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More To The Story
A Review of John Lewis Gaddis,
Surprise, Security, and the American Experience,
(Cambridge: Harvard, 2004), 150 pgs.
Stanley Kober
In this brief collection of lectures inspired by the
September 11 attack on the United States, Yale historian
John Lewis Gaddis attempts to demonstrate that the Bush
Administration’s response is not as great a departure
from American traditions as commonly believed. In
particular, he argues, John Quincy Adams based his
foreign policy on the principles of preemption,
unilateralism and hegemony, thereby establishing a
pattern for his successors to follow.
It is a very innovative interpretation of American
history, and Gaddis’s reputation means the argument must
be taken seriously. Unfortunately, the very brevity of
Gaddis’s book limits the discussion. A thesis so
startling needs to be developed more fully. More to the
point, it needs to take into account obvious objections.
Let us take each of the propositions in turn. First,
there is no question the Founders allowed for the
possibility of preemption, if by that we mean the
initiating of war. The issue was discussed at the
Constitutional Convention, and the power to initiate war
was given to Congress. “The only case in which the
Executive can enter on a war, undeclared by Congress, is
when a state of war has ‘been actually’ produced by the
conduct of another power,” James Madison wrote James
Monroe on November 16, 1827.[i] That position was not
controversial at the time. Indeed, President Monroe had
written Madison in 1824 revealing that when asked by the
Colombian minister whether, in light of the Monroe
Doctrine, the U.S. would come to Colombia’s assistance
in the event of war with France, he had replied that
“the Executive has no right to compromit [sic] the
nation in any question of war.”[ii]
The question, in other words, is not whether the United
States can initiate war (or preempt), but who should
decide on that ultimate and dangerous course. What
distinguishes our present situation from the one 200
years ago is the assumption that the President makes the
decision to initiate war. To be sure, the Bush position
is not new; for example, President Bill Clinton
initiated armed conflict in the Balkans without
authorization from Congress. Yet the resolution passed
by Congress in 2002 authorizing war against Iraq is
distinctive because Congress agreed to transfer its
responsibility to the President. According to the text
of the resolution, “the President is authorized to use
the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines
to be necessary and appropriate” against Iraq subject to
the provisions of the War Powers Act.[iii]
In other words, the President, not Congress, decided if
and when the United States would initiate war with Iraq,
which did not begin for several months. Contrast that
situation to the War of 1812. There is “on the side of
Great Britain a state of war against the United States,
and on the side of the United States a state of peace
toward Great Britain,” President Madison asserted in his
war message to Congress, acknowledging that “whether the
United States shall continue passive under these
progressive usurpations and these accumulating wrongs,
or, opposing force to force in defense of their national
rights, … , is a solemn question which the Constitution
wisely confides to the legislative department of the
Government.”[iv]
Congress then made the decision for war with Britain.
Similarly, in the war against Mexico, which Gaddis cites
as a model of preemption, Congress declared “a state of
war exists” in response to a message from President
James K. Polk.[v] It is one thing for Congress to decide
the United States is at war and instruct the president
to conduct it; it is something else altogether for
Congress to transfer the authority to make that decision
to the president. That is what is so distinctive about
the preemptive doctrine today, and why it raises such
concern. In effect, we are turning the Constitutional
procedure upside down, and we are doing so without even
realizing it or appreciating the example we are setting
for other countries.
With regard to unilateralism, two points must be made.
First, the international legal regime is far different
from what it was two centuries ago. In particular, the
United Nations Charter specifies that military action
other than self-defense must be authorized by the
Security Council. Unilateralism is in large measure a
justification for ignoring the United Nations, but the
Constitution specifies that ratified treaties are ”the
supreme Law of the land.” Since the President’s
responsibility is to take care that the laws are
faithfully executed, unilateralism now confronts a legal
complication that did not exist at the time of Adams.
Second, there is a practical objection. In the
nineteenth century, American objectives were limited,
matching our capabilities. When unilateralism was
proclaimed with much fanfare, its ambitions were
limitless, based on an underlying assumption of
irresistible American power. As recent events have
demonstrated, however, even American resources are not
limitless. The Bush Administration is now desperately
seeking allies, but is finding that those whose advice
it spurned are not rushing to come to its assistance.
In addition, other major powers, uneasy about American
preemption and unilateralism because of the implicit
threat it represents to them, are building ties of
resistance to American hegemony. For example, on
November 28, 2002, China’s People’s Daily Online
published an article entitled “China-Russian Relations
Remain Better Than Russian-U.S. Ties.” According to
this article, the “theoretical foundation for strategic
cooperation refers to the theory on opposing a
mono-polar world and promoting a multi-polar world.”
Other countries have also endorsed the idea of
multipolarity, but although most attention seems to be
focused on
France, the
action seems to be taking place in the heartland of
Eurasia. As the Indian Ambassador to Russia told the
Itar-Tass news agency (reported in The Hindu
on February 22, 2004), "Moscow, Delhi and Beijing are
moving from non-governmental contacts in a triangular
format to discussing issues of common concern at a high
official level."
It would be naïve to assume that such triangular
discussions do not touch on the concerns that all these
countries share about American policy. That is not to
say they, and others like them, do not want good
relations with the United States, for they clearly do,
but it is unrealistic to expect them to meekly accept a
situation in which “the United States exchanged its
long-established reputation as the principal stabilizer
of the international system for one as its chief
destabilizer.”
Of course, it is possible to dismiss these ties as
insubstantial, or to say American superiority is so
great it doesn’t matter anyway. Maybe, but that
attitude recalls the saying that pride goeth before the
fall. On this issue, either one believes prudence is a
virtue or one does not, since all evidence will be
perceived through that lens.
In the end, however, whatever the historical antecedents
of the policy Professor Gaddis praises, it has run afoul
of its ambitions. In what is perhaps the most important
passage in the book, Gaddis emphasizes “the
psychological value of victory—of defeating an adversary
sufficiently thoroughly that you shatter the confidence
of others, so that they’ll roll over themselves before
you have to roll over them.” Accordingly, the task
facing the Bush Administration after the initial victory
in Afghanistan was “to maintain the momentum…. This was
where Saddam Hussein came in: Iraq was the most feasible
place in which to strike the next blow.” Victory in
Iraq “could set in motion a process that could undermine
and ultimately remove reactionary regimes elsewhere in
the Middle East, thereby eliminating the principal
breeding ground for terrorism.”
To be sure, Gaddis immediately cautions that the
grandness of a strategy is no assurance of its success.
Indeed, the history of the last century would seem to
call into question the very basis for this approach.
World War I, after all, was supposed to be the war to
end all war. It didn’t. Neither did our decisive
victory in World War II. Even the triumph of the West
in the Cold War did not prevent the defiance of Saddam
Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic and Mohammed Aidid. And
now, despite our “shock and awe” victories in Iraq and
Afghanistan, our troops remain under incessant attack by
insurgents.
Strategy is not simply about vision; it must also relate
means to ends. The problem with an overly “grand”
strategy is that it risks outrunning the resources
available to achieve it. In this regard, Gaddis
recounts an incident that, unintentionally, illustrates
the problem confronting us. Shortly after September 11,
one of his students announces he is joining the Marines,
telling a gathering of students and faculty: “It’s
people like me who make it possible for people like you
to be here doing what you’re doing.”
Gaddis is clearly bursting with pride, but we are left
to wonder. One student? ONE? Out of how many? And
what does “people like me” and “people like you” mean?
Is that an implicit rebuke of the Yale community—and by
extension, of the entire American elite—for expecting
other Americans to defend their liberties?
This question is not academic, as stop-loss orders are
imposed on soldiers already serving and a growing number
of reservists are called to active duty and deployed
overseas. Although recruiting and retention have held
up so far, there is mounting concern about the future,
especially for the National Guard and reserves. The
active duty army may also face problems. "Parents will
tell us all the time that `Johnny's not joining!' and
just hang up on us," one recruiter told the New York
Times (June 14, 2004). "It has definitely gotten
harder out here."
The success of a strategy depends on knowing yourself
and knowing your enemy. It was just such a
miscalculation that led to our defeat in
Vietnam.
“As secretary of state I made two serious mistakes with
respect to Vietnam,” Dean Rusk acknowledged. “First, I
overestimated the patience of the American people, and
second, I underestimated the tenacity of the North
Vietnamese.”[vi]
Is history repeating itself? Certainly, the admissions
by Administration officials that they underestimated the
Iraqi insurgency provide an uncomfortable echo of Rusk’s
second point. And what about the first? How well do we
understand ourselves?
At the end of his book, Gaddis tells of another student
who asks whether it is ok to feel patriotic now, and
he—unsurprisingly—concludes it is. But that is too
easy. Ultimately, we are brought back to the first
student’s division of Americans into “people like you”
and “people like me.” It is a disturbing observation,
especially after September 11, and Gaddis’s failure to
recognize and discuss it suggests it is truer than many
of us would like to think.
Stanley Kober is a
research fellow in foreign
policy studies at The Cato Institute.
Notes:
[i] Tourtellot, p.
319.
[ii] Clark,
Memorandum on the Monroe Doctrine, p. 113.
[iii] http://hnn.us/articles/1282.html
[iv] http://www.multied.com/documents/MadisonWar.html
[v] Bemis, Diplomatic
History, p. 240.
[vi] As I Saw It, p.
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