Future of the US hinges on a strategic pullout from hot spots

By Richard Halloran

Wednesday, Apr 18, 2007, Page 9

In a provocative new article, a strategic thinker has asserted that the war in Iraq has been lost and US political leaders should start looking beyond that tragedy to the future.

"The truth is," Andrew Bacevich wrote, "next to nothing can be done to salvage Iraq. It is no longer within the capacity of the US to determine the outcome of events there. Iraqis will decide their own fate."

The professor of international relations at Boston University and retired Army officer contends that US President George W. Bush will depart in 20 months, leaving the US "bereft of a coherent strategy."

The pertinent question that the president's successors should address, Bacevich wrote in the Los Angeles Times last week, is: "What should fill that void?"

Here is a suggested response from this correspondent, who is not perched in the camp of any would-be successor.

A fresh US strategy would be modeled on a document titled National Security Council Report 68 (NSC-68), drawn up during president Harry Truman's administration. It defined US national interests, set diplomatic and military strategies and generally guided US policy on security from the Korean War of 1950 to 1953 through the Cold War to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990.

NSC-68 was the blueprint for containing the Soviet Union. A new doctrine would be aimed at countering threats from terror, militant Islam, a rising China if it becomes belligerent, a resurgent Russia that seems to be backsliding into dictatorship and whatever else comes over the horizon.

Next, the Weinberger Doctrine, forged by former secretary of defense Caspar Weinberger and his military assistant, then Major General Colin Powell, during the Reagan administration, should be revived to govern the use of military force.

Strongly influenced by the experience of Vietnam, that doctrine called for committing forces only to defend a vital national interest, clearly defining political and military objectives and making sure the public in the US would support a military venture.

"The commitment of US forces," the doctrine said, "should be a last resort."

Powell, later chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and then secretary of state in Bush's first term, is reported to have urged the president to adhere to those guidelines when planning to invade Iraq, but was clearly unsuccessful.

Continuing the suggested response, the US would pull most of its land forces -- which are stretched thin -- back to the US and rely on maritime power to maintain sea-lanes between the US and its key allies.

That web of US alliances would be reconstructed, however. Two countries that are supremely important to the US -- Canada and Mexico -- have been neglected by the Bush administration. The US must nurture friendly, reliable allies on its long, undefended northern and southern borders.

Across the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, Japan, Australia, and Britain are vital to US security. They are island states off the Eurasian landmass with which the US shares values, including a belief in human rights, democracy and free enterprise.

Moreover, those countries live in rough neighborhoods and have majorities who see an alliance with the US as being in their best interests. Japan has testy relations with China, North Korea and increasingly with South Korea. Australians keep a wary eye on Southeast Asia, or what they call the "Near North." The British don't have hostile neighbors but many lack enthusiasm for the EU.

US security contacts with South Korea are troubled, as Koreans are undecided about continuing an alliance with the US.

Much the same is true in the Philippines, once a US colony. Vitriolic anti-US views rage across Western Europe and as a result, the US cannot count on Koreans, Filipinos, or Europeans as allies today.

The US nevertheless has special relations with three more democracies: Israel, India and Taiwan, and it would be in its interest to cultivate its relationship with them.

In my proposed scheme, the US would withdraw from the Persian Gulf, Iraq, Afghanistan and Central Asia, where US forces are deployed as far from the continental US as can be and remain in the northern hemisphere.

Not only do those deployments put a strain on the armed forces, they are costly for the taxpayers. As the Chinese strategist Sun Tzu wrote 2,500 years ago: "To maintain an army at a distance causes the people to be impoverished."

Richard Halloran is a writer based in Hawaii.