History for McCain

Matt Bai asks John McCain which countries we should invade:

as we talked, I tried to draw out of him some template for knowing when military intervention made sense — an answer, essentially, to the question that has plagued policy makers confronting international crises for the last 20 years. McCain has said that the invasion of Iraq was justified, even absent the weapons of mass destruction he believed were there, because of Hussein’s affront to basic human values. Why then, I asked McCain, shouldn’t we go into Zimbabwe, where, according to that morning’s paper, allies of the despotic president, Robert Mugabe, were rounding up his political opponents and preparing to subvert the results of the country’s recent national election? How about sending soldiers into Myanmar, formerly Burma, where Aung San Suu Kyi remained under house arrest by a military junta?

“I think in the case of Zimbabwe, it’s because of our history in Africa,” McCain said thoughtfully. “Not so much the United States but the Europeans, the colonialist history in Africa. The government of South Africa has obviously not been effective, to say the least, in trying to affect the situation in Zimbabwe, and one reason is that they don’t want to be tarred with the brush of modern colonialism. So that’s a problem I think we will continue to have on the continent of Africa. If you send in Western military forces, then you risk the backlash from the people, from the legacy that was left in Africa because of the era of colonialism.”

Is it possible that John McCain is really not aware that the whole "legacy of colonialism" issue is also kind of a sore spot in the Middle East? Here for the first time I actually have a ray of hope about a McCain administration's foreign policy. I'd been thinking that he was motivated by grotesque moral and strategic errors, but maybe he's just kind of dim-witted and lacking in basic factual information. Maybe if somebody tells him that the whole Arab world (and Iran) was carved up by the British and French empires in the wake of World War I, a light bulb will go off in his head and he'll change his whole approach!

Actually, though, I think McCain's not alone here. Very few Americans (even American elites) seem to recognize that most of the "pro-American" regimes in the region -- all the monarchies, basically -- just are colonial regimes set up by the British imperial authorities. Eventually, the United States took over from Britain as the foreign underwriter of those regimes. But to understand U.S. policy in the region and how the U.S. is viewed, you need to understand that Jordan and the G.C.C. aren't just autocracies, they're autocratic creations of the British Empire and CENTCOM is seen as the successor to the Colonial Office. Meanwhile, the "anti-American" or "radical" regimes in Syria, Iran, and (formerly) Iraq all have their origins in rebellions against colonial regimes. The Egyptian regime shared those anti-imperialist origins, but eventually switched sides and joined Team America.

Comments

It's very simple and has nothing to do with the legacy of colonialism.
Does Zimbawe/NoKorea/Burma have anything we need and don't want to pay the going rate for (like oil)?
If they just have a bunch of trees, political prisoners, exploited populace - they're safe from invasion.

Posted by CParis | May 15, 2008 3:03 PM

[M]ost of the "pro-American" regimes in the region -- all the monarchies, basically -- just are colonial regimes set up by the British imperial authorities. Eventually, the United States took over from Britain as the foreign underwriter of those regimes. But to understand U.S. policy in the region and how the U.S. is viewed, you need to understand that Jordan and the G.C.C. aren't just autocracies, they're autocratic creations of the British Empire and CENTCOM is seen as the successor to the Colonial Office. Meanwhile, the "anti-American" or "radical" regimes in Syria, Iran, and (formerly) Iraq all have their origins in rebellions against colonial regimes. The Egyptian regime shared those anti-imperialist origins, but eventually switched sides and joined Team America.

Word. Excellent post.

I will say - because it is necessary in the blogosphere to argue - that this is why I find much of David Rieff's critique of HITS compelling - it was precisely the liberal internationalists who created the CENTCOM regime to prop up these colonial governments. What you are arguing for sometimes sounds like an extension of LI, and sometimes sounds like a repudiation of it.

Posted by DivGuy | May 15, 2008 3:04 PM

Now link that thought -- that CENTCOM is the inheritor of the British Colonial Office -- with the idea put forward by a certain young foreign policy intellectual (let's all him TFSB!) that international organisations can provide legitimacy for US military intervention and other actions in the Middle East. It would be like saying the Indian princely states could have authorised the British Raj: all that would happen is that the princes -- in both cases -- would delegitimise themselves rather than legitimise the imperial presence.

I don't say that IOs can arrange a certain sort of legitimacy in some circumstances, but I can't possibly see how this can happen in the circumstances of the US in the Middle East which you accurately describe above.

Posted by otto | May 15, 2008 3:08 PM

Furthermore, isn't Iraq essentially a British colonial creation that never existed prior to the Brits joining 3 Ottoman regions into one state? I guess that part of colonial history bears no relevance and the risk of having western forces on Muslim land has zero risk of backlash. Are these people that stupid or do they just assume everone else is?

Posted by Roman | May 15, 2008 3:13 PM

Furthermore, isn't Iraq essentially a British colonial creation that never existed prior to the Brits joining 3 Ottoman regions into one state? I guess that part of colonial history bears no relevance and the risk of having western forces on Muslim land has zero risk of backlash. Are these people that stupid or do they just assume everone else is?

Posted by Roman | May 15, 2008 3:15 PM

Hell, Matthew, McCain's just on the opposite side of the coin from you. Just as your post today about dictator/thieves selling natural resources failed to state the obvious, which is that all of us who willfully benefit from those natural resources being sold by the thieves are accessories to the crime of theft, with all that it entails, McCain refuses to state the obvious dictinction between intervention in the Persian Gulf and intervention in southern Africa, which is that any U.S. President who wishes to have his approval rating stay above 20% damned well better insure that the extraction of oil from the Persian Gulf is never, never, interrupted, even for a few months, or perhaps even a few weeks. An American President nearly always has the option of just ignoring Zimbabwe completely, come what may. No American President has such an option regarding the Persian Gulf, even if they don't choose military intervention.

Posted by Will Allen | May 15, 2008 3:25 PM

Here's a little more context from the Matt Bai story:

Most American politicians, of course, would immediately dismiss the idea of sending the military into Zimbabwe or Myanmar as tangential to American interests and therefore impossible to justify. McCain didn’t make this argument. He seemed to start from a default position that moral reasons alone could justify the use of American force, and from there he considered the reasons it might not be feasible to do so. In other words, to paraphrase Robert Kennedy, while most politicians looked at injustice in a foreign land and asked, “Why intervene?” McCain seemed to look at that same injustice and ask himself, “Why not?”

“I think we’ve learned some lessons,” McCain told me. “One is that the American people have to be willing to support it. But two, we need to work more in an international way to try to beneficially affect the situation. And you have to convince America and the world that every single avenue has been exhausted before we go in militarily. And we better think not a day later or a week later, but a year and 5 years and 10 years later. Because the attention span, unfortunately, of the American people, although pretty remarkable in some ways, is not inexhaustible.”

What was startling about this conversation was that, while McCain was talking about the dangers of intervening in a Zimbabwe or a Burma, he might just as well have been talking about the invasion of Iraq. Didn’t that country, too, have a colonial history that had been carelessly considered, to say the least? Didn’t the war’s proponents fail to plan more than a few weeks out or to ask the hard questions about how their soldiers might be greeted in the streets?

“Yes, I agree with you,” McCain said, nodding again, when I put this question to him directly. “It was one of the penalties that we paid. But remember, the major reason to go into Iraq were the weapons of mass destruction. That was the conventional wisdom at the time, not only held by the United States but certainly many other nations.”

Posted by Psittakos | May 15, 2008 3:26 PM

When Matt is busy upbraiding McCain for his ignorance of history he ought to be more careful. The most important monarchy aligned with the U.S. is Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia WAS NOT A BRITISH CREATION. It is the product of the expansion of the Saud monarchy based in the Nejd into the Hijaz, territory formerly ruled by the Hashemites as Ottoman vassals. The British had little to do with this and Ibn Saud was not a client of theirs. The close relationship between the U.S. and Saudis which dates back to the time of FDR is in part due to the fact that the Saudis established their state independent of the British,were highly suspicious of them and preferred a more distant patron.

Posted by VitoMarzullo | May 15, 2008 3:26 PM

When Matt is busy upbraiding McCain for his ignorance of history he ought to be more careful. The most important monarchy aligned with the U.S. is Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia WAS NOT A BRITISH CREATION. It is the product of the expansion of the Saud monarchy based in the Nejd into the Hijaz, territory formerly ruled by the Hashemites as Ottoman vassals. The British had little to do with this and Ibn Saud was not a client of theirs. The close relationship between the U.S. and Saudis which dates back to the time of FDR is in part due to the fact that the Saudis established their state independent of the British,were highly suspicious of them and preferred a more distant patron.

Posted by VitoMarzullo | May 15, 2008 3:32 PM

Another correction to Matt's correction. Iran was not part of the British empire. It was occupied, jointly, by the U.S. and USSR during World War II. But they both agreed to leave shortly after. The extent of "colonial occupation" of Iran was the neo-imperialist efforts of the CIA that led to the coup that installed the Shah.

Posted by Cap and Gown | May 15, 2008 3:33 PM

When Matt is busy upbraiding McCain for his ignorance of history he ought to be more careful. The most important monarchy aligned with the U.S. is Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia WAS NOT A BRITISH CREATION. It is the product of the expansion of the Saud monarchy based in the Nejd into the Hijaz, territory formerly ruled by the Hashemites as Ottoman vassals. The British had little to do with this and Ibn Saud was not a client of theirs. The close relationship between the U.S. and Saudis which dates back to the time of FDR is in part due to the fact that the Saudis established their state independent of the British,were highly suspicious of them and preferred a more distant patron.

Posted by VitoMarzullo | May 15, 2008 3:35 PM

Well, everything in the gulf was in some sense a British creation, since any formal authority contrary to British interests would have been quickly extinguished. And I think the British had something to do with Ibn Saud doing well out of the collapse of the Ottomans (as well as, ah, causing the collapse of the Ottomans). But its true that some kingdoms were less client-ish than others.

Wiki:
In 1902 at the age of only 22, Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud re-captured Riyadh, the Al-Saud dynasty's ancestral capital, from the rival Al Rashid family. Continuing his conquests, Abdul Aziz subdued Al-Hasa, Al-Qatif, the rest of Nejd, and Hejaz between 1913 and 1926. On 8 January 1926 Abdul Aziz bin Saud became the King of Hejaz. On 29 January 1927 he took the title King of Nejd (his previous Nejdi title was Sultan). By the Treaty of Jeddah, signed on 20 May 1927, the United Kingdom recognized the independence of Abdul Aziz's realm, then known as the Kingdom of Nejd and Hejaz. In 1932, the principal regions of Al-Hasa, Qatif, Nejd and Hejaz were unified to form the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Posted by otto | May 15, 2008 3:36 PM

"Is it possible that John McCain is really not aware that the whole "legacy of colonialism" issue is also kind of a sore spot in the Middle East?"

Arabs are sore about lots of slights, real and imagined, but they protest a little too much when they whine about western colonialism. If you don't understand the difference between the role European countries played in the Middle East after WWI and the role they played for hundreds of years in Africa, you are being obtuse.

Parts of Africa were conquered by Europeans (and other parts by Arabs), Africans were sold into slavery, etc. This went on for hundreds of years in some cases.

French and British control of parts of the Middle East, occurred under League of Nations mandates in the wake of the defeat of the Ottoman Empire. France and Britain gave Syria and Iraq, respectively, their first chances at democracy (a republican presidency, in the French fashion, for Syria, and a constitutional monarchy for Iraq).

These were Class A League of Nations Mandates, not European colonies. They were all given independence within thirty years.

Posted by Fred | May 15, 2008 3:39 PM

Very few Americans (even American elites) seem to recognize that most of the "pro-American" regimes in the region -- all the monarchies, basically -- just are colonial regimes set up by the British imperial authorities.

Which reminds me of a conversation I had last night, where I pointed out that while the British, French, Germans and even the Belgians were carving up Africa in the second half of the 1800s, the Americans were doing their own imperialist thing out west, which included places like... Arizona.

Thing is, it's never quite seen that way, in part because of territorial contiguity, but also because it's tacitly assumed that the current map of the USA was there from the start, and the bits just got filled in over time like a giant jigsaw.

(The Caribbean and Pacific expansion of the late 1800s are easier to see in the context of late imperialism, but they're an extension of the Push To The West...)

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | May 15, 2008 3:46 PM

And as VitoMarzullo points out above, Saudi Arabia was never a Mandate or otherwise under the control of European powers. By the time oil was discovered there, it was already an independent country.

Posted by Fred | May 15, 2008 3:48 PM

The really notable thing about this is that McCain's foreign policy seems really unformed and incoherent, which is startling for someone who is (A) a long-time U.S. Senator; (B) running for President as someone experienced in national security issues; and (C) this far into his Presidential campaign. Shouldn't he have this stuff figured out by now?

Posted by Todd | May 15, 2008 3:49 PM

Most Self-unaware Statement Nominee:

So that’s a problem I think we will continue to have on the continent of Africa. If you send in Western military forces, then you risk the backlash from the people, from the legacy that was left in Africa because of the era of colonialism.

I nearly fell out of my chair reading that.

Posted by Brent | May 15, 2008 3:54 PM

Recall that in 1994 Bill Clinton was closely monitoring the Congressional Black Caucus's attitude toward the Rwanda genocide to see if he should intervene. But the Black Caucus's foreign policy priorities were to have the US military invade Haiti to replace the mulatto regime with the black Father Aristide, and to celebrate the ANC takeover in South Africa. They had no interest in focusing American attention on blacks killing blacks in Rwanda.

The dynamics involving Zimbabwe are similar, but even more politically embarrassing because Zimbabwe was doing fine until Mugabe threw the white farmers out beginning about a decade ago.

Posted by Steve Sailer | May 15, 2008 4:03 PM

Pseudomonas,

"I pointed out that while the British, French, Germans and even the Belgians were carving up Africa in the second half of the 1800s, the Americans were doing their own imperialist thing out west, which included places like... Arizona."

The British, the French, and the Germans were carving up parts of Africa mainly from their primitive native populations. That was colonialism. The U.S. took Arizona from a European-created country called Mexico, which had inherited it from a European power called Spain. The westward expansion of the U.S. was less a case of imperialism (it actually shrunk the empires of Mexico, Britain, Spain, and France in the process) than a consolidation of territory by the dominant power on the continent. All the territories in what is now the Continental U.S. were of course eventually admitted as states, equal in rights to the original 13.

Posted by Fred | May 15, 2008 4:05 PM

Parts of Africa were conquered by Europeans (and other parts by Arabs), Africans were sold into slavery, etc. This went on for hundreds of years in some cases.

That would work if the Slave Trade that went on for centuries was in any way related to colonisation that started in the late 19th century.
Africa was not "conquered" during the Slave Trade. Unless having forts on the coast is conquest.

Posted by nu | May 15, 2008 4:08 PM

These were Class A League of Nations Mandates, not European colonies. They were all given independence within thirty years.

That's only half the story, though. The other half is the drawing of borders to determine those mandates, with governments reflecting the specific preferences of the mandate-holders. (We're still dealing with the consequences of the breakup of the Ottoman Empire.)

In addition, it's worth considering the role of Aden and particularly Suez in marking an end to British and French imperial outreach, the latter bringing to a close an imperial venture that predated the Great War by forty years.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | May 15, 2008 4:20 PM

"French and British control of parts of the Middle East, occurred under League of Nations mandates in the wake of the defeat of the Ottoman Empire. France and Britain gave Syria and Iraq, respectively, their first chances at democracy (a republican presidency, in the French fashion, for Syria, and a constitutional monarchy for Iraq).

These were Class A League of Nations Mandates, not European colonies. They were all given independence within thirty years."

Fred,

While it is true that the British and the French didn't colonize the Middle East, unlike what they had done in Africa, India, and Indochina, they did impose themselves as rulers over the territorities of the former Ottomon Empire. Officially, the reason for this Middle Eastern occupation was to establish protectorates necessary for the people of the Middle East to establish institutions of self-government, and not the base imperialist motives behind colonization in Africa and India.

After all, the Arabs,Kurds, etc. had been under the control of the Turks for centuries, and had no recent experience in self-government. It made sense then for the British and the French to temporarily occupy the lands the Turks had relinquished after losing WW1, so long as the occupation was aimed at establishing independence for the various peoples living there.

Nevertheless, this rule bred resentment toward the West among the people of the Middle East, a resentment that lasts until this day. It didn't help that it took nearly 30 years for this rule to end. This length of time convinced many Arabs, who had allied themselves with the British against the Turks during WW1, that the British had self-interested motives for occupying the Middle East (such as control over oil).

Too bad your average British or French colonial officer lacked the understanding of the people of the Middle East that Lawrence of Arabia had.

Posted by eltoro | May 15, 2008 4:24 PM

England and France used economic imperialism in the middle east long before the League of Nations existed. They would get the autocratic rulers to bankrupt themselves, and forfeit the profitable resources of their nations. Egypt, for instance, lost the Suez canal in the 19th century to cover the ruler's debts.

Posted by Njorl | May 15, 2008 4:32 PM

Roman,

They believe we (the American people as a whole) are that stupid ... and sadly they may be right.

Posted by Mike | May 15, 2008 4:32 PM

St. McCain sayeth: "So that’s a problem I think we will continue to have on the continent of Africa. If you send in Western military forces, then you risk the backlash from the people, from the legacy that was left in Africa because of the era of colonialism."

Shorter version: they don't have oil.

Posted by freddiemac | May 15, 2008 4:43 PM

If you look around the Arab-speaking world, you see a variety of regimes with a variety of histories. For example, Algeria has been independent for 46 years and staunchly anti-neocolonialist ever since. Yemen was never colonized. Saudi Arabia's government is indigenous.

But the common denominator is you wouldn't want to live under any of their dozens of different governments if you didn't have to. Arabs know this and they know that the rest of the world knows this ... and it drives them crazy.

So, they constantly devise theories of Why It's Not Our Fault. They love looking for somebody else to blame: Israel, America, the neocolonialists, the infidels, capitalism, the Elders of Zion, the Orientalists, etc etc

On the other hand, just because Arab thinking is perpetually childishly peeved doesn't mean we can ignore it or assume it away. That's just how they are. They've been that way for my whole lifetime, and they probably aren't going to change in the rest of my lifetime.

So, the foreign policy implications are obvious: Don't invade their countries. If you do invade them, go home. Deal with them in an arms-length manner. Don't let large numbers of people from countries where lots of people desire vengeance upon the U.S. into the U.S.

Posted by Steve Sailer | May 15, 2008 4:48 PM

"The westward expansion of the U.S. was less a case of imperialism (it actually shrunk the empires of Mexico, Britain, Spain, and France in the process) than a consolidation of territory by the dominant power on the continent. All the territories in what is now the Continental U.S. were of course eventually admitted as states, equal in rights to the original 13."

Fred,

This consolidation of territory was achieved by military force. When one Power takes territory away from another power, and puts that territory permanently under its control, that's an act of imperialism. When the British took control over South Africa from the Dutch, that was an act of imperialism. When the Soviets took over Poland from the Nazis, that too was an act of imperialism. When ancient Israel switched hands between the Babylonians, the Greeks, and then the Romans, that also was imperialism at work. The US taking over New Mexico and California fits into this mold.

The difference is that New Mexico and California were then settled in large numbers by Americans, who replaced the Chicanos as the dominant socioeconomic group, displaced the Native Americans from their lands, and became the overwhelming majority of the population. That's why these territories became states.

If the British had settled their African colonies in such large numbers that they outnumbered Africans, displaced the tribes from their lands, became the dominant socioeconomic group, and made those African territories part of the country of Great Britain (including representation in Parliment), we would still label their actions as imperialistic. Such behavior is no less imperialistic just because it is done by Americans.

Posted by eltoro | May 15, 2008 5:04 PM

What you can see from Yosemite Sam McCain's comments is that, as a white American, he's very sensitive to black-white racial issues. He wouldn't overthrow Mugabe, even though it would be easy to do, because a white President overthrowing a black dictator would look bad: it would be an assertion of white superiority. So, even though he loves wars, he's not looking for a war in black Africa. It would be too politically incorrect.

But that raises the important question of whether a black American President would feel so constrained about getting us involved in military adventures in black Africa. For example, some of Obama's foreign policy advisers, like Susan Rice, are hot to get us involved in Darfur. I think it's likely that much of the world's publicized troubles will increasingly tend to be found in Africa, especially along the broad, vague border between Muslim and Christian Africa.

I have some hopes that Obama, with his knowledge of how corrupt and dysfunctional Kenya is, would be more skeptical than his advisers about plans to Fix Africa with U.S. military power. But has anybody ever asked him about it?

Posted by Steve Sailer | May 15, 2008 5:04 PM

From McCain's perspective, Arabs are basically white people. Practically every successful politician in America knows at least one Tony Rezko-type -- an Arab-American wheeler-dealer who is willing to whip out his checkbook and help out a friendly politician who might someday help him get a zoning variance or an earmark.

So, all the racial taboos don't apply to Arabs. They're just white people. But some of them are misled by anti-Semitism or Islamofascism or anti-Americanism, just like the Germans were misled by Nazism, So, it's okay to kill them.

But killing Mugabe's goons? They're black. And they beat up white farmers. Oh, man, that's a whole different kettle of fish -- lots of domestic political implications that nobody wants to touch. Few white American politicians are excited about getting involved on the side of whites being victimized by blacks. There's no political profit in that!

Posted by Steve Sailer | May 15, 2008 5:18 PM

They love looking for somebody else to blame: Israel, America, the neocolonialists, the infidels, capitalism, the Elders of Zion, the Orientalists, etc etc

You could almost be writing about Pat Buchanan, Taki, Raimondo, etc...

Pretty spooky Steve.

Posted by SoCalJustice | May 15, 2008 5:26 PM

To a white American politician like McCain, Zimbabwe is the Jena Six brouhaha writ large. As you may (or probably don't) recall, the six star football players on the Jena H.S. team had been using their privileged position as local sports heroes to run amok for years, beating up people. But their coaches and fans kept getting them out of trouble so they could stay on the football team.

Finally, the Six went too far when they kept stomping a single youth after he was already unconscious on the ground. So, just like in Zimbabwe, you have a gang of black thugs outnumbering and beating up a white person.

What was the upshot?Why Rev. Jesse and Rev. Al and all the media came to town and denounced the white people for their horrible racism! It's quite hilarious, but you can see why even a war-fanatic like John McCain wouldn't want to get involved in such a directly analogous situation in Zimbabwe.

Posted by Steve Sailer | May 15, 2008 5:27 PM

But the Black Caucus's foreign policy priorities were to have the US military invade Haiti to replace the mulatto regime with the black Father Aristide

Conveniently ignoring that the episode was driven by the fact that 1)Aristede was the legitimately elected President of Haiti who had been overthrown in a military coup 2) that it was driven in the media by the arrival of thousands of "boat people" escaping from Haiti starting during the end of the first Bush Administration. Standing by a democratically elected ally and defending our national borders are very much in the self-interests of the United States, besides the crass political/racial pandering that your selective telling of the events suggests. So much for credibility.

Posted by Ethel-to-Tilly | May 15, 2008 5:29 PM

And everybody in Haiti lived happily ever after ...

Look, I didn't offer an opinion on the 1994 invasion of Haiti, I just pointed out how the domestic racial politics affected Clinton's decision not to intervene in Rwanda. The Congressional Black Caucus's priority, which Clinton monitored closely, was to intervene in Haiti rather than Rwanda -- they wanted to overthrow the mulatto regime in Haiti in favor of a black politician rather than call attention by sending American troops to black on black genocide in Rwanda.

Posted by Steve Sailer | May 15, 2008 5:49 PM

"But the Black Caucus's foreign policy priorities were to have the US military invade Haiti to replace the mulatto regime with the black Father Aristide, and to celebrate the ANC takeover in South Africa. They had no interest in focusing American attention on blacks killing blacks in Rwanda."

Steve,

I don't recall the Black Caucus opposing Bush I's intervention in Somalia, where blacks were also killing blacks. I also don't recall the Black Caucus opposing Clinton's intervention in Yugoslavia, where Slavic whites were killing other Slavic whites (many members of the Black Caucus come from cities like Chicago where relations between white ethnics of Slavic descent and African-Americans are especially tense) So I don't think racial politics play the role you think they did in the Rwanda situation.

Posted by eltoro | May 15, 2008 6:10 PM

Sailer it sounds an awful lot as if you're making an argument that the Black Caucus was the only element driving Clinton's foreign policy - as if there were no other considerations or interested or competing parties. And the way you phrase it gives it away - it wasn't a question of the US wanting "to overthrow the mulatto regime in Haiti in favor of a black policitian" - the guy WAS a democratically elected President (and US ally) who was overthrown in a coup - you can't bring yourself to acknowledge that can you because evidently you want to portray it in simple racial political pandering terms. Or is that the talking points talking?

Posted by Ethel-to-Tilly | May 15, 2008 6:12 PM

"But has anybody ever asked him about it?"

Steve Sailer - good point, I will admit.

Posted by freddiemac | May 15, 2008 6:36 PM

Quick semi-correction to Cap and Gown's correction - Persia/Iran was occupied by the UK and the USSR in 1941 - not the US - in order to secure the southern route to the USSR for the duration of the war. The occupation was off the back of an invasion, but Iran was indeed not formally incorporated into the Empire.

Incidentally, this post of Matt's does remind you just how big and ubiquitous the old British Empire[+Mandates] was (e.g. Zimbabwe, Iraq, Burma just to quote topical examples) . Makes the Americans like a bunch of beginners (excluding the very thorough work in continental North America mentioned above)

Posted by John | May 15, 2008 6:40 PM

"What you are arguing for sometimes sounds like an extension of LI, and sometimes sounds like a repudiation of it."

This is why Matt won't talk about Iran - he'd look stupid because his whole philosophy of "liberal internationalist" boils down to "liberal interventionist" when you add in Iraq and Iran - both of which he believed were legitimate interventions based on his own ignorance of the situations.

And he STILL believes that about Iran - but he won't admit it because it'll make him look as stupid as he was on Iraq.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | May 15, 2008 6:48 PM

What I see coming is increasing pressure from liberal interventionists and neocons to militarily intervene in Africa along the divide between the Arab-speaking and non-Arab parts of Africa. The bad guys will be portrayed as Muslim, fairer-skinned, and/or Arab, while the good guys/victims will be portrayed as more authentically African -- blacker, not-Arab speaking, not Muslim. They won't be able to come up with a perfect division along those traits each time, but they'll come up with something pretty close, like in Darfur.

My hope is that Obama knows from his visits to Kenya that this is all BS, that Islamofascism in Africa is a joke, that America's strategic interests in Africa are negligible, that Africa's problems go much deeper than just the current set of Bad Guys in power, and that America should just stay out.

But I don't know that he knows that.

I could easily picture Obama getting bullied by the "serious people" into intervening militarily in some ludicrously unimportant place like Darfur just to prove he's tough enough and anti-Muslim enough. I can see Obama wrapping it all in a lot of Kennedyesque rhetoric about America paying any price, bearing any burden to ensure hope and change in the strategically crucial crossroads of the Sahel.

Posted by Steve Sailer | May 15, 2008 7:35 PM

On the other hand, to Obama's credit, I can't see Obama as anymore likely than McCain to get us involved militarily in Zimbabwe. Obama didn't spend 20 years in Rev. Wright's church to put a bunch of white farmers back on their farms even though that's what it would take to save hundreds of thousands of blacks from starving. It's better that Africans starve than that the black race be embarrassed like that.

Posted by Steve Sailer | May 15, 2008 7:40 PM

Sailer's thesis seems to be that American foriegn policy is entirely a function of American race politics, with the Congressional Black Caucus (congressmen!) exercising decisive control over the Democratic party policy apparatus. Correspondingly, issues of alliances, energy, global competition, markets, prestige, institutional inertia and hegemony play no role.

That's...uh...um...fuck.

Posted by Mark | May 15, 2008 8:00 PM

My thesis applies not to American foreign policy in general, but to Zimbabwe.

That's the most obvious candidate for liberal interventionism, where a single elderly dictator has plunged the country into ruin. But intervening militarily in Zimbabwe has attracted almost zero enthusiasm in the West, even from a war-lover like John McCain, because of the embarrassing symbolism of a white American President attacking a black tyrant who has reduced his country to starvation by driving out efficient white farmers. That's just symbolically radioactive.

But, yes, I do believe that American foreign policy is driven in not insignificant measure by domestic ethnic politics. See, for example, America's ridiculous policy toward Cuba. I'm sure you can come up with other examples.

Posted by Steve Sailer | May 15, 2008 9:13 PM

Sailer, you're an idiot. The reason it hasn't been put forth among the vaguely sane to invade Zimbabwe is that the state remains at the very verge of complete collapse and outright military slaughter, and neighbor South Africa is neither interested nor able to care for several tens of millions of instant refugees. What do you think, you just send some troops in and the old guy will fall, and the only reason we aren't is because of your ridiculous notion of PC politics with your obsession about race which occupies every single minute of your haunted days?

Posted by El Cid | May 15, 2008 9:23 PM

"But intervening militarily in Zimbabwe has attracted almost zero enthusiasm in the West, even from a war-lover like John McCain, because of the embarrassing symbolism of a white American President attacking a black tyrant who has reduced his country to starvation by driving out efficient white farmers."

But that's absurd. The reason that even a "war-lover" such as John McCain is reluctant to invade Zimbabwe is because Zimbabwe hasn't got fuck-all to do with America's strategic interests. Because intervening in an unstable, nearly civil-war torn African backwater while being at the same time engaged in two other wars that have sucked trillions of dollars from the treasury and pushed America's military capacities to the brink, because that would the absolute apex of insanity. And you think McCain's reluctance to invade is a funciton of his reluctance to lose the inner-city vote? Because the Congressional black caucus would give him a hard time?

You silly racial paranoid, do you really believe this? I mean, fucking really?

Posted by Mark | May 15, 2008 9:32 PM

Obviously, Zimbabwe has no more (and no less) to do with American strategic interests than does Darfur. Both are of zero importance. It would be idiotic to intervene in either. Of course, that hasn't stopped interventionists in the past from agitating to intervene. (See, for example, the bloggings of M. Yglesias, circa 2003.)

And yet, Darfur is a cause celebre all over America and Europe, while Zimbabwe is just this embarrassment that has loomed for the last decade.

Posted by Steve Sailer | May 15, 2008 9:40 PM

Steve Sailer is just the weirdo at the gun show selling Nazi knives if he learned how to use polysyllabic words. Ignore him.

"That would work if the Slave Trade that went on for centuries was in any way related to colonisation that started in the late 19th century.
Africa was not "conquered" during the Slave Trade. Unless having forts on the coast is conquest.

Posted by nu | May 15, 2008 4:08 PM"

Good point. Africa was conquered relatively late in the imperialist era because Europeans died very easily due to tropical diseases. Medical treatments had to first be created before Europe could really start carving up Africa.

"Arabs are sore about lots of slights, real and imagined, but they protest a little too much when they whine about western colonialism. If you don't understand the difference between the role European countries played in the Middle East after WWI and the role they played for hundreds of years in Africa, you are being obtuse."

In terms of policy, this is neither here nor there. If Arabs believe this in general, then you have to deal with those beliefs as is. If your policies inflame Arab sentiments due to how they conflict with certain beliefs commonly held in the Arab world, then you are just being self-defeating. You have to love how so many conservatives who talk about how much they care about Iraqis just end up hating Arabs.

Posted by Reality Man | May 15, 2008 10:04 PM

Sailer: "I do believe that American foreign policy is driven in not insignificant measure by domestic ethnic politics."

This is similar to the argument I had with Arnold Evans via email over whether US foreign policy was being driven by Israel vs economic factors like oil, the military-industrial complex, and neocon (and others) desire for world hegemony - in other words, primate politics.

Arnold never could explain WHY the US - including people like Dick Cheney - would have such an attachment to Israeli Jews that they would be doing everything for Israel and not for more direct personal interests like money and power. He simply asserted it was so and denied that other motivations had greater influence without really being able to establish why that was the case.

Similarly, I can't agree that US foreign policy is driven by US ethnic division. I CAN agree that white US power mongers aren't going to give a shit about black Africans. So what? That is a correlation, not a cause. I suspect black power mongers in Africa don't give a shit about US whites - except to the degree that they have to deal with US or European influence over their countries.

The US had no problem invading Haiti, even though that was an equally clear example of a white country intervening in black politics in a country with no strategic significance to the US.

I can agree that Africa is the shit hole of the world. It's been backward for centuries and is likely to be the last place on the planet to get any significant economic improvement, despite being one of the richest regions on earth. How much that has to do with previous colonialism and how much that has to do with the basic limitations of its occupants or their societies has yet to be established.

I'd say that since that region is still mired in tribalism more so than even the Middle East and central Asia it explains much. But tribalism is a social culture - not an ethnicity. In other words, there would seem to be no a priori reason - genetic or otherwise - why Africa can't eventually move out of tribalism into better economic circumstances.

It simply a matter of history - history has not been kind to Africa in terms of being the center of the world, unlike Europe and to a lesser degree, Asia. Thus, it is not surprising that Africa has been somewhat tardy in developing.

So I would say it is too soon to be making prognostications that Africa is not capable of being developed.

In the meantime, the arguments for interventions anywhere where national security is not a direct issue boil down to moral ones - and moral arguments are just hand waving and invariably ignore practical considerations. If you can make a "moral" case for one intervention, you have to take that same stand for ALL the problems in the world - and that simply isn't rational because it clearly isn't feasible.

And that means if one intervention can't be established, then none should be for the exact same reason. What this means is not that the problems don't exist or should be ignored, it's that point interventions of the sort depicted aren't the general - and therefore not the specific - solution to those problems.

There may well be other solutions to the problems in specific countries, but those solutions will not be considered while the argument is over interventions.

Also, if the solutions to these sorts of problems don't address the underlying issues, they will not be solutions at all. And since most of the interventionists will not address issues of illegitimate states, or the nature of states in general, most of the time they can't come up with adequate solutions. So we end up with "bandaid solutions" like point interventions.

This is why I have little interest in such discussions except in cases such as Iraq and Iran and Afghanistan where the issues are more national security related than humanitarian intervention. Those interventions also more clearly show the limitations of interventions in general.

There ARE NO military solutions to much of anything except defense against direct attack. That's the bottom line.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | May 15, 2008 10:17 PM

For example, here is a 2006 WaPo oped co-authored by 2 of Obama's top foreign policy advisors:

"We Saved Europeans. Why Not Africans?

"By Susan E. Rice, Anthony Lake and Donald M. Payne
Monday, October 2, 2006; Page A19

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/01/AR2006100100871.html

Of course, they're referring to saving Africans in Darfur, not in Zimbabwe.

Personally, I think U.S. involvement in either case is equally stupid, but the question is why is Darfur such a cause celebre among the Stuff White People Like set while Zimbabwe is not, even to a war-lover like John McCain?

Posted by Steve Sailer | May 15, 2008 10:42 PM

"The US had no problem invading Haiti, even though that was an equally clear example of a white country intervening in black politics in a country with no strategic significance to the US."

You're missing Sailer's point. Haiti doesn't have the black-white dynamic Zimbabwe does. The despot in Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe, wrecked his country by dispossessing the white farmers who had turned it into the breadbasket of Africa. Now it's just a basket case wracked by poverty, repression, and 10,000% inflation. It would be too politically incorrect to have American troops depose a black dictator and give white settlers back their farms.

Posted by Fred | May 15, 2008 11:05 PM

Hi DivGuy. Just to join the argument - can I say disagree with David Rieff, and find McCain's comments are a perfect refutation of his argument from equivalency.

Rieff's remarks are self discrediting in that they essentially cast the imperial critique so wide that they retreat to the muddled logic of Nader voters in 2000, where Bush == Gore, and that is exactly the kind of dilettante, faux-purity that got us into Iraq in the first place, not to mention all the other Republican malfeasances that would not have occurred under Democratic leadership.

Rieff seems to believe that merely expressing the views that:
-America has been a comparatively benign hegemon;
-America is exceptional in the de Tocquevillian sense;
-America has played a morally good role in world affairs and ought to continue on the basis of hegemony;

essentially makes adherents of those view subscribers to the foreign policy exceptionalism which is the big tent he calls Wilsonian internationalism. But that IMO confuses de Tocquevillian exceptionalism with the kind of pugnacious foreign policy exceptionalism practiced by the neo-conservatives, which has nothing to do with the Wilsonian approach in anything but rhetorical ways.

The neo-cons aren’t remotely interested in working within a rule based order; they aren’t hard Wilsonians who just happen to be more aggressive than the soft Democrats. They aren't through their actions, in defying the constraints of the collective security regime, prepared to offer to other states a universalisable principle upon which they themselves might have discretion to act. Of course not. Their preventative war doctrine is fully exceptional in that it reserves solely for the US the ability to act, whilst using sympathetic opinion leaders and media messaging to clothe their action in some kind of vague legitimacy. That is why McCain is so fuzzy here about who get invaded and who doesn’t – he understands the game here perfectly - which isn’t about the applicable rule or posisting a new better rule - but simply about the political shell game of friends and enemies, fashionable causes, and hidden geostrategic interests. Sure, you have some outlier academics like Ruth Wedgewood who try to normalise the radically exceptionalist character of the Bush neo-cons, but she’s a reliable defender of the hardline view and her writing is transparently means-end and tightly written to the facts, and certain value judgements, that she avoids any possibility of implicating precedent outside the US sphere of influence.

Now, that’s not to say that the Democratic Party is in some way immune from letting it’s de Tocquevillian sense of exceptionalism bleed into foreign policy misadventure, but there is a clear sense at least on this side of politics that what counts is rule making and bringing people onboard with rules. David Rieff completely misunderstands this fault line because he is hung up on what is obviously a more sceptical view of the US as a hegemon at all.

Posted by Will Fettes | May 15, 2008 11:16 PM

Foreign policy is essentially becoming an extremely expensive hobby for various cliques of elites, who vastly overstate the benefits that any particular foreign policy can bring to Americans (other than a policy of "Stop doing stupid stuff"). The basics of a sustainable, sensible foreign policy are simple -- Don't invade anybody and don't let anybody invade you. And that's not very hard to do because war has gotten way to expensive to be profitable.

Consider Finland: It was forced to outsource its entire foreign policy to Moscow from 1945 to 1989, but not its domestic policy. And the horrible price it paid for not having a foreign policy was that it achieved world domination of the cell phone business, with all the comforts that went along with that accomplishment.

The various foreign policy hobbyist cliques tend to be:

A. Ethnic lobbies, such as Cubans, Armenians, and Jews.

B. The war enthusiasts -- the guys who should be bribing star high school linebackers to play for Old State U. but instead funnel their enormous competitive urges into playing the Game of Nations, even when there is very little to be won.

C. The Stuff White People Like set, who demonstrate their moral superiority by demanding something be done about Tibet, Burma, and a handful of other fashionable topics. (But not Congo or, God forbid, Zimbabwe.)

Darfur is a perfect convergence for all three cliques, since it involves killing Arabs, but killing Arabs by being on the side of Muslims -- we wouldn't want to be prejudiced, now. Indeed, we'd be on the side of Muslims who are black who are being oppressed by whites (who actually aren't very white looking, but never mind). And did I mention we'd get to kill people?

What's not to like?!?

Posted by Steve Sailer | May 15, 2008 11:36 PM

Yglesiais is right when he talks about the importance of European colonialism in the Middle East. Thing is the period of importance was about 350 BC to 660 AD. After that the Mid-East was dominated by respective Arab and Altaic colonists.

The notion that the period between 1919 and 1946 in a limited portion of the middle-east was as important as the century of Euro-migration and three centuries of Euro slavery (and ten centuries of Muslim slavery) is patently silly.

The REAL damage of European influence has been that the Arab world decided to pick the worst ideas Europe had to offer in the aftermath of 'colonization'. Instead of attempting to forge independent, secular, democratic, western-looking societies like Attaturk, the Arabs were influenced by Fascism (the one place the ideology survived the war), Cultural Relativism, Socialism, etc..

Posted by Aleksei | May 16, 2008 12:16 AM

Steve,

That last post actually mostly made sense. You parked your race obsession for a few minutes. I don't know if you can let it go for longer periods of time, but the whole race schtick of yours holds you back big time. Just like we have no compelling interests in Zimbabwe and getting involved would totally counter-productive, you have no compelling interest in race. You are one of those hobbiest you describe up. Race is your Iraq. Any credibility you might have with people outside a small racist sphere is completely destroyed within the much larger sphere of non-racists every time you open you mouth about race. Which, have you noticed, is all the time? You are obseesed by it. Think about it. Go back up and look at your comments on this post and see how much of it deals with race. It's nuts. And also, have noticed the huge amount of dissagreement you face every time you talk about race. You can tell yourself that you are the one sighted man in the world of the blind, but you also might want to consider the ocean of disagreeing voices as evidence that your instincts about race lead you to incorrect conclusions. So maybe you should just try to leave the subject of race alone for while. Take a vaction. Write about other stuff and if you find yourself talking or writing about race, bite your toung, put down you pen. Just see what it's like for a few months.

Posted by cw | May 16, 2008 12:28 AM

Okay, granting Sailer's point that Haiti is not the same as Zimbabwe, I still doubt that anybody in real power in Washington gives a damn as to whether the issue is giving white farmers back their farms is somehow "racist".

If they don't care about Zimbabwe, it's because they have no money or power interests there.

Now, as to what Sailer calls the "Stuff White People Like" set, I've no idea what their motivations are, other than the usual primate notions that "I'm better than you because [insert lame reason here]" - with in this case "lame reason" being "I'm more moral than you because I care about poor blacks."

But what I don't see is McCain fitting in with that notion - which IIRC correctly was Sailer's original point in this thread. McCain was quoted as saying that for the US to intervene in Zimbabwe would be a reflection of European colonialism. That was probably bullshit, too, but it doesn't seem to be to have anything to do with the symbolism of using white troops to restore white farmers. I don't think McCain has that depth of comprehension, for one thing.

Now maybe Sailer is correct about the Congressional Black Caucus - I've no idea, I don't follow their agendas. But I can't see them influencing McCain much in the area of foreign policy, especially if it involves military interventions. For that matter, when was the last time the Congressional Black Caucus even got mentioned in the MSM as influencing much of anything? The Haiti case?

And what was Clinton's reasons for worrying about them - the black vote in an upcoming election? That would make sense for Clinton - it would make no sense for McCain to be so concerned since he isn't going to get the black vote anyway - certainly not against Obama.

I think McCain is against Zimbabe intervention for the simple reason that there wouldn't be much of a war there to profit the war profiteers of the military-industrial complex that his labors are for. And of course, no oil.

Iran, on the other hand, now THERE'S a war to get McCain all excited. Oil to grab and Arabs to kill for another ten, fifty, a hundred years!

Zimbabwe would be over in a week, and the odds of a decent insurgency surfacing there would be slim.

So, no, I still don't believe US foreign policy is controlled by US ethnic interests, whether in Zimbabwe or anywhere else - except, of course, to some degree, Israel, who has spent millions building up a massive Lobby in this country.

I agree with Sailer that foreign policy is being influenced by various cliques - but more so by the people who directly profit from US foreign policy - the oil companies, the military-industrial complex, and the financial community that invests in them.

Follow the money - you can't go wrong.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | May 16, 2008 12:40 AM

Coming back to it late, and avoiding Sailor Boy, eltoro is quite correct, and Old Fart Fred is, quel surprise, full of shit. The current outline map of the US was not waiting to be 'consolidated': it was taken with the use of violence.

If statehood out west had been granted on the same basis as that in the Original 13, Native Americans wouldn't just be sovereign over casinos and reservations, and dude ranching xenophobe Lou Dobbs would be out of business. Instead, it came when those conquered were well and truly subjugated. American colonialism, done with the same tools and tactics of European colonialists in the same period. It's false historiography to treat the Spanish-American War and the western push as distinct elements of a general expansionist trend.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | May 16, 2008 2:02 AM

"If they don't care about Zimbabwe, it's because they have no money or power interests there."

We had no power or money interests in Bosnia either. That didn't stop us from intervening.

"The current outline map of the US was not waiting to be 'consolidated': it was taken with the use of violence."

As opposed to -- what country, exactly? -- where the use of violence wasn't used to consolidate power.

The history of what is now the continental U.S. is a history of the competition between various groups: the Americans (the colonists and their descendants), the French, the Spanish, the Mexicans, the Dutch, the Swedes, and various Indian tribes. For hundreds of years -- from the discovery of the New World until the beginning of the 19th Century -- the Indians held the balance of power here. They quickly adopted and became adept at horsemanship and the use of firearms. All sides in this competition used violence at times. In the end, the Americans won. The Indians lost, but so did the British, French, Spanish, etc. The only ones who get mythologized today are the Indians. They were no more noble than anyone else.

Posted by Fred | May 16, 2008 3:07 AM

"The notion that the period between 1919 and 1946 in a limited portion of the middle-east was as important as the century of Euro-migration and three centuries of Euro slavery (and ten centuries of Muslim slavery) is patently silly."

Except that is a key period during which countries like Iraq and Israel were creating by the imperial powers. 200 years ago, no one really knew what an Iraqi, a Lebanese, a Saudi, a Libyan, etc. were and only knew Israelis as people in the Bible. When you decide to start carving up entire countries (often just using a map, a ruler and a pencil, which is why there are so many straight borders in the Middle East and North Africa) out of random peoples who have never really lived together in modern time in a modern nation-state, then you are setting them off on a particular trajectory.

Posted by Reality Man | May 16, 2008 3:35 AM

A few reasons the case of Haiti might be different than Zimbabwe includes that Haiti is a tiny, impoverished island nation in the Caribbean off the coast of the U.S., such that people can arrive here in small boats, and there is a long history of U.S. intervention, whereas Zimbabwe is a comparatively large country in Southern Africa with a comparatively large population and a decently armed national military.

The U.S. had no problem intervening massively & extensively, albeit mostly indirectly, in Angola and Mozambique, which are also in Southern Africa and which have a lot of black people in them.

I have some hypotheses on Darfur, but comparing U.S. records of intervention in Haiti and Zimbabwe and concluding the difference is due to racial population mixes is about as deeply neurotic and monomanic as I could imagine, short of alleging it has to do with the Illuminati.

Posted by El Cid | May 16, 2008 6:53 AM

"In the end, the Americans won. The Indians lost, but so did the British, French, Spanish, etc. The only ones who get mythologized today are the Indians. They were no more noble than anyone else."

Fred,

The Indians/Native Americans were the ones who were here first, so they are lot more deserving of sympathy than the other losers, who were simply other imperialists who took land away from the Native Americans.

Of course, that sympathy only goes so far. None of those sympathizers are advocating for the return of all current US territory in continental North America to the Native Americans. The Native Americans are going to have to settle for their reservations and casinos, and for the opportunity to become assimilated into US society.

Posted by eltoro | May 16, 2008 12:55 PM

"We had no power or money interests in Bosnia either. That didn't stop us from intervening."

Fred,

Last time I looked, the people in Bosnia were white people, while the people in Zimbabwee were overwhelmingly black. A nation like the US with a majority white electorate is naturally going to be more sympathetic to saving people in a nation like Bosnia than in a nation like Zimbabwee.

In addition, the main reason we intervened in Bosnia was due to the specter of genocide. If Mugabe was engaging in ethnic cleansing like the Serbians in Bosnia or the Tutus in Rwanda or the Arabs in the Sudan, there were be a lot more interest in intervening in Zimbabwee.

However, even the threat of ethnic cleansing is not enough to muster a consensus on the part of the American people to commit US troops to intervening in Zimbabwee. Remember that in Bosnia our primary role was to bomb the hell out of the Serbians. We didn't commit ground troops to an invasion, and we had our European allies in NATO provide the bulk of the peacekeeping forces, since peace in the Balkans was mostly in their national interests, not ours.

Unfortunately for the oppressed people of Zimbabwee, both white and black, their neighbors in places in South Africa lack the desire to commit their troops to intervening in Zimbabwee and deposing Mugabe. With American and European troops committed to occupying Iraq and Afghanistan, neither the US nor Europe are in a position to invade and occupy Zimbabwee. The best we can do right now is arm an insurgent force against Mugabe, and provide them with air support.

Posted by eltoro | May 16, 2008 1:22 PM

By the way, Matt should send a copy of Heads in the Sands to Obama advisers Susan E. Rice and Anthony Lake, who in 2006 in the Washington Post advised America to go to war with Sudan over Darfur even without UN approval:

"The United States, preferably with NATO involvement and African political support, would strike Sudanese airfields, aircraft and other military assets. It could blockade Port Sudan, through which Sudan's oil exports flow. Then U.N. troops would deploy -- by force, if necessary, with U.S. and NATO backing. If the United States fails to gain U.N. support, we should act without it."

Posted by Steve Sailer | May 16, 2008 3:01 PM

Fred: "We had no power or money interests in Bosnia either. That didn't stop us from intervening."

Edward S. Herman in Counterpunch deals with some of the reasons in his refutation of Brad DeLong's smear of Noam Chomsky on Bosnia, to wit:

"DeLong then goes on to say that it is true today that the United States has no strategic or security interest in the Balkans. It goes without saying that he doesn't offer evidence on this point or discuss contrary facts and views. Many analysts have pointed to:

(1) the huge U.S. military base built in Kosovo, which must have some security interest function;

(2) the fact that the NATO intervention destroyed the one independent political body in Europe not integrated into the Western political economy--Yugoslavia--and facilitated that integration;

(3) the importance of the Caspian oil area and the interest of Western oil companies in possible Balkans transport routes;

(4) the link between the Kosovo War and the April 1999 celebration of the 50th anniversary of the birth of NATO with an imminent NATO military triumph;

(5) the possible interest of the United States in reasserting its domination of NATO by taking the lead in the Balkans struggles; and

(6) the admissions by Clinton, Blair, and Defense Secretary Cohen that the "credibility of NATO" was a prime reason for the bombing."

He follows this with the comment:

"I should mention that Andrew Bacevich's recent book, American Empire, highly praised in the mainstream, asserts strongly that the United States had no humanitarian concerns at all in its Balkans war-making and that Clinton's resort to force was merely to establish 'the cohesion of NATO and the credibility of American power.'"

I haven't followed the Bosnia thing much but it is clear to me from what little I've read that "humanitarian interests" were very likely not at the root of the actions taken.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | May 16, 2008 8:16 PM