Crackers
James Poulos has identified the one thing above all that guarantees success in foreign policy writing: the catchphrase! Fukuyama had “The End of History”, Huntington had the “Clash of Civilizations”. Poulos introduces us to “The Uncrackables”, his shorthand for a category of problems in international relations which are by definition unsolvable even by superpowers such as ourselves. “Being a superpower,” quips James, “it turns out, does not confer superpowers. It never has.” Preach on, brother!
It’s a fine article that’s well worth your time, written as it is by someone who’ll clearly be an important voice in discussing these kinds of issues going forward. Nevertheless, I’ve got some nits to pick.
Poulos:
And for all the talk of humility post-Iraq, the lesson of limiting expectations and curbing our ego is of a fundamentally different sort: in Iraq, we bungled a solvable problem. Fervent opponents and supporters of invasion agreed up and down the line on a single thing: their strategy was the right one, and it was right because it would not leave the US and its allies holding the bag. It would crack the Iraq problem. Whatever there is to be said about the merits of any approach to Iraq, our ability to escape utter defeat despite a compound of colossal blunders underscores how manageable a challenge, relatively speaking, it really was to “take on” Iraq. Neither in 2000, 2003, nor 2008 could the US, with our without allies, “take on” Iran, North Korea, or, especially, Pakistan.
Is that really the consensus opinion—that the mess we have in Iraq is just the result of bungling? We’ve transformed Iraq, to be sure, and the Iraqi people are free of a psychopathic dictator. But it’s not clear to me to what extent Iraq was ever “solvable” in any meaningful sense. As I argued yesterday, the myopia going into Iraq centered on the idea that removing an unquestionably “bad” actor would lead to a better outcome for the region. Yet the main outcome has been the emboldening of Iran, which had the main regional check on its power removed by us. And while the Iraqis are now free to dabble in democracy, it’s still far from clear that the final outcome of their experiment will be a stable, unitary state, much less a state which will serve as any kind of model for the region as the more optimistic democracy-promoters hoped. And all this for the low low price of half a trillion dollars.
Yes, perhaps Iraq could be considered “crackable” had we spent an order of magnitude more money and had installed some kind of massive colonial administration to do proper state-building. Or we might have decided to install our own, loyal Saddam replacement, a Sunni who’d also have to periodically massacre the pesky Shi’a and Kurds to keep Iraq together, aligned with us, and a check on Iran.
But let’s not kid ourselves: these were never options.
I like James’ “uncrackables” designation, but I fear it applies to most problems we face, if our goal is to solve problems. Generally, I’d counsel against that kind of approach, because it leads to wasteful and counterproductive policies which in turn lead to wholly unsatisfying outcomes. We should rather seek to identify our interests, and then approach the world as dispassionately as possible keeping our interest foremost in our minds. In the Middle East today, I’d argue that stability should be our main goal. I liked John Mearsheimer’s offshore balancing approach. I’d wager that there are analogous ways to deal with many other “uncrackables” the world over—don’t worry so much about cracking them as making sure they don’t explode all over you.