Rural Ruminations

[Originally published in the Burlington Free Press.]

The Burlington Free Press headline “Vermont split on Iraq” on October 30^th, which reports the results of a poll on Iraq, conveys a largely erroneous message because it misses the main finding of the poll in question.

The important thing here is not that Vermont is split, but that Vermont is populated by people who support “diplomatic efforts only” (31%), doing “nothing” (13%), military activity “only with UN backing” (40%) and “not sure” (6%) for a total of 90% percent who do not agree with the 10% who think the U.S. should “launch a military strike on its own”.

And that is the real issue here:  There will inevitably be major negative consequences for the United States if we take action against Iraq without U.N. cover.  Let’s make two stipulations:  Saddam is a thoroughly evil person and the world would undoubtedly be better off without him.

The question of unilateral action is the key because it has the potential to create the following disasters for the U.S.:

• A unilateral attack, despite the fact that most Muslims thoroughly dislike and fear Saddam, will move Muslim fence sitters toward the radical fundamentalists against the U.S. and very likely prompt many of them to join the jihad against the secular West.
• It will greatly increase instability.  The northern Iraqi Kurds, who have long sought their own country, will cause instability in Turkey and Iran where there are major Kurdish populations who would join them.  The Shiites in the South may find advantage in joining with Iran’s Shiites.
• Unelected governments (our “friends”) in the Muslim world will find it even more difficult to contain the growing fundamentalist Muslim discontent that exists in their populations. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan and the Gulf States as well as Pakistan and some of the countries in North Africa will all feel this instability and its unpredictably destabilizing results.
• It will empower any government to make preemptive strikes without worrying about U.S. wrath or intervention, simply because having done it ourselves, we will hardly be in a position to disapprove anyone else doing it.  Pakistan, India, Korea and Russia are all candidates.
• It will further marginalize the United Nations, which despite the derision of the U.S. political right over the years certainly has played a positive role in U.S. foreign policy objectives in Korea, Bosnia, Kosovo and Iraq.  In effect, a unilateral U.S. attack on Iraq will tell the rest of the world that they don’t have to worry about the U.N.
• What effect will it have on our long-time allies around the world who believe unilateral action is inappropriate?  Will we become increasingly isolated?  If you think that doesn’t matter, think about the importance of global trade to our well being.
• If Israel is attacked by Saddam in the waning moments of our attack on Iraq, they will retaliate, as they have said they would do, perhaps even with nuclear weapons.  Either way, it will create further chaos.
• It will bring a quick end to what is now left of U.S. moral authority in the world.  We will no longer be able to use that authority to defuse dangerous issues abroad as we have done so many times in the past sixty years.

We have already redefined the word ‘terrorist’ to cover anyone who uses “force or violence …..in furtherance of political or social objectives” (2001 FBI definition).  This could probably have been applied to the Minutemen!  This labels as terrorists any group of people who have legitimate grievances against their repressive government and it enables any such government to crush them without a whimper from the U.S.  This has recently happened with the Chechens in Moscow and will happen again all over the world.  After all, they are terrorists by U.S. definition and therefore they are evil. If we want to be supported in our war on terrorism, we will have to support theirs even if our war is morally correct and theirs is not.  The list includes any country with national minorities that have legitimate repressed goals.   Turkey, China, India, Russia, Iran, Pakistan, Indonesia, the Phillipines and Iran are all included.

It appears that Usama bin Laden’s primary goal on 9/11 was to provoke U.S. retaliation, which he dreamed would lead to a decades-long confrontation between the secular West and the Muslim worlds.  Even though there is no credible evidence of a connection between Iraq and Al Quaida, a unilateral attack on Iraq, particularly if it involves significant Israeli retaliation, will simply increase the possibility that he will get his wish.

If Saddam does not acquiesce to our demands on his weapons of mass destruction, the last thing we want to do is undertake action against him without the sanctions and the blessings of the United Nations.  Even though action under the UN’s multilateral umbrella may not solve all our problems, it will be preferable to going it alone.  The consequences of unilateral action could haunt our country and our civilization for decades to come.

Haviland Smith is a retired CIA Station Chief who served in the Middle East and was subsequently Chief of the CIA’s Counter Terrorism Staff.  He lives in Williston.

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[Originally published in the Rutland Herald and the Barre Times-Argus.]

Since the 1992 election, the Clinton administration has done nothing to develop a coherent, consistent foreign policy, opting instead for policy based on political expediency. Clearly, the first White House question on any international issue is “What’s in it for us?”

It is said that the decision to expand NATO up to Russia’s borders was connected to Clinton’s desire to win Czech, Hungarian and Polish votes in Chicago during the 1992 presidential campaign.  If true, and if that is characteristic of his overall foreign policy, then one should expect the results to be chaotic.

World stability has always depended primarily on the predictability of the foreign policies of the major powers.  During the Cold War, when the world seemed as close as it could get to self-destruction, there was really little to fear.  American officials knew exactly what the Soviets would do in any number of truly important situations and the Soviets knew the same about us.  We were both comfortably predictable in matters that truly concerned our “vital national interests”, largely because each knew exactly what those “vital national interests” were.

America is now in the process of becoming a real threat to world stability.  We are pursuing a foreign policy that has no perceivable thread of consistency.  We are leaving it to other nations to figure out just exactly what we are doing or will do, primarily because we don’t know ourselves.  How can our actual and potential protagonists figure out what we are up to when our observable policies are so totally inconsistent?  How are the Russians and the Chinese reacting to us?

Why does Russia take a back seat in our foreign policy concerns in Kosovo and just about everywhere else. Russia remains the only country in the world with the means (and under certain circumstances, the resolve) to blow us off the face of the earth.  Yet, we have treated them cavalierly, almost rudely, as if punishing them for losing the Cold War.  In the past decade we have antagonized them with our policy in the former Yugoslavia and with our totally unnecessary enlargement of NATO membership to include former allies of the USSR.  We are making it a more dangerous world in which to live.

A big part of our problem lies in the act that the Clinton administration is trying to broaden the meaning of the term “vital national interest”.  This term used to be defined quite narrowly and focused on critical political or economic interests like our continuing access to Middle East oil.  Now we are being told that preventing genocide is in our “vital National Interest”.  There is a preachy, moralistic tone that creeps into Clinton administration pronouncements on genocide.  But their message is mixed and hypocritical when we see nothing done to stop genocide in Africa or Asia.  It doesn’t work to be simultaneously preachy, moralistic and inconsistent.

If fighting genocide is in our vital national interest, why do we absolutely ignore the Kurds?  In their case, we actively support the Turks who are the ones trying to do them in.  It has been reported that we assisted the Turks in the recent capture of the Kurdish leader, Mr. Ocalan.  It seems that we limit genocide in the “vital national interest” to expedient fights in white Europe.  At very least, this Clinton administration ignores the Kurdish victims of genocide in favor of the expedience of its policy vis a vis
Turkey and southeastern Europe.

Worst of all, we are seeing the Clinton administration trying to effect the change without sufficient national debate.  We are constantly being told that our Kosovo policy is in the “vital national interest”, but just about everyone knows that it doesn’t fit the old definition.  Given the ambivalence of the administration on non-European, – particularly African – genocide, many are unconvinced by White House arguments that combating genocide is in the vital national interest.  Largely because of its own policy inconsistencies, the White House has failed to make the case.

Every time we have broadened or cheapened the meaning of “vital national interest” in the recent past – in Vietnam, Haiti, Lebanon, Grenada, Bosnia and Kosovo and then made questionable commitments, we have created major disagreement and dissent among Americans.  When we have stuck to the old definition – in World War Two and the Persian Gulf – there has been generally broad support among Americans.

Finally, these recent flings in Bosnia and Kosovo were undertaken in the face of a history that predicts failure.  These two adventures alone have cost hundreds of millions.  We will continue to throw hundreds of millions more at them for a very long time.  One has to ask of any of these old, intractable, Balkan problems are going to be solved by U.S. money even if it (against all odds) gets into the right pockets.  Whether we like it or not we simply can’t solve every problem in the world.

Unfortunately, our current policies make the kind of mess one can expect from an administration that has never had any practical or philosophical foundation for foreign policy other than the most recent New York Times poll.

Haviland Smith, who lives in Williston, is a retired CIA station Chief who specialized in Soviet and East European affairs.

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