The War On Terror Has Fizzled

Bush Doctrine Hasn't Bolstered U.S. Hegemony

By HAL BRANDS
September 2, 2007
Courant

In the early days of the "war on terror," the pieces all seemed to fit together. By focusing determinedly on the threats posed by terrorism and the spread of weapons of mass destruction, American foreign policy could regain the strategic coherence it had lost with the end of the Cold War.

The war on terror would give focus to American diplomacy, as anti-communism had in the decades after World War II. It would serve as the pivot for U.S. relations with the world, and unite American interests and ideals in a struggle for security and democracy.

This was the rationale behind the Bush Doctrine, laid out most lucidly in the administration's National Security Strategy of 2002. Far more than a response to 9/11, the Bush Doctrine was an attempt to craft the overarching grand strategy that had been lacking for more than a decade.

It was premised on the notion that the war on terror would provide the glue holding together the diverse components of American foreign policy.

By concentrating the bulk of U.S resources on fighting terrorism and WMD proliferation, it would counter the most immediate threats to American security.

By focusing on terrorism, a danger to nation-states everywhere, it would unite the world community and other major powers behind U.S. leadership.

By bringing democracy to the Middle East, it would spread American ideals and provide the United States with greater ideological influence.

In short, the war on terror would ensure the continuation of American hegemony.

This is not, of course, how it has worked out.

Though the president still clings to the war on terror as the central thread of U.S. foreign policy, it is clear that, on a geopolitical scale, his strategy has failed.

The war in Iraq is the most obvious indication of this strategy's ineffectiveness, but it is only a symptom of a much larger problem: that, as a grand strategy designed to ensure the continued safety and influence of the United States, the war on terror is neither effective nor sustainable.

A survey of the international scene confirms this strategic failure.

The Iraq war has sucked away the nation's military, economic and diplomatic resources, leaving American policy-makers ill-equipped to deal with the threats posed by North Korea and Iran.

With respect to great power relations, the war on terror has been similarly debilitating.

American aggressiveness in the Middle East has helped push Russia and China into an unlikely diplomatic coalition, and led to persistent strains in U.S.-European ties.

Closer to home, the intense focus on Iraq and international terrorism has distracted American leaders from a rising ideological challenge mounted by Hugo Chavez and his allies in Latin America.

In sum, if the war on terror was meant to sustain American hegemony, the result has been precisely the opposite.

Over the past five years, the Bush Doctrine has exacerbated strains in great-power relations and hindered U.S. attempts to deal with other challenges to its influence and security, leaving American power more contested and precarious than at any time since 1989.

Ending the Iraq war is one aspect of a solution to this problem, but it is not the only - or even the most important - part.

Though drawing down in Iraq will alleviate the military overstretch and worldwide moral outrage that have so complicated American diplomacy, it will not in itself set American power on a more sustainable footing.

What is needed, rather, is a fundamental reassessment of American grand strategy, a reassessment that takes into account not only the very real threats posed by terrorism and WMD, but situates these issues within their proper, larger context - the need to ensure U.S. influence over the long term.

What might this new strategy look like?

In broad terms, it would focus on regaining a global acceptance of American leadership that has been severely eroded by the current administration's foreign policy.

It would combat terrorism using tools such as international law enforcement collaboration, rather than responding reflexively with unilateral military might.

By doing so, it would promote cooperation between the United States and its European and East Asian allies, rather than division.

It would seek points of convergence with emerging great powers - nuclear cooperation with India, integrating China into the world economy, and maintaining a common negotiating front with Europe with respect to Iran's nuclear program - while recognizing that relations with a newly assertive Russia may well remain strained for the near future.

It would feature more forthright discussions with Iran regarding both Iraq and Tehran's evident nuclear ambitions, and seek to integrate Iran into a long-term framework for stability in the Middle East.

Finally, by generally demilitarizing U.S. policy in that region, it would cease to provide opponents from Chavez to Russian President Vladimir Putin with an issue around which to rally opposition to the United States.

For the politicians now seeking the presidency, producing this sort of strategic reassessment will not be easy.

It is hard enough for Americans to confront the fact that there is little hope left for a positive outcome in Iraq, harder still to admit that our all-consuming focus on the war on terror must be reduced to merely part of a more complex (but more effective) foreign policy.

Yet this task need not be impossible.

In the late 1960s, Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon pulled off a similar trick, ending a dead-end war and overhauling American foreign policy in the process.

They shifted the focus of American diplomacy from an unrelenting anti-communism to a more flexible strategy that restored the international balance of power and relieved the strain on a creaking American empire.

And they did so in ways that might well appeal to an imaginative statesman today - by seeking areas of agreement with the great powers, making ideology secondary to interests, and by using an overture to a long-shunned enemy to help extricate the United States from a military quagmire and achieve a more durable balance of power.

Admittedly, the idea that the war on terror is the centerpiece of American foreign policy has become ingrained in the national consciousness. But an unpopular war and an unusually wide open presidential election make a propitious set of circumstances for advancing bold ideas.

In terms of seeking a replacement for a disastrous grand strategy, the current political situation offers a good place to start.

Hal Brands is the author of "From Berlin to Baghdad: America's Search for Purpose in the Post-Cold War World," due out in January 2008. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the History Department at Yale University.

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