Thu, Aug 20, 2020 page9

• Can Joe Biden deliver on Americans’ hope for less war?

  A Biden administration would benefit from bringing in new voices who understand the failure of the US’ grand strategy and can transform foreign policy

  • By Stephen Wertheim / The Guardian
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  US Senator Kamala Harris is a “big slasher of funds for our military,” US President Trump said.

  If only. The truth is Harris, like former US vice president Joe Biden who selected her as his running mate for the US presidential election in November, is a mainstream advocate of globe-spanning US military dominance.

  Last month, she voted against cutting the US$740 billion annual military budget by a mere 10 percent, even though she said she supported reductions as a goal.

  In November, US voters, facing an uncontrolled pandemic and economic collapse, are to choose between one ticket that insists on spending more on the military than the world’s next 10 countries combined — and another ticket that might, after careful deliberation and under the right circumstances, be willing to outspend just seven or eight.

  For the progressive left, this is a disappointing, even dizzying outcome. In January (that pre-COVID-19 idyll when all one had to fear was war with Iran), the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination was US Senator Bernie Sanders. He promised a reckoning with decades of bipartisan military interventions and led last month’s effort to cut the defense budget. (Full disclosure: I voluntarily advised his presidential campaign on foreign policy.)

  A Biden-Harris ticket represents a serious setback for those who believe the US should abandon its quest for global military dominance and instead invest in building communities at home, and combating climate change and infectious diseases around the world.

  The longer the view one takes though, the less grim the prospects look.

  When Barack Obama was elected president in 2008, he defined the Democratic Party, from the grassroots to the White House. Although Obama promised to end the war in Iraq, he also pledged to prosecute the war on terror vigorously, especially in Afghanistan.

  In office, he delivered. Despite striking a bold nuclear accord with Iran and opening relations with Cuba, the Obama administration expanded the forever war through drones and special forces, intervened in Libya and Syria, and aided Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen.

  He handed over to US President Donald Trump command of 200,000 troops stationed around the globe.

  As Obama inspired deep loyalty in the Democratic electorate, he faced little pressure within his own party to be more peaceful. The chorus of criticism came instead from the foreign policy establishment, whose “Washington playbook” Obama himself derided for being reflexively militaristic.

  However, four years have made a difference. If elected, Biden is likely to face more intense and sustained pressure against military intervention than Obama did. Many Americans, left and right, now say that the biggest foreign policy problem is that their country is waging “endless war.”

  It is a remarkable development. Americans have opposed specific wars in the past, but rarely have so many voiced a general complaint that their country is waging warfare continually and unjustifiably.

  Three-quarters of Americans agree on little today, but roughly that number, according to the latest poll, favor bringing troops home from Afghanistan and Iraq.

  Twice as many Americans say their country spends too much on the military as too little. A mere one in four believe that military interventions in other countries make the US safer.

  Democratic voters are adjusting to 21st-century realities faster than their party elders. Climate change now stands alone as the Democrats’ top national security priority. Capping a decade of steadily rising concern, 88 percent say it constitutes a major threat to the US.

  The percentage drops into the 60s for terrorism and the countries perceived to be the most threatening — China and Russia.

  New candidates for the US Congress reflect these priorities. In June, Jamaal Bowman, a middle-school principal from the Bronx, ousted US Representative Eliot Engel, a hawkish 31-year incumbent who supported the Iraq War and was the chairman of the US House of Representatives’ Committee on Foreign Affairs.

  “We don’t need to be the world’s policeman,” Bowman said, urging dramatic cuts in military spending and investments in a global green new deal.

  Bowman is likely to enter the House with growing ranks of like-minded colleagues.

  Regardless, a Biden administration, already committed to a “clean energy revolution,” will have to confront reality: The planetary threat of climate change can be met only by mutual coexistence and cooperation with China rather than a new “cold war.”

  China is both a major problem, as the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, and an essential partner in any solution, as the world’s leading producer of low-carbon energy technologies. An intense military rivalry would make the problem worse and prevent a serious solution.

  This year’s Democratic primary tested where the party lay. Would the presidential aspirants hype threats from China, Russia, Iran and North Korea, and complain that Trump was too eager to make deals and withdraw from conflicts, as Democratic leaders in Congress have frequently done?

  To the contrary, the left defined what debate there was. The candidates competed over who would end endless war and combat climate change.

  On stage, Biden pledged to treat Saudi Arabia as a “pariah” and stop selling weapons to the kingdom. He has also vowed to “end the forever wars in Afghanistan and the Middle East,” though he currently supports bringing home only the “vast majority” of troops from Afghanistan, and advocated drone strikes and special forces raids as vice president.

  Those who seek realism and restraint in military affairs should see Biden’s bid as an invitation.

  Such cop-outs — can you end a war but keep fighting it? — indicate the obvious: The Biden-Harris ticket is not inclined to transform US foreign policy. The campaign’s extensive circle of advisers, drawn extensively from the Obama administration, reinforces the point.

  Although Democratic foreign policy hands are shifting left along with the rest of the party, it would not be enough to put the same people back into power and expect them not to make the same mistakes. A Biden administration would benefit from bringing in new voices who understand the bipartisan failure of the US’ grand strategy over decades.

  Even so, the coming years might offer more opportunity than defeat. Biden is not the future of the Democratic Party, and everyone knows it, including him. Those who seek realism and restraint in military affairs, and peaceful engagement on common challenges, should see his bid as an invitation, too.

  Candid criticism and sustained pressure might just move the next, pragmatic occupant of the White House. It might also deepen the ferment for change that began in support of diplomacy with Iran and matured in the bipartisan effort to stop US participation in the destruction of Yemen.

  The Biden camp has its own reason to take heed. Trump has exposed and accelerated the crisis of US global supremacy. Forged generations ago in the face of totalitarian conquerors, military domination no longer serves US interests, as Americans are increasingly aware.

  Any attempt to restore the “status quo” simply would not last, and leave Trumpian nativism and fearmongering as the only alternative.

  Stephen Wertheim is deputy director of research and policy at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, and a research scholar at the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University.
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