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quote:The Iraq invasion, Obama believed, should have taught Democratic interventionists like Clinton, who had voted for its authorization, the dangers of doing stupid poo poo. I'm interested in this. A lot of my current views on foreign policy first developed while reading Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine. I recall one of the chapters was on the Iraq war and subsequent reconstruction, the upshot being that there was an enormous amount of Iraqi enthusiasm for the reconstruction program, which had been billed as a sort of new Marshall Plan, that gave way to anger and violence when tangible benefits failed to materialize. This, Klein said, was because the purpose of the reconstruction program was to transfer enormous amounts of wealth to large American firms, which is why there was so little investment in Iraqi firms, and why the relevant American firms were much more interested in maximizing their costs (which were guaranteed to be covered) than in actually accomplishing anything in the region. So I guess my question is: why is it that a non-interventionist consensus has coalesced around the Obama administration, seemingly with the Iraq War experience as a rationale? Why has it become the conventional wisdom that the US must not get involved in other nations' affairs at all, rather than that it has to be done right, with the right incentive structure in place? Was Klein's analysis totally wrong, or are the lessons of Iraq being distorted?
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Mar 10, 2016 15:49
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Nocturtle posted:Klein's analysis of Iraq is very good in showing how capitalists took advantage of the invasion and occupation to profit, and to some extent how this kind of profiteering is inevitable in a capitalist society/world. You say that intervention "done right, with right incentive structure" is worth considering, but I'd argue Klein convincingly shows that this is politically impossible at present and capitalists will always find a way to exploit a crisis. In some cases the humanitarian benefits of intervention will outweigh these drawbacks, but the debate over intervention will always include some arguments motivated by profit-seeking instead of humanitarian concern. Iraq was a case were the motivations were nakedly opportunistic from the start, and has resulted in a public more critical of US interventionism. I get that, but to say 'wealthy interests will always corrupt even good intentions so it's better to not even try' seems more like it's giving up on trying to have a foreign policy at all, rather than recommending any particular such policy. And if it is the case that well-intentioned interventionism will always be corrupted, how do we explain the success of the actual Marshall plan? (Unless you think it wasn't successful, in which case, fair enough).
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Mar 10, 2016 16:41
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WMain00 posted:The Iraq war wasn't well-intentioned interventionism; the chance of corruption was pretty much 100% to begin with. The war was nothing more than neo-conservative antics with no real plan afterward. Well, yes, I more or less agree, which is why I think it's wrongheaded to take the result as instructive for any attempt at foreign intervention whatsoever. Like, that's my whole argument.
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Mar 10, 2016 17:37
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Okay, three lessons. First: quote:One lesson from the Iraq invasion is that the profit-seeking motivation can easily become dominant, and will co-opt humanitarian arguments and invent security risks wholesale (WMDs). This is not an argument against all "interventions", but it should cause Americans to be more critical of the arguments for war. Agreed. The American people should have been more cautious and skeptical in 2003, and in general policymakers should be more careful to ensure they have narrow and achievable goals. Second: quote:Another (obvious) lesson is that Americans as a whole are easily convinced to support military action, and this is reflected in the politics of invasion. In a just world supporting the Iraqi invasion should be a scarlet letter that dooms a politicians career, but in general politicians who supported the invasion have not been punished by the electorate. We agree here too. The invasion of Iraq was ultimately a political issue, a question of ideology and the memory of the electorate. But political problems have political solutions: it is a matter of making a (careful, deliberate) foreign policy strategy in response to what happened in Iraq, and selling it to the American people. I also wish that those responsible had faced political repercussions, but it seems like to the extent that the democratic process would be capable of doing that, it would also be capable of adopting a foreign policy strategy that is neither isolationist nor imperialist. If politics is hopeless, then politics is hopeless. Third: quote:Another lesson is that once you go to war you should not act surprised when people exploit the resulting crisis for profit, it's inevitable and part of the package. A further lesson is that modern America's ability to "nation build" is limited. Here is where I think I disagree, for reasons I hinted at above. It's not the case that corporate power exploited or hijacked the attempt at Iraqi reconstruction. Rather, it was handed to them. The upshot, to me, of Klein's argument is that the invasion of Iraq and subsequent occupation were really stunning successes from the perspective of the actual goals of the project. So it seems like the solution should be political: pick politicians who have better goals. Gravel Gravy posted:It'd be fairer to split thee Iraq example in half wherein you have the intervention which really defies conventional wisdom and the ensuing sectarian conflict. Iraq isn't quite a failed state yet but given the amount of resources and political will would doing it again in Syria from scratch been really feasible? No, probably not. I have no problem admitting that I am almost entirely at a loss when it comes to figuring out how the US should / should have respond(ed) to the Syrian crisis. I was speaking moreso in general.
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Mar 10, 2016 18:25
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A Buttery Pastry posted:The actual Marshall Plan was part of the US asserting itself as an imperial power, with the political class in general being strongly supportive of it as a national political project. Combine that with a weaker capitalist class, a recent history of deep government control of the economy, and the Marshall Plan also having the clear effect of restoring an export market for US goods, and it makes sense why short-term gains from corruption were generally overlooked in favor of long-term gains from doing it properly. Any modern attempts at a Marshall Plan is going to have to contend with capital having sunk its claws deep into pretty much every politician, and the country as a whole not caring enough about anything that a politician could channel it into the kind of sustained political action which would be needed to replicate it. If capital has sunk its claws so deep into our political class that the electorate couldn't possibly get them to adopt a nonimperialist interventionism, how are we supposed to get them to adopt isolationism? The argument here isn't for a particular foreign policy strategy, it is an argument for political despair. Which, sure, fair enough, but that tends to shut down a discussion pretty quick.
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Mar 10, 2016 19:24
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Stultus Maximus posted:They rely on us for stability and military strength and resent us for taking advantage of that to promote our own interests. I think there's an ambiguity here. Exactly whose interests are we talking about?
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Mar 11, 2016 00:23
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Helsing posted:Nobody is debating whether American can or does do good in the world, we're talking about America's foreign policy, and in particular it's role in the middle east. And anyone who thinks America promotes regional stability or has promoted stability at any point in the last several decades is delusional. Which is why your argument is only sustainable when you speak in the vaguest of platitudes and pretend that history started in 2012 and anything that occurred before then is off bounds. What do you think a good American policy toward the middle east would look like?
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Mar 11, 2016 03:18
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nopantsjack posted:Wait have you guys seriously written 3 pages of responses to Obama's foreign policy without mentioning drones? Are drone strikes morally different from conventional airstrikes, in your view?
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Mar 11, 2016 17:59
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