Are Left and Right coming together over the War in Ukraine?
Does commitment to the Wolfowitz Doctrine explain the US commitment to war in the Ukraine? And have we been operating under such a doctrine since 1947?
Arguably, the one party best situated to mediate a durable settlement to the war in Ukraine has declined to do that and has, instead, vigorously supported continuing the war. Indeed, on this President’s Day 2023, President Joe Biden made an ostentatious point of showing up in Kiev to commit more money and materiel to the effort.
But why? Here are some formative ideas:
Proposition 1: There was some prospect of enjoying a “peace dividend” after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, but, it had to compete with a proactive policy of Wilsonian “promotion of democracy and human rights.” “9/11” afforded the proponents of activist policy the opportunity to bury the “peace dividend” once and for all.
Proposition 2: There was some prospect of enjoying a peace dividend after the Second World War, but that gave way to an active policy of promoting democracy by way of “containment.”
Proposition 3: Ironically, Wilsonianism packaged as “promoting democracy” has generated a lot of destabilization and war.
And, yet, would a studied isolationism have performed better? Would that studied isolationism have been able to hold back demands to “Do Something!” in the name of “Human Rights” and “Our Democracy”?
By 1992, the Soviet Union had dissolved. Talk had already been coming out of the administration of George H.W. Bush of a “peace dividend.” This was rhetoric coming of out the administration, not out of some Lefty rag opposing the administration. Conceivably, the United States could reduce defense spending and, potentially, direct new spending to other projects. Or, the federal government could simply reduce overall spending.
That was the kind of thing that was the subject of the most intense debate as of September 10, 2001. The federal government had projected enormous budget surpluses far into the future. The Democrats under Nancy Pelosi’s leadership agitated for increased spending on social programs. The administration of George W. Bush agitated for tax cuts.
The events of September 11, 2001 provided an opportunity for certain parties within the Bush administration and within the “deep state” to agitate for an affirmative program of regime change in the Middle East. The Department of Defense would finally get a chance to implement its “Wolfowitz Doctrine”.
Paul Wolfowitz had been one of Dick Cheney’s lieutenants during Cheney’s first tenure as Secretary of Defense during Bush I. Paul Wolfowitz went on to be Cheney’s Undersecretary for Defense during Cheney’s second tenure as Secretary of Defense during Bush II.
It was in 1992 or so that Wolfowitz had composed his memorandum that had sketched the “Wolfowitz Doctrine”: In my mind, the United States should take the “peace dividend” and build up whatever defense and intelligence apparatus would be necessary to frustrate the rise of any potential rivals to America’s new status as sole superpower. Usual suspects would include Russia, China, India, Germany and Japan.
Someone leaked the document, and it did not garner broad approval. Rather, the entire matter of proactively monitoring and suppressing threats to a new, American-led, uni-polar order seemed to disappear. September 11 changed that. The Cheney cabal would finally get a chance to put serious resources behind the Wolfowitz concept. It would start in the Middle East with a program designed to draw certain Gulf states, most notably Iraq, more tightly within the American sphere.
A motivation seems to have been frustration with the fact that efforts to do just that pre-9/11 had stalled. The United States and Britain had been policing open-ended UN commitments to maintain both a No-fly-zone over Iraq and a boycott of oil from Iraq, but other parties—most notably the French, Russians, and Chinese—had been looking for opportunities to get in to Iraq and develop its oil resources. Manufacturing an excuse to invade Iraq—with UN acquiescence, no less—would end the frustration. On top of that, American entities like Halliburton would likely get first dibs over contracts to develop Iraqi oil resources.
The whole effort would conform to a kind of democratizing Domino Theory. Factions in Iraq supporting personalities like Ahmad Chalabi, speakers well-versed in the West’s platitudinous language of “Our Democracy,” would help countries like Iraq institute their own renditions of “Our Democracy.” One country after another would see the shining example of Iraq and subsequently fall like dominoes. What did the leadership of the regime in Iran think of that? Had they harbored some concerns?
It would be difficult to suggest that the United States had been vigorously winding down its military commitments and expenses during the Clinton years all as a way of securing a “peace dividend.” It was, afterall, during all of those Clinton years that the United States actively policed the No-fly-zone. Why did the Clinton administration not take time to sort out what we were doing in the Gulf? What long-term objective was the administration pursuing? Was it pursuing an objective, or was it just letting the military and intelligence communities run its foreign policy on auto-pilot?
One can go back as far as 1947 to find observers who would suggest that the political establishment had already granted, or should grant, the military and intelligence communities license to run the country’s foreign policy. Famous installments in the Should-Grant files would include publication in that year of George Kennan’s memorandum on “vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies.” Then there is, of course, President Eisenhower’s farewell remarks in January 1961 about the emergence of a “military-industrial complex.” (This from the person who purportedly coined the phrase “Domino Theory” some years earlier.) The procurement apparatus that the federal government had assembled during the Second World War had never entirely demobilized. Indeed, in 1946, many observers did not so much look forward to realizing a “peace dividend” but worried that demobilization might thrust the country back into deep recession. Within a few years, however, proponents of containment policy would find the first big test of their resolve to follow through with their theories: Kind of like the question of defending Taiwan against China today, would the United States, on a hot, dusty day in June 1950, commit to expelling North Korean invaders from South Korea? There had been some confusion in the late 1940’s about how to deal with the divided Korean peninsula. The invasion forced a definitive decision, and that decision was to fight.
The original Hawkeye (Donald Sutherland) enters the scene in MASH (1970).
The invasion of Korea in 1950 was one thing. The “loss” of China to the communists in 1949 proved to be a motivating factor for Cold Warriors and proponents of the Domino Theory. I say “loss”, because the question of “Who Lost China?” became an important theme in American politics. Maybe it was the Chinese who had “lost” China in 1949 just as it was the Cubans who would go on to “lose” Cuba in 1959, but in American politics, “Who Lost China?” became synecdoche for willful disregard for American security in a post-war, nuclear world in which Soviet-backed communist insurgencies seemed to be springing up like mushrooms. As David Halberstam (The Best and the Brightest 1969) might have argued, the American establishment might not have acquiesced to the French taking up their old place as colonial rulers of Indochina and might not have taken active interest in the French fight against the Viet Minh had larger concerns about containment not taken root. The establishment might not have found itself contemplating invasions of Laos and Cuba in later years. The establishment, basically, might not have found itself with the license afforded by “containment” to go around looking for things to do absent adult supervision.
One can imagine that it would have been easy to appreciate the appeal of containment in 1950, for it is not as though the Soviets had set about spreading “Our Democracy” around the world. Winston Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech in 1946 was inspired by the understanding that the Soviets had followed up liberation in Eastern and Central Europe with campaigns by its NKVD to wipe out anyone who might pose a threat going forward to the dominance of the local communist authorities. The Soviets were, it seems, operating under their own de facto Wolfowitz Doctrine. They even went so far as to support the liquidation of potential political rivals in North Korea and to frustrate reunification with South Korea under any terms other than communist domination. And it is not as though the Soviets had not already been in the business of trying to export their model of dictatorship, for they had already supported the communist faction during the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939. Finally, it’s not as though communism had proven to be very accommodating. The New York Times and others enthusiastically ran cover for Stalin and the Soviets through the course of the war and through the course of their murderous First Five-Year Plan (1928-1932), but, with the Soviets having taken on most of the burden of vanquishing the Nazis—Thanks for the doing that!—and with the predations of Soviet policies having become common knowledge, it was no longer stylish to be so obviously pro-Soviet.
Yesterday I encountered a few, enthusiastic pro-Soviets. Not many, but a few. I was attending the “Rage Against the War Machine” rally in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC. T’was a beautiful day.
Attendance amounted a few thousand. Not tens of thousands. Not 100,000, but enough to draw in some number of curious tourists.
The Libertarian Party motivated the event and made a point of drawing in quite a number of Lefty groups. The entire production did draw in a diverse crowd. The “Black Panther Party” provided security.
Most speakers did a good job of recognizing and then celebrating the fact that the rally had attracted a diverse coalition. In my mind, what makes many Left groups Left is their own preferences for telling the rest of us how to organize our lives. But, here we were all complaining about how the political establishment circumvents democratic process for declaring war or imposing technocratic solutions (like vaccine mandates) for problems that don’t exist. Some people of the Left may be recovering some appreciation for individual rights. (That would be nice.) And it would be nicer if they could then contemplate what kind of governance structures protect and respect the exercise of individual rights, because, after all, exercising rights may involve doing things that authoritarians on the Left or Right might not appreciate. The authoritarian ethos is antithetical to Live-and-let-live.