04/07/16 – Andrew Bacevich – The Scott Horton Show

Alright y'all, Scott Horton Show, scotthorton.org, sign up for the podcast feed there.
Introducing Andrew Bacevich, he is the author of a lot of important books, The New American Militarism, The Limits of Power, Washington Rules, Breach of Trust, and the latest is America's War for the Greater Middle East, a Military History.
Welcome back to the show, how are you doing Andrew?
I'm doing great, thanks for having me on.
Very happy to have you here, and well let me just tell you, I'm so pleased, just even the title of the book and the entire approach that you've taken, at least according to the excerpt I read at Politico, and of course the great one for Tom Dispatch, but in the Politico piece, well, I'll put it this way, I'm writing a book about the war on terrorism myself, and I think now it's going to start with reference to you and the fact that you don't waste our time calling it the war on terrorism, you explain that this is a much broader project to dominate the Middle East, and then you don't get into the terrorism aspect so much in the Politico piece, but apparently, you know, it plays a role in your book, it plays a part, maybe you can explain that, but it's not the reason that America's over there, huh?
Correct, so to try to summarize the book very briefly, as the subtitle suggests, it's a military history, it's not a political history, social history.
My aim is to describe and interpret U.S. military activities in large parts of the Islamic world from 1980 down to the present.
Why 1980 is the start point?
Because that's when Jimmy Carter's promulgation of the Carter Doctrine designated the Persian Gulf a vital U.S. national security interest, and that statement initiated the militarization of U.S. policy, not simply in the Persian Gulf, but more broadly in the Islamic world, and led to a never-ending sequence of armed interventions, large and small, justified by various reasons, but in my judgment, leading to something other than success.
We're kind of stuck in a condition of permanent war.
And, in fact, I just finished looking at an article by Christopher Preble at the National Interest where he's referring to your new book, and he talks about how, from your perspective, and then he links, I think, four or five other polemics by real experts, though, like yourself, arguing that there's no need for any of this at all.
That America, whatever argument that one could make for the national interest being to dominate the Middle East, to the degree it hasn't worked out, as you say, just shows that it's a fool's errand, and that really we would be way better off if we just called it quits.
Now, that could be a really tough pill for a lot of people with power to swallow, because they really believe.
They do.
I mean, one of the explanations for why we have followed the path that we have is that many people in Washington, and we're talking both parties implicated here, have had a far overstated confidence in the effectiveness of American military power, and actually excessive confidence in their own ability to wield American military power to achieve our objectives.
They have repeatedly misunderstood the nature of war, and they certainly have overestimated their own capabilities.
And they've misunderstood the situation, the region.
And the bottom line, my bottom line, what I hope readers of the book will take from it is, A, an appreciation of the fact that we've been at this now, this effort to fix the Middle East with American military power.
We've been at it for a long time.
It hasn't worked.
I believe it's actually made conditions in the region worse.
And therefore, it's really past time for us to have a serious debate about finding alternatives to permanent war.
And one of the things I find most disappointing about the ongoing presidential campaign is that nobody seems to want to take up that topic.
What we get is candidates on both sides bragging about how if they get elected, they'll go beat up on ISIS.
But nobody on either side really taking on board how far astray we have gone in our efforts to use military power in the region.
Well, and especially so since it would be such good politics.
As Trump is proving whenever he mutters some kind of incoherently right-wing anti-war type stance, people love it.
Even in South Carolina, he completely, just without abandon, smashed the Bush brothers and the Iraq War in South Carolina, and then beat everybody by double digits.
They wanted to hear that.
I think they certainly endorse Trump's critique of the Iraq War and the folly of invading Iraq, but he is so inconsistent and incoherent that there have been other things that he's said that would suggest that he'd up the ante militarily.
Absolutely.
Take a bomb moment to the Stone Age approach, which I would argue would make things worse still.
So, I mean, Trump ain't my guy, I'll tell you that.
But, of course, neither is Cruz and neither is Hillary Clinton.
Yeah, I completely agree with you there.
It was Rand Paul's cudgel to take up and he dropped it.
But anyway, it is a real shame because it's just going undebated, at least with Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul around.
You had a real argument, even if they kind of buried it.
Yeah, it's a judgment.
I mean, it's quite a negative judgment on our politics that 30-some years into this war for the greater Middle East, we don't have a party, a major party that questions the fact that war has become normal.
We don't have a significant candidate.
We don't have anybody even of the stature of Eugene McCarthy back in 1968 willing to pick up the banner of anti-interventionism and make that a cause around which to organize a presidential campaign.
Why our politics cannot incorporate a broader range of perspectives on war is a deeply troubling thing.
All right, now, here's the thing, though.
I mean, you're right that there's a Carter Doctrine and there's a history of the later part of the 20th century.
Who could deny that?
And, you know, I mean this in the most honest devil's advocate way that I can, not in favor of the demagogues, but in favor of their victims, at least.
Andrew, that radical Islam, man, how can you ignore the religiosity of Osama bin Laden and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi?
Isn't that what this is all about?
They're coming to get us because their religion makes them hate us.
I think that's a vast oversimplification.
I think that you can't understand the dysfunction of large parts, not all parts, of the Islamic world without taking into account a variety of factors.
I would include among those factors the history of European imperialism.
I'd include the pervasive economic underdevelopment.
I'd include the absence of any local leaders who are enlightened and effective and who actually care about the well-being of the people they govern.
I'd include the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, which had a destabilizing effect that continues to echo many years later.
I'd include the folly of American militarism as applied to the region.
And yes, also, there is an important religious element, divisions within Islam, grudges within Islam directed toward the West.
But I think we really go wrong if we try to single out one factor and say, that's it, because that oversimplifies things.
To appreciate why our war for the greater Middle East has failed and will not succeed, you need to take on board the multiplicity of factors that are in play.
Okay, now, so here's a problem that we have going back, you know, if you want, to Woodrow Wilson or Theodore Roosevelt or at least Jimmy Carter, where, okay, yeah, you might have a point, but look at the mess we're in now.
We've got to at least do something.
Maybe you're right that we've over-militarized things in a way.
But, boy, look at the mess we're in now, where just in the last few years, the Bin Ladenites, if you want to call them that, Al-Qaeda types and franchises and wannabes and the Islamic State have, you know, really taken a foothold into North Africa and down into Mali and in alliance with Boko Haram in Nigeria.
And the crazies are multiplying like crazy and it seems like, well, maybe, I mean, what, the Islamic State is just going to defeat itself?
We've got to go in there and knock the hell out of them before we come back and rebuild America, right?
You are accurately portraying the kind of thinking that prevails in policy circles, that even if people in Washington acknowledge that we've made a mess of things, they argue that we have no choice but to try harder and to keep at it.
And my response to that would be, how can it be that the most powerful nation in the world has no choices?
We only think we have no choices if we become a prisoner of this militarized mindset.
If we reduce the available options to two, either we have to continue to fight a misguided war or we're going to walk away from things, wash our hands, and resort to isolationism.
That's the way the debate gets framed and I think it's a false frame.
There are other choices if people in Washington would demonstrate a certain amount of creativity.
And I'll give you my favorite option and that is to encourage, nudge, persuade the countries in the region to take on board the responsibility of dealing with ISIS and other militant jihadist organizations.
Because guess what?
ISIS doesn't particularly pose an existential threat to us.
It does pose an existential threat to Saudi Arabia and Iraq and Iran, arguably Egypt, Turkey.
And if those countries would collaborate with one another against a common threat, they could deal with it.
Now I understand that all those countries I just ticked off have deep-seated disagreements with one another about a variety of issues.
But the diplomatic task facing the United States, not the military task, the diplomatic task is to persuade those countries to come to the realization that their common interest in dealing with ISIS should at least for now take precedence over the things that they differ about.
So I offer that as an example.
There may be other examples.
There probably are.
But as an example to illustrate that it's not either keep fighting a losing war or do nothing.
Well, so one of the problems here is that, well, because of the mess that America has made, Bush's invasion of Iraq and then Obama's support for the rebellion, especially in Syria, and the rise of the Islamic State has left a situation where the only way for them to be defeated really is, I mean, the Saudis have basically, I think, encouraged the rise of the Islamic State.
Maybe now they're a bit afraid of it, but it seems like the people in the best position to fight them are the Shiite militias and the Shi'istan government in Baghdad and what's left of their army, their special forces divisions and so forth, in alliance with Assad and the government, the military of Syria.
And, of course, then the problem comes when assuming that they can rouse the Islamic State from Mosul and Fallujah, for example, is now you have a giant question of sectarian cleansing there and whether these Shiite forces are going to try to keep Fallujah and Mosul.
There's a question to what degree they're letting Sunnis come back to places like Tikrit and Ramadi that have already been, quote-unquote, liberated from the Islamic State.
And so then this just sets up a whole new series of consequences for us to discuss the war against, you know, three years from now and that kind of thing.
They already opened Pandora's box.
There's an endless chain of excuses to intervene further here, is what I'm trying to say.
Yeah, well, I think you're exactly right.
There is a huge mess.
There will continue to be considerable violence and there will be, you can guarantee, there will be voices in Washington or more broadly in the policy community who will insist that we have an interest or we have a responsibility.
And therefore, you're correct.
There will be an endless supply of excuses to continue down this path.
And in all likelihood, those proponents of further war will probably win the debate.
In the meantime, I'm suggesting that were we, as a people, to seriously evaluate the consequences of all of our prior military interventions in the region, perhaps it would become clear that simply trying harder is not the answer.
And, you know, I hope some people read my book.
I hope that message resonates with some.
But you're right.
I mean, the forward momentum of ever more war is very strong and will be difficult to reverse.
Well, and how much of this is just wrapped up in bogus pride and patriotism and all that?
They can't figure out a way to declare victory and quit.
Well, that bogus pride and patriotism, I think that you're being too dismissive.
It is wrapped up in the difficulty that Americans have, and especially people in the policy world have, the difficulty they have of recognizing that, you know what, there are really, there are very clear limits to American power.
There are things that we cannot do, we cannot accomplish.
Certainly we cannot accomplish, given the willingness of Americans to sacrifice.
You know, I suppose maybe there's a chance that we could pacify the greater Middle East if we would fully mobilize the human and material resources of the United States of America.
You know, if we'd quintuple the size of the United States Army, if we would triple the size of the Pentagon budget, if we would be willing to commit U.S. forces for two or three or four decades, you know, maybe we could quote unquote win the war for the greater Middle East at that point.
But it's clear that we as a people are not willing to make that kind of effort and make those kind of sacrifices.
So instead we have this, in a fundamental sense, a really half-hearted approach to waging the war for the greater Middle East.
And the half-heartedness is a further guarantee that it's not going to succeed in the end.
Alright y'all, that is Andrew J. Bacevich.
The latest book is America's War for the Greater Middle East, A Military History.
You can read a great excerpt at Politico, The Middle East, Let's End America's Hopeless War, and another great one at TomDispatch.com about Congress abdicating their authority over American war making.
Thank you very much for your time again on the show, Andrew, appreciate it.
Oh, thank you.
Alright y'all, sign up for the podcast feed, ScottHorton.org.