It is hard to think of a period in the past five decades in which this country was more painfully bereft of national leadership than it currently finds itself. On one side we have an increasingly isolated president who, as Edward Luce opined recently, “prefers to campaign than govern.” On the other is a House-controlling GOP that, in the words of Thomas Friedman, “has gone nuts.” What’s more, the highly negative campaign that 2012 is shaping up to be will secure no governing mandate for the eventual winner, meaning that things are likely to get far worse.
Read the entire column at World Politics Review.
Monday, November 28, 2011 at 9:44AM 
Reader Comments (10)
Well, what is the vison of the "first Asian-Pacific USpresident"Obama ? TPP (which excludes China) , KORUS and a military base at the outback of Asia, in Darwin/Australia.Not very much close to the grand strategy term sheet Tom Barnett and John-Milligan-Whyte proposed.But also not very close to what AEI. Heritage Foundation and other China-bashers want to do. It´s just in the middle of nowhere. AEI, Heritage Foundation and other China bashers are concentrationg and focusing on the balance of military power. while Tom Barnett and Milligan-Whyte are focusing on the most important issue: Without a deeper interdependence of the great economic powers: USA, EU, Inida and China--means investment---means: reciprocal gloablization--our global economy won´t recover ande regain ist old strength--much more likely is the opposite: protectionism, trade and currency wars and global recession--maybe the 1929-style.It´s a hopeful omen that the CEO issued such a demand in the Wall Street Journal and that Barnett noted that you already have this genuine joint ventures on the behalf of General Electics and other companies.Let´s see it optimistic: If Obama is reeclected, there might be a shift towards a more recoprocal globalization as the TPP and the military base in Darwin won´t turn out to be the ideal solution. But if Mitt Romney is elected, I donßt know if the Republicans wonßt have more sympathy for Air-Sea-Battle and other military bases ariund China and strengthen protecionism.
At least when we were ruled by Kings we could take comfort in knowing that we did not choose the fools and drooling idiots born in the great castles. They were forced upon us. Now we actually pick the fools ourselves. We pat ourselves on the back because we have a system that allows us to get rid of the fools every four years. That would be a splendid system...if it worked.
The idea that a regiment of Marines is going to "hold the pass" against a nation of over one billion people is...well...it's hard to find words to describe it. Maybe if they wear their dress blues, or maybe we should have just sent the famous "Silent Drill Team", always a crowd pleaser.
The President just took his daughters to a "book store" to do some Christmas shopping. Very comforting stuff. Except "bookstores" are closing. Everyone is in the Apple store now.
Dr. Barnett,
You tend to forget that America's grand entrance to the World was in response to catastrophic events in Europe. When that was done with, you faced an easily defined adversary for some forty-odd years. Truman, Eisenhower and Reagan all dealt with the same World.
Your foreign policy establishment was built around these set of events and since old habits die hard, America lacks either the tools or the intellectual capacity to deal with a rapidly changing World. Thus, the tendency to fall back on the habits formed during the Cold War.
Most worryingly, there isn't much indication that your future generations of grand strategists will understand the World or even how to engage with it. Check it out, how many young Americans really have a hang of what is going on outside the Old Core? (Hint: look at the travel statistics).It is true that you have a lot of intellectual knowledge about the World, but do you really understand how the Chinese, Brazilians or Indians think? Can you read their minds?
After ten years and trillions of dollars wasted in Afghanistan and Iraq, can you say you "finally get" the Muslim World?
The American mind has already begun its long withdrawal from the rest of the World, your politicians are merely playing catch-up. It will take another catastrophic event for America to renew its engagement with the rest of the World, absent that, you'll merely be rehashing the Cold War.
Maduka:
I must take umbrage at your comments both on American intellectual capacity, and especially your comments about an "indication that .. future generations of grand strategists will understand the World or even how to engage with it."
I like to consider myself an up-and-coming analyst in my early 30s. My wife is originally from Vietnam, and my in-laws live in Saigon. For some travel statistics, I have been to Vietnam eight (8) times in six (6) years, and have traveled extensively throughout the country.
I have had the opportunity to meet personally with the current and previous Vietnamese Ambassador to the U.S., and have discussed Vietnam's defense priorities with the current Ambassador.
So, yes, I do believe that I have a strong understanding of what the Vietnamese are thinking, and a pretty good idea of what the Chinese are thinking, too, through an American and Vietnamese perspective. For the record, I do not have as positive a view of the Chinese government as does Dr. Barnett.
It would be wise for everyone not to give the Chinese government, military and economy too much credit, nor give the U.S. government, military and economy too little credit.
J. Ross Stewart,
I am very sorry about my choice of words as I make every effort to keep my conversation as civil as possible. It is also nice to know that we belong to the same generation, so probably we could initiate a conversation that lasts a lifetime.
Having said that, the fact remains that your generation and the generation after you are the most risk-averse generation America ever sent out to the World. There are valid reasons for this, the aftermath of 9/11 being one, but the damage to America's ability to understand a rapidly changing World is real.
You may be an exception and your news media may be full of stories of heroic Americans living with the locals, but the reality is far from that. Americans living outside America choose to or are forced to live secluded lives by their sponsors and/or the US Government. For example, my elder brother is an American citizen, when he came down to Nigeria on assignment he had to wait for six months to visit my parents, because the USG / Company sponsor thought it was not safe to do so. I had to pick my parents from his house and take them to the airport because the USG / Company sponsor didn't think he was safe going to the airport without a full complement of armed policemen.
These examples abound all over Africa and Asia.
The result is a detachment from the realities on the ground. Think about "the Imperial Life in the Emerald City" in Baghdad. Even your diplomatic staff are risk averse and your analysts increasingly depend on second-hand material translated into English. Why do you think you couldn't see the Arab Spring coming? How come your analysts took so long to understand that the Muslim Brotherhood were best placed to take advantage of events?
The future belongs to risk takers. There is nothing that suggests that your generation of Americans are willing to take the same risks that the World War II generation or the Baby Boomers took. As time goes on, Americans will be less, not more engaged with the rest of the World on a personal level. There is a level of information you can obtain from interacting with the movers and shakers of society, but another, more important level is obtained from the Street. As the "Arab Spring" showed - the Street also has a voice.
Maduka:
Thanks for your clarification.
You raise a lot of good points, in that the U.S. diplomatic corps and U.S. contractors living and working abroad can often be segregated from the local population, depending, of course, in large part on the level of security risks in the country in which they are located. However, I don't believe that the same can be said for the U.S. Intelligence Community nor our Special Operations personnel.
There are a lot of factors that play into such situations, including the high (and growing) value and concern placed on individuals in American society, and thus concern over the risk of terrorist attacks and kidnappings and related insurance concerns faced in certain countries. Furthermore, there are restrictions on what information Americans can disclose to non-U.S. citizens without U.S. government approval, including information governed by the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) and other export controls and classifications, and also in how Americans can interact with local populations as dictated by the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). Finally, U.S. companies have their own security, conflict of interest and ethics policies that often exceed the requirements detailed in the aforementioned regulations and statutes.
It is true that U.S. companies tend to be risk averse when it comes to such concerns as detailed above, (though not without good reason), but I can tell you firsthand that American business operations in politically-stable Vietnam do not carry the same level of concerns as they do in Iraq, or Afghanistan or Nigeria. I am sure that diplomatic operational concerns are commensurate.
However, I believe that American businesses taking into account the concerns detailed above makes good, ethical and prudent business sense, and I am further convinced that the capitalist and entrepreneurial American business community will face no shortage of those willing to take calculated risks within these confines.
Ross
Ross,
The point is that traditional intelligence gathering is the 20th Century way of doing things. Last century it was enough to glean information from diplomats, presidents, other intelligence services, opinion- shapers and influential members of society.
Afghanistan, Iraq and the Arab Spring show that that approach won't work today. To deal with that challenge, the Department of Defense (not the State Department) created the "Human Terrain" concept. Human terrain involves understanding the socio-economic context, cultural trends, religious traditions etc. Your intelligence and special operations community neither have the skills, nor the sufficient numbers to do "Human Terrain" effectively.
So American diplomats really need to get out of their comfort zones and interact with the locals if they REALLY want to get a hang of what is going in the rest of the World. If they can't do that, be prepared for challenges and surprises like the Arab Spring.
Secondly, having dealt with Americans of your generation. I can tell you that your generation is MORTIFIED of Africa and the Middle East. There are a few exceptions, but the fact that Western firms tend to recruit heavily from India says a lot about your generation's risk aversion.
Having said all that, it is not absolutely necessary for the US to have a detailed understanding of the World. You could decide to adopt a much less ambitious and more isolationist foreign policy - the rest of the World will do just fine.
The US already has an ambitious foreign policy, mainly economic not military. Also, the US has an economy intertwined in the consumer goods manufacturing sector with China and will increase with India, Southeast Asia, and Latin America as time goes by. Currently, the US is number 1 in the world in manufacturing output with China at number 2.
The problem with the world outside the US is that it doesn't show up when things go wrong, it currently waits and free-rides on the US tackling the toughest countries that may require some military intervention.
Of course, the world may be content for decades long dictatorship rule or minor insurgencies that claim 100,000 lives over 3-4 decades without outside (US) intervention to stop it permenantly. Iraq for example, lost 500,000 lives with 12 years of US economic sanctions through starvation. During the war, the US inflicted between 250,000 to 550,000 deaths in a 5 year timespan. Both situations are tragic although the situation would have continued indefinitely with Uday and Qusay leading Iraq after Sadaam passed away. Was the world ready to accept that outcome? Absolutely, unless the US did something.
In the future, the US should only be involved at 10% of the entire contribution, the rest from Asia, which is where the US will make the most money selling products. The US will continue to be involved at that small level otherwise Asia doesn't show up. China, India, Turkey, Brazil, and Russia will be the United States largest trading partners and military allies in the future. Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, or Korea may be possible candidates for future US states although their immigration policies and extreme aging may make that difficult.
Mortified of Africa, no the US simply misunderstands the situation. Although the US corporate world and government hasn't been mortified that badly to buy oil from Angola or Nigeria in West Africa, even though their corruption perception index is respectively 168 and 134 out of a possible 178. We regularly do business with the Philippines and Pakistan at 134 and 143 on the corruption perception index so it isn't that bad. We in the US simply need to diversify business trade with West Africa phones, agriculture, technology, and film beyond simply buying oil profiting the government elites.
Maduka:
I am somewhat confused by your comments. I honestly cannot say whether you are providing an honest assessment of the U.S. government's gaps and weaknesses in a bid to help the U.S. become more engaged and more effective in places like the African Continent and the Middle East, or whether you are simply celebrating what you see as America's decline.
In any event, the fact that American diplomats and aid workers tend, on average, to be risk averse is certainly not a new issue. If you've ever had the opportunity to catch any of Dr. Barnett's Blueprint for Action-era briefs, he touched on this issue. However, that certainly cannot be said for all American diplomats, because I know American diplomats who have met with dissidents in other countries and been beaten by that country's police for doing so (and that is not being risk averse).
Furthermore, whether you realize it or not, you are making the perfect case for Dr. Barnett's "Department of Everything Else" that he proposed in Blueprint for Action that, as he states in his Glossary on this site, "would fill the gap between the current Departments of Defense and State, engaging in unconventional pursuits such as nation-building, disaster relief, and counterinsurgency."
Of course, no government is omniscient - that is, all knowing - including the U.S. government, and we are certain to at times make mistakes, miss operative intelligence, misinterpret operative intelligence, etc. That is why I put my faith in God, and not in man.
However, do you seriously believe the world will "do just fine" with an isolationist America? Who is going to lead? China? Europe? The U.N.?
The world needs a strong and engaged U.S., and the U.S. government and military is a force for good, even though our strategy and plan is not always as coherent as it should be.
Ross
Ross,
I did not say you should isolate yourselves from the rest of the World. I said the US may decide to have a more isolationist foreign policy. (Instead of aggressive intervention, more emphasis on "offshore balancing").
We both lived through the past decade and we know understand that US intervention has a very mixed record. You could argue that Iraq would have been better off (geo-strategically for the US) if the US did not decide on an invasion.
The main point is that the US will not always have the financial resources to execute an ambitious foreign policy. Afghanistan, for example, is not your problem - it is India, China and Pakistan's problem. These nations are not going to take responsibility unless you withdraw.
The question of "who will lead the World" after America leaves is already being answered by economics. China is being forced to lead the World on renewal energy (and China is on track to be the dominant power in Africa). Turkey is being forced into a position of leadership in the Muslim Middle East (after the Arab Spring). China, India and Pakistan will have to lead in Afghanistan after 2014. Brazil is already assuming leadership in Latin America.
America is still the World's most important nation, but you are making a transition from global superpower to first among equals.
Finally, I love Americans and I have worked with / for them virtually all my working life. I agree with Dr. Barnett's "Department of Everything Else" but I doubt America has the full spectrum of skills to make it happen. (For instance, the Chinese can do cheap infrastructure better than anyone else and the Singaporeans and South Koreans have real experience in making the transition from third world to developed economy).
NB: Read Robert Kaplan's "The Coming Anarchy" to understand the World we might be dealing with.