In praise of caution
Super Power’s changing role
The belief that the US should always lead the global cavalry charge into interventions in far-off places is delusional.
Oh Dear! In the midst of the unfolding crisis in Iran, a country possibly on the brink of a horrible civil war, President Obama is being attacked for being too “timid and passive” in not speaking out against Tehran’s forceful repression of opposition protests.
Should not America, the recognised (and often self-proclaimed) leader of the Free World, be the first to castigate what is going on in Iran, where opposition politicians are being arrested, public protests suppressed by violence, and foreign reporters hustled out of the country? Why so cautious?
Even Obama’s reportedly stronger language at his press conference on June 23 is, on careful reading of the text, a model of circumspection. Pretty soon we may expect to see the dreaded word “appeasement.”
Well, hold on a minute. There are two reasons - really, two levels of reasons - why the White House’s canny attitude makes sense here.
The first is practical: What, specifically, could America do that would help rather than disturb the situation in Iran? The answer is: nothing. As Senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut has wisely pointed out, the worst thing Washington could do is allow the frazzled Iranian authorities the chance to claim that this is a US-led opposition, with US-led demonstrations.
Americans with any sense of their own history should get the point. When the Civil War broke out, various Europeans spoke of giving support to the North, or intervening on behalf of the South. Such ideas were fantasies. Back then, Americans were determined to settle their own affairs, and nowadays Iranians will settle theirs, even if it takes a year or two, or a decade. Meddling and muddling in Persian waters by Uncle Sam doesn’t make sense.
That brings us to our larger point. In spite of its own many problems, America has massive reserve capacities to intervene in most parts of the globe. It has had so since around 1917, when it overtook Europe as the central power in world politics.
But after 1945, its grand strategy changed in an interesting and fundamental way. Instead of being the last Great Power to join a fight (and thus coming in fresh and strong), it assumed the opposite role: It would place its forces in the front line, along the newly expanded borders of insecurity - Berlin, the Mediterranean, Korea, Southeast Asia.
As if in conformity with the law of averages, some of these advances made sense (the Truman Doctrine, the creation of NATO, the Korean intervention), and others were foolish (Vietnam, Iraq, Central America). But another consequence was that, over time, Americans and non-Americans alike came to expect that if an international crisis arose Washington was the place where the chief decisions would be made, where the buck stopped.
The idea that there were places in the world in which the US was not strategically interested became incomprehensible. The notion that an American president should observe political convulsions unfolding somewhere and not offer an opinion or propose a decisive policy gradually became unimginable.
This belief that the US should always lead the global cavalry charge into interventions in far-off places is both delusional and a recipe for disaster. It rests upon a constant assumption of worst-case scenarios: Iran nukes Israel, North Korea nukes Japan, the Taliban blow up Yankee Stadium. It is impossible to organise civil society permanently around impending-disaster hypotheses.
Other players
But there also seems to be no understanding among critics that there are other players on the field, that is, significant third parties that are more directly affected than America by the unpleasant or bizarre actions of rogue states. If, for example, Vladimir Putin’s Russia is silly enough to try to blackmail its Western neighbours over energy supplies next winter, then the European Union should handle the problem.
If Pakistan’s situation worsens, is that not of greater concern to India, Russia, China, Saudi Arabia and other nearby countries? If North Korea implodes, then surely the country most directly affected - other than South Korea - is China? Why should America be the first to speak, the first to act, the first to feel compelled to respond?
During the 1870s and 1880s, repeated convulsions and local wars occurred across the Balkans, causing Russia to threaten intervention, and Austria counter-intervention. But everyone needed to know what the great German chancellor Bismarck would do. His policy, very wisely, was to keep his mouth shut, since that made other governments uncertain and more cautious themselves. He also authorised further enhancements of the Prussian Army. It was a combination- international constraint, plus quiet power improvements - that worked.
Perhaps such Bismarckian restraint is impossible in today’s America, where excited talk-show hosts and irresponsible congressmen yelp for action, causing White House advisers to urge the president to be more firm, more pronounced and more decisive.
But right now is not the time for Obama to be “more decisive” on Iran, because there is nothing for Americans to decide. It is a time, rather, for him to recall a policy of one of his greatest predecessors in office, Theodore Roosevelt: Speak softly, but carry a big stick.
(The writer is the Director of International Security Studies at Yale University)
