Another American Casualty: Credibility
By Zbigniew Brzezinski
Forty years
ago, an important emissary was sent to
the emissary was a tough-minded former secretary of state, Dean Acheson. His mission was to brief French President Charles de Gaulle and solicit
his
support in what could become a nuclear war involving not just the
Pact.
At the end of the briefing, Acheson said to de Gaulle, "I would now like
to show you the evidence, the photographs that we have of Soviet missiles armed
with nuclear weapons." The French president responded, "I do not wish
to see the photographs. The word of the president of the
enough for me. Please tell him that
Fifty-three years ago, after the Soviet-sponsored assault by
Council for a collective response to
Today it is the
In one, the vote was 133 to 4, and in the other, it was 144 to 4 – the
our NATO allies, including
The loss of U.S. international
credibility and the growing U.S. isolation are aspects of a troubling paradox:
American power worldwide is at its historic zenith, but American global
political standing is at its nadir. Maybe we are resented because we are rich,
and we are, or because we are powerful, and we certainly are. But I think
anyone who thinks that this is the full explanation is taking the easy way out
and engaging in a self-serving justification. Since the tragedy of 9/11, our
government has embraced a paranoiac view of the world summarized in a phrase
President Bush used on Sept. 20, 2001: "Either you are with us or you are
with the terrorists." I suspect that officials who have adopted the
"with us or against us" formulation don't know its historical
origins. It was used by Lenin to attack the social democrats as anti-Bolshevik
and to justify handling them accordingly. This phrase is part of our
policymakers' defining focus, summed up by the words
"war on terrorism." War on terrorism reflects, in my view, a rather
narrow and extremist vision of foreign policy for a superpower and for a great democracy
with genuinely idealistic traditions. Our
country suffers from another troubling condition, a fear that periodically
verges on blind panic. As a result, we lack a clear perception of critical
security issues such as the availability to our enemies of weapons of mass
destruction. In recent months, we have experienced perhaps
the most significant intelligence failure in American history. That failure was
fueled by a demagogy that emphasizes worst-case scenarios, stimulates fear and
induces a dichotomous view of world reality. It is important to ask ourselves, as citizens,
whether a world power can provide global leadership on the basis of fear and
anxiety. Can we really mobilize support, even of friends, when we tell them
that if you are not with us you are against us?
That calls for serious debate about America's role in the world, which is not
served by an abstract, quasi-theological definition of the war on
terrorism. That definition oversimplifies a complex set of challenges that needs
to be addressed. It talks about a phenomenon, terrorism, as the enemy
while overlooking the fact that terrorism is a technique for killing people. It doesn't tell us who the enemy is. It's as
if we said that World War II was not fought against the Nazis but against
blitzkrieg. We need to ask who is the
enemy. They are not, to quote the president again, people who "hate
things," whereas "we love things." Or people who simply hate
freedom. I think they do hate, but I don't think they sit there abstractly
hating freedom. They hate some of us. They hate some countries.
They hate some particular targets. But it's a lot more concrete than these vague
quasi-theological formulations. In the
debate over the current direction of U.S. foreign policy, Democrats should not
be naysayers only. But they certainly should not be cheerleaders as some were
roughly a year ago. Democrats should insist that a pluralistic democracy such
as ours rely on bipartisanship in formulating a foreign policy based on
moderation and the nuances of the human condition.
Bipartisanship in the making of foreign policy has been the tradition from the
days of President Harry Truman and Sen. Arthur Vandenberg until recent times.
And it has led us not only to a triumph in the Cold War but to our emergence as
the only global superpower with special responsibilities. We should cooperate
not only with each other at home, but with our allies abroad. While America is
paramount, it isn't omnipotent. We need Europe, which shares our values and
interests, even if it disagrees with us on specific policies. But we cannot
have a relationship if we only dictate to or threaten those who disagree.
Sometimes we may be right. Sometimes they may be right. But there is something
transcendental about shared values that shouldn't be subordinated to tactical
requirements.
We should strive to expand the zone of peace and prosperity to build a stable
international system in which our leadership can be fruitfully exercised. That
means supporting a larger European Union. It means drawing Russia closer while
remaining unambiguous about the behavior that disqualifies Russia -- pursuing a
policy of genocide against the Chechens, killing journalists and repressing the
mass media -- from genuine membership in the community of democratic,
law-abiding states.
We must also transform the world's zone of conflict into a zone of peace. That
means, above all else, the Middle East. We must more clearly identify
the United States with the pursuit of peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
Palestinian terrorism has to be rejected and condemned, yes. But it should not
be translated into support for Israel's increasingly brutal repression,
colonial settlements and a new wall. Instead, America should help the majority
of Israelis and Palestinians, who are ready to accept a viable peace. In Iraq we must succeed. Failure is not an
option. But we have to ask ourselves what is the definition of success. More
killing, more repression, more effective counterinsurgency? The introduction of
new technologies to crush the resistance? Or is success an effort to promote,
by using force, a political solution?
If there's going to be a political solution in Iraq, two prerequisites have to
be fulfilled as rapidly as feasible: the internationalization of the foreign
presence in Iraq and the transfer of power as soon as possible to a sovereign
Iraqi authority. Regarding the first, too much time has been lost already. As
for the second, there's nothing to be lost by prematurely declaring an Iraqi
authority as sovereign if that lends it political legitimacy in a country which
is searching to define itself, which has been
humiliated, and which remains ambivalent toward us. What is the future for the doctrine of
preemption against nations or groups with the potential to acquire weapons of
mass destruction? It is important not to plunge headlong into the tempting
notion that we will preempt unilaterally on suspicion, which is what the
doctrine now amounts to. We simply do not know enough to be able to preempt
with confidence. For four years I was
the principal channel of intelligence to the president of the United States. We
had a good idea of the security challenge we faced. Today the problem is more
elusive. We're not dealing with nuclear silos and
military structures geared for an assault on American security. We could decipher
and seek to paralyze those in the event of war. We were well-informed to a
degree that cannot be matched in dealing with the new threats to our security. These new challenges can only be addressed if
we have what we do not have --
a really effective intelligence service. I find it appalling that when we went
into Iraq we did not know if it had weapons of mass destruction. We thought it
had such weapons based largely on extrapolation. That means that our commanders in the field
went into battle without knowledge of the Iraqi WMD order of battle. They did
not know what units, brigades or divisions in the Iraqi armed forces were
equipped with what kind of weapons of mass destruction. Were there chemical
weapons on the battalion level, on the brigade level or with special units? Who
had bacteriological weapons? At what stage of development was the allegedly
reconstituted nuclear program? All of
this points to a fundamental shortcoming in our national security policy. If we
want to lead, we have to have other countries trust us. When we speak, they
have to think it is the truth. This is why de Gaulle said what he did. This is
why others believed us prior to the war in Iraq.
They no longer do. To correct that, we need an intelligence service that speaks
with authority. If preemption becomes necessary, it should be able to truly
tell us that, as a last resort, preemption is necessary. Right now there's no
way of knowing.
Ultimately at issue is the relationship between the new requirements of security
and the traditions of American idealism. For decades, we have
played a unique role in the world because we were viewed as a society that was
generally committed to certain ideals, prepared to practice them at home
and ready to defend them abroad. Today, for the first time, our commitment to
idealism worldwide is challenged by a sense of vulnerability. We have to
be careful not to become self-centered and subordinate everything else in the
world to an exaggerated sense of insecurity.
We are going to live in an insecure world. It cannot be avoided. We have to learn
to live in it with dignity, with idealism, with steadfastness.
Zbigniew
Brzezinski was President Jimmy Carter's national security adviser.
He is author of the forthcoming book, "The Choice" (Basic Books).
This
article is adapted from an Oct. 28 speech.