14 thoughts on “Remembering 9/11: “I am not at war””

1. jayz43 September 11, 2013 at 1:59 pm

   You make some valid points and the U.S. does not have clean hands, in either the Vietnam or the Iraq involvement. I even question the validity of the “hard evidence” (probably from Israel) that the Assad government is to blame. But I was in favor of going into Afghanistan to get Bin Laden and taking out the Taliban. But like attacking Syria, which I am not for, there are always unintended consequences.

   “The bombings of German cities and the use of atomic bombs on Japanese cities…” were necessary to hasten the end of that terrible war. Many more Allied and American lives would have been lost, ESPECIALLY in an invasion of Japan. Unfortunately, that is the reality of war.

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   1. t September 11, 2013 at 3:19 pm

      We are free to believe whatever we want, whenever we want.

      But Hitler would have marched all over the face of the earth if we tried to do anything short of fighting back. No matter what we would like to believe, Hitler would be in charge and you and I would be Pacificist Nazis in the year 2013. 1984 would seem like a dream novel.

      but let me guess — it is not fair to discuss Hitler!!!! Why? Because pacifism would have been useless with Hitler.

      Yes, pacifism would have been better with Vietnam, Iraq and many other historic scenarios. But the point is seeking peace and stopping violence, not getting stuck in a personal -ism -ism -ism, no matter the consequences for humanity.

      In other words, are we talking about pacifism? or are we stuck in another personal, perfectionist absolutism?

      (i think it’s time for some mental peace, rather than anger to the mention of “Hitler”.)
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfl6Lu3xQW0

      o.O

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      1. David Stannard September 12, 2013 at 1:10 am

         Ever heard of Godwin’s Law? You can google it. there are lots of entries. But here’s one pithy summation:

         A term that originated on Usenet, Godwin’s Law states that as an online argument grows longer and more heated, it becomes increasingly likely that somebody will bring up Adolf Hitler or the Nazis. When such an event occurs, the person guilty of invoking Godwin’s Law has effectively forfieted the argument.

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2. R Ferdun September 11, 2013 at 4:17 pm

   I have it here before and I will say it again, it takes two to make peace. It is as true in the world of nations as it was on the grade school playground. In the face of a determined aggressor, you can either fight or you should plan on becoming his slave.

   Admittedly in cases like Syria things are not as clear cut as say at the beginning of World War II. However, we need to ask ourselves what is our moral duty as a nation/organization/individual to act, if we can act, to prevent a great wrong. Do we say, we want peace, we don’t want to get involved and let the bullies/tyrants of the playground/world wreak their havoc. Or, do we stand up and say, what you are doing is wrong we will not allow it to continue.

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3. John Bruce September 11, 2013 at 7:44 pm

   Everyone should read a book from 1928 “Propaganda” by Edward Bernays.
   ILind.net is one of the most clear sources of information we have here in Hawaii. I have been writing “No war, no war, NO WAR” on various forums.
   I now add “I am not at war” to my repertoire. Thanks Ian.

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4. Patty September 12, 2013 at 9:00 am

   An excellent article today, Ian. I so appreciate your thoughts. Dr. Noam Chomsky offers good insights on Democracy Now this morning.9/11 changed attitudes and policies in America. The unfortunate Patriot Act that resulted sharply curtails our liberties. It resulted in illegal attacks on Afghanistan, Iraq, and the use of Drones for murder by Obama. These are all criminal attacks by the U.S. Gov. Under International Law. Basically the U.S. Gov. Has defied our Constitution, our Bill of Rights, International Law, Geneva Convention and human decency in its actions, and that is not good. No more wars please.

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5. compare and decide September 17, 2013 at 10:08 pm

   Rather than the Second World War, a more apt analogy for the conflict in Syria might be the Spanish Civil War. The goal of both sides in the Spanish Civil War, Nationalist and Republican, was not victory, but the extermination of the enemy. In fact, on the Republican side, there were anarchists and communists, both politically radical but historically enemies. If they had prevailed in the civil war, they might have turned against one another, leading to a second civil war. This is already happening in Syria, some say.

   World War II was the model for the Cold War for both the United States and the Soviet Union. More explicitly, the so-called ‘Lesson of Munich’ helped to make the United States in particular much less willing to compromise with the Soviets. This ‘lesson’ has been absorbed by others, as well.

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lesson_of_Munich

   In international relations, the Lesson of Munich asserts that adversaries will interpret restraint as indicating a lack of capability or political will or both. The name refers to the appeasement of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany in negotiations toward the eventual Munich Agreement. Steven Chan describes the moral as “appeasement discredits the defenders’ willingness to fight, and encourages the aggressor to escalate his demands.”

   When Czechoslovakia was seized by the Soviet Union in 1948, most Western Europe countries formed NATO to prevent the Soviet Union from using the salami technique and conquer any more countries, one by one. Memories of Munich greatly decreased the willingness of Western Europe to make any concession to the Soviet Union in the Cold War.

   Munich also played a role in British Prime Minister Anthony Eden’s forceful confrontation with Nasser in the Suez Crisis of 1956.

   During the Cold War, Neville Chamberlain’s agreement at Munich again resurfaced, with prominent anti-communists arguing that the United States could not duplicate his perceived mistakes by “appeasing” the Soviet Union.[1]

   In Israel since the 1980s, the term “Lessons of Munich” is being used by hawkish politicians as an argument that any territorial concessions to the Palestinians will pose a threat to Israel’s security. This type of argument was used extensively by Benjamin Netanyahu in his book, A Place among Nations (1993).

   There is a tendency for countries to “fight the last war”, as they say. That is, humans understand the world through the eyes of recent history; that’s how limited human understanding is and how bound it is to immediate perspective. But we distort that history even further in so far as it becomes simplified, and emotionally intensified, into a mythology. And its a very self-serving and self-glorifying mythology. Everybody does that.

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6. compare and decide September 22, 2013 at 5:21 pm

   In referencing World War II, there is the possibility that World War II did not happen or exist as we typically think of it.

   It has been argued that the two world wars were really a long single war with a 20-year intermission.

   In this case, World War II, which has been labeled in the popular imagination as a battle between good and evil, can be seen as an extension of a conflict between established great powers who have colonies (French, English-speakers, Russians) versus emerging great powers who wanted colonies (German-speakers, Japanese).

   In fact, it has been argued that the two world wars were really part of a longer European ‘civil war’ that went back to 1870.

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Civil_War

   The European Civil War is a term of historical argumentation in the form of an overarching construct tying a series of 19th and 20th century conflicts between sovereign nations in the now partially unified continent of Europe.
   Some historians argue the period that started with the 1870 Franco-Prussian War and ended with World War II constituted an era they term the European Civil War, that notably included both world wars and many lesser wars. The earlier wars are regarded as causes for the wars that followed.[1]

   The term seeks to explain the rapid decline of Europe’s global hegemony and the emergence of the European Union. By this self-mutilation, it is argued, Europe lost its position in the world, its hegemony, and caused itself to be divided into two spheres of influence: one “Western”, and one Soviet.

   By seeing the two world wars as one war that lasted about thirty years, they can be compared to the Thirty Year War of 1818 to 1848, which might have killed off about one-third of the population of European countries involved in the war, and which gave rise to the modern nation state.

   Another comparison might be with the American and French Revolutions, a period which began in the 1770s and ended in France with the rise of Napoleon in 1805. That is about a thirty-year period that ushered in a new kind of politics.

   (Interestingly, all the periods of the ends of these wars – the 1650s, the early 1800s, the 1950s – correspond with other developments across the political, scientific and cultural spectrum.)

   From what I know about the First World War, it is difficult to see it as a war to halt German aggression, which is how it was sold in the US.

   Europe had enjoyed a long peace because of a highly effective system of balance-of-power politics, in which a web of ever-shifting alliances prevented any one player from gaining ascendancy, and also because aggression could effectively be exported to the non-Western world through colonialism. The flaw of this system is that one minor but catastrophic event (the assassination of an aristocrat by a terrorist) that could trigger an otherwise small war between two players would cause a cascade effect, in which all their allies were compelled to also declare war. Also, great powers competed for prestige through colonization, sparking the jealousy among lesser Western powers.

   The US entered the war (as I understand it) because it was allied with Britain, because there is a kind of ‘special relationship’ between the two countries. (Indeed, the US supported the British throughout the controversial Boer War, the first time concentration camps were used in war.) But that commitment was arbitrary in terms of the ‘blame’ for the war; it’s been argued that the US could have just as easily sided with the Germans (I believe that President Wilson threatened to his cabinet to support the Germans).

   The US was supplying material and perhaps armaments to the British and French, which led to German attacks on American shipping, which led to the entrance of the US in that war. But the great hope of President Woodrow Wilson is that by becoming a player in the war, the US could shape a just and lasting peace that would not humiliate a defeated Germany. By creating international institutions like the League of Nations, Wilson hoped that the international order could be regulated much the way that liberals seek to regulate the domestic economy.

   That did not happen. The French saddled the Germans with enormous reparation payments (which Germany finally paid off in 2010, I believe) and other humiliations. Wilson knew that this, as well as the rise of nationalism in minorities trapped behind arbitrary borders, would lead to another, and worse, war (which led to Wilsons physical and mental breakdown, much like John Maynard Keynes’s after the war).

   So, my question is, did America’s support for the British and French in the First World War only make things worse? If the US had pursued a more neutral stance, would Germany have not been so badly humiliated?

   That has implications for the popular perception of the Second World War. In popular entertainment, like the movies Star Wars or Lord of the Rings, WWII is the obvious model. In those movies, the problem is getting skeptical allies to join against a battle against pure evil.

   But if the two world wars can be seen to be the same war, the original problem can be found to be US involvement. Without US involvement, then there would have been no overwhelming victory against Germany in WWI, and so no rise of Nazism (and no Russian Revolution, and no Stalin). Isolationism would have then been the correct policy for the US during this ‘European civil war’.

   (The ‘problem’ with this counter-factual scenario is that Britain and France might still have colonies, and the US and Russia might still be somewhat marginal in world affairs. But for a lot of British and French, that might not be seen as a problem.)

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7. compare and decide September 25, 2013 at 4:53 pm

   Without US involvement, then there would have been no overwhelming victory against Germany in WWI, and so no rise of Nazism (and no Russian Revolution, and no Stalin).

   This is my penultimate sentence from my penultimate paragraph above. I recant; he part in bold really makes no sense. Without American assistance, the Germans might have done better against the Russians in battle, hastening the 1917 revolution.

   So, this leads to the question, what could have been done to prevent the First World War in the first place?

   Here’s the first website that pops up when one googles “Causes of the First World War”:

   http://www.firstworldwar.com/origins/causes.htm

   The article concludes by citing several causes for the war:

   1) Austro-Hungarian determination to impose its will upon the Balkans;

   2) a German desire for greater power and international influence, which sparked a naval arms race with Britain, who responded by building new and greater warships, the Dreadnought;

   3) a French desire for revenge against Germany following disastrous defeat in 1871;

   4) Russia’s anxiety to restore some semblance of national prestige after almost a decade of civil strife and a battering at the hands of the Japanese military in 1905.

   Interestingly, these four reasons have less to do with practical significance and are more about prestige and national identity. Usually Germany’s colonial ambitions are cited as the cause for the war, but one could just as easily blame the French and the British for not sharing the colonial world with the Germans, but the German impetus for empire was based on a desire for status, not material needs. The website states:

   Germany’s military unsettlement arose in the sense that Kaiser Wilhelm II was finding himself largely frustrated in his desire to carve out a grand imperial role for Germany. Whilst he desired “a place in the sun”, he found that all of the bright areas had been already snapped up by the other colonial powers, leaving him only with a place in the shade.

   Not that Wilhelm II was keen upon a grand war. Rather, he failed to foresee the consequences of his military posturing, his determination to construct both land and naval forces the equivalent – and better – than those of Britain and France (with varying success).

   One wonders if a compromise could have been reached, where the Germans could have claimed to their citizens that huge chunks of the world controlled by the British and French were actually under German dominion. After all, I believe that the British were administering principalities in what is now India but were letting the Indian princes claim sovereignty in those states. Also, modern Africa is largely controlled by the French, but they allow the illusion of sovereignty to African ‘leaders’.

   For the Japanese, conflict with the West was largely driven by a desperate need for natural resources. But Japan was a latecomer to colonizing Asia.

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_World_War_II#Competition_for_resources_and_markets

   Competition for resources and markets

   Other than a few coal and iron deposits, Japan lacks extensive natural resources. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Japan was a latecomer to the club of industrialized imperialist countries. By the time it had the ability to gain its own colonies, much of the Pacific and its resources had been carved up between the Western Great Powers: the British Empire included India, Singapore, Papua New Guinea; the French empire included French Indochina; and the Netherlands held the Dutch East Indies. In addition, the sphere of influence of the United States was expanding across the Pacific, annexing Hawaii, the Philippines, and providing crucial assistance to China. (See Overseas expansion of the United States.) At the start of the 20th century in the Russo-Japanese War, Japan had succeeded in pushing back the East Asian expansion of the Russian Empire in competition for Korea and Manchuria.

   The Japanese were completely shut out of both resource extraction from the colonial world, as well as from purchasing the finished good that were made from those resources by the colonial Western powers.

   The natural resources in Asia were shipped to fuel the industries of the colonial powers at low prices, often in closed economic systems such as the British Commonwealth, and were denied the Japanese industry. The markets for finished goods sent the colonies were also closed to the Japanese. According to Japanese diplomat Mamoru Shigemitsu, “The Japanese were completely shut out from the European colonies. In the Philippines, Indo-China, Borneo, Indonesia, Malaya, Burma, not only were Japanese activities forbidden, but even entry. Ordinary trade was hampered by unnatural discriminatory treatment…. In a sense the Manchurian outbreak was the result of the international closed economies that followed on the first World War. There was a feeling at the back of it that it provided the only escape from economic strangulation.”

   But Americans did not want to share their colonial spoils with the Japanese either.

   The largest source both of raw material and consumers in Asia was China. Japan was determined to dominate this market, which the U.S. and other European powers had been dominating. On October 19, 1939, the American Ambassador to Japan, Joseph C. Grew, in a formal address to the America-Japan Society stated, “”What I shall say in Japan in the ensuing months ‘comes straight from the horses mouth’ in that it will accurately represent and interpret some of the current thoughts of the American government and people with regard to Japan and the Far East…..the American Government and people earnestly desire security, stability, and progress not only for themselves but for all other nations in every quarter of the world. But the new order in East Asia has appeared to include, among other things, depriving Americans of their long established rights in China, and to this the American people are opposed….American rights and interests in China are being impaired or destroyed by the policies and actions of the Japanese authorities in China.” [13]

   In 1937 Japan invaded Manchuria and China proper. Under the guise of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, with slogans as “Asia for the Asians!” Japan sought to remove the Western powers’ influence in China and replace it with Japanese domination.

   This rocked the boat and led to the Pacific war during the 1940s.

   The ongoing conflict in China led to a deepening conflict with the U.S., where public opinion was alarmed by events such as the Nanking Massacre and growing Japanese power. Lengthy talks were held between the U.S. and Japan. When Japan moved into the southern part of French Indochina, President Roosevelt chose to freeze all Japanese assets in the U.S. The intended consequence of this was the halt of oil shipments from the U.S. to Japan, which had supplied 80 percent of Japanese oil imports. The Netherlands and UK followed suit. With oil reserves that would last only a year and a half during peace time (much less during wartime), Japan had two choices: comply with the U.S.-led demand to pull out of China, or seize the oilfields in the East Indies from the Netherlands. The Japan government deemed it unacceptable to retreat from China.

   Hoping to knock out the United States for long enough to be able to achieve and consolidate their war-aims, the Japanese Navy attacked the U.S. Navy at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. They mistakenly believed they would have a two-year window to consolidate their conquests before the United States could effectively respond, and the United States would seek a compromise peace long before the tide of war could potentially turn to the Allies’ superior production.

   In practical terms, it might have been better for everyone to share Asia with the Japanese. Also, morally, there is the issue of fairness, of not being greedy. What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

   The point here is that the ‘Lesson of Munich’ – that appeasing an adversary by allowing them territorial gains – that was derived from World War II seems in the larger scheme not to have a necessary validity. If the Germans and Japanese were allowed in the 19th century the foreign policy latitude that the British, Americans and French allowed themselves, none of these world wars might have happened (and by extension, the Cold War might not have happened).

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8. compare and decide September 30, 2013 at 8:00 pm

   In the popular mind today in the US, isolationism is associated with the Democratic Party, and intervention is associated with the Republican Party.

   But this (mis)understanding is all somewhat recent.

   Historically, ‘isolationism’ and ‘foreign policy realism’ are associated with the Republican Party, and Liberal Internationalism (aka, Liberal Institutionalism, Wilsonian Internationalism) is associated with the Democratic Party.

   Just what is isolationism?

   Here’s the wiki on ‘isolationism’.

   Isolationism (pronounced eye suh LAY shun nihz uhm) is a broad foreign affairs doctrine held by people who believe that their own nation is best served by holding the affairs of other nations at a distance. Most Isolationists believe that limiting international involvement keeps their country from being drawn into dangerous and otherwise undesirable conflicts. Some strict Isolationists believe that their country is best served by even avoiding international trade agreements or other mutual assistance pacts.

   Two other terms often associated with Isolationism, but not necessarily the same as Isolationism, are:

   1. Non-interventionism – is the belief that political rulers should avoid entangling alliances with other nations and avoid all wars not related to direct territorial differences (self-defense). However, most non-interventionists are supporters of free trade, travel, and support certain international agreements, and therefore differ from isolationists.

   2. Protectionism – Relates more often to economics, its proponents believe that there should be legal barriers in order to control trade and cultural exchange with people in other states.

   Until the 20th century, the dominant foreign policy doctrine in the US was isolationism.

   United States

   The history of isolationism in the United States reaches as far back as the first President. In his farewell address, George Washington advised as follows:

   The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop. Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none; or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.
   —Washington, George.”Washington’s Farewell Address 1796.” Yale Law School Avalon Project, 2008. Web. 12 Sept 2013.

   Isolationist sentiment kept the U.S. out of both World Wars until it found itself under threat. Problems of the Old World were not relevant to the New World in the eyes of many citizens.

   Isolationist sentiment near the end of the Cold War led the U.S. to develop an apathy to the circumstances in Afghanistan following the withdrawal of Soviet troops. This allowed local fundamentalists known as the Taliban to capture Afghani government. The Taliban protected and supported the group known as Al Qaeda which engaged in international terrorism, most notably the attacks on 9/11.

   The wiki on ‘non-intervention’ is even more specific.

   Nonintervention or non-interventionism is a foreign policy which holds that political rulers should avoid alliances with other nations, but still retain diplomacy, and avoid all wars not related to direct self-defense. This is based on the grounds that a state should not interfere in the internal politics of another state, based upon the principles of state sovereignty and self-determination. A similar phrase is “strategic independence”. Historical examples of supporters of non-interventionism are US Presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, who both favored nonintervention in European Wars while maintaining free trade. Other proponents include United States Senator Robert Taft and United States Congressman Ron Paul.

   Nonintervention is distinct from, and often confused with isolationism, the latter featuring economic nationalism (protectionism) and restrictive immigration. Proponents of non-interventionism distinguish their policies from isolationism through their advocacy of more open national relations, to include diplomacy and free trade. Non-interventionism is a policy in government only and thus does not exclude non-governmental intervention by organizations such as Amnesty International.

   In a nutshell, ‘isolationism’ = ‘non=interventionism’ + ‘protectionism’.

   I have never heard of this formula until now.

   This is a considerably different understanding of the history of international relations that most of us are taught in high school. The old cliché is that the US was ‘isolationist’ up until World War One.

   According to this wiki, nonintervention is the ethic that comes with the rise of the modern nation state. In fact, as it is described, one could argue that this ethic comprises – that is, it ‘is’ – the modern state.

   Overview

   The concept of nonintervention can be viewed to have emerged from the system of sovereign nation states established by the Peace of Westphalia of 1648. The concept of state sovereignty states that within the territory of a political entity the state is the supreme power, and as such no state from without the territory can intervene, militarily or otherwise, with the internal politics of that state. The full theoretical underpinning of the norm of non-intervention is best discussed through analyzing the principles of sovereignty and the right of political communities to self-determination.

   The article then claims that this ethic was reinforced by the new Liberal Internationalist order (although it makes no mention of that doctrine) that was ushered in with the First World War and was enforced by the new institutions created at that period (Liberal Internationalism has also been called Liberal Institutionalism because it seeks to bring order to international relations via institutions).

   History

   The norm of non-intervention has dominated the majority of international relations, and can be seen to have been one of the principal motivations for the U.S.’s initial non-intervention into World Wars I and II, and the non-intervention of the ‘liberal’ powers in the Spanish Civil War (see Non-Intervention Committee), despite the intervention of Germany and Italy. The norm was then firmly established into international law as one of central tenets of the UN Charter, which established non-intervention as one of the key principles which would underpin the emergent post-WWII peace. This however was somewhat optimistic as the advent of the Cold War led to massive interventions in the domestic politics of a vast number of developing countries among varying pretexts of ‘global socialist revolution’ and ‘containment’ policies in response to it. Through the adoption of such pretexts and the establishment that such interventions were to prevent a threat to ‘international peace and security’ allowed intervention under Chapter VII of the UN Charter (not to mention the impotence of the UN during the Cold War due to both the U.S. and USSR holding veto power in the United Nations Security Council).

   Non-intervention has therefore become encoded in the UN’s formal rules and norms.

   Here is the wiki for ‘United States non-interventionism’.

   Non-interventionism, the diplomatic policy whereby a nation seeks to avoid alliances with other nations in order to avoid being drawn into wars not related to direct territorial self-defense, has had a long history within the United States. Non-interventionism on the part of the United States over the course of its foreign policy, is more of a desire to aggressively protect the United States’ interests than a desire to shun the rest of the world.

   That second sentence is strikingly paradoxical. It continues:

   Non-intervention, sometimes referred to as military non-interventionism, seems to some to be the antithesis of isolationism.[1] Maintaining the participation of the United States in global economic affairs is thought to likely boost trade and expand US diplomacy, in the view of Edward A. Olsen.

   This seems to mean that ‘isolationism’ involves economic self-sufficiency (e.g., North Korea or Cuba), whereas what the US has long pursued is trade, but without alliances or military involvement. That brings us back to the formula given above of ‘isolationism’ = ‘noninterventionism’ + ‘protectionism’.

   Background

   Thomas Paine is generally credited with instilling the first non-interventionist ideas into the American body politic; his work Common Sense contains many arguments in favor of avoiding alliances. These ideas introduced by Paine took such a firm foothold that the Second Continental Congress struggled against forming an alliance with France and only agreed to do so when it was apparent that the American Revolutionary War could be won in no other manner.

   This policy held throughout the 19th century.

   No entangling alliances (19th century)

   President Thomas Jefferson extended Washington’s ideas in his March 4, 1801 inaugural address: “peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.” Jefferson’s phrase “entangling alliances” is, incidentally, sometimes incorrectly attributed to Washington.[2]

   In 1823, President James Monroe articulated what would come to be known as the Monroe Doctrine, which some have interpreted as non-interventionist in intent: “In the wars of the European powers, in matters relating to themselves, we have never taken part, nor does it comport with our policy, so to do. It is only when our rights are invaded, or seriously menaced that we resent injuries, or make preparations for our defense.”

   After Tsar Alexander II put down the 1863 January Uprising in Poland, French Emperor Napoleon III asked the United States to “join in a protest to the Tsar.”[3] Secretary of State William H. Seward declined, “defending ‘our policy of non-intervention — straight, absolute, and peculiar as it may seem to other nations,'” and insisted that “[t]he American people must be content to recommend the cause of human progress by the wisdom with which they should exercise the powers of self-government, forbearing at all times, and in every way, from foreign alliances, intervention, and interference.”[3]

   The United States’ policy of non-intervention was maintained throughout most of the 19th century. The first significant foreign intervention by the US was the Spanish-American War, which saw the US occupy and control the Philippines.

   Some of the examples of non-intervention are seemingly odd.

   20th century non-intervention

   Theodore Roosevelt’s administration is credited with inciting the Panamanian Revolt against Colombia in order to secure construction rights for the Panama Canal (begun in 1904).

   Huh?

   Again, it’s strange that this would be cited as an example of non-interventionism.

   The article concludes by pointing out how non-interventionism is associated with conservatism.

   Conservative policies
   Rathbun (2008) compares three separate themes in conservative policies since the 1980s: conservatism, neoconservatism, and isolationism. These approaches are similar in that they all invoked the mantle of “realism” and pursued foreign policy goals designed to promote national interests. Conservatives, however, were the only group that was “realist” in the academic sense in that they defined the national interest narrowly, strove for balances of power internationally, viewed international relations as amoral, and especially valued sovereignty. By contrast, neoconservatives based their foreign policy on nationalism, and isolationists sought to minimize any involvement in foreign affairs and raise new barriers to immigration.[25] Former Republican Congressman Ron Paul favored a return to the non-interventionist policies of Thomas Jefferson and frequently opposed military intervention in countries like Iran and Iraq.

   It was once seemingly well-known that isolationism is (was?) associated with conservatism, as I pointed out from the first above. But as I said, when you mention isolationism, it seems that Americans today associate it with the left-wing.

   All the rest of this stuff — distinguishing ‘non-interventionism’ from ‘isolationism’ — is new to me.

   The example of the US involvement in creating Panama is intriguing, at least in the way that it is given as an example of ‘nonintervention’.

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9. compare and decide October 1, 2013 at 10:01 am

   Now, let’s go back to the bit on how the US military support of the Panamanian Revolt was cited as an example of US military non-intervention in the Wikipedia article on the American history of non-interventionism.

   That is curious, even Orwellian.

   The following is from the wiki on ‘the separation of Panama from Columbia’. (I will excerpt mainly the parts that refer only to the US.)

   Prelude

   After its independence from Spain on November 28, 1821, Panama became a part of the Republic of Gran Colombia which consisted of today’s Colombia, Venezuela, Panama and Ecuador.

   The political struggle between federalists and centralists that followed independence from Spain resulted in a changing administrative and jurisdictional status for Panama. Under centralism Panama was established as the Department of the Isthmus and during the federalism as Sovereign State of Panama.

   1885 crisis

   In 1846 a treaty between Colombia and United States was signed. In the treaty the United States was obliged to maintain “neutrality” in Panama in exchange for transit rights in the isthmus on behalf of Colombia. In March 1885 Colombia thinned its military presence in Panama by sending troops stationed there to fight rebels in other provinces. These favourable conditions prompted an insurgency in Panama. The United States Navy was sent there to keep order, in light of invoking its obligations according to the treaty being signed in 1846.

   In 1885 the United States occupied the Colombian city of Colón, Panama. Chile, which had by the time the strongest fleet in the Americas, sent the cruiser Esmeralda to occupy Panama City in response. Esmeralda’s captain was ordered to stop by any means an eventual annexation of Panama by the United States.

   The Thousand Days’ War

   In 1903, the United States and Colombia signed the Hay–Herrán Treaty to finalize the construction of the Panama Canal but the process was not achieved because the Colombian congress rejected the measure (which Colombia had proposed) on August 12, 1903. The United States then moved to support the separatist movement in Panama to gain control over the remnants of the French attempt at building a canal.

   Separation

   A United States Navy gunboat, USS Nashville, commanded by Commander John Hubbard, who had also helped to delay the disembarkation of the Colombian troops in Colón, continued to interfere with their mission by alleging that the “neutrality” of the railway had to be respected.

   Reactions

   On November 13, 1903 the United States formally recognized the Republic of Panama (after recognizing it unofficially on November 6 and 7). France did the same on November 14, 1903 followed by other 15 countries. On November 18, 1903 the United States Secretary of State John Hay and Philippe-Jean Bunau-Varilla signed the Hay–Bunau-Varilla Treaty. No Panamanians signed the treaty although Bunau-Varilla was present as the diplomatic representative of Panama (a role he had purchased through financial assistance to the rebels), despite the fact he had not lived in Panama for seventeen years before the incident, and he never returned. The treaty was later approved by the Panamanian government and the Senate of the United States.

   Colombia recognized the sovereignty of Panama in 1921, only after the United States compensated Colombia with US$25 million and a formal apology from US Congress for the intervention in the Panama – Colombia conflict.

   Contrary to the wiki on non-interventionism – which seems to define non-intervention solely in military terms (as opposed to trade) – it turns out there was plenty of US military intervention in the crisis.

   Someone’s got amnesia. Either that, or Wikipedia is schizophrenic. (Or both.)

   Are there any other cases of US military intervention in Latin America?

   Because if the US was militarily involved in the secession of Panama from Columbia, and yet the memory of this intervention is elided and even passed off in Wikipedia as an example of non-intervention, then there might have been much more interventionism on the part of the US prior to the 20th century in a period in which US foreign policy is generally thought to be ‘isolationist’ or ‘non-interventionist’.

   (What we were taught in high school history class might have been quite erroneous.)

   Reply ↓
10. compare and decide October 3, 2013 at 11:18 pm

    Are there any other cases of US military intervention in Latin America?

    Because if the US was militarily involved in the creation of Panama through the dismemberment of Gran Columbia, and yet the memory of this intervention is elided and even passed off in Wikipedia as an example of non-intervention, then there might have been much more interventionism on the part of the US prior to the 20th century in a period in which US foreign policy is generally thought to be ‘isolationist’ or ‘non-interventionist’.
    

    The wiki on ‘Latin American-US relations’ begins with this paragraph.

    During the Cold War era, the United States feared the spread of communism and, in some cases, overthrew democratically elected governments perceived at the time as becoming left-wing or unfriendly to U.S. interests.[1] Examples include the 1954 Guatemalan coup d’état, the 1964 Brazilian coup d’état, the 1973 Chilean coup d’état and the support of the Nicaraguan Contras. The ’70s and ’80s saw a shift of power towards corporations, and a polarization of the political election systems of many of the Latin American nations.

    But following this quote, going back in time to the 19th century, one immediately wades into the Monroe Doctrine.

    19th century to World War I

    The 1823 Monroe Doctrine, which began the United States’ policy of isolationism, deemed it necessary for the United States to refrain from entering into European affairs but to protect Western hemisphere nations from foreign military intervention. The Monroe Doctrine maintained the autonomy of Latin American nations, thereby allowing the United States to impose its economic policies at will.

    Here are the first paragraphs from the wiki on the Monroe Doctrine.

    The Monroe Doctrine was a policy of the United States introduced on December 2, 1823. It stated that further efforts by European nations to colonize land or interfere with states in North or South America would be viewed as acts of aggression, requiring U.S. intervention.[1] At the same time, the doctrine noted that the United States would neither interfere with existing European colonies nor meddle in the internal concerns of European countries. The Doctrine was issued at a time when nearly all Latin American colonies of Spain and Portugal had achieved independence from the Spanish Empire (except Cuba and Puerto Rico) and the Portuguese Empire. The United States, working in agreement with Britain, wanted to guarantee no European power would move in.

    President James Monroe first stated the doctrine during his seventh annual State of the Union Address to Congress. It became a defining moment in the foreign policy of the United States and one of its longest-standing tenets, and would be invoked by many U.S. statesmen and several U.S. presidents, including Theodore Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Ronald Reagan and many others.

    The intent and impact of the Monroe Doctrine persisted with only minor variations for more than a century. Its primary objective was to free the newly independent colonies of Latin America from European intervention and avoid situations which could make the New World a battleground for the Old World powers. The doctrine asserted that the New World and the Old World were to remain distinctly separate spheres of influence, for they were composed of entirely separate and independent nations.

    However, the term “Monroe Doctrine” was not coined until 1853.

    Basically, the doctrine declares to European countries ‘You don’t mess around in our backyard, and we won’t mess around in yours.’

    The original context for the rise of the Monroe Doctrine was a reactionary backlash by central and eastern European monarchs against the democratic revolutions sweeping western Europe in the early 19th century.

    Dexter Perkins wrote that the Monroe Doctrine was inspired by the Napoleonic Wars. The U.S. government feared the victorious European powers that emerged from the Congress of Vienna (1814-1815) would revive the monarchical government. France had already agreed to restore the Spanish Monarchy in exchange for Cuba.[5] As the revolutionary Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815) ended, Prussia, Austria, and Russia formed the Holy Alliance to defend monarchism. In particular, the Holy Alliance authorized military incursions to re-establish Bourbon rule over Spain and its colonies, which were establishing their independence.

    Interestingly, it was the British who initially came up with the Monroe Doctrine and enforced it, and tried to get the Americans to cooperate in pushing other Europeans out of the western hemisphere.

    Great Britain shared the general objective of the Monroe Doctrine, if from an obviously opposite standpoint and ultimate aim, and even wanted to declare a joint statement to keep other European powers from further colonizing the New World. The British under Prime Minister Canning wanted to keep the other European powers out of the New World fearing that its trade with the New World would be harmed if the other European powers further colonized it. In fact, Great Britain, for much of the early years of the Monroe Doctrine, was the sole nation enforcing it through the use of its navy (the United States still lacked sufficient naval capabilities to contribute to the effective enforcement of the doctrine as declared). In 1829, however, despite Britain’s active acquiescence to the Monroe Doctrine and having contributed to its enforcement by keeping foreign powers out of the New World, rumors spread that a group of British merchants tried to strike a deal with Mexico offering $5,000,000 for Texas which would be held under the protection of Great Britain. Ultimately, nothing came of the British merchants’ offer but the rumor was proved to be true — a clear violation of the Monroe Doctrine. Allowing Spain to re-establish control of its former colonies would have cut Great Britain off from its profitable trade with the region. For that reason, Great Britain’s Foreign Minister George Canning proposed to the United States that they mutually declare and enforce a policy of separating the new world from the old. The United States resisted a joint statement because of the recent memory of The War of 1812, leading to the Monroe administration’s unilateral statement.

    However, the immediate provocation was the Russian Ukase of 1821 asserting rights to the Northwest and forbidding non-Russian ships from approaching the coast.

    Because the US was a marginal and militarily weak nation at the time, no country took the Monroe Doctrine seriously when it was announced. The British, however, enforced it because they had the world’s most powerful navy — and because the Monroe Doctrine was really their own idea all along.

    International response

    Because the U.S. lacked both a credible navy and army at the time, the doctrine was largely disregarded internationally.[3] The doctrine, however, met with tacit British approval, and the Royal Navy mostly enforced it tacitly, as part of the wider Pax Britannica, which enforced the neutrality of the seas. This was in line with the developing British policy of laissez-faire free trade against mercantilism. Fast-growing British industry was ever seeking outlets for its manufactured goods, and were the newly independent Latin American states to become Spanish colonies once more, British access to these markets would be cut off by Spanish mercantilist policy.

    It has been said that to some extent there was no ‘American Revolution’, that the American form of government is really mostly the traditional British form of government, and perhaps even that up until relatively recently, the US has been the economic equivalent of an autonomous region of Britain (and that more recently Britain has become in a sense an autonomous region of the US). The history of the Monroe Doctrine might in some ways confirm that interpretation.

    The “Special Relationship”

    The Monroe Doctrine was viewed as a precursor to the “Special Relationship” between the United States and the United Kingdom. Similar to the President Woodrow Wilson’s proposal of a League of Nations nearly 100 years later, Canning’s proposal “defected ideas into the American decision-making process in such a manner that they imperceptibly seemed to be a part of Washington’s own”.

    At the time, Latin Americans found the Monroe Doctrine to be in their self-interest.

    Latin American reaction

    The reaction in Latin America to the Monroe Doctrine was undeniably upbeat. John Crow, author of The Epic of Latin America, states, “Simón Bolívar himself, still in the midst of his last campaign against the Spaniards, Santander in Colombia, Rivadavia in Argentina, Victoria in Mexico—leaders of the emancipation movement everywhere— received Monroe’s words with sincerest gratitude”.[12] Crow argues that the leaders of Latin America were realists. They knew that the President of the United States wielded very little power at the time, particularly without the backing of the British forces. Furthermore, they figured that the Monroe Doctrine was powerless if it stood alone against the Holy Alliance.[12] While they appreciated and praised their support in the north they knew that their future of independence was in the hands of the British and their powerful navy. In 1826, Bolivar called upon his Congress of Panama to host the first “Pan-American” meeting. In the eyes of Bolivar and his men, the Monroe Doctrine was to become nothing more than a tool of national policy. According to Crow, “It was not meant to be, and was never intended to be a charter for concerted hemispheric action”.

    After this period, things started to get complicated.

    Post-Bolivar events

    In 1836, the United States government objected to Britain’s alliance with the newly created Republic of Texas on the principle of the Monroe Doctrine. On December 2, 1845, U.S. President James Polk announced to Congress that the principle of the Monroe Doctrine should be strictly enforced and that the United States should aggressively expand into the West, often termed as Manifest Destiny.

    Ideologically, this would seem to be double-sided or Janus-faced. That is there is a conservative, realist motive for this kind of rapid expansion westward, reflected in the Monroe Doctrine. The following wiki is of the territorial evolution of the US, with the maps showing the North American continent’s political division just after the American Revolution (continue to scroll down to visualize the expansion).

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_evolution_of_the_United_States#18th_century

    What is now the US was comprised mostly at the time of the territories of Britain, Spain and Russia (Alaska). One would expect a nation state – especially one with what had been at that time a revolutionary democratic political system – to secure its frontiers against threats.

    But there was also an idealistic side, expressed in the idea of ‘Manifest Destiny’. From the wiki:

    In the United States in the 19th century, Manifest Destiny was the widely held belief that American settlers were destined to expand across the continent. Miller argues:

    Historians have for the most part agreed that there are three basic themes to Manifest Destiny.
    1. The special virtues of the American people and their institutions;
    2. America’s mission to redeem and remake the world in the image of America;
    3. A divine destiny under God’s direction to accomplish this wonderful task.

    Historian Frederick Merk said this concept was born out of “A sense of mission to redeem the Old World by high example […] generated by the potentialities of a new earth for building a new heaven”.

    It is interesting how this kind of idealistic rhetoric mirrors the Liberal Internationalism of the Democratic Party in the 20th century in its quest to democratize the world.

    It is also interesting how the idea of the US as a utopia that would lead the world through its example evolved into a territorially expansionist program. But it has been asserted that a vast swath of Americans, perhaps the overwhelming majority, and their political leaders never really bought into this utopian vision. But it has nevertheless had a huge impact on US foreign policy.

    Historians have emphasized that “Manifest Destiny” was a contested concept–many prominent Americans (such as Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses Grant and most Whigs and Republicans) rejected it. Historian Daniel Walker Howe wrote, “Nevertheless American imperialism did not represent an American consensus; it provoked bitter dissent within the national polity.”[3] Nationwide, probably most Democrats supported Manifest Destiny and most Whigs strongly opposed it.

    Manifest Destiny provided the rhetorical tone for the largest acquisition of U.S. territory. It was used by Democrats in the 1840s to justify the war with Mexico and it was also used to divide half of Oregon with Great Britain. But Manifest Destiny always limped along because of its internal limitations and the issue of slavery, said Merk. It never became a national priority. By 1843 John Quincy Adams, originally a major supporter, had changed his mind and repudiated Manifest Destiny because it meant the expansion of slavery in Texas.

    Merk concluded:

    From the outset Manifest Destiny—vast in program, in its sense of continentalism—was slight in support. It lacked national, sectional, or party following commensurate with its magnitude. The reason was it did not reflect the national spirit. The thesis that it embodied nationalism, found in much historical writing, is backed by little real supporting evidence.

    The belief in an American mission to promote and defend democracy throughout the world, as expounded by Thomas Jefferson and his “Empire of Liberty”, Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, Douglas MacArthur (regarding the American rebuilding of Japan), and George W. Bush, continues to have an influence on American political ideology.

    Interestingly, the attitude toward the American Indians expressed by Americans at the time does not seem to have the same hostility, paranoia or fear that Americans had toward the great European powers. That would seem remarkably out of sorts with how the American attitude toward Native Americans has been portrayed in later literature and movies (e.g., either movies that are hostile or sympathetic toward Native Americans). On the other hand, there seems to be no real concern or respect for Native Americans.

    To end the War of 1812 John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay and Albert Gallatin (former Treasury Secretary and a leading expert on Indians) and the other American diplomats negotiated the Treaty of Ghent in 1814 with Britain. They rejected the British plan to set up an Indian state in U.S. territory south of the Great Lakes. They explained the American policy toward acquisition of Indian lands:

    The United States, while intending never to acquire lands from the Indians otherwise than peaceably, and with their free consent, are fully determined, in that manner, progressively, and in proportion as their growing population may require, to reclaim from the state of nature, and to bring into cultivation every portion of the territory contained within their acknowledged boundaries. In thus providing for the support of millions of civilized beings, they will not violate any dictate of justice or of humanity; for they will not only give to the few thousand savages scattered over that territory an ample equivalent for any right they may surrender, but will always leave them the possession of lands more than they can cultivate, and more than adequate to their subsistence, comfort, and enjoyment, by cultivation. If this be a spirit of aggrandizement, the undersigned are prepared to admit, in that sense, its existence; but they must deny that it affords the slightest proof of an intention not to respect the boundaries between them and European nations, or of a desire to encroach upon the territories of Great Britain. . . . They will not suppose that that Government will avow, as the basis of their policy towards the United States a system of arresting their natural growth within their own territories, for the sake of preserving a perpetual desert for savages.

    In a sense, the American Indians seem to have suffered ‘collateral damage’ from the American efforts to keep Europeans from the continent(s). Indeed, Manifest Destiny and expansionism could be seen to be a product of the Monroe Doctrine. (In an alternate reality, if Europeans had been too preoccupied in Europe to seek to colonize the western hemisphere – with, say, a revived Turkish Empire driving deep into central and southern Europe – then perhaps the US might not have expanded westward and southward so rapidly or even at all. After all, American democracy would have been secure if Europe retreated into itself.)

    The Monroe Doctrine and manifest destiny were closely related ideas: historian Walter McDougall calls manifest destiny a corollary of the Monroe Doctrine, because while the Monroe Doctrine did not specify expansion, expansion was necessary in order to enforce the Doctrine. Concerns in the United States that European powers (especially Great Britain) were seeking to acquire colonies or greater influence in North America led to calls for expansion in order to prevent this. In his influential 1935 study of manifest destiny, Albert Weinberg wrote that “the expansionism of the [1830s] arose as a defensive effort to forestall the encroachment of Europe in North America”.

    The wiki on ‘Manifest Destiny’ then concludes on a couple of notes. At the end of the 19th century, there was no more room for the US to expand, and so there was a shift to intervention. The goal became to transform Europe rather than to just protect the western hemisphere from Europe.

    Later usage

    After the turn of the nineteenth century to the twentieth, the phrase manifest destiny declined in usage, as territorial expansion ceased to be promoted as being a part of America’s “destiny”. Under President Theodore Roosevelt the role of the United States in the New World was defined, in the 1904 Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, as being an “international police power” to secure American interests in the Western Hemisphere. Roosevelt’s corollary contained an explicit rejection of territorial expansion. In the past, manifest destiny had been seen as necessary to enforce the Monroe Doctrine in the Western Hemisphere, but now expansionism had been replaced by interventionism as a means of upholding the doctrine.

    President Woodrow Wilson continued the policy of interventionism in the Americas, and attempted to redefine both manifest destiny and America’s “mission” on a broader, worldwide scale. Wilson led the United States into World War I with the argument that “The world must be made safe for democracy.” In his 1920 message to Congress after the war, Wilson stated:

    …I think we all realize that the day has come when Democracy is being put upon its final test. The Old World is just now suffering from a wanton rejection of the principle of democracy and a substitution of the principle of autocracy as asserted in the name, but without the authority and sanction, of the multitude. This is the time of all others when Democracy should prove its purity and its spiritual power to prevail. It is surely the manifest destiny of the United States to lead in the attempt to make this spirit prevail.

    This was the only time a president had used the phrase “manifest destiny” in his annual address. Wilson’s version of manifest destiny was a rejection of expansionism and an endorsement (in principle) of self-determination, emphasizing that the United States had a mission to be a world leader for the cause of democracy. This U.S. vision of itself as the leader of the “Free World” would grow stronger in the 20th century after World War II, although rarely would it be described as “manifest destiny”, as Wilson had done.

    Today, in standard scholarly usage, manifest destiny describes a past era in American history, particularly the 1840s. However, the term is sometimes used by the political left and by critics of U.S. foreign policy to characterize interventions in the Middle East and elsewhere. In this usage, manifest destiny is interpreted as the underlying cause of what is perceived by some as “American imperialism”.

    The legacy is a complex one. The belief in an American mission to promote and defend democracy throughout the world, as expounded by Thomas Jefferson and his “Empire of Liberty”, and by Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson and George W. Bush,[68] continues to have an influence on American political ideology.[69][70] Bush looked at the American success after 1945 in imposing democracy in Japan as a model. Under Douglas MacArthur, the Americans “were imbued with a sense of manifest destiny” says historian John Dower.[71]

    The Monroe Doctrine was (mis)appropriated by certain European observers.

    German Lebensraum

    German geographer Friedrich Ratzel visited North America beginning in 1873[72] and saw the effects of American manifest destiny.[73] Ratzel sympathized with the results of “manifest destiny”, but he never used the term. Instead he relied on the Frontier Thesis of Frederick Jackson Turner.[74] Ratzel promoted overseas colonies for Germany in Asia and Africa, but not an expansion into Slavic lands.[75] Later German publicists misinterpreted Ratzel to argue for the right of the German race to expand within Europe; that notion was later incorporated into Nazi ideology, as Lebensraum.[73] Harriet Wanklyn (1961) argues that Ratzel’s theory was designed to advance science, and that politicians distorted it for political goals.

    In sum, what ‘isolationism’ seems to mean in US history is the US not getting involved in European affairs, with the quid pro quo or tradeoff that Europe stay out of the Western hemisphere. But this policy that is non-interventionist toward Europe involves policing and intervening militarily in Latin America. This policy also involves the US expanding west and south into territories that are ‘unoccupied’ – that is, not occupied by Western peoples – in order to fill the (supposed) vacuum and keep out Europeans. But eventually, in the early 20th century, there is a military interventionist turn toward Europe by the US, in order to purge Europe of the authoritarian regimes that (supposedly) threaten the western hemisphere.

    (One question that comes to mind is how a geographic notion of corruption or contamination influenced the willingness of the US to get involved in a region. The European stereotype of the New World in the Age of Exploration was that everything civilized upon entering the Americas breaks down and becomes corrupt; here I am thinking of Herzog’s movie ‘Fitzcaraldo’. Thomas Jefferson’s reaction to this was that it was the Old World that was corrupt and decadent, and that it was Americans who were innocent, virtuous and energetic; perhaps the 19th century novels of Henry James express this best. But to what extent did this kind of understanding change in the US in the 19th century with the colonization of Africa? After all, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness came out in 1899; it’s a condemnation of imperialism, but also portrays Africa as hopelessly backward and corrupt, a place worth avoiding altogether – and so perhaps Europe becomes a place more attractive for US intervention. There is another shift in this geography of decay with the revising of Heart of Darkness into the 1979 film Apocalypse Now; again, imperialism is cast as immoral, but the society being colonized is characterized as hopelessly savage and worth avoiding.)

    Reply ↓
11. compare and decide November 4, 2013 at 10:23 pm

    We are often given to understand that with the First World War, the US turned away from a policy of isolationism toward intervention abroad (Internationalism).

    But that does not seem to be true (at least, according to Wikipedia). Instead, it seems that the US (along with the British) intervened militarily in Latin America as a part of an established, explicit policy of keeping Europeans out of the western hemisphere (the Monroe Doctrine) and also expanded westward (and southward and northward) in an effort to dislodge Europeans from North America (Manifest Destiny).

    So there is no change in policy, but rather merely a change of geography. Latin America was a buffer zone for the Americans, and then later Western Europe and Northeast Asia along with Oceania (Australia and New Zealand) also became buffer zones.

    This is classic sphere of interest politics. From the wiki:

    In the field of international relations, a sphere of influence (SOI) is a spatial region or concept division over which a state or organization has a level of cultural, economic, military, or political exclusivity, accommodating to the interests of powers outside the sphere is the state that controls it.

    This is not necessarily a formal relationship.

    While there may be a formal alliance or other treaty obligations between the influence and influencer, such formal arrangements are not necessary and the influence can often be more of an example of soft power. Similarly, a formal alliance does not necessarily mean that one country lies within another’s sphere of influence. High levels of exclusivity have historically been associated with higher levels of conflict.

    It can become a relationship of complete subordination.

    In more extreme cases, a country within the “sphere of influence” of another may become a subsidiary of that state and serve in effect as a satellite state or de facto colony. The system of spheres of influence by which powerful nations intervene in the affairs of others continues to the present. It is often analyzed in terms of superpowers, great powers, and/or middle powers.

    For example, during the height of its existence in World War II, the Japanese Empire had quite a large sphere of influence. The Japanese government directly governed events in Korea, Vietnam, Taiwan, and parts of China. The “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere” could thus be quite easily drawn on a map of the Pacific Ocean as a large “bubble” surrounding the islands of Japan and the Asian and Pacific nations it controlled.

    Not all countries exist within a distinct sphere of influence even in a straightforwardly colonial situation. For example, Thailand was the only country in the world not colonized by Europeans because it lay on the faultline between the British and French empires and could diplomatically play the two sides off. Conversely, a single country like Germany after WWII (or Italy from the collapse of the Roman Empire until the 20th century) can be divided by various spheres of influence.

    Sometimes portions of a single country can fall into two distinct spheres of influence. In the colonial era the buffer states of Iran and Thailand, lying between the empires of Britain/Russia and Britain/France respectively, were divided between the spheres of influence of the imperial powers. Likewise, after World War II, Germany was divided into four occupation zones, which later consolidated into West Germany and East Germany, the former a member of NATO and the latter a member of the Warsaw Pact.

    This Wikipedia article links with another on Lateral Pressure Theory.

    “Lateral pressure” refers to any tendency (or propensity) of individuals and societies to expand their activities and exert influence and control beyond their established boundaries, whether for economic, political, military, scientific, religious, or other purposes (Choucri and North, 1972; 1975; Ashley, 1980; Choucri and North, 1989; North, 1990; Choucri, North and Yamakage, 1992; Lofdahl, 2000). Framed by Robert C. North and Nazli Choucri, the theory addresses the sources and consequences of such a tendency.

    Lateral pressure is a relatively neutral concept similar to what Pitrim Sorokin (1957: 565) called economic expansion and Simon Kuznets (1966, 334-348) referred to more broadly as outward expansion. The strength of a country’s lateral pressure is generally taken to correlate positively with its “power” as conventionally understood. The theory of lateral pressure draws on the level of analysis or Image perspective in international relations (Boulding 1956; Waltz (1979) largely as an initial framing and extends this traditional perspective in specific ways.

    In simple language, wealthy, powerful countries tend to expand their influence.

    In fact, this whole theory (fancy language and all) seems like an effort to give the study of international relations the systematic, objective quality of a natural science, like physics. For example, the master variables for state behavior in this theory are population, resources and technology. There is no mention of ideology (although presumably some ideological orientations determine master variables, e.g., the economic difference between North and South Korea).

    That’s stunning. That implies that all states behave the same in the international arena, depending on how rich and powerful they are, not according to their beliefs. All relatively powerful states will form a sphere of influence for themselves, and these spheres of influence will eventually bump up against spheres of influence of other states (war).

    Lateral Pressure theory seeks to explain the relationships between domestic growth and international behavior. The causal logic runs from the internal drivers, the master variables that shape the profiles of states — through the intervening effects of socially aggregated and articulated demands and institutional capabilities — toward modes of external behavior designed to meet demands given the capabilities at hand (Choucri and North, 1989). To the extent that states extend their behavior outside territorial boundaries – driven by a wide range of capabilities and motivations – they are likely to encounter other states similarly engaged. Intersection among spheres of influence is thus the first step of the dynamics leading to conflict and violence. The subsequent developments are contingent on the actors‘ intents, capabilities, and activities. Framed thus, the theory addresses the sources and consequences of transformation and change in international relations.

    This might not be completely true, however. Everything that we have reviewed so far suggests that the US expanded rapidly in the 19th century (especially under President Polk) and became involved in Latin American affairs not because it simply could (because the US was populous, wealthy and modernized), but rather because there was an explicit fear of major European powers establishing a presence in the western hemisphere. True, this oft stated fear might have been a pretense to expand. But so far not one historical voice, critical of US expansion/hegemony or otherwise, has asserted that. (In fact, one can generalize this defensive motive for expansion; e.g., the British developed a great navy that they used to colonize the earth not primarily for the purpose of colonization, but in order to defend Britain from European great powers and from the Turks.)

    Nevertheless, this rather dry, banal theory is therefore devastating in its implications for cultures that feel that they are different and exceptional from other countries, especially with regard to their role on the world stage. That is, this otherwise technocratic (and seemingly positivistic) theory that comports with mainstream, Establishment political science contains a kernel of critical understanding that can challenge the status quo in some respects.

    From the wiki on Exceptionalism.

    Exceptionalism is the perception that a country, society, institution, movement, or time period is “exceptional” (i.e., unusual or extraordinary) in some way and thus does not need to conform to normal rules or general principles. Used in this sense, the term reflects a belief formed by lived experience, ideology, perceptual frames, or perspectives influenced by knowledge of historical or comparative circumstances.
    …
    Many countries of all kinds have claimed exceptionality, including the modern United States, Britain, India, Imperial Japan, Iran, Spain, the USSR, North Korea, France and Germany. Historians have added many other cases, including historic empires such as ancient Rome, the Ottoman Empire and China, along with a wide range of minor kingdoms in history.

    In the broad scheme of things, specialness is an illusion. Values and ideals among groups and individuals may differ, but everyone behaves in remarkably similar ways.

    There is then a fascinating implication of an approach like Lateral Pressure Theory in the social sciences. It seems to be ‘positivistic’, that is, it spurns subjectivity and values and so forth.

    From the wiki on ‘positivism’:

    Positivism is a philosophy of science based on the view that information derived from logical and mathematical treatments and reports of sensory experience is the exclusive source of all authoritative knowledge,[1] and that there is valid knowledge (truth) only in scientific knowledge.[2] Verified data received from the senses are known as empirical evidence.[1] This view holds that society, like the physical world, operates according to general laws. Introspective and intuitive knowledge is rejected. Although the positivist approach has been a recurrent theme in the history of Western thought,[3] the modern sense of the approach was developed by the philosopher and founding sociologist Auguste Comte in the early 19th century.[4] Comte argued that, much as the physical world operates according to gravity and other absolute laws, so also does society.

    The irony is that a seemingly positivistic theory like LPT, modeled after the rigor of the natural sciences, is simply inaccurate (it does not adequately take into account motives). The double irony is that it is nonetheless powerfully critical in its effect, in that it challenges basic and widespread assumptions that are ‘sacred cows’ (exceptionalism).

    Reply ↓
12. compare and decide November 6, 2013 at 8:04 pm

    Let’s get back to Syria (which is where I had intended to take this from the start).

    The old story that students are taught in high school is that with American involvement in the First World War, the US turned from isolationism to (Liberal) Internationalism. The debate over intervention abroad indeed does seem to be between old-fashioned conservative isolationists (like Obama) and Liberal Internationalists (like John McCain and John Kerry, and, to some extent, George W. Bush).

    But on closer inspection, the US has always had a foreign policy that was simultaneously isolationist AND interventionist. In the 19th century, Latin America was the US’s sphere of influence that was declared out of bounds for Europeans, while the Americans swore off involvement in Europe. During the Cold War, Western Europe, Japan, South Korea and Oceania became the US’s sphere of influence, while Eastern Europe was ultimately recognized by the US as the Soviet’s sphere of influence (Americans paid lip service to supporting revolts in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, but backed off when the rebels were crushed by the Russians).

    One issue to keep in mind is the motive for the creation of a sphere of influence. Great powers tend to impose themselves on smaller, poorer countries (this is the basic tenet of Lateral Pressure Theory). But great powers tend to have a dread of other great powers, and seek to minimize the possibility of war with each other by having buffer states, but not necessarily just for the sake of having a little country it can boss around (e.g., Switzerland has long served as a buffer state for great powers, but as a neutral state, which other states largely wanted to remain neutral). Fear of other great powers could be the primary motive for the creation of spheres of influence. Importantly, this fear could be the only ethical justification for the domination of other nation states (since the modern nation state is defined by its claim that it is a realm of non-interference from outside forces). That is, the country that dominates a sphere of influence in some respects has a right to do so out of self-defense against a great power that lies outside of that sphere, and because it is simultaneously protecting the countries that it is dominating.

    Another issue is that the US’s spheres of influence have continued to grow.

    The Middle East has become a formal American sphere of influence since at least the 1970s.

    This is made explicit in the so-called ‘Carter doctrine’.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carter_Doctrine

    The Carter Doctrine was a policy proclaimed by President of the United States Jimmy Carter in his State of the Union Address on January 23, 1980, which stated that the United States would use military force if necessary to defend its national interests in the Persian Gulf.
    It was a response to the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, and was intended to deter the Soviet Union—the United States’ Cold War adversary—from seeking hegemony in the Gulf.
    The following key sentence, which was written by Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter’s National Security Adviser, concludes the section:

    Let our position be absolutely clear: An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.

    Brzezinski modeled the wording on the Truman Doctrine,[1] and insisted that the sentence be included in the speech “to make it very clear that the Soviets should stay away from the Persian Gulf”.

    In The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power, author Daniel Yergin notes that the Carter Doctrine “bore striking similarities” to a 1903 British declaration, in which British Foreign Secretary Lord Landsdowne warned Russia and Germany that the British would “regard the establishment of a naval base or of a fortified port in the Persian Gulf by any other power as a very grave menace to British interests, and we should certainly resist it with all the means at our disposal”.

    This doctrine was informed by at least three other foreign policy doctrines that preceded it, those of Truman, Eisenhower and Nixon.

    From the wiki of the Truman Doctrine.

    The Truman Doctrine was an international relations policy set forth by the U.S. President Harry Truman in a speech[1] on March 12, 1947, which stated that the U.S. would support Greece and Turkey with economic and military aid to prevent them from falling into the Soviet sphere.[2] Historians often consider it as the start of the Cold War, and the start of the containment policy to stop Soviet expansion.[3] President Harry S. Truman told Congress the Doctrine was “to support free people who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.”[4] Truman reasoned, because these “totalitarian regimes” coerced “free peoples”, they represented a threat to international peace and the national security of the United States. Truman made the plea amid the crisis of the Greek Civil War (1946–1949). He argued that if Greece and Turkey did not receive the aid that they urgently needed, they would inevitably fall to communism with grave consequences throughout the region. Because Turkey and Greece were historic rivals, it was necessary to help both equally, even though the threat to Greece was more immediate.

    Importantly, it is not just outside (Soviet) forces that the Truman doctrine sought to oppose in Greece and Turkey, but insurgents, although during the Cold War the operational assumption was that the leftwing everywhere were puppets of the Soviets.

    From the wiki of the Eisenhower Doctrine.

    The term Eisenhower Doctrine refers to a speech by President Dwight David Eisenhower on 5 January 1957, within a “Special Message to the Congress on the Situation in the Middle East”. Under the Eisenhower Doctrine, a country could request American economic assistance or aid from U.S. military forces if it was being threatened by armed aggression from another state.[1] Eisenhower singled out the Soviet threat in his doctrine by authorizing the commitment of U.S. forces “to secure and protect the territorial integrity and political independence of such nations, requesting such aid against overt armed aggression from any nation controlled by international communism.”

    Again, although the doctrine opposes any state in the Middle East that acts aggressively toward its neighbor(s), it is understood that this aggressive state is simply a proxy or dupe of the Soviet Union (‘international communism’). (Both communist Yugoslavia and later communist China turned against the Soviet Union and in some sense became allies with the West, so the Cold War was not necessarily purely ideological; it was classic great-power politics, same as it always was.)

    Finally, the wiki on the Nixon Doctrine.

    The Nixon Doctrine (also known as the Guam Doctrine) was put forth during a “Silent Majority” speech in a press conference in Guam on July 25, 1969 by U.S. President Richard Nixon. According to Gregg Brazinsky,[1] Nixon stated that “the United States would assist in the defense and developments of allies and friends,” but would not “undertake all the defense of the free nations of the world.” This doctrine meant that each ally nation was in charge of its own security in general, but the United States would act as a nuclear umbrella when requested. The Doctrine argued for the pursuit of peace through a partnership with American allies. The Nixon Doctrine implied the intentions of Richard Nixon shifting the direction on international policies in Asia, especially aiming for “Vietnamization of the Vietnam War.”

    A more specific breakdown of the Nixon Doctrine:

    In Nixon’s own words (Address to the Nation on the War in Vietnam November 3, 1969):

    1. First, the United States will keep all of its treaty commitments.
    2. Second, we shall provide a shield if a nuclear power threatens the freedom of a nation allied with us or of a nation whose survival we consider vital to our security.
    3. Third, in cases involving other types of aggression, we shall furnish military and economic assistance when requested in accordance with our treaty commitments. But we shall look to the nation directly threatened to assume the primary responsibility of providing the manpower for its defense.

    This doctrine would seem to be double-sided. On the one hand, the US would not commit itself militarily to all non-communist (‘free’) nations, although it would use the threat of nuclear retaliation to protect formal allies (e.g., NATO states); nations like South Vietnam would have to learn to fight for themselves.

    On the other hand, this opened to door to massive weapons sales to countries that were, unlike the Europeans and the Japanese, not formal allies of the US under US nuclear protection (e.g., rightwing dictatorships in the Middle East and Asia). That is, the US was retreating from the world, and compensated through weapon sales to anti-communist states.

    The Doctrine was also applied by the Nixon administration in the Persian Gulf region, with military aid to Iran and Saudi Arabia.[3] According to author Michael Klare,[4] application of the Nixon Doctrine “opened the floodgates” of U.S. military aid to allies in the Persian Gulf, and helped set the stage for the Carter Doctrine and for the subsequent direct U.S. military involvement of the Gulf War and the Iraq War. Not only for Middle East regions, but it applied to other Asian countries such as Philippines, Thailand, South Vietnam, South Korea, and others which might be threatened by Communist aggression.[5] For example, Nixon Doctrine was applied to Foreign Policy of the United States on South Korea, and 20,000 of 61,000 American soldiers were evacuated from Korea until June, 1971.

    This policy change was due not just to changes in public opinion (especially among the older US voters) toward the Vietnam War, but also to the decline of the US economy.

    Nixon was president when a resolution of the Vietnam War was essentially mandatory due to growing public opinion in favor of withdrawal;[7] A Gallup poll in May showed 56% of the public believed sending troops to Vietnam was a mistake. Of those over 50 years old, 61% expressed that belief, compared to 49% of those between 21 and 29 years old, even if tacit abandonment of the SEATO Treaty was ultimately required, resulting in a complete communist takeover of South Vietnam despite previous US guarantees.[8]

    US retreat from unconditional defense guarantees to lesser allies in general was driven as much by financial concerns[9] as by policy re-examination of strategic and foreign policy objectives, reflected in Nixon’s goals of detente and nuclear arms control with the Soviet Union, and establishment of formal diplomatic relations with Communist China. As a consequence of this shift, direct sales of weaponry[10] to nations no longer under the nuclear umbrella of previous US security guarantees dramatically increased as US guarantees were withdrawn.

    Again, back to Syria. Even by the standards of the Carter Doctrine, which assumes that the Middle East is an American sphere of influence, involvement in Syria cannot be justified. First, Syria (unlike Saudi Arabia) is not a nation of vital importance to the US; that is, Syria is not essential to American self-interest (national survival). Second, Syria is not under threat from an outside major power, namely the Soviet Union. In fact, the Soviet Union no longer exists (indeed, Russia is a major oil exporter that has no economic interest in the Middle East, although it is an ally of the Syrian regime).

    There is a complication to this argument, however, thanks to Ronald Reagan.

    This would be the “Reagan Corollary to the Carter Doctrine”. Reagan argued for protecting Saudi Arabia from other Middle Eastern countries, not just from the Soviets.

    Carter’s successor, Ronald Reagan, extended the policy in October 1981 with what is sometimes called the “Reagan Corollary to the Carter Doctrine”, which proclaimed that the United States would intervene to protect Saudi Arabia, whose security was threatened after the Iran–Iraq War’s outbreak. Thus, while the Carter Doctrine warned away outside forces from the region, the Reagan Corollary pledged to secure internal stability. According to diplomat Howard Teicher, “with the enunciation of the Reagan Corollary, the policy ground work was laid for Operation Desert Storm”.

    The US launched the Gulf War in 1990 to expel Iraq from Kuwait on the grounds of the Reagan Corollary. First, Iraq was a threat to Saudi Arabia, its neighbor. Second, while not a great global power external to the Middle East, Iraq was a regional power that threatened the vital interests of the US and its treaty allies. So both the abstract conditions of 1) fighting aggression, and 2) protecting US interests were satisfied in the Gulf War, in line with the Carter Doctrine and with, by extension, the foreign policy history stretching back to the Monroe Doctrine.

    How would this apply to Syria? As a civil war, both sides of the war have essentially declared themselves representatives of the Syrian state (and neither side can probably compromise, it seems to be a fight to the death). This complicates things because there is no whole, integrated state government in Syria (unlike Kuwait) that is under attack by a neighbor. Iran and Hezbollah are helping Assad, and Saudi Arabia and Israel are helping the opposition, again, both of whom claim to be the Syrian state. Again, it seems that US involvement in Syria would not be justified.

    European great powers were at one time global superpowers. Today, only the US can project its power globally. There are rising regional powers like Russia, China and India. But even they are implicitly complicit with American power, and it with them. The Reagan Corollary therefore becomes more important than the Carter Doctrine. But who is going to invade Saudi Arabia? Iraq really does not exist anymore either (in some respect, it has become a confederacy of three different countries, Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish). The Reagan Corollary then becomes irrelevant.

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