The US is once again learning the limits of military power. In Iraq, the US has unrivaled control of the air, but can't hold the ground. Its mere presence incites violence.
While US President George W. Bush believes that he has protected Americans by "taking the war to the enemy," more than 1,700 Americans have died in the Iraq war, which has also provoked terrorist attacks on US allies. The horrific London bombings were probably inspired by Britain's co-leadership of the war.
The Bush administration's mistake, of course, is to neglect politics in its war calculations, or to blindly follow the dictum that war is politics by other means. In fact, most war is a failure of politics, a failure of political imagination. Given their self-righteousness and lack of historical and cultural awareness, Bush and his advisers believed that invading Iraq would be easy, that former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's military would crumble and that the US would be welcomed as a liberator. They failed to comprehend that Iraq has long been an occupied and externally manipulated country.
ILLUSTRATION: MOUNTAIN PEOPLE
As a result, Iraqis understandably regard the US-led occupation as just another episode of outside exploitation. It is widely accepted that oil, not terror, was the original motivation of the war -- a war planned by Bush's senior advisers during the 1990s, and made possible by their accession to power in 2001. Through the 1990s, Vice President Dick Cheney and others made clear that Saddam's reign threatened the US' oil security by forcing over-reliance on Saudi Arabia. Iraq's vast reserves, went the argument, could not be developed safely until Saddam was deposed. The Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the US provided the green light, not the underlying motivation.
The Iraqis sense all of this. Bush's refusal to set a deadline for withdrawing troops is not taken as a sign of resolve, but as a statement of the US' intent to remain in Iraq, establish a puppet regime, control the country's oil and set up permanent military bases.
That won't work. There are simply too many real political forces on the ground in Iraq for Washington to manage, and these forces are increasingly demanding a timetable for US withdrawal, as are legions of Iraqis in the course of public protests and mosque worships. Every time the US reiterates its refusal to set a deadline for withdrawal, it simply stokes political opposition, not to mention the insurgency. There are too many Iraqis ready to fight and die to oppose the US' presence. Only politics, not arms, can calm the scene.
Vietnam is a true precedent here. Vietnamese deaths and casualties outnumbered US deaths and casualties by perhaps 20 to one, but the US still could not subdue the nationalist adversary that it faced. The US could bomb Vietnam's cities to rubble, as it can Iraq's cities, but this solves nothing, claims vast numbers of innocent lives, and confirms the view of Americans as occupiers.
All of this has an economic angle as well. US foreign-policy doctrine states that US national security rests on three pillars: defense, diplomacy and development. Economic aid for poor nations is crucial, because poverty provides the tinder for violence, conflict and even terrorism. Yet diplomacy and development take a distant second and third place behind defense -- or more accurately, military -- approaches in US foreign-policy spending.
Washington will devote approximately US$500 billion, or 5 percent of GNP, to military spending this year -- half of the world's total. In other words, the US spends as much on arms as the rest of the world combined.
In Europe, by contrast, military spending is roughly 2 percent of GNP, while development aid is around 0.4 percent of GNP and on a rising path to reach 0.7 percent of GNP by 2015.
If the US would pursue politics rather than war, it would understand that more development spending and a commercial approach to Asia, Africa and the Middle East, rather than the current military approach, would best serve US interests. Bombing Libya did not bring its leader Muammar Qaddafi "in from the cold." Peaceful diplomacy did the job, showing Qaddafi that reopening diplomatic relations with the West and abandoning Libya's nuclear ambitions would be advantageous for its own future.
The same approach would have been far less expensive and more promising with Saddam Hussein. Vast sums -- and millions of lives -- would have been saved if that approach had been tried with Ho Chi Minh in the 1950s.
No one doubts that intelligence operations and police actions are needed to fight terrorists. But the war in Iraq and enormous military expenditure are quite another matter. The military can protect the US from conventional military attack, and it can keep the high seas open, ensuring the flow of oil and other vital commodities. But it can't protect the US from politics. For that, Americans need to be smarter, investing in peaceful development rather than military bases in long-abused lands.
The US should leave Iraq quickly. After that, it can and should use its political and economic weight to help manage a complex and difficult situation that is significantly, though not exclusively, of its own making. Washington's sway in Iraq will be limited, but leaving now would actually make it more effective than it is now, and at much less cost in terms of money and American, allied and Iraqi lives.
Jeffrey Sachs is professor of economics and director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University.
Copyright: Project Syndicate
Recently, China launched another diplomatic offensive against Taiwan, improperly linking its “one China principle” with UN General Assembly Resolution 2758 to constrain Taiwan’s diplomatic space. After Taiwan’s presidential election on Jan. 13, China persuaded Nauru to sever diplomatic ties with Taiwan. Nauru cited Resolution 2758 in its declaration of the diplomatic break. Subsequently, during the WHO Executive Board meeting that month, Beijing rallied countries including Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Belarus, Egypt, Nicaragua, Sri Lanka, Laos, Russia, Syria and Pakistan to reiterate the “one China principle” in their statements, and assert that “Resolution 2758 has settled the status of Taiwan” to hinder Taiwan’s
Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s (李顯龍) decision to step down after 19 years and hand power to his deputy, Lawrence Wong (黃循財), on May 15 was expected — though, perhaps, not so soon. Most political analysts had been eyeing an end-of-year handover, to ensure more time for Wong to study and shadow the role, ahead of general elections that must be called by November next year. Wong — who is currently both deputy prime minister and minister of finance — would need a combination of fresh ideas, wisdom and experience as he writes the nation’s next chapter. The world that
Can US dialogue and cooperation with the communist dictatorship in Beijing help avert a Taiwan Strait crisis? Or is US President Joe Biden playing into Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) hands? With America preoccupied with the wars in Europe and the Middle East, Biden is seeking better relations with Xi’s regime. The goal is to responsibly manage US-China competition and prevent unintended conflict, thereby hoping to create greater space for the two countries to work together in areas where their interests align. The existing wars have already stretched US military resources thin, and the last thing Biden wants is yet another war.
As Maldivian President Mohamed Muizzu’s party won by a landslide in Sunday’s parliamentary election, it is a good time to take another look at recent developments in the Maldivian foreign policy. While Muizzu has been promoting his “Maldives First” policy, the agenda seems to have lost sight of a number of factors. Contemporary Maldivian policy serves as a stark illustration of how a blend of missteps in public posturing, populist agendas and inattentive leadership can lead to diplomatic setbacks and damage a country’s long-term foreign policy priorities. Over the past few months, Maldivian foreign policy has entangled itself in playing