Building on the earlier works of Andrew Bacevich’s Washington Rules and Robert Kaplan’s Imperial Grunts, Stephen Glain’s State versus Defense provides a thought provoking, compelling historical revision to United States Foreign Policy. Well researched, his findings demand consideration as we try to understand who we are, where we have been, and where we want to go in the future. His initial interviews sparked controversy at Foreign Policy and Salon, and we asked him to join the conversation at Small Wars Journal in order to talk through his specific thoughts and recommendations for our nation. Regardless of your individual views on the subject, I would ask that you consider Steve’s voice and critique. This book is high on my recommendation list.
Your book, State versus Defense, builds upon the concept that the United States, as the world’s only superpower, is an empire with a militarized foreign policy securing the periphery. What life experiences led you to this conclusion?
It’s hard to live in Asia and the Middle East, as I have as a journalist, and not be struck by the scope of the U.S. military’s presence overseas and the depth of its influence on American foreign policy. While in Asia, to cite just one example, I saw how the Pentagon worked behind the scenes during the 1997-1998 currency crisis to ensure a generous response by international institutions for the sake of its strategic allies. In the Arab world, U.S. embassies have become more fortress-like listening posts and flag billets than sources of diplomatic and cultural outreach. Now that the Pentagon has its own funding authority, it can sidestep the State Department in establishing close relations with foreign governments. Whether or not that is a good thing, there’s no denying that it further marginalizes the diplomatic side of the profile America projects abroad.
I might add that the notion of American empire and militarization is hardly notional for foreigners like the Okinawans, who for generations have dwelled alongside a sprawling Marine base, or among residents of South Korea’s Jeju island, who are challenging plans to build a major naval installation there ostensibly on America’s behalf. At the same time, the indulgence by Washington of autocrats who accommodate U.S. bases even as they bully their citizens at home - most recently in Bahrain, for example - fuels the assumption that American empire is not only real but malign.
About the Author(s)
Michael Few is a retired military officer who served multiple combat tours to Iraq including the Thunder Runs and The Surge, and he currently serves as the editor of Small Wars Journal. He is a graduate of the United States Military Academy and studied small wars at the Defense Analysis Department at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA
Comments
Glain in his book references Gen David Shoup in the context of a brief SIOP memo in 1961 but there's no other reference that I can find in the book or online that he's read Shoup's April 1969 essay in the Atlantic Monthly "The New America Militarism": Shoup covers these military verses diplomatic ideas clearly and succinctly and offers up the easily acceptable conclusion that the military can-do mentality, the focus and energy that the military puts towards tasks, overmatches the diplomatic and aid efforts at every turn.
In addition to the recent Bacevich and Kaplan tomes on the broad subject mentioned above by the editor, there's a good body of literature going back at least to Bulter's famous War is a Racket and and spanning the decades to the present, e.g., as recently seen here at SWJ in Coerr's essay 'Ten Years Gone.' In other words, a fairly rich area of inquiry.
It's our foreign policy geared toward results over statecraft that is the real divide. The professional military is nothing if not results oriented, and when the politicians who set it in motion for all varieties of domestic and international reasons, the military will work toward any stated goals, or more often than not, its derived and self-created goals in the typical strategic vacuum.
State and its diplomacy has more than military bullying, McCarthyism, or political scare mongering to account for its impotence: it's own fecklessness, demonstrated time and again renders it as a second choice even when given the first shot at any given international issue. State has a hiring problem: it attracts and recruits the wrong types of people. If State and the aid agencies want to begin to matter in foreign affairs, they need to compete for the talents of the folks who volunteer for the military in wartime, or in peacetime who know that soon enough they'll be going to war, folks who can suck it up in all conditions, are goal-oriented, and are devoid of the DMV Legionnaire mentality that typifies U.S. government civilians abroad.
Good recommendation for DOS regionally reorganization. The military needs an equal partner.
Flawed argument elsewhere--unilateral withdrawal will not solve our issues. Islamic extremists will follow us home (see 9-11). Our Pacific allies do not want Chinese regional hegemony.
Back to your revisionist drawing board, please.
I'll need to read the book and will do so. However, based on this interview, it seems Stephen Glain has reached the correct destination -- by quite a few wrong paths...
He appears to emphasize the positive steps that led to the current primacy of DoD in US foreign policy efforts while apparently paying little heed to the negative events that were arguably far more responsible. For example were the machinations of Tail Gunner Joe, Forrestal and LeMay more important than the abrogation of responsibility by successive US Congresses that elevated partisanship and reelection over the national interest and not allowed but insured that change in primacy occurred? Was the mishandling of MacArthur and Korea a fault of Truman or a systemic American failure? While there is little doubt that the dangers posed by the USSR and world Communism were overstated, there is also no doubt that both did pose a danger and while placing all that in perspective is desirable, downplaying their potential for harm is IMO ill advised as it can lead to erroneous conclusions.
He correctly castigates George W. Bush for failure to properly explain the motivation for the attacks on the US in 2001 and then wrongly continues to condemn him for a poor reaction, citing Iraq as a misadventure. That it was indeed a misadventure is far from proven. That the US Army failed to handle a sensible mission given them by a President who had a right to expect competent performance -- and did not get it -- in the execution of a mission designed to correct the glaring errors and shortfalls of that President's four predecessor's in failed or flawed response to events in the Middle East. Something needed to be done and while a different method or approach could have been selected, none was and the selected approach should have been far less problematical than it was -- simply put, DoD was not up to the job they had been given. That's a sin of omission, not of commission and the US Congress is responsible for that; failure in oversight is failure in oversight...
He cites the need for DoS to have its own version of a Goldwater Nichols without noting that Act is in large part responsible for the DoD primacy he rightly condemns. He does not seem to note that the American propensity to meddle needlessly in the affairs of others is very much responsible for many of the ills he correctly cites. He doesn't seem to note that domestic US politics drive our so-called foreign policy -- as in the Kennedy and Johnson failures in Viet Nam; the book may be more inclusive. I'll see...
There is no question the roles and missions of DoD need a re-think. I suggest that Congress and the arcane Federal budgeting process have played a larger part in our foibles than is apparent in the interview.
All that said, I broadly agree with his recommendations, particularly with respect to rebuilding and reemploying the DoS and the Foreign Service and avoiding the arrogance and conceit evinced by our all too common attempts over a good many years to believe that other nations should emulate us. We're like the parent that has been told by a child "you're not the boss of me..." by a world that is tired of overbearing interference. We need not -- should not -- try to play Mayor Bloomberg to a World that is not New York.