Customer Reviews

At War with Ourselves: Why America Is Squandering Its Chance to Build a Better World

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

"Newsweek" editor Hirsch supplies a lucid, readable account of the tensions in US foreign policy between practitioners of "Wilsonian idealism" (multilateralism) and "conservative realism" (unilateralism). He focuses on the Clinton and second Bush administrations as examples of the problems with either worldview: while Clinton, he argues, "staked his foreign policy on negotiation and norms," Bush favored "the assertion of hard power and little else." The unfortunate results, in Clinton's case, were the Bosnian conflict and the massacres in Rwanda and, in Bush's case, the deteriorating debacle in Afghanistan (and possibly in Iraq, although the verdict is still out).

Hirsch proposes a middle way: diplomacy and cooperation with international organizations and agencies, backed by the might of US and regional military force. The world's major powers will "feel both unthreatened and protected by the United States . . . only if Washington itself embraces the international community" while simultanesly projecting its power. The "international community," he convincingly asserts, not only exists but is largely our creation, and it provides the best means for America to affirm its hegemony without seeming arrogant and to encourage democracy and well-being without seeming hypocritical.

He offers as a model the resolution of the 1999 crisis in East Timor, when Indonesian forces began slaughtering thousands of East Timorese residents, who were increasingly clamoring to reestablish the independence they lost in 1975. After an initial (and lethal) hesitation, the US coordinated an able, multilateral response: America suspended much-needed assistance to Indonesia, the IMF withheld money, the UN passed a resolution authorizing a peace-keeping force, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (of which Indonesia was a member) made a stink, China backed military invention, and the Australians supplied the troops. The combination of diplomacy, economic sanctions, regional pressure, and military force proved immediately and extraordinarily successful. Hirsch's discussion of why our intervention in Afghanistan seems to be failing, on the other hand, shows how military force alone--without regional cooperation and financial leverage--is a recipe for disaster (and the events of recent weeks lend this section of the book considerable weight).

Hirsch's conclusions often resemble the analysis offered by Clyde Prestowitz's "Rogue Nation," even though the two authors approach their topic from widely divergent points of view. Hirsch's book is surprisingly deficient, however, in scrutinizing America's role in the Arab world (and the Islamic world in general). He skirts entirely the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the repercussions of American energy policy--two issues troubling American strategy not only in the Mideast but throughout the world.

Like any book on foreign policy, "At War with Ourselves" won't satisfy everyone, and it will surely anger those at either end of the political spectrum (e.g., neoconservatives and anti-globalists). Nevertheless, whether or not you agree with the selection of evidence or the overall thesis, this treatise offers much food for thought and challenges the way one thinks of the world.

Edit of 21 Dec 07 to add comment and links.

New Comment: I am distressed to see so many important books no longer available. Even though it makes my summative reviews valuable as a trace, I have tried to get Amazon to realize that it should offer such books electrionically, micro-cash for micro-text, and Jeff Besoz just doesn't want to hear it. I predict that Kindle will fail.

The author has provided a very informed and well-documented view of the competing "axis of thinking" (unilateralism versus multilateral realism) and "axis of feeling" (isolationism versus engagement). The two together create the matrix upon which a multitude of ideological, special interest, and academic or "objective" constituencies may be plotted.

The endorsement of the book by the Managing Editor of Foreign Affairs is a very subtle but telling indictment of the unilateralist bullying that has characterized American foreign policy since 2000--indeed, the author of the book coins the term "ideological blowback" as part of devastatingly disturbing account of all the things that have been done "in our name" on the basis of either blind faith or neo-conservative presumption.

The book received four stars because at the strategic level, Clyde Prestowitz' book, Rogue Nation: American Unilateralism and the Failure of Good Intentions is better in all ways--easier to read, more detailed, more specifics. Historically, I would bracket this book with the collection of Foreign AffairsThe American Encounter: The United States and the Making of the Modern World Essays from 75 Years of Foreign Affairs articles, , and I would add Wilson's Ghost: Reducing the Risk of Conflict, Killing, and Catastrophe in the 21st Century by McNamara and Blight, Kissinger on Does America Need a Foreign Policy? : Toward a Diplomacy for the 21st Century, Boren et al on Preparing America's Foreign Policy for the 21st Century, and finally Joe Nye's, The Paradox of American Power: Why the World's Only Superpower Can't Go It Alone There are many other books I have reviewed on these pages, and one could make a fine evening of reading only the reviews, as they are summative in nature.

In any event, and the reason I mention other books above instead of in the last paragraph, is to make the point that everyone--other than a few obsessive neo-conservatives who happen to hold the reins of power--is saying the same thing: America must engage the real world, in a multilateral fashion.

The author of this book differs from other authors in that he explicitly recognizes, in his preface and then throughout the book, the fact that a coherent U.S. foreign policy cannot be achieved without the U.S. public's first understanding what is at stake, and then making its voice heard.

The author is also noteworthy in detailing the hypocrisy and ignorance of existing U.S. national security policies. Although Prestowitz does this in a more useful fashion, this book is very valuable and has many gifted turns of phrase. Consider this one, from page 10: "Despite a century of intense global engagement, America is still something of a colossus with an infant's brain, unaware of the havoc its tentative, giant-sized baby steps can cause. We still have some growing up to do as a nation."

A third aspect of this book that I found compelling was the author's continued emphasis on the need to change mind-sets and emphasize *awareness* over "guts"--as he tells this compelling tale, Americans are too quick to show "toughness" when they perhaps should slow down, orient, observe, decide, and then act on the basis of a fully-informed appraisal of all the linkages and potential consequences of their actions.

A fourth valuable feature of this book is the author's focus on one chapter on American vulnerabilities in the age of globalization and super-empowered angry men. He quotes the incoming Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in explaining to Congress the military's incapacity to intervene on 9-11, as saying "We're pretty good if the threat is coming from outside. We're not so good if it's coming from inside."

This leads to the fifth and final aspect of the book that I found noteworthy: the author's discussion of the mismanagement--even lack of management--of the broad spectrum of the varied instruments of national power. As Suzanne Nossel, a top Holbrook aide puts it, "Today, when it comes to U.S. diplomacy, one hand rarely knows what the other is doing. The U.S. government has no central ledger in which bilateral relationships are tracked. There is no place to turn to find out what the United States has done for a particular country lately, or what a country may want or fear." The book clearly supports what appears to be an emerging consensus within the Senate that some form of "Goldwater-Nichols Act" for civilian and joint civilian-military national security management.

The endnotes are good, the index useful but annoyingly below 8 font type (possibly as low as 6) which is a very foolish act on the part of the publisher. A readable index would have increased the reference value of this book by at least 10%. The book lacks a bibliography, and here we urge the author to consider one for what we hope will be a second printing: books on realism, books on unilateralism, books on blowback (e.g. The Fifty-Year Wound: How America's Cold War Victory Has Shaped Our World, or Why Do People Hate America?), etcetera.

See also:
The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People
A Power Governments Cannot Suppress

I need not expound too long. But, Hirsh's book presents to us, and to me a Republican, hard truths that have been traditionally hard to accept in the past and are harder, under the present political climate, to accept.

While the writing, at times, can be slow going, overall, the book is easily readable.

It is a book for the times.

Michael Hirsh, the noted Newsweek journalist and author, thinks he sees the future and it would be beautiful if only America would get over itself. In At War with Ourselves, Hirsh nominally argues that America must overcome its sense of exceptionalism and embrace the "international community". Unfortunately, what he has really produced is a highly readable but sometimes unpleasantly partisan summons to utopia, and it is not very convincing.

Hirsh believes that the "international community" is an American creation and that America is its principle beneficiary. He also argues that it is pointless to use history and old notions of sovereignty as guides to discerning the national interest and that these must be discarded in return for the benefits of a new global order. Hirsh believes that, if successful in doing so, America's "children and grandchildren may never have to fire a shot in anger" ever again.

Hirsh has a kernel of a point. There is a tendency of writers to draw overspecific conclusions from history's general lessons, and there is a high degree of integration in the world that is, in part, an outgrowth of American statecraft since the end of World War I. Indeed, he is right to suggest that America benefits in many ways from this integration and ignores it at its peril. However, he overstates his case, and when a writer at the outset excludes the precedents of history and promises a world of peace and harmony, the reader is well advised to be cautious.

Indeed, for a man who discounts the value of historical precedent, Hirsh spends a great deal of his book analyzing it, albeit mostly recent history. Much of the book's first chapter is spent studying the Clinton and Bush years, or to be more accurate, the Bush years, which Hirsh finds odious, with passing reference to the preceding Clinton years, of which Hirsh is more tolerant. This makes for odd history since it ignores much continuity between the Clinton and Bush years, especially in the willingness of both leaders to use force without U.N. or other international support. (Clinton in the Balkans, Bush in Iraq.) Yet these linkages get short shrift in the book because they do not fit the Hirsh thesis.

That thesis is plagued with obscure definitions. Hirsh's opponents are unilateralists, exceptionalists, neoconservatives and realists. Yet he never makes clear if these are different people or if they are just different names for the same people. Similarly, Hirsh, condemns the American sense of exceptionalism that he says has kept America aloof from the world, yet he applauds that exceptionalism for making possible the "international community" in which he claims America needs to become more involved.

Perhaps most astonishing of all, however, is Hirsh's failure to adequately define the "international community" he champions. Hirsh ferociously criticizes Bush Administration officials for claiming that the international community does not exist, but his own description of it is maddeningly vacuous. Hirsh seems to suggest, tritely, that it is a global acceptance of free markets, economic interdependence, democracy and the rule of law. Yet he does not dispute that much of the Third World - especially China - may not, and the Arab world certainly does not, accept that consensus. That does not leave many nations in the "international" community. Moreover, Hirsh does not even attempt to address the argument that just because nations accept a broad consensus in principle, it does not mean that they necessarily have shared strategic objectives in practice.

Exhibit A for that argument is the recent Iraq War, where the United States went to the United Nations Organization - strange behavior for unrepentant unilateralists, but no matter - to authorize the use of force against a state that all agreed was in violation of international law. Yet, France (among others) opposed the United States notwithstanding France's belief in democracy, free markets and international law.

Indeed, the strategic calculations are what mattered. France had long ago abandon its part in enforcing the "no fly-zones" so as to expand its trade with Iraq and more broadly enhance it position in the less than democratic Arab world. It did so secure in the knowledge that American military power was there as insurance against any Iraqi misbehavior, and confident that as long as Saddam Hussein was in power, America would be pinned down in the Middle East, leaving France free to pursue its own objectives. Thus, democratic France used totalitarian Iraq to limit the strategic options of a democratic America. That is a situation no responsible American leader could accept - international community or no.

Similarly, Hirsh thinks the United Nations is the best tool for restraining China. Yet it is almost a foregone conclusion that China's respect for the United Nations would evaporate were Taiwan to declare its independence. Indeed, China has said as much, "international community" notwithstanding.

Also, Hirsh's vision is politically impractical. He notes on one page that many around the world believed that America got what it deserved on September 11, and on the next page literally complains about how the Bush Administration squandered away the world's sympathy after that day. Putting aside this seeming contradiction, Hirsh seems oblivious to the thought that 3,000 dead is too high a price to pay for the world's transient sympathies. An international community that uses American-style institutions while indulging in convenient America bashing will never sell politically in the United States.

In the end, that thought points to the fundamental weakness of Hirsh's book. He cannot account for human irrationality. He assumes that if only America embraced the international community, the international community would embrace America. That assumption requires that America's democratically elected leaders take risks that they cannot plausibly ask their people to accept - namely infringement of the nation's freedom of action in principle, (as opposed to as necessary), in return for the hope that the nation will be loved rather than disdained for its self-abnegation. Yet in his comfortable, convenient, and wholly wrong assumption that he is living in historically unprecedented times, Hirsh has forgotten that politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum.

Michael Hirsh's "At War With Ourselves: Why America Is Squandering Its Chance to Build a Better World" is a though-provoking argument for increased American involvement in world affairs. However, rather than pursuing the unilateral policy that the current administration favors, Hirsh insists that America should become more active in what he refers to as "the international community." He maintains that only through more active participation in the international community can America continue as the "überpower" of the modern world.

Hirsh's primary claim in "At War With Ourselves" seems to be that if America were more involved in the international system, the world would see us as its protector and ally rather than its enemy. He asserts that America has an obligation to the international community because this community itself is of America's own making. He also devotes much of the book to the hypocrisy of America's foreign policy: he claims that while we advocate widespread democracy, we shy away from the implementation of this policy if it does not suit our purposes.
Hirsh is a good writer, with a style that is easy to read and easy to follow, but he has one flaw-many of his arguments are simply weak and contradictory. He excels at including data and facts-but only those that suit his purpose, leaving out the other side of the argument. Or worse: he often seems to be "at war with himself," arguing one side of an issue in one chapter, only contradict himself in a later one.

A comprehensive review of American foreign policy, going back to the Founding Fathers. Michael Hirsh explains clearly and in great detail how the world has changed and how we must change if we are to take advantage of our unique position as the world's first and only "Uberpower". The writing is literate and the book is well indexed with excellent "notes" and references.

Michael Hirsh's "At War With Ourselves "is a well documented and spirited argument for how our nation must re-think its past position relative to the rest of the world. America has been given an unsolicited mandate to help "repair the world". (Heb."Tikkun Olam"} Mr. Hirsh's empirical knowledge and extensive travels have well prepared him in forming his thesis, particularly because of his firsthand contacts with governmental personnel during different American presidential administrations.

For those seeking a stimulating, serious and no nonsense theory, this book is a must read. Future generations would benefit greatly by utilizing this work perhaps as a textual reference to the past as well as a guide to formulating policies for the future.

In addition, future global leaders might find his work instructive and helpful in formulating new relationships with the United States

The author cites many examples to buttress his argument that America is squandering its goodwill. However, there is no mention of the Peace Corps, which continues to provde many of America's best 'envoys'.