Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?

Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?

Mini Teaser: There is no shortage of books on security and strategy in a world beset by terror. "Fortunately," writes Harvey Sicherman, "most are short."

by Author(s): Harvey Sicherman

Still, Clarke was wrestling with a problem that for thirty years had bedeviled U.S. counter-terrorism. How could one attack terrorists who enjoyed state-sponsored sanctuaries? Basically, once Bin Laden bought Afghanistan, the only way to get him was through a CIA assassination or war.

Clinton failed to do either, and much of Clarke's advice to Bush was to try both. But Clarke has admitted that by 2001, his ideas, even if they had sped through the interagency slow-motion machine, would not have prevented 9/11. For by that time Al-Qaeda had metastasized, and America's last line of defense was soon to fail.

Here lies the real peculiarity of Against All Enemies. The courageous, decisive Bill Clinton conjured by Clarke somehow cannot get his story straight to a suspicious and dispirited FBI director whose agency bungled its job. Clinton's directive to kill Bin Laden somehow never makes it down to CIA working ranks. Terrorism was such a priority that the CIA Directorate of Operations suffered serious budget reductions until 1996, after which it remained flat for the balance of Clinton's term. And then there was the "wall" separating the FBI and CIA on intelligence sharing, reinforced by Clinton's appointees at the Department of Justice; an ins that neglected it own rules; a JCS that balked at dramatic action; and an FAA and the airlines that only pretended to protect the airways. Either Clarke is fibbing about Clinton's priorities, or Clinton was an astonishingly ineffective president.

Bush, too, repeated Clinton's (and Clarke's) error of concentrating on some solution to the Afghan problem while doing little about the easily pregnable last lines of defense. Thus, Bush perpetuated for a few months the vulnerabilities he inherited. The sobering conclusions of the 9/11 Commission will presumably be "mutually respectful" unlike Clarke's polemic.

"Forward Containment"

The Mead and Frum-Perle books represent two distinct approaches important to any understanding of U.S. policy. Both are at war--with terrorism and with each other, including their respective writing styles.

Mead, the Kissinger Senior Fellow in U.S. Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations, has previously written on U.S. foreign policy traditions. Aided by a brigade of assistants and consultants, Mead spent the two years since 9/11 in quest of that Holy Grail, an American Grand Strategy for a world at risk. We need one, Mead argues, because 9/11, like Pearl Harbor, has taken us once more on a "terrible turn." And we face a crisis because American foreign policy has gone off the tracks.

Like Gaddis, Mead grounds his observations in deeply rooted American traditions. Unlike another historian, Walter McDougall, who identified those traditions by theme (for example, "progressive imperialism"), Mead uses well-known American names (Hamiltonian, Jeffersonian, Jacksonian, Wilsonian) to symbolize the differences. But most of these men made their mark on domestic politics and, as one struggles to recall Mead's distinctions, the author heaps on a whole new (and unfamiliar) lexicon. American power, for example, is hard, soft, sweet and sticky. The U.S. economy evolves from (Henry) Fordism to "millennial capitalism." Human rightists and European realpolitikers are respectively the Party of Heaven and the Party of Hell. In the preface, Mead introduces himself as "an odd duck", but this terminological quackery is too odd, too often.

Still, the author should be congratulated for his courage. He tackles economics, a rare subject among grand strategists. Mead warns us of confusing complexity, and certainly fulfills his promise. The new lexicon interferes again as he stretches it too far--trying to make the case for the prevalence of Fordism. Consider this whopper: ". . . the years from about 1923 to 1973 saw an unusual degree of stability in American enterprise, except for the turmoil of the Great Depression." He could have fooled most Americans.

On more recent events, Mead writes brilliantly about the French pratfalls on the eve of the Iraq War, and Franco-German relations. He extols most of Bush's "hard power" (military) actions, but he thinks Bush has gone too far. Mead asks: "Is there a world order in which all states have an equal stake, or is it an American empire that the United States imposes on others?" And Mead answers:

"In reality, the American project is and will remain an uneasy combination of the two. . . . Managing the balance . . . is one of the most delicate and critical tasks American policymakers must address."

Mead argues that this balance has been so badly fumbled by Bush that the "American revival" begun by Reagan could be jeopardized.

What then to do? As the book nears its conclusion, Mead's rhetorical imagination fails him. He calls the new balance "Forward Containment", not exactly a bell-ringer. He wants an international consensus against terrorism and a war of ideas against "Arabian fascism." (Islamicism is too easily misunderstood). The United States needs more emphasis on softer power. International institutions such as the UN must be made more representative (more vetoes in the Security Council). He likes the idea of micro-capitalism (small loans for entrepreneurs) in the Third World, where injustice and explosive population growth are disasters in the making. Mead would also like the United States to lead a "buy-out" of the Palestinian refugees in lieu of an overall Arab-Israeli agreement if only to assure the Arabs that America cares about the Palestinian future. Mead ends on a high note of American noblesse oblige to the rest of the world, quoting Endicott Peabody and, inevitably--you guessed it--FDR. Overall, Mead's book is an interesting try with a message similar to those of Gaddis and Harries, namely, that hegemonies need good manners to ease the friction of leadership.

David Frum, briefly a Bush speechwriter, and Richard Perle, a Reagan-era Assistant Secretary of Defense and more recently the former head of the Defense Intelligence Advisory Board, agree with Mead that America faces a crisis. But the problem isn't manners. Instead, "we can feel the will to win ebbing in Washington." They tell us "there is no middle way for Americans. It is either victory or holocaust." Their book is a "manual for victory."

Clearly, balance and containment are not their style for dealing with the evil of terrorism, and the prose reflects it. Occupying the simmering middle ground between indignation and outrage, the authors occasionally ascend to apocalypse or drop into a withering sarcasm. Indeed, the authors seem happiest when they flagellate the wimps, pimps and feeble-minded so well represented abroad (allies, Russians) and at home (State, Defense, CIA, academics, media). Nor do they fear to enter current controversies, attributing our postwar problems in Iraq to CIA-State sabotage of Ahmad Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress, who presumably were ready to run the country after Saddam, thereby making occupation unnecessary. These expectations, popular among the Pentagon's civilian masters, may explain a policy that assumed the worst case going into the war and the best case coming out of it.

The biggest problem with this "manual for victory" emerges when one tallies the actual or potential hostilities advocated by an End to Evil, which includes, among other things, a military buildup to intimidate and blockade North Korea. Outgoing Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki's words come to mind: beware of a twelve-division foreign policy with a ten-division army. The United States has already reached that point, to judge by our difficulties in sustaining manpower levels in Iraq. What Frum and Perle suggest would require a much larger military. After all, if we had 18 divisions (as we did in the Cold War), we wouldn't be hesitant about taking on Iraq, Iran, Syria or Korea, would we?

They may very well be right about the military needed to win this war their way. But recruiting and training such forces will take some time and lots of money. The authors, however, fail to correlate costs and force structures. It is true that wars are waged on borrowed money and that domestic spending should take a backseat to national security, as they argue. We have done 18 divisions before, even without a draft. But the president must ask for it, Congress must authorize it--and then the ranks must still be filled.

Meanwhile, what's an administration to do? When apprised of Al-Qaeda's presence in over sixty countries at the Camp David strategy meeting the weekend following 9/11, President Bush (or maybe "President" Woodward) supposedly said: Fine, one by one. That strategic wisdom means not opening too many fronts at once, especially if you have only ten divisions. But the Frum-Perle manual counsels taking on all of the fronts simultaneously and takes for granted that high technology can always substitute for boots on the ground. Well, sometimes not.

The book ranges far and wide, the authors never short of self-confidence. Many, many scores are settled here. When they are not dismantling or revamping State, the CIA, the Pentagon and Congress, they have many recommendations designed to protect our home front from terrorists (and, one suspects, to infuriate the ACLU). There are defenses of Israel and analyses of Arab outrage and modest appeals for allied or UN help--"but we should not make the mistake of relying on it." They conclude with the ultimate accolade to America's sense of right. "America's vocation is not an imperial vocation. Our vocation is to support justice with power . . . the hope of the world." Certainly.

Essay Types: Book Review