6 ms·

US foreign policy is driven mostly by short-term politics, not coherent strategy

• civilized 5y ago
  This thesis will be obvious to many, but I think it's still worth reading for the concise argument and compelling evidence Hanania brings together.
  • PaulHoule 5y ago
    The vapidness of the state department has long been pretty remarkable. They struggle to hire people who can actually speak foreign languages because they are ‘too smart for that shit.’ At least since Nixon, it’s been a major theme that political talk in the U.S. is driven by the need to bolster our self-esteem.
    • deleted 5y ago
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    • cheese_van 5y ago
      >they struggle to hire people who can actually speak foreign languages I was career Foreign Service. This observation is rather wide of the mark. State's foreign language school is the best of its kind as it certainly needs to be - State requires all diplomats to achieve fluency in one foreign language or face termination. A two year, or more, intensive language assignment at State's Foreign Service Institute is mandatory for nearly all diplomats. As I mentioned, ALL diplomats are required to achieve fluency or they are terminated. In fact, if you want to be paid while learning and achieving a language fluency, I can unreservedly recommend State. edit: This "learn a language or get fired" applies only to career Foreign Service diplomats. Executive branch appointments via the spoils system (plum book) avoid such requirements.
      • civilized 5y ago
        I assumed he was talking about executive branch appointments.
        • cheese_van 5y ago
          Perhaps. Although appointments are by definition, appointed, not hired, or considered part of the hiring process. Certainly, the ratio of career diplomats to appointments with respect to ambassadorial appointments is a lively topic among FS personnel.
• deleted 5y ago
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• h2odragon 5y ago
  It's a good argument; but I question how many have believed this was not the case all along. Look at how the Marines got their start; was that Grand Strategy or short term popular politics driving one of the nation's Founding Fathers to discard principles for realistic expedience? There were a couple years in WW2 where our government acted with a "Grand Strategy"; insofar as possible, and that probably didn't involve as much of the government as we like to remember now. Afterwards, the people who had stepped up and got shit done purged the deadwood to an extent, but we don't really analyze that part of the 50's and "Normalcy" movements anymore, we just decry the excess that grew from them. One of those excesses was the narrative of the Grand Strategy; that there's a Destiny of Greatness we're supposed to be working towards, as individuals, communities, as a nation and a species. Why can't we just muddle along as we have been for thousands of years, doing what we can, raising kids, and enjoying the world as far as possible without hurting others? Is that not an ambitious enough goal?
  • civilized 5y ago
    I agree that grand ambitions in foreign policy are not necessarily desirable. But (and I think we agree on this) deliberate do-no-harm policy would be vastly preferable to what we do today, selling policy out to the people who get money or prestige from war. To your other point, other commenters are already demonstrating how many people fundamentally don't understand Hanania.
  • mythrwy 5y ago
    It could be if you just muddle along enjoying the world eventually the Mongols show up and take your stuff and put your skull on the skull pyramid. Or at least that's the fear.
    • civilized 5y ago
      Theoretically you could maintain a state of being prepared for war without running around the world cracking skulls and making everyone hate and distrust you.
    • antattack 5y ago
• JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  The thesis is compelling. Here is my question: why now? How did early America muster the capital and courage to do long-term planning in a way we today seem unable to? (If it didn’t, is this a problem?)
  • thoughtstheseus 5y ago
    People valued democracy as a process over their personal opinions.
  • bena 5y ago
    I'd say it's one of a few things. 1. Survivorship bias. Things that look like long-term planning is really the result of things that remain politically expedient through the years. The Constitution is (at least) the second attempt to write laws for the nation. 2. Continuous leadership: Or how no President will ever have the influence of FDR ever again and how WWII shaped the country for years to come. When you are in charge for a while, you can plan longer. FDR won 4 terms, spent 13 years in office before dying. Navigated the country through the Depression and the second World War. Dying at the beginning of his fourth term left Truman in charge. Being his Vice President, Truman was in line with FDR's goals and continued them. And you may think Eisenhower winning the presidency next would represent a break in the leadership, but Eisenhower was the Supreme Commander of the Allied forces in WWII. He worked closely with FDR. He ran as a Republican mostly to make sure Taft didn't get the Republican nomination. He continued New Deal programs and started the Interstate Highway system. For a Republican, he was fairly progressive, continuing many social programs and starting another. Both parties wanted Eisenhower to run under their banner. He was just a generally well regarded figure. Following Eisenhower, we have Kennedy (WWII veteran), then Johnson (also WWII veteran). So for about 36 years, you had administrations that were invested in social programs. That were willing to continue the policies of previous administrations. Hell, you could probably throw Nixon (WWII veteran) on that train as well. Served as Eisenhower's VP, started the EPA. He probably represents that last vestiges of FDR's influence on the office. And George HW Bush is the last President to have served in active duty during WWII. I mean, WWII is a major pivot point for the entire world. The events that went on during that time period literally still define the world today. We hardly think about Vietnam or Korea anymore, but you can still trot out Hitler and Nazis as ultimate examples of pure evil. And even then, the Vietnamese and Korean conflicts are results of the events of WWII. So you have all those years being led by people shaped by the same world-defining event. Who saw the value in all the same things. It's not completely out of left field that their interests would line up.
• yeetaccount4 5y ago
  That’s anything to do with government in the US now and it’s accelerating. I seriously worry about the long term outlook for America, with the way politics are degrading. There was that Adam Curtis documentary that was talking about how politicians since Thatcher were letting polls almost exclusively decide their policy so they could win elections, but in the process they lost any coherent vision for the future and discovered that the public didn’t have one. Seems like we’re seeing that continue to play out. At this point though, politics seem like their own end, the details don’t really seem to matter much.
  • programmarchy 5y ago
    It's tragic that mass democracy is basically nihilistic in nature. If your values are decided by whatever the 51% want, then you are a reed in the wind. The Greeks had this figured out a long time ago, and Plato's Republic is a pure expression of that ideal of a divinely ordered hierarchy. Similarly, reactionaries like Moldbug argue that we'd be better off with a monarchy, because they have the sovereignty to execute a long term vision, and while I believe he's wrong about many things, that sentiment sort of rings true. In present times, where we've abolished metaphysical hierarchies and replaced them with materialist hierarchies like capitalism, if you want to execute on a long term vision, then you need to seize technocratic control to manufacture mass opinion to support it, and ruthlessly lobby politicians to execute it. That seems incredibly inefficient, and oddly more totalitarian.
    • civilized 5y ago
      I am not in love with Moldbug or other ideologues who would like to throw us into the sausage machine of history -- mostly, I think, because they're bored and impatient for something cool to happen. All I want from my government is to let me live my life and prevent especially horrible things from happening. For this value system, constitutional liberal democracy is the safest bet. Things will get better as humans themselves slowly improve.
      • nobodyandproud 5y ago
• Symmetry 5y ago
  Not just US foreign policy either. Why was Germany allied with Austria-Hungary, their former enemy, at the start of WWI? If Austria-Hungary collapsed Austria would probably want to join Germany bringing a ton of Catholics into the nation and potentially challenging Prussian political dominance. And the best book on the rest of the diplomacy leading to WWI was named The Sleepwalkers for good reason. Why did Japan go to war with the western powers in WWII? A bunch of reasons but army/navy rivalry was one of the biggest. The navy hadn't been doing much with the war in China and was in real danger of having some of their budget re-directed to the army. I could go on...
  • syki 5y ago
    Japan did not go to war with the U.S. because of army/navy rivalry. This was not a consideration for the perceived necessity of going to war with America. It all had to do with supply constraints and the military gambled and initially succeeded in that gamble. To your overall point I very much agree. There are lots of examples of short term thinking clouding the long term goals of a nation. Indeed, doesn’t this almost always happen? In a book about the Silk Road that I read the author claims that China’s way of defeating the Xiongnu was to sell luxury goods to them for a cheap price and to get the Xiongnu along their border hooked on Chinese goods. Eventually the Xiongnu split into northern and southern factions. That was a long term strategy to defeat an opponent. Off the top of my head I can’t think of another long term cohesive strategy to defeating an enemy.
    • Symmetry 5y ago
      The Japanese decision making leading up to the declaration of war on the western powers was complicated and involved many political actors. Inter-service rivalry wasn't the official reason for the declaration and wasn't the most important one but I'd argue that in the counterfactual world where it did not exist Imperial Japan would have managed to avoid that particular unwinnable war. I'm basing this on having read Tower of Skulls: A History of the Asia-Pacific War: July 1937-May 1942 by Richard B. Frank this last summer.
      • 5y ago
• dragonwriter 5y ago
  This is a direct result of the governmental instability driven by having a partisan duopoly, FPTP legislative elections, and a separately elected strong President rather than proportional multiparty parliamentary system; the latter empirically results in slower complete cabinet turnover and more personal, partisan, and policy stability in cabinets, enabling longer term, more coherent strategy.
• huitzitziltzin 5y ago
  Is the lack of an essential unifying framework to foreign policy surprising in a democracy like the US or Great Britain? To a first approximation Russian foreign policy on large issues like the Ukraine is whatever is in Vladimir Putin’s head. Similarly Chinese policy is driven by Xi Jinping. For those states the “unitary actor” theory is reasonable to the extent that Xi and Putin are themselves rational. In the US, U.K. and other multi party democracies a hypothetical “bipolar actor” theory is going to be a better approximation to the truth, given that control alternates between Democrats and Republicans, or Labor and the Conservatives. Surely this cannot be a novel insight to people in IR?
  • civilized 5y ago
    There is an essential unifying framework: those who benefit from war, either financially or career-wise, are motivated to enter government and persuade it to make war when advantageous to them.
    • antattack 5y ago
      For example: This year military got 25 billion USD extra, and $1000 per child was taken away from families with children.
• howmayiannoyyou 5y ago
  Hanania's assessment is dangerously misguided. Why? Because there is no universe in which China's actions the past 10 years cannot be viewed as serious threat to the sovereignty of its neighbors and US interests abroad and at home. Not that China's rise should (or can be) stopped, rather that a counterbalance is a must - and only a US led alliance can achieve this. Similarly, the objectives of the radical Islamists had to be opposed, and should've been addressed prior to 9/11. Several state actors were/are using sponsorship of terrorism as a means of advancing their agendas, and the US had to act (though Iraq I view as an epic failure). But MOST importantly, is what the world would have looked like if the US had done nothing instead of engaging in the 'war on terror', the 'cold war', the Korean War, the war in Vietnam, Greneda, Panama, WWII, or WWI; and what the world would look like if the US disengaged from opposing Russia's ambitions in Europe & the Artic, or China's ambitions in the SCS. US foreign policy is often poorly executed, totally subject to prevailing political winds, and is compromised by US business. I agree with all three of those points by Hanania. The problem is our expectations are too high given the limitations of a liberal democracy, short election cycles & the inescapable fact that the 'enemy' always gets a vote.
  • civilized 5y ago
    I don't understand your point. What do you think the US should be doing about China? How do you even know Hanania disagrees with you on China, or on the need to respond to Islamist terrorism? Why are you in such a rush to label Hanania "dangerously misguided" when it's not even clear you disagree? Is your position that we have to choose between complete non-interventionism and the hyperactive, incoherent, and sometimes incredibly harmful and unjust policy the US has actually pursued?
  • mercy_dude 5y ago
    > Because there is no universe in which China's actions the past 10 years cannot be viewed as serious threat to the sovereignty of its neighbors and US interests abroad and at home. Not that China's rise should (or can be) stopped, rather that a counterbalance is a must - and only a US led alliance can achieve this. And who helped create the China that it is today? NAFTA and entry to WTO set the stage while endless pandering to CCP to cater to cheap Chinese sweat labor and market by US companies to maximize the shareholders return in return of endless IP theft on the back of US working class was ubiquitous. Hell even when the former president was trying a trade tarriff with China, many politicians across the board opposed not because it was wrong but because the corporations that wrote them cheques were not happy. Oh but we are told China will soon turn into democracy by policy day dreamers, except it hasn’t happened in 30yrs and in all likelihood won’t happen. You could argue the same thing with war on terror - rise of Bin Laden, rise of ISIS out of vacuums from Iraq war and Libya. It was US foreign policy that helped create these monsters. You give wrong guys weapons and training expecting them to not to turn their back on? How many times do we have to learn this? Here is one question: name one US foreign policy that has served us well in last 20yrs. Answer is none.
• drewcoo 5y ago
  This seems like looking at the symptoms and making up "just so" stories to explain disease. American foreign affairs have always largely been driven by the desires of monied oligarchs. Smedley Butler, highly decorated Marine general wrote about that a century ago. If anything has changed, I would think it has been the shorter-term thinking around business goals. "What have you done for me this quarter?" is not a philosophy of long-term stability. Couple that with our constant flip-flopping of political party and those parties' inability to maintain the previous administration's policies because that gets in the way of their own short-term goals and . . . here we are.
• allturtles 5y ago
  The book looks interesting, too bad it's absurdly expensive. The printed version appears to be priced such that it will only be bought by academic specialists in IR (or, more likely, they will get their institution's library to buy it).
  • mjreacher 5y ago
    Luckily we can find it on our favorite online library that goes by the name of a 2015 terminator movie.
• icedistilled 5y ago
  Apologies, but the headline isn't drawing me in to read the article for a rather significant fact. Nearly all of human activity seems driving by short term considerations, why would government be so different, or at least why would it be surprising that it reverts to it if at one time it had a long perspective? Corporations are notoriously short term, with stock and strategy and outsourcing. Humans are generally short term gratification seekers, like with food, drink exercise and tv/internet and shopping etc. The headline is not enticing at all because it's saying "badly behaved dogs may bite people" not "man bites dog". It doesn't indicate any new, or interesting thesis, or at the very least a solid take on the state of badly behaved dogs. When rehashing an expected situation, the hook should give some hint of why this yet-another-take will be worth reading.
• joshka 5y ago
  The thing that I really struggle with understanding about the Senate system at least is how when there is a 51/49-ish split that it makes any sense for that seat to be controlled for the entire state by the 51 side. Why wouldn't doubling the seats make this more representative?
  • goldenManatee 5y ago
    The thing about the Senate is it is bastardized tyranny by the minority. Those best able to organize always win-out, and that means large state-bound corporations and major donors become best represented by bodies like the Senate. It’s power is sustained by the appearance of fairness.