Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
Boston Globe
September 30, 2008
By H.D.S. Greenway
[FONT=Times New Roman, Times]Recently[/FONT] the most thoughtful cabinet member of the Bush administration, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, gave a speech at Blenheim Palace in England, following a NATO meeting. It would not have escaped him that this was the birthplace of Winston Churchill, perhaps revered more in America than in even his own country for opposing appeasement and standing up to Hitler.
It would also not have escaped him that this palace was named for a famous battle that Churchill's ancestor, the Duke of Marlborough, won in the summer of 1704 near a small Bavarian town on the banks of the Danube. Marlborough led a NATO-like alliance of soldiers from Britain, Austria, Savoy, Hungary, Hanover, Prussia, Hesse, and Denmark against the French and Bavarians, in order to thwart the ambitions of Louis XIV, the would-be hegemon of Europe.
Gates was speaking against a backdrop of a weakened America, stretched thin by two wars, alienated from its allies by the unilateral excesses of George W. Bush's first term, and now further humbled by a growing financial crisis that threatens to destroy the very base of America's strength, its economy.
He spoke to the great issue of war and peace, and how the debate had too often been framed by two extremes, "a too-eager embrace of the use of military force, and an extreme aversion to it."
Hawks on the right and humanitarian interventionists on the left bitterly criticized President Clinton for not intervening in the Balkans earlier than he finally did. Certainly many who swept into power with George W. Bush despised Clinton for his aversion to the use of force. Even Clinton's own secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, asked what was the use of having such a big and powerful army if we were unwilling to use it?
But under the Bush administration we saw the greatest militarization of foreign policy since the second world war. The too-eager embrace of military force became the order of the day as intellectual supporters of the administration wrote volumes in praise of raw power.
Gates used the crises of 1914 and 1938 to make his point.
In 1914, the world went to a war that nobody really wanted in which "miscalculations, hubris, bellicosity, fear of looking weak" led to World War I. What could have better described Bush's war of choice in Iraq? Hubris, bellicosity, and the fear of looking weak, we now know, all played roles in the decision to invade, but miscalculation trumped them all.
On the other extreme, Gates said, was Neville Chamberlains's decision in 1938 to allow Hitler to dismember Czechoslovakia because ethnic Germans predominated in one corner, the Sudetenland. That example could be cited by both sides in the Georgia and Kosovo disputes.
No doubt the horror of everything that World War I had wrought was uppermost in the minds of the appeasers who thought everything must be done to avoid that again. But as Churchill said, Chamberlain had a choice between dishonor and war. "He chose dishonor, he will get war."
Gates was right that those two starkly opposing examples have overshadowed decision-making ever since. Europe today is perhaps too adverse to the use of force with governments unable to commit their armies to anything beyond peacekeeping. America may still be too quick to resort to force.
Much will be decided in the upcoming US election. American voters are wondering if Barack Obama is up to the role of commander in chief. They also worry that McCain is too much up to that role, too belligerent, too risk-taking to be trusted.
It was indicative that in the post-debate charges, Obama's camp accuses McCain of not mentioning the middle class, while McCain's people fault Obama for not using the word "victory" in the context of Iraq.
Gates got it right when he said: "We must try to prevent a situation where we have only two bleak choices: confrontation or capitulation, 1914 or 1938."
He also was right in saying that the trick was to "come together and take the steadfast and prudent steps. . . to shape the international environment and choices of other powers." Then the choices of 1938 and 1914 can be avoided.
H.D.S. Greenway's column appears regularly in the Globe.
September 30, 2008
By H.D.S. Greenway
[FONT=Times New Roman, Times]Recently[/FONT] the most thoughtful cabinet member of the Bush administration, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, gave a speech at Blenheim Palace in England, following a NATO meeting. It would not have escaped him that this was the birthplace of Winston Churchill, perhaps revered more in America than in even his own country for opposing appeasement and standing up to Hitler.
It would also not have escaped him that this palace was named for a famous battle that Churchill's ancestor, the Duke of Marlborough, won in the summer of 1704 near a small Bavarian town on the banks of the Danube. Marlborough led a NATO-like alliance of soldiers from Britain, Austria, Savoy, Hungary, Hanover, Prussia, Hesse, and Denmark against the French and Bavarians, in order to thwart the ambitions of Louis XIV, the would-be hegemon of Europe.
Gates was speaking against a backdrop of a weakened America, stretched thin by two wars, alienated from its allies by the unilateral excesses of George W. Bush's first term, and now further humbled by a growing financial crisis that threatens to destroy the very base of America's strength, its economy.
He spoke to the great issue of war and peace, and how the debate had too often been framed by two extremes, "a too-eager embrace of the use of military force, and an extreme aversion to it."
Hawks on the right and humanitarian interventionists on the left bitterly criticized President Clinton for not intervening in the Balkans earlier than he finally did. Certainly many who swept into power with George W. Bush despised Clinton for his aversion to the use of force. Even Clinton's own secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, asked what was the use of having such a big and powerful army if we were unwilling to use it?
But under the Bush administration we saw the greatest militarization of foreign policy since the second world war. The too-eager embrace of military force became the order of the day as intellectual supporters of the administration wrote volumes in praise of raw power.
Gates used the crises of 1914 and 1938 to make his point.
In 1914, the world went to a war that nobody really wanted in which "miscalculations, hubris, bellicosity, fear of looking weak" led to World War I. What could have better described Bush's war of choice in Iraq? Hubris, bellicosity, and the fear of looking weak, we now know, all played roles in the decision to invade, but miscalculation trumped them all.
On the other extreme, Gates said, was Neville Chamberlains's decision in 1938 to allow Hitler to dismember Czechoslovakia because ethnic Germans predominated in one corner, the Sudetenland. That example could be cited by both sides in the Georgia and Kosovo disputes.
No doubt the horror of everything that World War I had wrought was uppermost in the minds of the appeasers who thought everything must be done to avoid that again. But as Churchill said, Chamberlain had a choice between dishonor and war. "He chose dishonor, he will get war."
Gates was right that those two starkly opposing examples have overshadowed decision-making ever since. Europe today is perhaps too adverse to the use of force with governments unable to commit their armies to anything beyond peacekeeping. America may still be too quick to resort to force.
Much will be decided in the upcoming US election. American voters are wondering if Barack Obama is up to the role of commander in chief. They also worry that McCain is too much up to that role, too belligerent, too risk-taking to be trusted.
It was indicative that in the post-debate charges, Obama's camp accuses McCain of not mentioning the middle class, while McCain's people fault Obama for not using the word "victory" in the context of Iraq.
Gates got it right when he said: "We must try to prevent a situation where we have only two bleak choices: confrontation or capitulation, 1914 or 1938."
He also was right in saying that the trick was to "come together and take the steadfast and prudent steps. . . to shape the international environment and choices of other powers." Then the choices of 1938 and 1914 can be avoided.
H.D.S. Greenway's column appears regularly in the Globe.