![Magic and Mayhem: The Delusions of American Foreign Policy From Korea to Afghanistan by [Leebaert, Derek]](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51bLsVOpeHL._SY346_.jpg)
Derek Leebaert is a Georgetown University professor and he has written a stinging critique of the US foreign policy establishment. The book is an entertaining read and his conclusion is fairly devastating: "the American foreign policy establishment is not up to the task of world leadership as posed by the country's far-flung political and military involvements."
Leebaert focuses on the evolution of US foreign policy since the Korean War. He criticizes decision makers for their superficial analysis of problems and inability to look for alternatives. Often doing nothing might have been the best option. However, the US has plenty of what Leebaert calls "emergency men." These are "the clever, energetic, self-assured, well-schooled people who take advantage of the opportunities intrinsic to the American political system to trifle with enormous risk." Emergency men are eager to "do something" and they tend to carry the day in Washington. Those that urge caution are often dismissed as too negative or defeatist and are usually beaten into submission.
Emergency men include McGeorge Bundy, John F. Kennedy, Henry Kissinger, and Paul Wolfowitz. These men often plunge into situations without adequate research or an exit strategy. Later reflection indicates that what they recommended was doomed to fail. However, the emergency men are supremely self-confident, notwithstanding their all-too-frequent lack of any real basis for such confidence.
The Iraq War presents an example of the emergency men in action. Leebaert calls Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney and Paul Bremmer "masters of mayhem." Dick Cheney promised that "the (Iraqi) people will be so happy with their freedoms (after a US invasion) that we'll probably back ourselves out of there within a month or two." This proved to be completely wrong. Leebaert complains that Americans often don't bother to learn about countries whose histories, cultures and traditions have little in common with their own. None of the architects of the Iraq war spoke Arabic or had lived in the Middle East. Paul Bremmer, who disbanded the Iraqi Army and banned the secular Ba'ath Party, admitted he knew nothing about Iraq before his arrival in the country. Adam Garfinkle, who worked as a speechwriter for Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, said in 2007, "No one in a senior position in this administration seems to have the vaguest notion of modern Middle Eastern history."
The US has found in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan that the rest of the world does not always share American values. The Taliban did not want to live in a liberal democracy. Rather than seeing the world as it is, America's foreign policy experts see it as they believe it ought to be. In Iraq, the United Sates appointed Maliki as president. He was a man the White House thought it could do business with. But Maliki had his own agenda and would not stick to the US script. He excluded the Sunnis and the Kurds from the government and created the environment for civil war. America did not grasp that Maliki was a disaster until it was too late.
The US exit strategy in Iraq was predicated on training a local army. We have seen in Iraq and Afghanistan that newly minted armies may not be successful. In Iraq, nothing worked out as planned. With the benefit of hindsight, perhaps it was naïve to assume that the US could turn Iraq into a loyal US ally which embraced secularism, democracy, and capitalism.
Leebaert believes that the military has similar issues. The US has too much firepower for any future adversary to try and take it on in a conventional conflict. The reality is that the US continues to get drawn into small messy wars with enemies who don't have tanks and fighter aircraft. The US military is still preparing to fight big set-piece battles just like it did in World War 2, but future opponents are more likely to use guerilla tactics. The truth appears to be that the Pentagon dislikes fighting insurgencies. As Leebaert points out: "the Army not only forgot everything it had been bloodily taught about counterinsurgency in Vietnam; but in Vietnam, it had forgotten everything it had learned about counterinsurgency in Korea as well."
Leebaert gives the impression that arrogance and cluelessness are perhaps the greatest constants in US foreign policy. This book is a fun read.
- File Size: 3237 KB
- Print Length: 354 pages
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster (September 7, 2010)
- Publication Date: September 7, 2010
- Sold by: Amazon.com Services LLC
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1439141673
- ISBN-13: 978-1439141670
- ASIN: B003L786HI
- Text-to-Speech:
Enabled
- Word Wise: Enabled
- Lending: Not Enabled
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Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#615,296 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #2845 in 20th Century History of the U.S.
- #891 in International Relations (Kindle Store)
- #613 in 21st Century History of the U.S.
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