In his response
to our article “Neoconservatism
Is Not Reaganism” (posted Tuesday under the headline, “Would
Ronald Reagan Have Attacked Iraq?”), Peter Wallison evinces a
keen eye for the humorous. We had supposed that the spectrum of
arguments for attacking Iraq was filled. We were wrong. He offers
us genuinely new reasons, namely that “its population was
well-educated, relatively secular in outlook…and most likely to
be capable of self-government.” Neither of us has yet heard the
administration make this argument but, as the chaos in Iraq
deepens, this deft insight will, no doubt, inspire administration
wordsmiths. We congratulate Mr. Wallison on getting there first.
To turn to more serious matters, Mr. Wallison is right to say
that any attempt to judge how Reagan would have reacted to 9/11
is necessarily speculative. But our speculation is not
self-willed. A central claim of the neoconservative advocates of
war was, as we document, that their policy was “Reaganite.” Their
purpose in doing so is to assert that their vision and, more
importantly, their force-based methodology represent the new
orthodoxy of Republican foreign policy. Through this marketing
device, they wish to preempt debate among Republicans about
post-9/11 policy. Our purpose is to show that they have gotten
their history wrong and that the true lesson of the Reagan era is
that ideas are effective only when they are properly balanced
with interests — which the neoconservative-driven policy in the
Middle East has clearly failed to do.
In fact, today’s neoconservatives not only separate themselves
from mainstream Republican thought on national security matters,
they are an aberration; they reject a half-century of
risk-sensitive, alliance-oriented, multilateral policy that has
characterized American interaction with the world and
successfully promoted American objectives since World War II.
Moreover, with reference to the issue at hand, rather than
installing a “beacon of democracy” in the region, they have
contrived to demonstrate the limits of American power, rendering
American military and diplomatic policy dysfunctional in a region
that respects strength — and that is a miscalculation for which
we shall pay dearly.
Mr. Wallison appears to miss another critical part of our
argument: namely that methods used are every bit as
important as objectives sought. Perhaps this is why he
has devoted so much space to lengthy quotes of Reagan and Bush,
seeking to identify rhetorical continuities in the aspirations
expressed by Bush and Reagan. This is easy to do, but it means
that Mr. Wallison ends by addressing the wrong questions.
Over the years the central question for American foreign policy
has not been what Americans see as desirable outcomes. From Teddy
Roosevelt onward, the rhetorical goals of American foreign policy
have been remarkably consistent: a commitment to liberty and
freedom, the virtues of market-democracy, the universal
applicability of the Bill of Rights. There is a century-long,
rock solid consensus on these goals. As for Mr. Wallison’s
argument that Reagan and Bush uniquely used this rhetoric for
offensive rather than defensive purposes, has our interlocutor
forgotten the bold, forward-leaning statements of the Truman
doctrine? Also, a quick look at Kennedy’s “pay any price, bear
any burden” speech or Carter’s 1977 Notre Dame speech (which
caused the hair of many a totalitarian militarist to stand on
end) should quickly disabuse him of this assertion.
Facts matter. History matters. It is crucial that we not permit a
casual rewriting of events for the sake of ideological
convenience. We are told to live in the past is to be blind in
one eye; to forget the past is to be blind in both.
THE CORE OF THE DEBATE is thus not about ends — we all want a
freer, more democratic, less evil world — but about means.
Perhaps we have a practitioners’ bias against ideology, but our
experience suggests that if foreign policy success lay in giving
speeches, then all the desiderata contained in the
neoconservative speechifying quoted at length by Mr. Wallison
would be today’s reality. In fact, events cruelly present
something quite different: these noble aspirations have turned to
dust amidst an unacceptable sacrifice of American credibility,
blood, and treasure.
There is no escape to the question: What methods most effectively
and efficiently achieve the nation’s objectives? This is critical
in understanding the Reagan legacy. The neoconservatives
(succinctly defined in our article, pace Wallison, as
“Wilsonians with guns”) misread the Reagan military build-up —
and Wallison repeats this error — to justify their use of
military force as the preferred option of policy.
In fact, the Soviet Union was consigned to history without a
single hostile sortie by NATO — and remember that the Reagan
years coincided with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and
upheaval in Eastern Europe. In terms of foreign policy, the
leitmotif of the second Reagan administration is one of
negotiation. This is extraordinarily significant. Mr. Wallison
treats this as though it were something routine (“well-understood
principles” are his words). This is an improper — and in
neoconservative hands, willful — misunderstanding. To get this
wrong is to fundamentally misunderstand the delicate balance of
Reagan’s political-military policy. Mr. Wallison chides us for
suggesting that Reagan was “averse to military action.” Well, if
he was not, where is his evidence? We have set out the Reagan
military record as it is usually recorded in the history books.
Was there a parallel universe in which Reagan was constantly
sending Americans into battle? If so, Mr. Wallison should
identify it.
Mr. Wallison falls into the tired and emotional refrain of
arguing that since Reagan never experienced an attack on the U.S.
homeland, it cannot be said that he would not have attacked Iraq.
Surely the issue is that had Reagan been in the same position as
Bush: (a) believing — as Bob Woodward records Bush as doing —
that the intelligence on Iraq’s possession of WMD was
unconvincing; (b) seeing only the most tenuous evidence about
Saddam’s operational links with al-Qaeda; and (c) hearing
consistent doubts expressed by the secretary of state, among the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, and at CIA that Iraq posed a direct threat
to the United States, Reagan’s record indicates that he would
have moved much more deliberately. He would have either resolved
the doubts or not initiated military action. Reagan’s attack on
Libya in 1986 was preceded by a painstaking intelligence analysis
that linked the Libyan intelligence service to the deaths of two
American servicemen without doubt. Likewise, Reagan’s attack on
Grenada proceeded only when there was incontrovertible evidence
of that government’s political-military relationship with the
Castro regime and after it was clear that American lives on the
island were in imminent danger. Further, the brief deployment of
Marines to Beirut hardly makes the point in favor of military
adventurism.
In short, we are grateful to Mr. Wallison for taking our argument
sufficiently seriously to seek to counter it. The debate will no
doubt continue. But we should remind ourselves of its hard edge.
While the social and economic benefits of market-democracy
coupled with Reagan’s cautious optimism gave buoyancy to
dissidents throughout the Soviet system producing the Havels and
Walesas, the neoconservative approach to “democracy” delivered on
the back of a Humvee has produced a reawakened Iraqi nationalism
and a resurgence of world-wide anti-Americanism. Under
neoconservative stewardship, the achievement of America’s goals
is further away than ever. That is their true indictment which,
we doubt, even Mr. Wallison will wish to excuse.
