US foreign policy and the American savior trap

From Israel to Yemen to China to Cuba, President Biden’s foreign policy has fallen flat with progressives and proponents of restraint more broadly, as he continues some of former President Trump’s worst policy initiatives. Surprisingly (and thankfully), however, Biden continues to show restraint and a commitment to diplomacy on Ukraine and Russia, despite a flurry of outlandish hawkishness from all sides of the foreign policy establishment in Washington.

While Biden’s diplomacy-first approach and his wariness at preemptive coercive action are welcome, the debate about U.S. policy towards Ukraine, Eastern Europe, and Russia more broadly is stuck in a false myth of American exceptionalism — but  it’s not unique. Instead of grappling with the limits of U.S. power globally to influence, cajole, and/or coerce other countries into changing their behavior, Washington is fighting with itself on how best to saber-rattle rather than advance diplomacy and conflict termination. 

For years I’ve watched as the Democratic establishment, in particular, has sought to use Cold War-era Russophobia as a political cudgel to show it was tough on national security. During the Trump years, this toughness centered on U.S. election interference.  It was merely a side note for most Democratic-aligned politicians and advocates that there appear to have been as many U.S. counterintelligence investigations into Saudi Arabia’s and the United Arab Emirates’ interference with and attempts to influence the 2020 election outcome, as there were with regard to Russia.  

The fervor of the debates presaging the passage of a  law back in 2017 sanctioning Russia, North Korea, and Iran for purported election interference and other nefarious activities is back: Putin only knows and responds to force so we must act quickly to take preemptive action to punish him for his interference in our democracy potential plot(s) to further invade/takeover/destabilize Ukraine before he can destabilize us further carry out his plot(s). “When the United States faces a real threat, we have an obligation to respond. So far, [our] response to Russia has fallen far short. That ends with this legislation,” then-Rep. Elliot Engel said at the time.

 Then, as now, the question has been about what Washington should “allow” Putin to do, and how these punitive actions by the United States are essential to stopping this dangerous man. 

The problem with framing U.S. policy questions as ”do we allow Country A to do X to Country B?” is that it eliminates the agency of other actors and the wide-ranging historical context of any given situation. Perhaps worse, particularly in our era of 30 second soundbites and nonstop newscycle, it also creates an inflated public perception that the United States stopping whatever bad thing is happening is only a matter of will and strength, not a question of capability, strategy, or responsibility. Instead, working people are sent push notifications depicting entire nations as dangerous enemies and painting an urgent (most often false) choice before U.S. policymakers in response to a crisis: military or coercive action to “stop it” or do nothing at all. 

This false binary of Washington constantly having to respond and intervene in global crises, in most cases militarily, or doing nothing seems almost manufactured by Washington given its regularity, but really it occurs because the U.S. government approaches the world through the lens of crisis management — that indispensable nation policing the world — rather than pursuing strategic ends other than (delusional) dominance. Focusing on only addressing indicators of instability, fragility, and conflict once it has reached the point of international attention keeps the United States on the backfoot, with little capacity to act proactively rather than reactively.  

What we’re seeing recreated in Washington’s debate about Ukraine, in the seemingly scathing disdain commentators on the left and right have laid upon people who dare urge giving diplomacy time to work, is the same dynamic that has led to the expansion of Washington’s endless post-9/11 wars to dozens of countries, and the continuation of the cold wars waged during that conflict, some now under the guise of counternarcotics programming.

It’s also reflected in the Biden administration’s overarching focus of building an anti-China coalition, most recently exemplified in the establishment of AUKUS trilateral security pact between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. All of these policy decisions are rooted in the assumption that any potential threat to U.S. military and economic dominance is a threat that is best addressed proactively by preventative warfare and broad unilateral, as well as international, sanctions. It doesn’t matter that these moves are provocative and serve to convince other nations that war is coming, in turn resulting in their foreign policy and society further militarizing in response. Policymakers fail to understand how U.S. actions are influencing or could influence other countries at their own peril. 

This is the hard reality of geopolitics you may say at this point. Geopolitics, which is based on power, dominance, and supremacy, but it’s really just a euphemism for imperialism. The idea that the United States can only prosper if it dominates and determines the rules of the game is only true if you are only concerned about the CEO bonuses of multinational corporate, oil, and war manufacturers. Otherwise it just means more billionaire grift on the backs of working people across the world. So long as these determining factors dominate the perception of national security in Washington, the U.S. government will continue to serve the interests of the few, not the many.