Posted on 05/09/2007 10:51:10 AM PDT by Clemenza
Whether a Democrat or a Republican is elected in 2008, the time is ripe for a reassertion of the traditional Republican way of war in America. By that I mean the approach to foreign policy of pre-neo-conservative Republicans such as Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Colin Powell - an approach that US President George W. Bush and the neo-conservatives have rejected in favour of a disastrous strategy inspired by cold war Democrats.
Neo-conservatives are far more likely to praise Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy than to quote Eisenhower or Nixon, and with good reason. Most are ex-Democrats, and their foreign policy tradition is based in the "cold war liberalism" of Truman, Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. As big-government liberals, cold war Democrats assumed that the US economy could afford both welfare and warfare. They favoured outspending the Soviet bloc at all levels.
Cold war Republicans were much more concerned about ensuring that the cost of containment did not stifle the American economy. Eisenhower feared that what he called "the military-industrial complex" would compete with the private sector for resources. To keep defence costs under control, he rejected matching Soviet power gun for gun, in favour of astrategy based on atomic airpower. Cold war Democrats influential in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations rejected this in favour of matching the Soviets and their proxies in conventional wars and even guerrilla wars. Result: Vietnam.
While trying to extricate the US from Vietnam, Nixon added the Nixon doctrine to the Republican way of war. In Guam on July 25 1969, he announced that, although the US would provide indirect aid to its allies, "we shall look to the nation directly threatened to assume the primary responsibility of providing the weapons for its defence". The Reagan doctrine added yet another element. Instead of sending US troops to liberate nations from communist dictatorships, the US would arm and bankroll insurgents in countries such as Afghanistan, Angola and Nicaragua. In an article in Foreign Affairs in 1992, Gen Powell added his own "Powell Doctrine", which stated that the US should not send troops except as a last resort and with sufficient force to ensure swift victory.
Call it the Eisenhower-Nixon-Reagan-Powell doctrine - a capital-intensive strategy for the traditional American party of capital. The US will rely on superior technology, rather than attempt to match the military manpower of its enemies (Eisenhower). The US will provide allies and clients with arms, intelligence and aid, but expect them to fight their own battles (Nixon). The US will support freedom fighters, but will not send its own soldiers to liberate them from their oppressors (Reagan). Only when all else fails will the US send its own troops (Powell).
Nothing could be further from the neo-conservative Bush doctrine. Neo-conservatives reject the logic of the Eisenhower doctrine, arguing that the US should permanently fund the military at cold war levels. They reject the spirit of the Nixon doctrine, arguing that the US in the name of "reassurance" should volunteer to protect allies such as Japan against their enemies such as North Korea. While praising Reagan, the neocons reject his doctrine, holding instead that the US should liberate oppressed nations by means of "regime change" instead of by his less costly alternative of arming indigenous "freedom fighters". And they reject the Powell doctrine, arguing that it raises the bar for US military intervention too high.
The neocon hostility to the Republican way of war comes as no surprise. They and their allies are converts to the Republican party who emerged from the anti-communist left wing of the Truman-Kennedy-Johnson Democrats. In the electorate, the major supporters of Mr Bush's foreign policy are hawkish southerners, who used to be Democrats until the cultural revolutions of the 1960s drove them out.
Now that the Republican way of warfare has been rejected by the Republican party, might it be adopted by the Democrats? In the past 30 years, moderate Republicans switched to the Democrats. Their geographic base - the northeast, midwest and Pacific coast - is that of the Republican party up to Eisenhower and Nixon.
"We're Eisenhower Republicans here," Bill Clinton reflected, shortly after being elected president. "We stand for low deficits, free trade, and the bond market." Mr Clinton was right: with the exception of their dwindling trade-union wing, the Democrats are already Eisenhower Republicans in domestic policy. Will the Democrats become Eisenhower Republicans in foreign policy, too? The Republican way of war could provide the Democrats with a tough-minded but cost-conscious national security strategy as an alternative to the Bush doctrine, with its spendthrift attitude towards American blood and treasure.
Will the 2008 election pit an Eisenhower Democrat against a Truman Republican? Now that would be an interesting debate.
However .... I can list a number of things wrong with how both Eisenhower and Nixon dealt with the enemy. Eisenhower could have really smacked the commies in Asia harder and prevented both the Vietnam War as well as the China Threat. Nixon was way too into detent and listened way too much to Henry Da K.
The weapons of today and certainly tomorrow are very different than those of the past. So too must be the leadership.
Michael Lind is up something alright, but I can't say it on the board.
Poor analysis. The neo-con crap is a canard. Bush is from a long line of GOP bluebloods, Cheney was a strong Reagan ally and SOD of Bush I. Rummy is a lifelong cold warrior. And the biggest hawk of them all, Duncan Hunter, is a reagnite down to his toes.
Nixon and Kissinger found themselves in a corner, largely caused by the actions of their predecessors. A combination of a bloated federal budget, increasing inflation (thanks Fed!), and the rise of folks like Wily Brandt in Germany meant that it was indeed time for a strategic "cooling" period both to reassess strategy, and bring things under control at home.
Nixon's two severe miscalculations were in trying to micromanage the economy (through a spineless jellyfish named Arthur Berns at the Fed, and a populist Democrat at treasury named Connolly), which only made things worse, and, of course, Watergate. On foreign policy, I believe that he did the right thing considering the cards he was dealt with.
A short list of Republicans this author likes. Says a lot to me.
I don’t care for Michael Lind, but even a severely broken Timex is correct at least twice a day. I would take it a step further and say that, while proxy wars would be a better strategy in places like Africa and south Asia, should crises arise due to TROP, I still believe that we should strike hard and fast when we know our enemies are on the ropes, and not care about “the Muslim street” if key jihadists are easily within the rifle scopes of either us or our proxies.
Actually I think I would prefer the old Abe Lincoln Republican style of war
TOTAL warfare. Sherman's March through Tehran would be good.
Of course, Reagan finally bloodlessly defeated the USSR and Communism essentially by outspending it. This was the greatest bargain in the history of mankind.
Yet here the author is trying to dragoon Reagan in as support for his containment on the cheap theory!
Don't have the numbers right now, but defense spending, even with the war in Iraq, is vastly lower as a percentage of the federal budget and of the GDP than it was under any of these other GOP Presidents. So in any realist ic sense, GW is spending less than they did.
The US military is designed to engage in war, fight battles, kick butt, win victory and get the out. Not get bogged down in potential losing scenarios. However, Lind has it wrong on one issue. The US military is underfunded. Reagan spent upwards of 28.1% of the budget on national defense. Even with the off budget costs of Iraq and Afghanistan thrown in, Bush43`s defense spending is 9%-10% less then what Reagan annually.
Spending 25% on the defesne of America is not out of line. If we didn't have such an insidious liberal welfare state to pay for, spending 40%-50% of the taxpayers money would be in keeping with the Constitution. Protecting the US homeland and its people are priority #1. Always has been. Its money well spent.
Great minds and all that. Absolutely tied posting times!
Apparently so. :^)
There’s a problem with Lind’s strategy: call it the Iran-Contra Effect. Once you engage in a strategy that emphasizes proxy wars, you have to accept that your own proxy may, from time-to-time, do things in the course of that war that offends US sensibilities.
The Contras weren’t choirboys, but they were effective. The Democrats were too squeamish to accept that what was going on down in Nicaragua was a real dogfight.
If we were to have followed Lind’s strategy in the Balkans, we probably would have gotten behind the Serbs in their attempt to clear Kosovo. Ooops! Can’t do that since “Ethnic Cleansing” is a crime.
He also has it wrong that we spent billions “nation building” in Germany, Japan, Italy, & the Phillipines.
We fisrtly need to handle the 5th columnists in our own government,especially in the CIA, either quietly, or publicly.They need to be silenced, prosecuted or terminated.Government employees in violation of their oaths need to be tried or fired, or both.
Where is the old "Republican" doctrine on this. It did not exist.
Also we need to be aware that total war on any population is no longer politically acceptable in America. In the dyas of Eisenhower, Nixon and Reagan,it was acceptable, or tolerated.
Now every strike must be planned to avoid innocent civilians.Iraqui troops have a hard time understanding this and do not feel that we are serious in our military activities. We have managed to convnce them of our approach, barely.
We have the approproiate military policies in place. What we do not have is an insistance on loyalty at home, by calling subterfuge when it is encountered, a distinctly new dynamic, since the Vietnam War, and one which also deeply effected Nixon ( John Kerry's treason, Paris Peace Talks) Reagan ( Dems prevent contra funding, and Reagans end run.) Eisenhower would have simply shot anyone trying these modern day hi jinks.
That is the major change, politicians willing to sell their country down the tubes for a little power. And so far our ( so called) neo conservative president has not been up to the task.
Yeah, I can just see Ike pushing nationalized health care, “hate crimes” laws, gay marriage, uncontrolled immigration, and repeal of all restrictions on abortion.
There were Eisenhower Democrats in the ‘50s, but the aren’t many now, and Michael Lind would have no use for them, then or now.
I also believe that the billions we spent on Marshall Plan aid were, in many ways, unecessary, other than for infrastructure reconstruction. It was Ludwig Erhard and Wilhelm Ropke who liberalized the economy and Germany, and brought the country to normalcy, to say nothing of the reforms put in by Alicide de Gasperi in Italy and, to a lesser extent, De Gaulle and Giscard in the late 1950s in France.
Which is why we should wash our hands of "European" culture, and should allow proxy armies in other nations to "do as they see fit" and argue back to the Euros that "it is their culture" and that we can't judge the brutal actions of another group of people.
A bigger issue is the rise of mass media and an emotionally involved female electorate that personalized every crying Arab woman they see on television as a "mom like me." This last point, however, is intractable, unless we decided to give most of our womenfolk the boot, and imposed press censorship.
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