Andrew Bacevich on New Cold War triumphalism

We’re ten days away from the first anniversary of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine and the official one-year retrospectives are already appearing.

This article by Andrew Bacevich (with a quirky title and an introduction from Tom Engelhardt) takes a look at the current situation of US policy and the Russia-Ukraine War.

Irony, tragedy, and arrogance in US foreign policy

Bacevich’s foreign policy outlook is heavily influenced by the Protestant theologian and foreign policy “realist” Reinhold Niebuhr, author of The Irony of American History (1962). And he also takes lessons from a “revisionist” historian of the (first) Cold War William Appleman Williams and his book The Tragedy of American Diplomacy (1959). Niebuhr was particularly concerned about the temptation in US foreign policy to missionary tendencies and hubris.

In Niebuhrian mode, we could describe three major phases in post-Second World War American foreign policy:

1. 1945/47-1989: Cold War arrogance
2. 1989-2022: (post-) Cold War triumphalism and the requisite arrogance
3. 2022-?: New Cold War arrogance

But whatever “exceptional” features the US may have, arrogance isn’t unique to America, as Russia’s overestimation of its prospects in the initial stage of the war in Ukraine last year showed. Yet American foreign policy has a very hard time shaking the habit.

As the “realist” international-relations thinkers constantly remind us, the post-1989 found the US in a “unipolar moment,” where it was the hegemonic power in the world with no “peer competitor” as the Soviet Union had been. Neither China, Russia, nor the EU was in a position to play the role of a major balancing power. And one of the practical results of that was the US was more tempted than ever to blunder into unnecessary and risky interventions, the Iraq War being the most dramatic example.

Now China is in the position to be something like a “peer competitor” to the US. And Russia is obviously trying to assert itself more aggressively in foreign policy, though despite its nuclear arsenal, it is not in a position to upstage China as the second major world power. The EU’s role in world affairs in the coming decades will depend to a very large extent on the internal political cohesion of the Union and, crucially, to what extent the EU can develop a defense force capable of acting independently of the US and its NATO structure.

Triumphalist metaphor-making in the current situation

But being a big power does not pre-determine what a country’s foreign policy is. The leaders and those who elect them are still making choices among various available options. Unfortunately, the organized lobbying efforts for those who stand to benefit from military confrontations and arms races are far better financed than whatever peace lobby there is in the United States.

Bacevich begins his piece by noting the symbolism being used in American and European politics harking back to the Second World War - with Vladimir Putin in the “Hitler” role, of course!

These days, it may be Western-supplied missiles downing “kamikaze drones” rather than Spitfires tangling with Messerschmitts over southern England, but the basic scenario remains intact. In the skies above Ukraine and on the battlefields below, the “finest hour” of 1940 is being reenacted. Best of all, we know how this story ends — or at least how it’s supposed to end: with evil vanquished and freedom triumphant. Americans have long found comfort in such simplified narratives. Reducing history to a morality play washes away annoying complexities. Why bother to think when the answers are self-evident? [my emphasis]

As Russia rolls out a new military offensive and the war enters its second year, it is of course Ukraine that pays the highest price. Ukraine has a very strong interest in the war being shorter rather than longer - for reasons that should be obvious even to American pundits! - which they have to balance against their own urgent interest in defending their territorial sovereignty.

Europe has an interest in the war being as short as possible to allow them to concentrate on building up their militaries and strenghten coordination among the EU member nations. The EU also has an interest in Ukraine stymieing or defeating Russia. But the longer the war goes on, the more chances Russia and internal anti-EU parties will have to weaken the Union. The EU also has an interest in strengthening ties to China as some kind of balance against the US and Russia, and a longer war with China supporting Russia makes that more difficult.

One might think that with the US giving top priority to a military and political buildup to contain the rising power China, the US would be eager to get a settlement sooner than later. But here’s where those choices come in. Because it appears at the moment that the Biden Administration is more interesting in seeing the current war weaken Russian conventional military preparedness as much as possible. This was the scenario that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin mentioned publicly in April 2022. ("We want to see Russia weakened to the point where it can’t do things like invade Ukraine.")

Of course, everyone would be better off if the nuclear arms stockpiles in the world were eliminated or drastically reduced. And if the US, Europe, China, and Russia all actively cooperated to mitigate the climate crisis. There was also a great opportunity to do that after 1989. But it failed. On the bright side, every major nation can blame the others for the failure. But that doesn’t make the world any safer.

And it’s unfortunately likely that it will be a long time before a “1989” situation comes around again. But that also depends on the choices nations and their leaders make.

Perils of power and arrogance

Timothy Snyder is a good historian and has done important work on authoritarianism. But as Bacevich describes in some length, Snyder seems to have the kind of messianic vision against which Niebuhr and others warned when it comes to the results backing the Ukrainian war effort is likely to produce. Niebuhr himself in his Irony book cited George Kennan:

[Kennan] ascribes the weaknesses of our [US foreign] policy to a too simple "legalistic-moralistic" approach and defines this approach as informed by an uncritical reliance upon moral and constitutional schemes, and by too little concern for the effect of our policy upon other nations, and too little anticipation of the possible disruption of policies by incalculable future occurrences. In short, he accuses the nation of pretending too much prescience of an unknown future and of an inclination to regard other peoples "in our own image." These are, of course, precisely the perils to which all human idealism is subject and which our great power and our technocratic culture have aggravated. [my emphasis]

Here is Bacevich on Snyder:

Put simply, according to Synder, a Ukrainian victory over Russia will have a redemptive impact on just about any imaginable subject, transforming the global order along with humanity itself. Ukrainians, he writes, “have given us a chance to turn this century around.” Again, let me emphasize that what gives me pause is the “us.”

That Professor Snyder along with the editors of the Atlantic (and similarly pugnacious publications) should focus so intently on the unfolding events in Ukraine is understandable enough. After all, the war there is a horror. And while Vladimir Putin’s crimes may fall well short of Hitler’s … he is indeed a menace of the first order and his reckless aggression deserves to fail. [my emphasis]

Becevich prefers a less redemptionist and triumphalist view:

Whether Ukrainian bravery combined with advanced Western weaponry will, however, have more than a passing impact on world history strikes me as a dubious proposition. Along with causing immense suffering, Putin’s war has unleashed a tidal wave of hyperbole, with Professor Snyder’s [essay being] but one example.

As someone who makes no pretense to being an “historian of political atrocity” [like Snyder] — the most I can muster is to classify myself as a “student of American folly” — my guess is that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will have about as much lasting impact as our own invasion of Iraq, its 20th anniversary now approaching. [my emphasis]

About that whole weakening-of-Russia idea…

While most countries including the US and the EU member states would prefer not to see Russia absorbing neighboring countries, whether it is beneficial to have Russia come out of the current war seriously militarily weakened and humiliated is a different matter.

Lydia Wachs wrote in September 2022 for the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik that one effect of the weakening of Russia's conventional forces in the Russia-Ukraine War could be to increase the role of nuclear weapons in Russia's military planning:

Enhancing the role of nuclear weapons in Russia's deterrence strategy and strengthening nuclear posture in areas bordering NATO could, in various ways, weaken European security and stability. …Research on nuclear crises highlights two factors in particular that can influence crisis stability, i.e. the potential for crises to escalate. The first is the incentive to use nuclear weapons first, and the second is the degree to which crises can be controlled, for example through communication channels. It is not so much the actual situation that is important as its perception by the actors involved. [my emphasis]

As a Bruce Springsteen song once put it, “With every wish there comes a curse.” Severely weakening Russia’s conventional military capabilities may not be the unconditional benefit that New Cold War triumphalists think.