The Dispensable Nation: American Foreign Policy in Retreat (41 page)

America should not settle for this result. American leadership is still critical to the stability of the world order and the health of the global economy—to expansion of trade and the continued development and prosperity of nations. There is no other power today that could play America’s role on the world stage or is willing to step into America’s shoes. Nor would the world be better off were that to happen, or even if any and all of the rising BRIC nations and those following in their footsteps tried their hands at it. The world America has built still needs America to lead it. America remains the world’s pivotal nation.

But the world has changed and is changing still, and so should American leadership. The frustration Americans feel when they tally the cost of their foreign adventures only to see them fail is understandable. Too often in the recent past we have led with our military. That has been costly and fruitless. In the Middle East, in particular, where American leadership was put to the test in the past decade, that approach has been disastrous.

Rather than shun leadership in the world, it is time to think differently of how we approach influencing its affairs. It is time we returned diplomacy and economic engagement to their rightful place. Those facets of American power were central to its leadership in the past—defining both our vision and audacity—and they should be so again in the future.

Our world has been shaped by bold acts of American statesmanship. Harry Truman won the future for the free world with a massive commitment of American power and resources to build a transatlantic alliance that successfully contained and defeated the Soviet Union. George H. W. Bush similarly pushed hard for German unification, a risky proposition that at first even Germans were wary of. Successfully contending with
the challenges that the greater Middle East poses to American security demands similar bold American leadership, the willingness to embrace a clear strategy and commit the full measure of American power to realizing it.

Historically, American leadership in the world has been a force for good. Without it, writes Robert Kagan, the world could be led “by some other kind of order, reflecting the desires and the qualities of other world powers,” which may be illiberal and destructive; or, he writes, “perhaps [the world order could] simply collapse.”
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That is why we think of America as the indispensable nation.

It was only after what America did in Bosnia—compelling a confused and recalcitrant Europe to follow America’s lead to end genocide in the Balkans—that it earned that sobriquet. The people of the Middle East heard President Obama say in his much-anticipated speech on the Arab Spring, “Our support for these principles [human rights and democratic, peaceful demands for political freedom and economic opportunity, and legitimate aspirations of people] is a top priority and central to the pursuit of other interests in the region. The U.S. will marshal all our diplomatic, economic, and strategic tools to support these principles.”
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What they understood was that the nation that had transformed other parts of the world for the better was now poised to help change theirs.

The Arab Spring was a ray of hope in a troubled region. But a brave call for freedom cannot alone change the reality of economic stagnation, social misery, and political frustration. Not without outside support. We don’t have to look too closely to realize that the Middle East is going through a historical transformation. Islamism is rising, sectarianism exploding, and regional balances of power collapsing, and flash points in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and Bahrain are threatening conflagration on a regional scale. The last time change of this magnitude happened was in 1979, when the Iranian revolution inspired Islamic radicalism and upended regional stability. What is happening in the Middle East today is both more complex and potentially bigger, and demands greater American engagement.
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Solving the problems of the Middle East and the threat they pose to the world requires a fundamental change in the region’s economic
profile.
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The international community would have to make a sizable investment—a Marshall Plan in scale—to bring about change of that magnitude. And that requires American leadership. Even if we cannot afford that right now, we still need a clear economic strategy for the region—a plan for using development aid, trade, and investment to help the region and also serve our interests.

That is familiar territory for the United States; it has secured stability, promoted prosperity, and built democracy in region after region of the world since the end of World War II. But when it comes to the Middle East, America has forgotten this legacy. It has relied more on war (and nowadays on drones) than on trade. The Bush administration contemplated a free-trade deal with Egypt but then shelved the idea when President Mubarak jailed dissidents. We have signed preliminary free-trade agreements with Jordan and Morocco, but they remain limited in scope and there have been no plans for deepening them. Pakistan has been clamoring for more trade instead of aid, but our response has been yes to aid but no to trade. American leadership of the kind that would transform the Middle East has to be anchored in economic interdependence that would promote growth in the region and make it a part of the burgeoning global economy. Change in the Middle East needs BRIC-like development, and that requires American investment.

In turn, growth relieves social pressure and creates upwardly mobile middle classes that tend to champion democracy and engagement with the world. America could help make all this happen. It could rally the international community, mobilize resources, and provide the kind of influence in the region’s capitals that would persuade them to commit to (sometimes painful) economic change.

Economic engagement should go hand in hand with serious diplomatic engagement in the region. Our generals are prominent across the Middle East and should remain so, but so should our diplomats. We should be a participant in the flow of regional politics and not just a military arbiter. Our engagement should be directed at ensuring regional stability and promoting regional harmony. Seeing the region through the narrow lens of counterterrorism does not serve those goals.

Zbigniew Brzezinski writes that America has played a critical balancing
role in East Asia, fostering peace and prosperity by maintaining a delicate balance between China and its neighbors.
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But it is not just in Asia that America has kept the balance. In the Middle East, too, America has played a balancing role, between Iran and its neighbors on one side of the region, and Israel and its neighbors on the other. Without American engagement the region would have to arrive at its own balance, and that will be a violent and destabilizing process. Without American leadership in the Middle East, the region’s future, left to China and Russia to figure out, or to Turkey, Iran, and Saudi Arabia to fight over, will not be hopeful.

The political scientist John Ikenberry lauds the liberal international order America has built.
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The global order is today durable and stable thanks to the many multilateral mechanisms America helped build and continues to support: institutions such as the UN, the World Bank, and NATO that have fostered security and development, or the EU and NAFTA, which have promoted prosperity and lured the likes of Mexico and Turkey to embrace capitalism and democracy.
¹²

America has lost some of its own authority to international institutions it created and sustained. But that is a good thing. It means that the liberal international order has legs; it will last longer and continue to define the world order around values and practices that will foster peace, freedom, and prosperity. As Ikenberry notes, “The underlying foundations of the liberal international order will survive and thrive” without America’s guiding hand.
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In the Middle East, though, where simmering instability threatens global security and prosperity, America has done very little institution building of the kind Ikenberry writes about. There is no equivalent to ASEAN or APEC (the Asia Pacific Economic Council), or rival to the SCO, which is backed by China, Russia, and Iran. Perhaps America should help create those kinds of institutions, which could foster order but also make the region’s security and prosperity less dependent on the exercise of American authority. Only then should America think about pivoting somewhere else.

Whatever our new commitments, it is not likely that America can easily and quickly wash its hands of the Middle East. We cannot escape the blowback from trouble in this region. Even Asian leaders who are
now the object of our greater attention are incredulous: “Are you sure you can do this with all that is happening in the Middle East?”

The answer should be yes. We have done it in the past and we can do it again. We can have a vision of the world that encompasses our interests in Asia and in the Middle East. That is the essence of global leadership.

This book would not have been but for the generosity of many colleagues in Washington, Europe, China, the Middle East, Afghanistan, and Pakistan; senior and junior officials, journalists, and scholars. They shared their views of the past and the present, and provided essential information that helped my thinking and sharpened my arguments, and narrated telltale vignettes and backstories that have enriched this book.

No one was more instrumental in shaping the idea for this book than Richard Holbrooke. He was a source of inspiration and fount of ideas large and small about America’s place in the world and how it ought to conduct its foreign policy. I owe to him the core ideas of this book and the details of many of the events narrated within it. He exhorted me to focus on the challenges facing American foreign policy, especially in the Muslim world, and I hope the result is true to his vision and legacy.

Thanks also to Rina Amiri, Peter Bergen, Ashley Bommer, Stephen Bosworth, Nicholas Burns, Kent Calder, Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Shamila Chaudhry, Alexander Evans, Leila Fawaz, Leslie Gelb, Fiona Hill, Ibrahim Kalin, Bijan Khajepour, John Lipsky, Maleeha Lodhi, Kati Marton, Sean Misko, Afshin Molavi, Nader Mousavizadeh, Meghan O’Sullivan, Tom Pickering, Joel Rayburn, Barnett Rubin, Jamie Rubin, David Sanger, Arthur Sculley, Emma Sky, James Walsh, Frank Wisner, and Emirhan Yorulmazlar for their wisdom and insights. There are many others to whom I owe a debt of gratitude but who shall remain anonymous.

Liaqat Ahamed, Ray Takeyh, Randa Slim, and Bilal Baloch read all or parts of the early drafts of this book and made valuable comments that have improved the narrative in important ways. I am grateful to
them. Philip Costopolous read all of what I wrote with his customary care and attention to detail, and spared no effort to hone my arguments.

My talented research assistants, Artin Afkhami, Maliheh Birjandi Feriz, and Tara Sepehrifar, were immensely helpful in locating sources and finding relevant facts large and small that have enriched the pages of this book.

Throughout the time I worked on this book I benefited from the support of colleagues at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy of Tufts University, where I taught when I first embarked on this endeavor, and the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University, where I served as dean when I finally finished the manuscript. I also benefited from the support of colleagues at Brookings Institution, where I was senior fellow in foreign policy through most of the time I worked on this book. I would like to thank in particular Brookings’s president, Strobe Talbot, and the institution’s vice president and director of its foreign policy program, Martin Indyk. They were generous with their support and also with their insight. I am grateful for their friendship and interest in my work.

My literary agent, Susan Rabiner, was instrumental in giving this book direction. She gave this project the full measure of her attention from our very first conversation about it to when the final draft went to press. Her insights and suggestions were invaluable, and the book owes much to her caring interest. My brilliant editor at Doubleday, Kris Puopolo, took a deep interest in this book, and read everything I wrote carefully, and then took her pen to the entire manuscript, time and again improving each chapter, page, and paragraph. I am deeply grateful for her work on this book. Thanks also to Kris’s assistant editor, Daniel Meyer, my publicists, Alison Rich and Todd Doughty, and the entire team at Doubleday for their professionalism and wonderful work.

My deepest appreciation is reserved for my wife, Darya, sons, Amir and Hossein, and daughter, Donia. Without their love and encouragement, not to mention patience and good humor, this book would not have been possible. I hope they will find the book worthy of that indulgence.

INTRODUCTION

PROLOGUE: “A WEEK IN SEPTEMBER”

CHAPTER 1: AFGHANISTAN: THE GOOD WAR GONE BAD