The New American Century Has Not Been Cancelled

By Steve Hynd

Anyone who thought the neoconservative project for a new American hegemony was finally cancelled when Obama came to power, promising to change Bush's failed course in Iraq and Afghanistan, has by now had their hopes dashed. The Obama administration has proven itself just as inclined to interventionism and picking up the White Man's Burden as Dubya ever was, albeit with a less coarse and selfish face.

Obama has proven his neoliberal credentials with his strategy for escalation in Afghanistan: a decade-or-two continuation and expansion of Bush's policy there which has no direction, no benchmarks, no clearly defined end-point, no exit ramps and no truth-telling about the costs. Those who backed him because they thought they'd get a foreign policy less hawkish than Clinton's might well suspect they've been sold a pup. On Iran, too, the course has been more Clintonesque than expected, with everyone from Obama on down continually ignoring the intel communities best efforts and lying about the non-existent Iranian nuclear weapons program while suggesting that Iran only has one, rapidly-closing window of opportunity to dismantle its non-existant nukes before diplomacy is once again replaced by broad sanctions and threats of attack.

Now we have the unsurprising news, given that it's been telegraphed for a while, that the Obama administration will ask for an exception to the Iraq SOFA agreement's demand that all American combat troops will leave Iraqi cities by July 30. Those who advocated a withdrawal agreement and timetable while Bush was in the White House - like Spencer Ackerman - did so because they felt that the Iraqis would never "stand up" while the U.S. was there to catch them. It was an argument that Obama himself used more than once, saying that the "blank check approach has failed to press Iraq’s leaders to take responsibility for their future". Yet now there's not a whisper of that argument being advanced by these partisan commentators. One wonders whether they and the White House will back assertions that General Odierno is the only true Deciderer if the Maliki government says no. Such a re-negotiation would also pave the way for moving the planned end date for the occupation as well, leading to the prospect of US troops in Iraq when Obama leaves office, whether that’s four or eight years from now.

Bernard Finel today points to a revelatory snippet from Bob Gates, which he rightly says shows that the Obama military budget and thus foreign policy are designed to "implement Bush's policies more effectively" :

Q Can you tell us a little bit more, Mr. Secretary, about the analysis that went into these decisions? Even over the weekend there was some criticism that such bold decisions before the QDR, before this top-to-bottom review, perhaps don't have the analytical framework that would be required Can you give us sort of the 1-2 about how this all was put together?

SEC. GATES: Well, first of all, I think that there is a very sound analytical basis for these decisions because they emanate directly from the National Defense Strategy, which involved a great deal of analysis on the part of both the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Staff and the Joint Chiefs. So there is a strong analytical base.

The National Defense Strategy Gates is referring to was issued in 2008. It was drafted by Bush appointees and approved by the Bush White House. It is easy to miss the forest for the tree with all the discussion of counter-insurgency and unconventional warfare. But in the big picture, the Obama Administration clearly envisages a world in which the United States indefinitely into the future embarks on foreign interventions, leading to long-term military occupations, with a goal of building nations that will embraces values that make them friends and partners of the United States. This is the essential core of neoconservatism.

...Obama's apparent diagnosis of Bush's foreign policy is not that it was wrongheaded - imperialistic and unachievable - but rather that it was implemented incompetently. Now with better public diplomacy and a retooled military, the policy of remaking the world in our own image - at the point of a gun if necessary - can proceed apace.

...we now have the opportunity to witness the spectacle of a liberal Democratic president, working hand-in-hand with a Republican holdover Secretary of Defense, to enshrine into institutions and budgets the neoconservative view that it is indeed in America's interests to plan for the long-term occupation of foreign countries in order to transform them into something resembling stable allies.

I agree. Gates' military budget is an expansion, not a cut, and will go to reorganising the U.S. military as a force capable of fighting 15 year plus "nation building" occupations i.e. counter-insurgency wars. Wars that can only be fought, at great off-budget expense of both blood and treasure, if the U.S. keeps occupying foreign lands. The New American Century has not been cancelled.

Comments

[Russ Wellen]

Andrew Bacevich agreed in the Boston Globe Friday:

Obama's revised approach to the so-called Long War, formerly known as the Global War on Terror, should hearten neoconservative and neoliberal exponents of American globalism: Now in its eighth year, this war continues with no end in sight. Those who actually expected Obama to "change the way Washington works" just might feel disappointed. Far than abrogating the Sacred Trinity, the president appears intent on investing it with new life.

[Steve Hynd]

That's a good quote from Bacevitch. Got a link for it, Russ?

Regards, Steve

[jawbone]

http://www.counterpunch.org/bacevich04272009.html

Link for Bacevish Boston Globe article.