptoms,” Foreign Affairs 93, no. 6 (November/December 2014); and Danielle Pletka, “What Obama Has Wrought in Iraq,” U.S. News and World Report, June 13, 2014.
9. Not to be outdone, Jeb Bush said that “the premature withdrawal was the fatal error”; former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani called withdrawal “the worst decision so far of the 21st century”; and the neoconservative pundit Max Boot, an outspoken advocate of the original invasion, termed the decision to withdraw “tragic.” See “Rubio: Iraq Invasion ‘Was Not a Mistake,’” The Hill, May 17, 2015, at http://thehill.com/policy/defense/242339-rubio-iraq-invasion-was-not-a-mistake; “Lindsay Graham Calls for 10,000 Troops in Iraq,” CNN, May 18, 2015, at http://cnn.com/2015/05/18/politics/lindsay-graham—iraq-not-a-mistake-election-2016/index.html; “Giuliani: Obama’s Iraq Withdrawal ‘Worst Decision of the 21st Century,’” The Hill, June 10, 2015, at http://thehill.com/blogs.blog-briefing-room/244548-giuliani-obamas-iraq-withdrawal-worst-decision-of-21st-century; and Max Boot, “Obama’s Tragic Iraq Withdrawal,” The Wall Street Journal, October 31, 2011.
10. See in particular Alexander Downes and Jonathan Monten, “FIRCed to be Free: Why Foreign-Imposed Regime Change Rarely Leads to Democratization,” International Security 37, no. 4 (Spring 2013); and Stephen M. Walt, “W
hy Is the US So Bad at Promoting Democracy in Other Countries?” Foreign Policy, April 25, 2016; at http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/04/25/why-is-america-so-bad-at-promoting-democracy-in-other-countries/.
11. See John Judis’s interview with Landis, “America’s Failure—And Russia and Iran’s Success—in Syria’s Cataclysmic Civil War,” TPMCafe, January 10, 2017, at http://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/americas-failure-russia-success-in-syrias-war.
12. See Sopan Deb and Max Fisher, “Seeking Lessons on Syria, but Taken to Task Instead,” The New York Times, September 18, 2017.
13. See Philip Shenon, The Commission: The Uncensored Story of the 9/11 Commission (New York: Hachette, 2008), pp. 25–26, 29–30, 214–19.
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