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One becomes a hardened cynic when following US foreign policy. Such pessimism is justified: looking at nearly two decades’ worth of nation building abroad and a seemingly shatterproof consensus on foreign policy interventionism in DC $6 trillion<\/a>\u00a0and roughly\u00a0seven thousand\u00a0American lives<\/a>\u00a0later, America\u2019s foreign policy machine appears to be chugging along just fine.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\nThe election of Joe Biden as president may represent a partisan change in terms of who will be the face of the country. In terms of substance, however, it may not amount to much. Biden has a long track record of promoting interventions abroad such as the bombing of Serbia in\u00a01999<\/a>, and he voted to\u00a0authorize the 2003 Iraq invasion<\/a>. Although Biden has previously expressed skepticism about the troop surge in Afghanistan and intervening in Libya, the cabinet he is currently assembling\u2014starring various neoliberal interventionists such as\u00a0Neera Tanden<\/a>,\u00a0Anthony Blinken<\/a>, and\u00a0Jake Sullivan<\/a>\u2014shows no real signs of a foreign policy shake-up.<\/p>\n
Indeed, the Biden administration may not directly thrust the US into new conflicts. Biden himself\u00a0has even suggested that he wants to end America\u2019s\u00a0never-ending excursions abroad<\/a>. However, Biden\u2019s brain trust will likely maintain coercive policies such as sanctions, color revolutions, and black operations on deck to ensure a degree of continuity for the American liberal hegemonic project. Biden himself still wants to maintain residual forces abroad under the guise of running counterterrorism operations in countries such as Afghanistan.<\/p>\n
Is the Possibility of Permanent Troop Withdrawals a Pipe Dream?<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Americans have naturally grown tired of DC\u2019s activist foreign adventures, which in many cases prompted them to pull the lever for Donald Trump in 2016\u2014who was perceived as the most prorestraint candidate both in the Republican primaries and in the general election that year. Despite the promising rhetoric about reversing the previous foreign policy errors, the Trump administration ended up being a mixed bag. Things did get somewhat interesting in 2020, though. At the end of July, the Trump administration announced that America would be reducing its military presence in\u00a0Germany<\/a>\u2014a country that has had a US military occupation since\u00a01945<\/a>\u2014by pulling twelve thousand troops out of Germany. Fast forward to November:\u00a0the Trump administration announced its plans to withdraw\u00a0twenty-five hundred troops<\/a>\u00a0from Afghanistan.<\/p>\n
On the surface, these announcements sounded good, but the devil is always in the details. In a piece for the\u00a0Wall Street Journal<\/em><\/a>\u00a0published this past summer, Donald Trump\u2019s national security adviser, Robert C. O\u2019Brien, assured the newspaper\u2019s neoconservative readership that troops stationed in Germany would be shifted to other hotspots in the Indo-Pacific and eastern Europe.<\/p>\n
Shortly thereafter, the US signed a defense cooperation deal with Poland to\u00a0redeploy a thousand\u00a0American troops<\/a>\u00a0from Germany to the eastern European country. Although there have been talks about shifting troops to Baltic states, nothing has materialized thus far.<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, America\u2019s strong presence in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization\u00a0pretty much guarantees some form of saber rattling toward\u00a0Russia. Back in early August, NATO\u00a0dialed up its aggression<\/a>\u00a0when six US B-52s flew over the Black Sea to ostensibly test Russian air defenses. One could only imagine how the US would have responded to Russian warplanes flying over the US\u2019s backyard in the Caribbean Basin.<\/p>\n
Similarly, there\u2019s no telling what will happen with the troops being pulled out of Afghanistan. For all we know, they could be stationed elsewhere and not brought back home. For an empire, the entire world can serve as a military warehouse depending on the political context. Stationing them in Saudi Arabia, which witnessed the arrival of\u00a0fifteen hundred troops<\/a>\u00a0in 2019, back when tensions between the kingdom and its bitter rival Iran began to mount, would probably not be out of the question. Similarly, these same troops could be useful for the so-called pivot to Asia,\u00a0where American foreign policy elites want an\u00a0Asian NATO<\/a>, via the establishment of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QUAD), to check the rise of an ascendant China.<\/p>\n
The National Security Establishment Is Constantly Searching for Monsters to Destroy<\/strong><\/h4>\n
It’s safe to say that the foreign policy blob is constantly looking for new enemies. Even when a conflict is concluded, the US government has an uncanny ability to quickly lunge itself into new foreign struggles. Although nothing has manifested so far, foreign policy apparatchiks are devious in that they know how to gaslight the public into believing they\u2019re bringing troops back home, when in reality they\u2019re either shifting troops around or making gradual reductions. The latter case is particularly dangerous because it creates the illusion that troops are being immediately withdrawn from certain areas and being brought back home. This generates false optimism and pacifies the public in a way that prevents them from grasping what\u2019s really going on. The fact remains that with a residual troop presence in hot spots like the Middle East, lawmakers can always create an excuse to deploy more troops after the inevitable blowback against these forces takes place.<\/p>\n
Pace the ruling class\u2019s foreign policy assumptions, international relations aren\u2019t static. Both Europe and Asia now have multiple countries marked by prosperity, or at least promising development , therefore giving them the resources to build hard military power. Ryan McMaken\u00a0observed<\/a>\u00a0that adhering to a market economy allows countries to not only raise their standards of living but also makes it easier for them to mobilize war-making machinery to deter potential aggressors. The US does not need to coddle developed countries, nor should it carry out military functions on their behalf when they\u2019re wealthy enough to build up and upgrade their defenses. Further,\u00a0balancing coalitions<\/a>\u00a0will naturally arise if countries try to make hegemonic plays in their respective spheres of influence.<\/p>\n
Even the failures of nation-building projects in Afghanistan and Iraq have not deterred policymakers from finding new bogeymen. Over the last decade, a foreign policy consensus has crystallized in DC which is aiming its sights at bigger fish on the international stage. The Pentagon\u2019s\u00a02018 national defense strategy<\/a>\u00a0marked a significant shift in foreign policy priorities through its emphasis on \u201cGreat Power\u201d competition against China and Russia as opposed to the prior focus on\u00a0combating transnational terrorist threats. Such a pivot will undoubtedly be a boon for the\u00a0military-industrial complex<\/a>, which will be lobbying for gargantuan defense budgets to take on these perceived threats. We will be reminded every day how these countries pose \u201cexistential\u201d threats that justify more defense spending and potential meddling abroad. A very familiar movie script, but with a different cast of characters.<\/p>\n
Old Ways of Thinking Must Be Abandoned<\/strong><\/h4>\n
World War II and the Cold War are over; policymakers should get out of their twentieth-century geopolitical time warp and recognize that international relations have drastically changed. There is no longer a unipolar moment where the US can just throw its weight around and expect countries to roll over. There will be costly resistance in every corner of the world that the American government tries to stick its nose in.<\/p>\n
Since the executive branch has proven incapable of extricating itself from a number of controversial conflicts such as the\u00a0Yemeni Civil War<\/a>, Congress will have to reassert itself in order to counter the top-down machinations of the national security establishment. Thanks to the growing realignment in American politics, there is an\u00a0emergent bipartisan bloc<\/a>\u00a0of congressmen who are beginning to challenge DC\u2019s desire for perpetual conflict. This is a good start.<\/p>\n
Elected officials must reject the interventionist impulse and recognize that America\u2019s military overextension is a major concern for foreign policy restrainers. As long as military assets are parked across the globe, they can be manipulated and used as chess pieces to saber rattle the US into another conflict\u2014be it conventional or by proxy.<\/p>\n
Only a well-informed Congress with a backbone can put an end to the executive branch\u2019s overzealous foreign policy. But first, this requires a shift in the way lawmakers, pundits, and academics view foreign policy. Most certainly, changing foreign policy conventional wisdom will involve a long, drawn-out ideological battle. But it has to start somewhere.<\/p>\n