Stephen Walt discusses how incompetence weakens U.S. foreign policy:
If the main institutions charged with conducting America’s foreign relations—the National Security Council; the departments of state, defense, treasury, and commerce; the intelligence services; and various congressional committees—are not very competent, all the will in the world will not convince others to take our advice and follow our lead. The Berlin airlift in 1948 was a clear signal of Western resolve, for example, but it would have backfired if the United States and its partners had been unable to pull off a complicated logistical effort successfully. Building a superfluous pier in the Mediterranean and having it fall apart about 9 days later sends a rather different message.
Walt is right that poor execution and ineptitude are damaging to America’s reputation, but the reason for the floating pier stunt is even more discrediting for the U.S. The floating pier was a half-baked gimmick that the administration came up with because they are afraid to challenge a client government over its use of starvation as a weapon. It was a pitiful effort to distract people from U.S. complicity in one of the worst man-made famines in decades.
If the pier had not broken apart, it would not have done much good because it was a piece of humanitarian theater rather than a real attempt at fighting famine. Famine had already been spreading in Gaza when Biden announced the plan months ago, and it was obviously not a serious response to such a grave crisis. It is doubtful that the administration put much thought or effort into making sure that their Potemkin pier would last because it didn’t matter to them if it did. Like the airdrop stunts that preceded it, the building of the pier was for show. It was a cynical gesture meant to quiet critics at home, as if to say, “No, really, Biden isn’t completely indifferent to mass starvation.”
Many accounts of the Iraq war focus on the bungling and ineptitude of the Bush administration that made things worse, but dwelling on the incompetence of U.S. officials sometimes creates the illusion that there might have been a “right” way to invade another country illegally and overthrow its government based on lies. There are some policies so awful and irredeemable that it doesn’t matter whether they are carried out “well” or poorly.
When we fault an administration for incompetent execution, that can sometimes let them off the hook for their atrocious ideas and assumptions that went into making the policy. What mattered most in 2003 was the insane idea that the U.S. had the right to attack another country in a “preventive” war. When some critics of the war objected to how Bush waged it rather than the fact that he launched an unprovoked, illegal war of aggression, they helped let Bush get away with a massive crime.
Every U.S. error related to the war in Gaza stems from the original decision to provide unflagging and unconditional backing for the Israeli government’s campaign. When it comes to funneling weapons nonstop to the Israeli military, no one can accuse the Biden administration of being incompetent. The U.S. has been very ably aiding and abetting war crimes in Gaza for close to eight months, and that shows no signs of stopping. One of the big problems with this policy is not that it is being executed incompetently, but that the weapons keep flowing in violation of U.S. law.
That isn’t something that can be fixed by better execution. It goes to the rotten heart of a foreign policy that gives some governments a free pass to commit whatever crimes they want while pretending that the U.S. and its clients are on the side of light. Incompetence may compound the problems created by such a destructive foreign policy, but we shouldn’t want a foreign policy like this even if it were run by the most capable people.