From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776 (156 page)

Despite the precipitous fall in support for the war and his rising unpopularity, the president refused to change course. Stubbornly optimistic, he continued to insist that the United States would remain until victory was secured. He refused to hold his advisers accountable even for
egregious mistakes and awarded medals to officials like CIA director Tenet and General Franks who bore substantial responsibility for the debacle. Although under intense fire, Rumsfeld hung on until after the Democrats regained control of both houses of Congress in 2006. The new Congress was bitterly divided on the war. Most members did not endorse an outright withdrawal, but by the summer of 2007 even some Republicans urged removing some forces from Iraq. Bush responded by sending thirty thousand additional troops to contain the rising violence.

The "surge" brought noticeable but tenuous gains. The troop increase and belated shift to a counterinsurgency strategy produced by late 2007 a decline in violence. Cooperation between the United States and Sunnis in Anbar province and with Shiite militia in the south brought some stability to those regions. In parts of Baghdad, life returned to normal; some refugees began to filter back into the country. Al Qaeda's power seemed on the wane. In some cases, however, good news resulted from bad. The relative quiet in Baghdad came from many Sunnis being driven from the city and others being ghettoized behind hastily constructed concrete "blast walls." Refugees returned not only because conditions had improved in Iraq but also because they were unwelcome in neighboring countries. Crime and corruption continued to flourish. Al Qaeda retained a stronghold in the north. The most glaring deficiency was the Shiite-dominated government's inability or unwillingness to bring together the country's bitterly divided ethnic and religious groups.
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At the start of 2008—a U.S. presidential election year—observers noted the huge disconnect between discussions of the war in Iraq and the United States. Top U.S. officials in Baghdad hailed the recent progress while stressing that it was "fragile" and that much more must be done to stabilize a war-shattered nation. They emphasized the need for a continued long-term U.S. military presence, speaking in terms of years, even a decade. As the presidential campaign geared up in the United States, politicians sought to appease public impatience. Republicans hinted that victory was near; Democrats pressed for troop withdrawals without discussing the possible consequences. The violence in Iraq apparently ebbing, the war lost its top priority; public attention shifted more and more to domestic issues, especially an increasingly shaky economy.
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The war in Afghanistan also continued to falter. The Bush administration had been no more enthusiastic about nation-building there than in Iraq. In any event, by late 2002, its attention and resources had shifted to
Iraq. The United States provided no more funds in Afghanistan than had been given to earlier efforts in Bosnia or even the 1999 UN intervention in East Timor. Only forty thousand NATO and U.S. troops were deployed to maintain security and assist with reconstruction. One frustrated diplomat called Afghanistan "the most under-resourced nation-building effort in history." The central government exercised authority over little of the country. In most areas, local warlords held sway. More ominously, a revived and reinvigorated Taliban, funded partly by the lucrative opium trade, moved from safe havens in Pakistan into Afghanistan's southern provinces, exploiting popular disaffection with the government. They were not able to take large towns, but they mounted widening attacks, even in Kabul. The war in Afghanistan was by no means lost, but an opportunity to stabilize an important country seemed squandered.
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The cost of the wars for the United States was substantial. Nearly four thousand Americans had been killed in Iraq as of early 2008. Thousands more whose lives were spared by the miracles of modern medicine suffered horrible maiming wounds and severe psychological damage. The two wars strained the U.S. armed forces to the breaking point. A decline in enlistments, even with lowered standards and higher incentives, threatened the volunteer army concept, the mainstay of post-Vietnam national security policy. Popular disillusionment appeared likely to produce an Iraq Syndrome in the form of resistance to future military intervention abroad.
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The Bush administration's attitudes and policies damaged the nation's image across much of the world and stirred virulent anti-Americanism. The economic costs were staggering, for both wars an estimated $800 billion, roughly 10 percent of all government expenditures. The addition of long-term medical care for veterans was predicted to drive the long-term cost as high as $3 trillion.
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The impact of the war on Iraq and the Middle East was profound. Estimates of Iraqi war dead ranged from fifty thousand to more than two hundred thousand through 2008. The influx of Iraqi refugees destabilized neighboring countries such as Jordan and Syria. The U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq provoked fury in the Muslim world, undermining Washington's broader efforts against international terrorism. The one winner of the war was Iran, which no longer faced a strong Sunni nation to the south and had close ties with some Iraqi Shiites.
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The scorecard of the so-called Global War on Terror seemed also on the negative side. To be sure, the United States had not been struck since 9/11. Anti-terrorist forces across the world foiled numerous plots, notably in England and Scotland. But the war was far from won, and the United States was little safer than before 2001. Using the respite provided by the war in Iraq, al Qaeda revived and reconstituted itself and remained intent on striking the United States again. "We thank God for appeasing us with the dilemmas of Iraq and Afghanistan," bin Laden's deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri proclaimed in 2003.
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Perhaps more important, the terrorist "movement" had transformed itself. The war in Iraq boosted recruitment among Muslims across the world. The Internet increasingly served as the major "training camp." Instead of al Qaeda, the United States and its allies faced a more diffuse and elusive al Qaedism, an international conglomeration of thousands of separate cells operating more or less on their own. "We have taken a ball of quicksilver and hit it with a hammer," one expert observed. Nine-eleven may not be replicated, but smaller attacks mounted by more amateurish terrorists seemed possible if not likely. A summer 2007 National Intelligence Estimate warned of a "heightened threat environment."
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As if Bush were chastened by these events, the tenor if not the essential thrust of his foreign policy changed in his second term. Powell resigned and was replaced by Rice. Her deputy Stephen Hadley took over as national security adviser; after Rumsfeld's departure, Robert Gates, her former NSC boss, became secretary of defense. Given the new foreign policy lineup and her especially close relationship with Bush, Rice emerged as a major player.
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Amidst the wreckage of Iraq and Afghanistan, Bush's soaring second inaugural commitment to spread democracy and end tyranny in the world never got off the ground. On the contrary, elections in Palestine and Lebanon produced victories for Hamas and Hezbollah, militant movements tied closely to Iran. With "Madame Rice," as the president called her, in the lead, the United States set out to repair the damage to relations with the European allies done in the first term. Over loud protests from neo-cons like Bolton, the administration reopened negotiations with North Korea and made concessions that permitted a fragile agreement to halt its nuclear program.

The major second-term initiative was to infuse new life into the Arab-Israeli peace process. During his first years, Bush studiously refrained from involvement in this issue. When he spoke out, he usually sided with Israel. His late switch undoubtedly reflected his and Rice's hopes to leave a legacy for world peace and their willingness—both were avid football fans—to try the big play. It also resulted from changes in the region brought about partly by the invasion of Iraq. The rise of Iran as a major regional power with nuclear potential and its ties with Hamas and Hezbollah frightened Saudi Arabia and other predominantly Sunni nations, spurring what has been called an "alliance of fear."
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Bush and Rice thus stepped onto perilous ground. The secretary of state visited the region eight times during 2007. She brought Israeli and Palestinian leaders, along with Saudi and Syrian representatives, to a conference in Annapolis, Maryland, in November. While maintaining a certain detachment, Bush made clear his commitment to a Palestinian state and his hopes for an agreement before he left office. The two sides agreed to work toward a settlement. But many thorny issues had to be resolved, especially the status of Jerusalem and the right of return of Palestinian refugees. The post-Annapolis talks deadlocked. The political weakness of the two major figures, Ohlmert and Abbas, along with Bush's reluctance to engage himself, left experts skeptical whether the "fifty-year headache" could be cured. Indeed, one commentator saw the conference less as producing peace than as "girding the region for conflict."
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A final assessment of the Bush legacy in foreign affairs lay in the lap of the future. Yet even if Iraq should emerge from its present chaos unified and stable, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that it was the wrong war in the wrong place fought in the wrong way. It diverted attention and resources from the war in Afghanistan, what should have been the preeminent concern. Saddam Hussein was a cruel tyrant, to be sure, but his removal brought more misery to the Iraqi people, destabilized a critical region, and created a new training ground for terrorists. The Bush administration's dismissive attitude toward allies in the run-up to war, its scandalous incompetence in fighting the insurgency, and its abandonment of the Geneva Conventions, widespread use of torture, and detainment of suspects without recourse to the law compromised its claims to world leadership. The United States of 2008 bore little resemblance to the global behemoth of the turn of the century. It is one of the supreme ironies of recent history that leaders bent on perpetuating
U.S. primacy squandered it through reckless use of the nation's power. Talk of unipolarity ended; pundits once more spoke of a nation in decline.

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HE INTERNATIONAL SYSTEM WAS EXPERIENCING MAJOR CHANGES
as the first decade of the twenty-first century neared an end, even, according to Fareed Zakaria, undergoing a "seismic shift in power and attitudes."
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The European Union (EU) and China had joined the United States as economic great powers, competing for resources, markets, and influence across the world. The European market was now the world's largest. Europe's technology challenged that of the United States. The EU provided more foreign assistance to other countries than the United States and drew many countries into its commercial orbit. China appeared to be achieving in East Asia the sort of economic influence Japan sought in the 1930s. Its reach extended to Africa and Central Asia. Rising "Second World" nations such as Russia, India, Turkey, the Middle Eastern oil states, and Brazil might form the principal battleground of a new world order. Even beyond the Second World, economic growth was stunning in its scope and magnitude. Pundits spoke of the "end of the era of the white man," the "rise of the rest."
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Commentators also agreed that America's unipolar moment had ended. Indeed, Samantha Power observed, the erosion of U.S. strength was the "core fact of recent years."
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Despite the costs of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the United States in terms of its military spending and vast nuclear arsenal remained easily the world's strongest nation. In the "post-American world," however, military power seemed less important than economic clout, and the global economic position of the United States had changed significantly since the turn of the century. Along with the tax cuts enacted early in Bush's presidency, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq produced soaring deficits. The national debt grew by more than $3 billion. Once the world's greatest creditor, the United States became its greatest debtor, borrowing more than $800 billion per year from China, Japan, South Korea, and other nations. One of the most significant indicators of recent economic trends was the way in which other nations buoyed up the U.S. economy by pouring money into its corporations and financial institutions.

The United States' decline was perhaps most evident in the area where the nation was once most dominant, its soft power, the sway of its ideals. This change resulted from an inevitable worldwide reaction against U.S. hegemony. It was also the product of competing sources of information. The United States no longer dominated world airwaves as it once did. Global viewers and listeners had many choices. The Arab television network al Jazeera, for example, reached 100 million households worldwide. But the decline also reflected recent U.S. actions. The Bush administration's policies provoked anti-Americanism across the world. Its mishandling of the conflict in Iraq as well as of Hurricane Katrina on its own Gulf Coast severely undermined its credibility. Perhaps most important in weakening U.S. claims to world leadership has been the huge gap between the principles its leaders proclaimed and the actions they took, especially in the much publicized mistreatment of captives. "Today, six years after the terrorist attacks produced a moment of global kinship, America is feared, loathed, and misunderstood across the world," journalist James Traub observed in late 2007.
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America's decline may be temporary, as in the 1970s. It could certainly be slowed if not arrested by intelligent policies. But it may represent a longer-term trend.

Experts disagreed on whether the emerging world order would be peaceful or menacing and on how the United States should respond to it. Some insisted that terrorism remained the most urgent threat and that the United States, working with other nations, must vigorously combat it, even to the point of intervening in states that harbored terrorists.
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Others warned that economic growth might spur a rising nationalism, especially among autocratic nations like China and Russia. The United States must therefore retain superior military power and must be prepared to use it to contain expansionist tendencies on the part of autocratic nations and to defend and extend democracy.
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Still others played down the threats posed by terrorism and autocracy and argued that the new international system would be more benign, if also more complex and much messier. The United States must adapt by relearning the art of diplomacy and by reverting to the multilateralism that served it so well in the Cold War era. It must work closely with other nations to address urgent international problems. It must recommit itself to free trade and
open immigration. It must learn to function in a world where it can no longer call the shots. "For America to continue to lead the world, we will have to join it," Zakaria concluded.
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