OUR DEMONS, OUR STUPIDITY
How many setbacks does it take to change a nation? ‘X’ – provided that it really wants to change!
The conventional method for analyzing foreign policy is to concentrate
on examining the thinking of policymakers: their objectives, their
self-defined interests, their strategic perspective, their
interpretation of what other states are thinking. This approach
is grounded on two core premises: 1) that government leaders follow a
logical behavioral course, informed by empirical realities, and 2) that
emotions, feelings, fixations and prejudices impinge on this process
only marginally – if at all. Yet, there is good
reason to question both. Considerable attention, however inadequate, has
been paid the deviations from logical process and rational thinking in
the actual policymaking process of governments. The latter, though, is
largely ignored. That is a serious error.
For a close look at the record reveals that those intangibles can have
as much impact on the conduct of external relations as careful,
conscious deliberation. That is especially so in the present era.
Indeed, a persuasive argument can be made that they are
more important in several major instances.
Here is the evidence.
1. President Trump’s bellicose statements about seizing control of
Greenland, of Panama and of subjugating Canada are the ravings of
somebody who is driven by impulses rooted in a deranged psyche, and
exhibit a clinical narcissist’s total inability to empathize
with other persons/entities. Still, they are not evanescent
epiphenomena that will evaporate like morning dew; they will have
far-reaching, long consequences.
2. Trump’s verbal ejaculations about the Ukraine conflict are only
somewhat less incoherent, lacking consistency and tenuously connected to
factual realities. On the one hand, he vows to end the war quickly by
cutting a deal with a “beleaguered” Putin, coercing
Zelensky into negotiations, and acknowledging that Russia has legitimate
reason to be upset by the prospect of Ukraine membership in NATO. On
the other, he tries intimidating the Kremlin by crude threats of
meaningless, redundant economic sanctions; and he
outlines terms of a ‘settlement’ that contradict the most fundamental
interests and objectives of a Russia as stated repeatedly by Putin and
Lavrov. The resolution to be accomplished in a few months. This, of
course, is illogical – and, frankly, quite mad.
However, it is fully understandable as the typical modus operandi of a congenital bully for whom the world is infinitely malleable to his will and unfiltered wants.
Trump’s mental and emotional infirmities were not obscure. They are
self-evident to anybody who has viewed with detachment his performance
over the past 9 years. Yet, it is astonishing that so many sober
analysts have missed that distressing truth. So, we
hear discussions and interpretations (speculations) about Trump’s
purported Europe strategy, his multifaceted plan to resolve the Ukraine
conflict, prospective steps toward a possible
modus vivendi with China, even how his pressuring Netanyahu to
accept a supposed Gaza ceasefire foreshadows a reversion from the
American complicity in Israel’s atrocities and imperial ambitions. These
analysts, like their subject, were not thinking
with inductive logic from the evidence. In their own way, they were
allowing their feelings and unfounded hopes (for Trump, for American
foreign policy) to project onto Trump attributes and qualities
manifestly alien to him.
3. Trump provides the outstanding example of how ‘non-rational’
elements of personality can determine policy. That in the mind’s
substrata are lodged a lode of psychological elements that can distort
perceptions of reality and act as behavioral drivers.
Less obvious cases reinforce the general proposition. Let us consider
the actions of the United States under the last three Presidents in
regard to Russia and China. These two formidable powers have been
accorded the official status of the greatest threats
to the United States’ world position. They rose to the top of the
national security worry list as the “Global War On Terror” slipped from
the Number One slot which it had held for years. (Its relegation now
punctuated by American promotion of the leader of
a designated terrorist organization as President of Syria). Elementary
logic, derived from circumstance and history, points to the irrefutable
conclusion that it is an American strategic imperative to prevent them
from joining forces to gang up against the
U.S. The outstanding example of that principle being operationalized
was Nixon’s historic 1972 visit to Beijing which aimed at diplomatically
leveraging one against the other. What we now see is a failure in the
single-digit arithmetic of international diplomacy.
I Instead, nearly everything Washington has done, and is doing with
greater intensity, drives Russia and China into a closer and closer
partnership. How do we explain this odd departure from the norm? The
progenitors of our self-defeating moves offer only
feeble, disjointed justifications. One notion is that the U.S. could
persuade the Russians that they were in danger of being swallowed up by
China; therefore, they would be better off throwing in their lot with
the West – on Western terms, of course. This
ploy is most notable for its display of complete ignorance about
post-Yeltsin Russia. The obverse venture was urging China to rein in
Russia in Ukraine so as to minimize the chances of a major great power
conflagration which could envelop China as well. The
approach was unaccompanied by any moderation of American hostile
position on Taiwan and the campaign to undermine the Chinese economy.
This ploy was most notable for its display of complete ignorance of
present-day China. Can we explain this stunning deviance
from logic and common sense to sheer stupidity? It is true that finely
tuned strategic minds and practitioners of diplomacy have been absent
from recent administrations – there are no Talleyrands or Bismarcks in
Washington’s corridors of power. But neither
are its decision-makers that stupid!
Admittedly, in the Paul Wolfowitz frame of reference (Wolfowitz
Memorandum March 1991), there is simple logic in confronting both
challengers to American hegemony. For it allows no place for
co-existence, for balance-of-power, for the workings of a diplomatic
strategy over time. It aims to eliminate all and any threat as soon as
it appears on the horizon – to act preventively as well as preemptively.
What is unaccounted for in this perspective is the denial of factual
truths, the gross misrepresentation of challengers,
and a total failure to make tactical adjustments when circumstances so
dictate. Moreover, the manifest detestation of Russia and everything
Russian among the country’s political class makes impossible the mental
discipline required for any foreign policy project
that entails diplomacy and pragmatic accommodation.
4. We must look into that other realm of ingrained prejudicial
beliefs, deep-seated identity needs and anxieties, and habits of mind
and emotion that skew perceptions of reality – about the world system,
about other states, about oneself and how they
interact. Crude, usually superficial reference to this layer of our
collective being is made by critics who speak of American Exceptionalism
as a hindrance to level-headed approaches to the country’s external
dealings. Shallow – understandably so. For
to plunge into the depths of the national psyche is to encounter a
complex psychological tangle of dogmas, totems, comforting abbreviations
of ideas and facts. Braided together are these strands: the belief in a
United States born under a Providential star
destined to lead the world down the enlightened path of democracy and
civic virtue; a conviction in American moral superiority coupled to a
Manichean view of countries and peoples; devotion to a can-do,
pro-active philosophy of life that favors linear, discrete
actions with the attendant expectation of quick, tangible results; and
the fusing of individual self-esteem with continual confirmation of the
American enterprise’s uniqueness and superiority.
T The ultimate confirmation of these proud convictions seemed to
come with victory in the Cold War marked by the implosion of the Soviet
Union. We interpreted that as the judgment of history that, indeed,
democracy, capitalism and attendant values met the
aspirations of all peoples – for which the U.S. was the cynosure and
model. The American star glowed brighter than ever. A world designed
according to American specifications was on the horizon. That also was
the time when hard-nosed Realpolitikers like Paul
Wolfowitz drafted a strategic guide outlining what we must do to
solidify in perpetuity the United States’ global dominance. He and his
like-minded apostles of hegemony were perfectly logical in their
thinking insofar as their prescription followed from their
premises and objectives – however audaciously improbable its prospects
might be. At another level, the country’s political class overall
infused it with the emotive content noted above. The two convergent
streams led to the current prevailing consensus - one
that shows itself impervious to the intrusion of factors from a
non-compliant world. Hence, the persistence in unsustainable,
counter-productive actions directed at Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela
et al. Absent the emotional elements, a pragmatically
self-conscious foreign policy, however audacious, might have made
practical adjustments. Given the strength and pervasiveness of the
articles of faith, though, that is very unlikely.
We should bear in mind that these peculiar American tenets of belief
are fixtures of the mental landscape – if not quite immutable. That
holds for the political class and the foreign policy community as well
as the populace at large. They are not beliefs
that have been selected after deliberation of some sort; they do not
derive from adhesion to an ideological system conceived by others. They
are an integral part of our make-up. In a sense, they are organic – a
native product passed on over the generations
by a process of acculturation and modified only at the margins as
circumstances evolve. They are exceedingly hard to shed. Therein lies
what we might call “the great American dilemma.” For the
international environment no longer accommodates that foundational
mythology. It was sustainable during the 19th Century when encounters
with strong powers were few and glancing. It was sustainable when the
U.S. faced overt military challenges in World Wars I and II. It was
sustainable when the U.S. faced the military
cum ideological challenge of the Soviet Union. However, it is not
sustainable when global supremacy is threatened by inexorable changes
in the patterns of international intercourse as is occurring at present.
The steady rise in China’s attributes of internal strength and
attendant external influence is of a different order. Moreover, it is
reinforced by the partnership with a recrudescent Russia. Other nations -
e.g. India, Brazil - emerging as significant forces
in world affairs completes the picture of a multi-nodule world
unamenable to domination by any single country – or even bloc. That is
not a world where relations among states are characterized by games of
power politics. War no longer is its hallmark. Yet,
America’s long suit these days is military power. That aside, the
cardinal truth at the heart of the American dilemma, is that the
sine qua non for the U.S. to manage in this environment, for it
to retain a fair measure of influence on how its institutions and
exchanges are formed, it must free itself from its mythic self-identity.
A system marked by compromise, accommodation, a
sharing of leadership, of mixed relative strengths and relative
weaknesses does not permit the indulgent. vain belief in national
exceptionality, superiority and historic mission. That means loosening
the grip of the very set of convictions that have defined
the American experience – consciously and unconsciously.
To date, there is no evidence of any such self-awareness. Quite the
opposite. Intimations that the exalted America could be mortal have
produced instead compulsive attempts to prove otherwise through
compulsive acts of audacity and daring. Their failures
in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in the Persian Gulf, in Georgia and above all
in the inability to intimidate China and Russia have not slowed or
restrained that drive. Rather, it has led to increasingly contrived
efforts to bring the world into line with American
preconceptions through fanciful narratives. Thus, Russia is cast as the
Soviet Union, China as Imperial Japan and Iran as evil incarnate that
spawns terror and menace across the Middle East. Most tragically, the
American political class has projected themselves
onto Israel – vicariously battering bad guys into the dust without
mercy, as we couldn’t do to the Iraqis, the Afghans, the Houthis or the
Russians. The pleasure of ‘kicking ass’ as the flinty-eyed types in
Washington say. Collapse of the moral pillar that
played a crucial role in supporting the superstructure of American
mythology is ignored – the unspoken collateral damage of
self-destructive behavior. Bonus: Americans don’t shed their own blood.
What does all this foretell about the future? One, The United States
will keep throwing punches – harder and harder, more and more daring –
looking for a TKO. That is the only way it knows to hold onto its
championship belt. Two, China and Russia will parry
the blows – occasionally throwing a sharp counterpunch to keep the U.S.
off-balance. They are keen to avoid a slugfest since that carries the
danger of both fighters prostate on the canvas like Rocky Balboa and
Apollo Creed – except that neither would ever
get back on his feet. Nor do they crave the diamond encrusted belt –
success, status and security would suffice. Three, a less dire
alternative has Uncle Sam getting arm weary, punched out, his blows
progressively weaker and ineffectual. He subsides on a stool
in his corner. Throw in the towel? No. Sober up, shake your opponent’s
hand, and get ready to participate as one of the major players in
setting new rules for the competitive/cooperative game and keeping it
stable. Place your bets. Oh, envision Donald Trump
as the Angelo Dundee corner man.
5. Foreign policymakers, like us all, have mental maps of the universe in which they act. Rarely
are they fine-grained representations of actuality. That is why
responsible leaders rely on colleagues, staffs, Intelligence agencies,
and other
experts to rectify gross distortions and keep them up to date. That
holds for self-aware persons who are inclined to think logically and
deliberately. By contrast, someone who is in the grip of non-rational
elements rooted in the substrata of their minds,
is impelled to do the opposite. For them, that confected map acquires
a life of its own – endowed with an intrinsic value, demanding of
reconfirmation, and unwelcoming if any intrusion that implicitly
questions its validity. They hold tightly to distorted
cognitive maps whose accuracy is less important than their compatibility
with the array of biases and dogmas that sway their view of reality and
guide their actions in it. In short, they live and act in a world of
make-believe. That truth gives us insight
into the perverse, unbending behavior of Biden/Blinken/Sullivan; of
Starmer et al; of von der Leyen; of Schulz/Baebock; of Macron, of
Trudeau, of Rutte on the issues of Ukraine/Russia, Israel/Palestine.
A related effect is that deception and self-deception blend into a
homogenous mindset. It is insulated from encroachments by a mental Hepa
filter which keeps out anything – even the smallest particle of truth -
that could stimulate doubt or raise self-awareness
Consider the following: the inability to acknowledge the resilience of
the Russian economy despite a clear record that belies persistent
assertions as to its presumed fragilities and vulnerabilities – despite
the fact that the country’s growth rate is higher
than that of any major Western economy, Spain apart, and that its budget
is balanced. The inability to acknowledge Russia’s capacity to produce
military equipment now on a scale that exceeds that of NATO countries
combined; the inability to acknowledge the
extreme disproportion between high Ukraine casualties and Russian
casualties; the inability to acknowledge that strength of Putin’s
political standing at home or that his main critics domestically argue
for harder-line policies – despite the fact that his
approval ratings among the Russian public are higher than those of
Starmer, Macron and Schulz combined; the inability to acknowledge the
implications of the fact that China’s manufacturing capacity is greater
than that of all Western countries in aggregate;
the inability to acknowledge that Iran’s regime has a solid hold on
power that obviates American hopes of its being toppled. It is essential
to recognize that these examples are not matters of assessment or
opinion. They are based on indisputable facts.
One could postulate that public declarations and actions to the
contrary reflect willful ignorance, i.e. that some manner of conscious
decision has been made to elide or to shade unwelcome facts for
diplomatic and/or domestic political reasons. However, there
is good reason to judge that the issue goes deeper. In these instances,
it is a plausible proposition that at the substratum of emotions,
obsessions, and attachment to prejudicial images of nationalities of
persons of ideologies are psychological forces that
together warp one’s awareness of objective realities. Therefore, they
are unaccounted for in perception, in decision and in actions. The
longer that one inhabits this alternative reality, a phantasy land– over
a prolonged engagement with a salient foreign
policy issue – the more firmly entrenched become the aberrant behavior
patterns. Perhaps, we should think of this phenomenon in terms of sunk
psychological costs as we do sunk financial or political costs which
dictate illogical conduct long after it demonstratively
is errant and self-defeating. That appears to have happened in regard to
official American, and Western, attitudes about relations with Russia
and its involvement in the criminal politics of the Middle East.
6. A similar phenomenon is observable in the United States’ mounting hostility toward China.
Spiking over the past decade, it has reached the point where senior
military officials testify publicly that we can expect a war with China
before the end
of the decade, where war-fighting scenarios are the favored fare in
think tanks, service academies and the minds of armchair strategists.
This is quite extraordinary in the light of the fact that the PRC poses
no military threat to the United States whatsoever.
It has not acted aggressively toward us – or anybody else for that
matter.
[The ‘cry havoc’ crowd breathlessly points to Beijing’s militarizing of a
few Spratley islets in the South China Seas as evidence of its
aggressive intentions. In fact, not only does China have a reasonable
claim to the territory, but more important such military
value as they have is defensive. Radar installations there could provide
early warning detection missile launches against China from the South –
thereby, adding a few crucial minutes of reaction time. The
far-reaching American project, in collaboration with
Australia, to establish a powerful naval force with missile capable
submarines at its core quickens that concern). The reverse is true: it
is the United States that is arming to the teeth and promoting actively
the independence of Taiwan – an entity under
Chinese sovereignty as legally recognized in official declarations by
the government United States for the past 50 years].
The root of the American dread about China’s rise lies within the
country’s collective psyche. It is feared mainly not for explicit
tangible reasons; rather, for its existential threat to the mythology of
American exceptionalism, superiority and destiny. As
noted earlier, that is to say: the underpinning of the nation’s
collective image of its rightful place in the world which in turn
anoints our singular identity as a people and as persons. Here again,
we should differentiate between a cool-headed, rational
strategic choice as might be made by a rigid, orthodox adherent of the
Wolfowitz doctrine, on the one hand, and the impetus that drives
policies based more on animus and anxiety than on national interest
conventionally defined, on the other.
7. American peculiarities aside, the United States is not the
only country whose leaders are prone to irrational behavior driven by
psychological forces in their mental makeup. In Europe, we
observe foreign policies even further removed from
the model of logical, self-conscious processes for formulating
strategies than they are in the United States. In the West, subservience
to Washington in a classic dominant-subordinate relationship is the
main element responsible for distorting visions of their
international environment, thinking about it and actions taken in it. In
the East, it is the historically grounded fears and antagonism raised
by their Russian neighbor that generates attitudes informed more by
fantasy than by fact.
What logic leads the EU to cut boycott of critical Russian oil and
natural gas supplies – despite its having been a reliable provider of
abundant cheap energy for decades? In the most astonishing case, the
Berlin government approved the Biden administration’s
blowing up of the Nordstrom Pipeline which had been the brainchild of
Angela Merkel and Germany’s heavily energy dependent industries. The
effect has been to cripple those industries, force plant closures or
relocations elsewhere and to cast the national economy
into the doldrums. What logic leads the EU to join the American campaign
to weaken the Chinese economy despite the twin facts that 1) enhanced
cooperation with China was correctly portrayed in official documents as
vital to restoring its members’ growth and
long-term viability in a globalized economy; and 2) that China poses no
security threat to Europe whatsoever?
In concrete ways, Europe's vassalage to the United States obliges it to
follow Washington down whatever policy road the seigneur takes - however
reckless, dangerous, unethical, and counter-productive. In predictable
fashion, they have walked (or run) like lemmings
over whatever cliff the United States chooses next under its own
suicidal impulses. So it’s been in Iraq, in Syria, in Yemen, in
Afghanistan, in regard to Iran, in Ukraine, on Taiwan and on all matters
involving Israel. The string of painful failures and heavy
costs produces no change in loyalty or mindset. It cannot - for the
Europeans have assimilated totally the habit of deference, the
Americans' worldview, their skewed interpretation of outcomes, and their
shamefully fictious narratives. The Europeans
no more can throw this addiction than a life-long alcoholic can go
cold-turkey.
Eastern Europeans, too, have paid a stiff price for the misguided and
ineffectual sanctions imposed on Russia. For them, Russia is a natural
trade partner, source of raw materials and mutually beneficial
investments in both directions. Integration into a NATO
dedicated to confronting Russia means a sharp spike in their defense
budgets involving the purchase of expensive military equipment from the
United States. These actions are accompanied to near hysterical
accusations of Russian malevolence and dire warnings
of imminent threat, issuing from the likes of the vitriolic Kaja Kallas
who, as Prime Minister of Estonia and now EU High Representative for
Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice-President
of the European Commission, has broken all standards of
decorum in slanderous diatribes that paint Russia as an inherently evil
society whose state should be dismembered in order to save Western
civilization from its ravages. By so doing, she
and her ilk foreclosed any future possibility of cordial dealings with a
powerful state who is a close neighbor by the dictates of geography.
Sweden is a distinctive case. For 300 years, it had been a bystander to
Europe’s power political games – ever since Charles XII was thrashed by
Peter the Great at Poltava (Ukraine) in 1709. Over the past century,
the country has cultivated its role as a neutral
dedicated to fostering conciliation through mediation and peacekeeping.
That has now changed with Sweden’s admission to NATO. In the present
confrontation between Russia and the West, it takes a hawkish stance –
castigating Moscow as a clear and present security
threat, denouncing Russian alleged autocratic doings at home and abroad
while putting Sweden on a war footing - psychologically speaking. Stoney
faced military men gravely sketch plans for bottling up Russia in the
Baltic when the inevitable (as they see it)
hot war erupts. Politicos second them in somewhat more discreet
language, and the media cheerlead. This behavior pattern is explicable
in part to the enthusiasm of a newly converted novitiate or entrant into
an exclusive club. The initiation fee is to act
as drum major at pep rallies.
Swedish behavior can be squeezed into the rational category were it not
for the awkward fact that the entire scenario is illusory. It pivots on a
premise of Russian imperial designs that don’t exist. The eagerness to
play a part in this theater of the mind
should be understood in terms of the Swedes vague but very real unease
at the memory of having stood on sidelines when the historic struggles
of the 20th century were fought. That factor, emerging from the mind’s
substratum, deserves consideration in the causal
equation. Now, the Swedes are back on stage - just in time for the
tragic theater of the absurd.
8. Up to this point, scant reference has been made to the Middle East conflicts to
buttress the analysis presented in this essay. When we shift our
geographical focus there, we encounter a world of anti-reason. Processes
and policies that exhibit
traits of sober deliberation and logical thought are notable by their
absence. Instead, we are confronted with an unprecedented situation in
which the main protagonists are moved by a potent mix of passions,
obsessions, dehumanizing racism, bloodlust, anarchic
aggression, cultish fanaticism, and a facile normalization of mass
atrocity – generating actions that are either counter-productive
(Israel) or do severe damage to national interests (the United States
and the states of the collective West). The sources of
this pathology are to be found within the collective (and individual)
psyches of protagonists, generating powerful forces that overwhelm
normal forms of rational thinking, the restraints of the superego, or
inborn human instincts for a measure of empathy.
The very idea of ethics, of morality, of honesty have been expunged from
public discourse.
I have expounded on these phenomena at length in earlier commentaries.
They are attached for reference – along with others that focus on the
causes of contemporary America’s habitually illogical behavior. Let it
be said that what has been done and not done
in regard to Palestine will haunt us as far into the future as we can
imagine. It also obliges students and practitioners of foreign affairs
to qualify our conventional understanding of the degree to which the
situational logic of a system composed of self-willed
political entities shapes and constrains behavior. Questions: is the
widespread flight from reason and logic by our political class an
historical exception? If so, how do we explain it?
Addendum
*Critics of the thesis presented here doubtlessly will focus on what
they see as a fatal flaw: the postulate that Russia is a benign power
that pose no security threats to the West. They will make their case in
reference to Ukraine and, secondarily, Georgia.
So, it is imperative to remind ourselves of the record.
Ukraine: In 2014, the United States instigated and
orchestrated a coup in Kiev that toppled democratically elected
President Victor Yanukovych who
assiduously pursued a policy of maintaining good relations with both
the West and Russia. We installed a rabidly nationalist, vehemently
anti-Russian government That included in prominent places the neo-Nazi
Bandera militias. Their overt program of denying
the rights of Ukraine’s Russian-speaking, Russian-identifying population
led to the secession movements in the Donbass oblasts. The ensuing
conflict was calmed, if not resolved, by the Minsk agreements. Two of
the guarantors, France and Britain – backed by
Washington, stymied implementation of their provisions, as now publicly
admitted by Merkel and Hollande (as well as Ukrainian leaders). The aim
was to buy time for the strengthening of the Ukrainian military for the
expected second round. The United States
played the key role in training, equipping and planning for a formidable
force of 700,000+. By late 2021 it was deployed along the line of
demarcation in the Donbass with the intention of seizing the breakaway
oblasts by force. That put Moscow in a bind. If
the Russians took no action, the insurrection in Donetsk and Luhansk
would be crushed, Ukraine ushered into NATO and Russia humiliated. If
they did respond, Russia would be denounced as an aggressor who
threatened the entire continent. In the latter instance,
the ensuing draconian sanctions would crater the Russian economy,
thereby provoking massive opposition to Putin that could result in his
overthrow by an alliance of oligarchs and other Western-leaning
elements.
Russia’s choice to was launch a limited attack by an expeditionary
force - numbering roughly 125,000 - with the purpose of causing panic in
Kiev that would result in an internal rejection of the Zelensky regime
and/or a full restoration and implementation
of the Minsk terms. They failed on the former, and succeeded on the
second as manifest in the negotiations at Istanbul (negotiated in
March-April) that produced a document initialed by both sides that went
further than Minsk in meeting Russian demands. It
was immediately sabotaged by Washington, with London running
interference, which forced Kiev to cancel their approval under threat of
being cast adrift by the Western powers – financially, militarily,
diplomatically. This is all a matter of record. We know
what ensued.
GEORGIA: The official line is that Russia launched an
unprovoked invasion in 2008 in order to impose its will on the disputed
territory of South Ossetia. This is a lie. It was Georgia that launched
the invasion with the full backing of the
United States which had undertaken a program of training its army,
equipping it and, indeed, devised the plan of attack. Numerous American
military advisers were on the ground. The scheme was an integral part of
the American strategy to isolate and to diminish
Russia. It had been signaled by the Bush administration’s aggressive
promotion of Georgia’s entry into NATO along with Ukraine.
Michael BRENNER