America: How Niall Ferguson Blew It
Wednesday, February 16, 2011 at 10:41AM 
Niall Ferguson has a cover piece out in Newsweek entitled, "Egypt: How Obama Blew It." It's a predictable enough piece of criticism from a guy who hoped to make it big as a foreign policy adviser to John McCain in his 2008 presidential bid and still harbors that ambition. The piece drips with the implied "my much more experienced guy would have got it right" (with Bismarck as the historical stand-in).
But think back to Ferguson's own work over the past decade when it comes to discussing globalization and America, because this guy sold empire and primacy like crazy. And frankly, to the extent that Obama "blows it" on Egypt like he allegedly "blew it" on Iran in 2009, he's acting the careful superpower that's responsible for the world. Most of the rest of the time, especially on economics, he does act like America is just one among several great powers in partial control of things, but on national security issues, he tends to follow the Bush-Cheney empire-primacy mode a bit too much, meaning, in effect, he's guilty of taking Ferguson's previous advice.
Ferguson says Obama has no grand strategy, but again, it's not all that different from Bush: hog control of interventions we make (so very "primacy"), plan a defense that must dominate all comers in all directions at all times (how Obama blows it with China, I have argued), and generally be about preserving US primacy under conditions of the imagined "empire" that we run (no longer possible after all the reckless years of spending under Bush-Cheney and now Obama-Biden).
Ferguson says Obama blows Egypt like he blew Iran, but again, that presupposes all manner of primacy/empire conditions, stating in effect that countries of this stature are subject to direct US manipulation at these moments, when in truth they're not.
Where Ferguson gets it right: Obama is guilty of what I call that whole "let's keep all the balls in the air" mentality. There at least, Bush-Cheney were indeed single-minded: when they focused on the Middle East with their Big Bang, they were all in. They put China to the side and avoided poking Beijing in the eye like Obama has a tendency to do. They responded similarly to Putin on Georgia. They did not try to keep all the balls in the air. They did not try to eliminate nuclear weapons and cure cancer and create a new-energy economy all at the same time. They had a sense of realism--a bit too aggressive and way too focused on preserving primacy for my tastes, but they were realistic all right.
Bush-Cheney also had a "map," something Ferguson says Obama does not. Ferguson is right there too.
But again, go back to his books of the past like "Colossus": he wanted America to admit its empire, George Friedman-like. And America the imperial power stands by its man, Mubarak, because that is what imperial powers do.
America the globalizer, however, goes with the flow. It recognizes a map that shows what's connected via globalization and what is not. It notices that the unconnected places are where the violence is. It notices that the seam between the connected places and the unconnected places is where all the revolutions seem to happen, along with the rising frontier markets like CIVETS (Colombia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Egypt, Turkey and South Africa--think about that group for a second when Wikistrat talks about the Turkish "exit glidepath" and the Obama administration proposes Indonesia-post-Suharto as the interim path to that ultimate one). It accepts that such risers will be independent-minded, like Turkey, and not ours to boss around, but that, in their integrating, bridge-building, mini-economic-empire building, they'll be doing our work for us.
Point being: for Obama to be in touch with the times, he disavows empire and primacy, two things Ferguson has long preached for America. He sees America primarily in its historical guise as a force of integration that is both destabilizing in the short run (why I called it "The Pentagon's Map") but stabilizing in the long run--even as it creates a world of many rising great powers (hence the third book's title). But no, in the end, we're not about primacy, which is un-American when considered alongside our century-plus grand strategy of "open door" (still active and still pertinent), and we're not about empire, because we want rising great powers with whom we share the responsibility of running this world (where Zakaria is correct).
Point: we need a globalization-centric grand strategy, where America is opportunistic about when and where globalization breaks down doors, not a terror-centric one (Bush-Cheney, Philip Bobbitt's books), nor a China-centric one (see our new National Military Strategy), nor a primacy-centric one, nor an empire-centric one.
We remain a transformational, revolutionary force on this planet, but in our success and to remain true to our ideals, we are not primacists and we are not imperialists.
This piece by Ferguson is clever and largely correct, but it's tactics--not grand strategy, so the gripe about Obama lacking one does not hold water, because Ferguson offers none here and his past offerings are highly inappropriate to the tasks at hand. It's just that Obama really hasn't changed all that much from Bush-Cheney's while operating it in Zakaria's "post-American" mindset that conservatives (and I) find so unappealing in its defeatism. To me, that's a very unsatisfactory combo: strategically acting like nothing has changed from Bush-Cheney, but then tactically buying into the whole "rise of the rest" dooms us to irrelevancy. It's a queer combination, all right, signaling a lack of confidence in America that is contagious ("I know this won't work but I can't change what my government is doing!").
In the end, we can fix any perceived "blow" on Egypt, and selling this as a "foreign policy failure" is hilariously self-centered (again, reflecting the primacy/empire mindset). But to do so intelligently, America would accept help from others, like Turkey and China (I am more partial to Ferguson's now-OBE-but-historically-accurate economic analysis on "Chimerica"). But America the primacist and owner of empire won't do that, for fear of making Egypt an economic colony of the "Beijing consensus" and other silly nonsense. It will find Turkey's offers of help scary, because they will allegedly threatened our remaining imperial ally in the region--Israel. And that's too bad, because Mubarak's fall is a HUGE VICTORY for globalization and therefore--by extension--America's grand strategy, but only if you know what that grand strategy truly has been these past seven decades, instead of confusing it with "empire" and primacy.
So yeah, tough choices ahead, but Ferguson the longtime preacher of America the empire "colossus" holds no magic answers, even as he's a wickedly clever and always telegenic critic of our usually clever and always telegenic Prez.
Thanks to David Emery for sending me the piece before one of my last issues of Newsweek (alas, I am not renewing) showed up this ayem.
Reader Comments (7)
Why do you think "Chimerica" has been over taken by events? Internal consumption in China? America's medium-term economic weakness?
I found the whole article a specious exercise.
'All-roads-lead-to-Obama' is a comical reading of the ability of the US to do the Bismarck thing outside of Germany ...everytime.
And then going to the country that sat the Turkish ambassador on small chair, read Mubarak like everyone else and has an ME policy based on waiting for the US prez to change .....and comes back with nuggets like ....' ME is an Obama mess...Israelis confirm '.
Sure....
Niall is clever, he reminds us , with his General Jones tale but I think your observation of the McCain losing team bitterness explains more here .
I often think of a conversation I had with a very wise old friend of mine many years ago. We were talking about the relative merits of British and American universities. He said that British universities teach you how to talk pretty, but on substance, they were nowhere near American universities. I often think of that when I read punditry from Brits like Ferguson, Andrew Sullivan, Clive Crook, and many others giving us advice on how to run a global empire. Glad you took on Ferguson on this. For a much better take on Egypt, I suggest Olivier Roy's piece in the New Statesman. http://www.newstatesman.com/religion/2011/02/egypt-arab-tunisia-islamic
I saw Mr. Ferguson on Morning Joe yesterday and came away with similar thoughts. Although I thought he was correct in saying there was no explicit grand strategy employed I rejected the idea that it was a disaster through the insights gained from reading your blog on a daily basis. There was little response from the hosts either, so I think they were a little perplexed at the disaster comment as well.
John,
Yes and yes and a few other yeses. That transaction strategy, as I dubbed it long ago, ran to its logical (or politically feasible, from our side) conclusion.
Stuart,
I do agree that Roy is almost always the best analysis by far.
The protesters in Tahrir Square were writing "Facebook" on walls and signs, and using the KFC logo for Twitter avatars. Didn't see many hammers and sickles, nor many crescent moons. That looks like an American win to me.
'We remain a transformational, revolutionary force on this planet'
Unfortunately, it is the potential losers who understand the meaning and implications of transformations (as opposed to routine tactical changes) rather than the potential, but less experienced potential winners. So we get a distorted media and political dialogue.
Adam Smith moved from writing about ethics to pragmatic open market domestic and global economics in 1776, at the same time Americans decided they didn't want to be part of a managed colonial network. England kept playing the old game and trying to decide whether it could trust Russia or France as a global partner. In Victorian England the political and academic folks preached about turning the whole world into a parallel of virtuous England.
Rudyard Kipling tried to get the English to understand the need to listen and learn the roots of foreign cultures 1000s of years old rather than just export the English way checklists.
When America stumbled into globalization as a result of Spanish American War, England decided we would be her partner. Then Kipling wrote poetic literature for our leaders and public to understand the scope and complexity of that new mission.
History can't provide a checklist guide for today's leaders and media, but they can provide insights on the learning process.
Maybe they could start with 'Transformation is as Transformation does.' ;-)