The Cost of Unilateralism
by Chas Freeman

200Ambassador Chas. W. Freeman Jr., president of the Middle East Policy Council since 1997, was assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs from 1993-94, earning the highest public service awards of the Department of Defense for his roles in designing a NATO-centered post-Cold War European security system and in reestablishing defense and military relations with China. He served as U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia (during operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm). He was principal deputy assistant secretary of state for African affairs during the historic U.S. mediation of Namibian independence from South Africa and Cuban troop withdrawal from Angola.

Chas. Freeman served as deputy chief of mission and chargé d’affaires in the American embassies at Bangkok (1984-1986) and Beijing (1981-1984). He was director for Chinese affairs at the U.S. Department of State from 1979-1981. He was the principal American interpreter during the late President Nixon’s path-breaking visit to China in 1972. In addition to his Middle Eastern, African, East Asian and European diplomatic experience, he served in India.
Today, Chas. Freeman is also chairman of the board of Projects International, Inc., a Washington-based business development firm that specializes in arranging joint ventures, acquisitions and other business operations for its American and foreign clients. Prior to one of his frequent trips to the Middle East, Chas discussed his views of the United States’ use of power in the world.

For some purposes, the use of military power is essential, but those are limited. The use of force should be the exception, not just on moral grounds, but because it is ineffective. The ‘war on terrorism’ for example, is a misleading term. This is not a war; it cannot be won on a battlefield. There’s no ‘ism’ in terrorism; it is not an ideology. It is a criminal form of struggle, unacceptable to normal, civilized people. Whether or not the cause of the struggle is just, the means must be condemned. We can understand the Palestinians’ resistance to occupation and ethnic cleansing through land seizures as just, for example, but see their use of terror as a means as unjustifiable. The way to deter and minimize criminal forms of struggle is to apply the rule of law: stringent enforcement of law. Our greatest weapon against terror is international law and cooperative enforcement. Military action should hold a secondary role.

“The effort to end terror, then, is a reason not to abandon the 20th century American enterprise: building a world based on law. To disregard law, to become a scofflaw (and therefore to become anti-democratically dismissive of the right of others to differ with us) is not just wrong. It is self-defeating and destructive, and leads to an increase of terror.

“The doctrines based on preemptive use of military power originated in German thought in the 1920s and ’30s. Applied in the Middle East, they have failed and have been counterproductive. The notion that the U.S. should adopt them is bizarre and unjustified both on moral and pragmatic grounds.

“The irony is that during the 20th century, the United States was the greatest champion of a rule-bound national order. We succeeded in marketing our ideas and bringing them to fruition in international institutions. In the 21st century, the great champions of international law are France, Germany and Japan. The people we sought to persuade are persuaded. In the meantime we seem to have lost faith in our own vision, and now seek to substitute a vision of might making right and the ends justifying the means.

“This small group of strategic thinkers, with their intellectual roots in pre-World War II German political theory have essentially hijacked the Republican party. This situation has a corrosive effect beyond foreign policy, with two particularly objectionable domestic effects:
• The imposition of political correctness, which has been most devastating to the American Jewish community that has been intimidated into silence; great damage to public debate
• A more indirect effect: the implementation of policies with indifference to foreign opinion, based on Caligula’s formula, ‘Let them hate us as long as they fear us’; greatly restraining openness, due process and civil liberties

“In a series of desperate and ill-considered reactions to the September 11 assault on us we have greatly restrained civil liberties. We have suspended habeas corpus for certain classes of people, chiefly Muslims and immigrants. We have suspended the protections of due process for property for Arabs, whose property is subject to seizure without evidentiary hearings, and we have violated the Geneva Conventions with the Taliban held at Guantanamo: They were not stateless terrorists; they were captured defending their government against a foreign invasion of their country.
“It is anomalous that a country normally guided and strengthened by the rule of law, dispenses with the rule of law, and thereby legitimizes the forms of behavior we object to. Why are the British and French, who have had greater experience with terror than we, able to maintain a relatively open society, while we cannot?

“At the moment, getting a visa to enter the U.S. is hard, and is often impossible for Arabs, Muslims and Chinese (for some reason). Arabs or Muslims suffer a high risk that they will be humiliated at our borders, by law enforcement on the spot, by customs officials, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) or even airline crews. We are damaging our export position and our place in the global economy by giving up what gave us the edge, our openness and our fundamental decency of behavior and by being brazenly xenophobic. As a result of our lack of regard for the rule of law at home and abroad, our economy will suffer. We should not be surprised if, nine months from now, we discover that 30 to 40 percent of our exports have disappeared.

“The devastating economic effects of escalating mutual brutality have, at the time we speak, turned the Israelis and Palestinians to the task, once again, of trying to determine their future. There’s no reason for anything but pessimism in the short term, however, because the shared toll of the dead and of seriously maimed survivors has made the polarization complete. Neither group now has a majority who can accept the notion of coexistence; with what both have witnessed and experienced, they have internalized the impossibility of coexistence. Arab and Muslim identification with the rage of Palestinians suffering under occupation, however, in the absence of a solution, makes the situation a nuclear trigger: a small explosion in a small, contained space with the potential to ignite a broader conflict, fueled by reactions to our invasion of Iraq and other actions. The fifth of the human race that is Muslim, is now profoundly alienated from the U.S. It regards America and American policy as unjust and indifferent to the suffering of anyone other than ourselves and people who look like us. It should be unacceptable to analyze this situation and call a solution ‘impossible.’ The U.S. arms and supplies Israel; if we had the courage to use the leverage that we have to compel Israeli rethinking of counterproductive policies, the majority of the American people and of the Jewish population in America would applaud that action. It is unacceptable that a small, vicious struggle in the holy land should have the clear potential to ignite something harmful to Americans on a much larger scale, and that we do nothing.

“As a country, we have had earlier lapses in international and domestic behavior, and we have ultimately self-corrected. Consider the idiocy of the post-World War I period and the similar anti-foreign frenzy culminating in the so-called Palmer Raids and the Sacco and Venzetti trial. We interned Japanese-American families and took their property during World War II. When the consequences of our mistakes sink in, we change personality and rethink our behavior. American history inspires faith in the possibility of repentance and redemption.

“When will we self-correct? It might come from the perceived complexities of failures in Iraq. The president justified the invasion on five grounds:

“He purported the need for regime change, but the regime has been replaced with anarchy. He asserted the threat of weapons of mass destruction, but we have learned that even if they are in Iraq, they were essentially inconsequential as a menace. We would democratize Iraq, he said, but thus far we are desecularizing Iraq. We would strike a mighty blow against terrorism, but so far the terrorists have not noticed. Finally, by banging Iraq on the head, the kaleidoscope of the Middle East would rearrange into a new and more advantageous pattern we have yet to see.

“Perhaps the American taxpayer having to pay for Iraq’s reconstruction, directly or indirectly, will get our attention. Perhaps obnoxious American behavior will lead to coalitions of the unwilling and recalcitrant, blocking our unilateral behavior. Perhaps our exports will decline. Perhaps we will no longer be able to import brains as we always have to staff our university research and laboratory positions. If so, we will respond appropriately. Americans have an effective election system, and we are fundamentally a good and just people.
“We have a long tradition of attracting talented people because of our remarkable open environment and their ability to be more productive here than where they came from. As we call that atmosphere into question, and destroy that openness or jeopardize the attractiveness of our society, we risk losing our leadership edge. In the end, the cost of unilateralism in political terms will be American isolation; in economic terms it will mean losing our economic primacy.
“I believe that we are in one of the pivotal moments of American history, a transitional period. During these transitions—we’ve gone through them before-—the compact of governance is renegotiated, the relationships between the layers of government are re-arranged, and the purposes of the country are redefined. We have all the symptoms of transition to a new era; typically the pattern seems to take 12 to 16 years. The new era, the nature of which we can’t predict, has not arrived and is not yet defined.

“What is the best way to manage our security for the next 10 to 20 years? It will not be by drawing a gun and pointing it at the rest of the world, thereby amassing enemies rather than friends. We should remember Teddy Roosevelt—‘Speak softly and carry a big stick’: maintain military superiority; do not boast about it; use it sparingly. We should rely primarily on diplomacy and focus on enhancing our attractiveness, on what others want to imitate. Our global leadership is based on the fact that others have wanted to emulate American society; they see our society as aspiring to a higher standard of decency than any other. Maintaining ‘the city on the hill’ is vital, for our own self-image, and to keep alive our traditions of aspiring to higher spiritual and ethical standards. If we lose the capacity to inspire, we will lose the capacity to lead.”