A fraudulent account of American foreign policy has been gaining momentum throughout the 1990s and has now acquired unwarranted credibility. Those who propound it do not (in most cases) condone the attacks on New York and Washington. They do claim that America?s support for injustice and oppression explains the motives of the terrorists and the support for their actions in the third world. This explanation is usually connected to a litany of US misbehaviour which alleges: uncritical military and financial backing for Israel; responsibility for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, thanks to a savage sanctions regime; and support for archaic, feudal regimes in the Arabian gulf for purely selfish reasons. This litany requires refutation, although it is important not to fall into the opposing trap of casting US foreign policy in an idealistic light or denying the many mistakes for which it is plainly responsible.
The origins of the critique of contemporary US foreign policy, as with so much of the policy itself, lie in Vietnam. As the war?s opponents looked back at the cold war, many of them became convinced that, contrary to the orthodox view that America had responded to Soviet aggression, the reverse was true. A picture was painted of an anti-communist crusade, conducted with US business in mind, relentlessly crushing progressive movements, often by brutal or underhand means. More recent historiography, with the benefit of archive material from the communist bloc, has challenged the revisionist thesis and is less willing to grant Soviet policy such a passive role. Consideration of life in the two halves of Europe during those years has provided retrospective justification, if any were needed, for a cold war stance.
By contrast, much of the conduct of the cold war in the third world still looks unimpressive and counterproductive. In the name of anti-communism, the US found itself first supporting old European powers trying to cling on to their empires and then newly independent states led by repressive autocrats. Even when it encouraged decolonisation and urged reform on the autocrats, in the end the imperatives of the cold war and the principle of ?my enemy?s enemy is my friend? led anti-communism to triumph over liberalism. Some anti-communist regimes did gain legitimacy, but the attempt to shore up those that failed to do so cost the US dear. The comment of a US officer that a Vietnamese village had to be destroyed in order to be saved summed up the moral as well as the military quagmire into which America had sunk.
Jimmy Carter made the first attempt to escape this quagmire after he became president in 1976. He sought to make human rights a centrepiece of foreign policy. For those autocrats who expected US support solely on the basis of their anti-communism this was unnerving. One of the first victims of the policy was the Shah of Iran, who had been sustained since the 1950s by the US and Britain, in order to prevent the country and its oil from falling under the influence of its Soviet neighbour. Little secret had been made of the coup they organised on his behalf when he faced exile and the oil assets were threatened with nationalisation in 1951. Even when the Shah connived in the surge in oil prices in 1973-4, reasons were found to support his regime (he was, after all, ready to recycle petro-dollars for arms). Carter never repudiated the Shah?s regime, but his human rights rhetoric added to its disorientation in the face of discontent.
The new regime which seized power in 1978 was not pro-communist but nor was it liberal. With Ayatollah Khomeini?s ascent to power and the seizure of American diplomats as hostages in November 1979, Islamic fundamentalism was established as a new threat. In Lebanon in the early 1980s, the US got caught out by fundamentalists, often backed by Iran. After 239 Marines were killed in 1983 by a suicide bomb, the US left Beirut to avoid another quagmire.
But the continued primacy of cold war imperatives over a concern with fundamentalism was illustrated by Washington?s readiness to back the resistance to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979, in order to prevent the collapse of the previous year?s secular and socialist revolution. As Soviet forces got caught in their own quagmire, the US, again with Arab encouragement, supported the Muslim mujahidin. The fight against the Soviets was, of course, the training ground for committed young Islamic militants such as Osama bin Laden.
At the same time, hostility to Iran was reflected in support for Iraq?s Saddam Hussein, whose aggression towards Iran in 1980 was tolerated by the west and later actively supported. This policy was endorsed by all the pro-western Arab states who had their own reasons for opposing the Shi?a rising in Iran. When in 1990 the US turned against Iraq this was not because Saddam was seen to represent a fundamentalist threat?his Ba?athist ideology is secular?but because he had acted as an old-fashioned aggressor against a pro-western regime. Even before the invasion of Kuwait, the west had become disillusioned with Saddam as a result of his violence towards his own people, especially the Kurds, and his determination to become the dominant regional power by acquiring weapons of mass destruction. Fearful that it was next on Iraq?s list, Saudi Arabia accepted the need for US troops. This enraged radical Islamists, who considered the US presence a form of desecration of Islam?s holy sites. The relationship between the US and the Saudi military had long been close, but the decision to invite up to 100,000 troops to be based in the country was a radical step?about which many leading Saudis remain ambivalent.
At the behest of the broad-based coalition backing the campaign to liberate Kuwait, no effort was made to overthrow the Iraqi regime. It was assumed that no leader could lose a war so conclusively and survive, yet Saddam is still there, diminished in power but not defiance. To the current generation of anti-American campaigners in the west, this continuing struggle is the equivalent of Vietnam. A key part of this case is the devastation allegedly inflicted upon Iraq during the war and by the subsequent sanctions.
Iraq?s own figures for civilian casualties were about 3,200 killed and 6,000 injured and independent analysts broadly agree. The number for military dead is probably higher but no reliable figures have ever been produced. Critics of the US often cite a ludicrous figure of 200,000 Iraqis dead. It originates in the comment of a US general, puzzled at the discrepancy between the number of Iraqis taken prisoner and those who were assumed to be in position waiting for the coalition forces. The reasons for the discrepancy were that the numbers of Iraqi soldiers had been grossly exaggerated by both sides and that many Iraqis had fled before the fighting. Moreover, one reason why George Bush senior stopped the ground war when he did was because of reports that US aircraft were engaged in a ?turkey shoot? of a retreating Iraqi convoy. Newspapers were full of grisly pictures of the ?mile of death.? In fact, most of the Iraqis had fled as soon as the shooting began.
Those who opposed the war in 1991 had argued for economic sanctions instead. After the war, when sanctions were sustained, they came to be characterised as more criminal than the war, with claims that 500,000 Iraqi children had died because of inadequate nutrition and medical treatment. This claim is based on a misunderstanding of the sanctions.
The sanctions regime was kept in place because of evidence uncovered by UN inspectors of how far Iraq had gone in developing weapons of mass destruction. At the end of the Gulf war in 1991, Iraq accepted UN security council resolution 687. This imposed a number of obligations on the country, the main one being to eliminate these weapons. As the inspectors started to uncover the biological weapons capability Iraq blocked their efforts. Sanctions have thus continued?including UN control over Iraq?s oil sales?but have been adapted to allow unlimited funds for food and medicine. Since 1996, Iraq has made about $48.7 billion from UN-controlled exports, of which about $29.6 billion has been made available for humanitarian relief. (In the 12 months before invading Kuwait, Iraq spent only $4.2 billion on its civilian import needs, including food, medicine, cars and education.) In a dictatorship, the effects of sanctions are bound to be felt more by the population than the regime. Saddam has used the available resources to strengthen the state apparatus at the expense of his people?s welfare?already reduced by the war with Iran?and then used sanctions as the scapegoat. The current sanctions may now be counterproductive, but to suggest that Iraqi suffering is caused by the US, while neglecting to mention the direct responsibility of Saddam, is a gross distortion.
At the time of the Gulf conflict in 1990-91, and again after 11th September, it has often been argued that the root of hostility to the US lay in its support for Israel. Saddam played on this by implying that he might consider his position in Kuwait if Israel left the occupied territories. The use of anti-Zionism has been typical of Arab leaders. The historic challenge to Israel has been from mainly secular Arab republicans, such as Egypt?s Nasser, Syria?s Assad and the Palestinians? Arafat. The more pious Gulf states have been less militant, while Israel has had good relations with the Shah?s Iran and is on excellent terms with Turkey. Furthermore, when they have felt threatened by the PLO, Jordan and Syria have shown far greater ruthlessness than the Israelis.
It is the growing role of radical Islamic groups such as Hizbullah and Hamas in the confrontation with Israel that has helped to turn the Palestinian cause into an Islamic one in the past 20 years. It serves the purposes of other Arab states because it allows anger and frustration to be directed outwards and distracts attention from the failure of their economic management and distaste for political reform.
The charge against the US made both by western and Arab/Islamic critics is that the US is responsible for establishing Israel as the powerful state it is today, is complicit in the occupation of Palestinian lands and is in a position to impose a settlement on Israel. Yet none of these propositions is true. It is true that Israel owes its existence to Harry Truman?s readiness to override his diplomats in 1947 and support the UN resolution to create the new state. Although the cold war was starting, this was a rare moment of consensus with the Soviet Union, who judged Israel to be a progressive oasis in a feudal desert. Thereafter, American support for Israel was limited or nonexistent until the 1973 Yom Kippur war. The US took no part in the 1948 war and in 1956, President Eisenhower turned against Israel?s collusion with Britain and France during the Suez crisis and required Israel to return the territories that it had seized from Egypt. France became Israel?s main patron, even helping Israel to construct nuclear weapons. The US only took over after President de Gaulle decided to abandon Israel and curry favour with radical Arab states during the 1967 war.
The US used Israel?s desperate need for resupply during the 1973 war to establish a dependency relationship of a kind. Egypt restored some of its military pride in that war and then sued for peace, leading to the Camp David accords. Even by then, US-Israeli relations were becoming strained as Israel began to colonise the territories occupied in 1967 and adopt a more aggressive regional policy, notably in its 1982 invasion of Lebanon. At most, the Americans found that they could limit Israeli excesses. The dangerous consequences of this became apparent to US policy makers in the difficulties they met building the anti-Iraq coalition after the invasion of Kuwait.
As soon as the Gulf war was over, considerable pressure was put on the Israeli government by the US, leading eventually to the replacement of the Likud government by Labour, led by Yitzhak Rabin, and then on to the Oslo peace process. The fact that this process broke down a year ago is now cited as evidence of the culpability of the US. Yet the peace process did not collapse because the Americans were showing a lack of interest or failing to put pressure on the Israelis. It collapsed because of inept diplomacy on all sides and because the negotiations had reached the truly difficult issues. It was the Palestinians and also the Syrians who seemed to recoil most from the concept of a definitive deal. At Taba early this year, the Americans almost succeeded in brokering an agreement. The negotiations were rushed through during the final days of the Barak and Clinton administrations, a factor that may have deprived any deal of legitimacy, but indicates what might be achieved if calm returns. But there is only hope of reviving the process if, as in 1991, the US emerges from this war with enhanced prestige. At least this time, in contrast to 1991 when he acted as Saddam's spokesman, Arafat has accepted the risks involved in staying close to the US, although his people have more radical views. As things stand, the US does constrain Israeli policy, preventing Sharon?s anti-Arafat and anti-Oslo line being followed to its conclusion, but is not able to persuade Israel that a more conciliatory policy would serve its security needs better.
The lack of democratic institutions in the Arab world may be the key vulnerability of both conservative and radical regimes in the region. Some in the US now regret that more effort was not put into urging the feudalistic Kuwaitis to reform after the liberation of their country. Similarly, it is said that more effort could have been made to liberalise the Saudi regime. But support for authoritarian regimes is not a complaint made by Osama bin Laden?s al Qaida group. His charge is that Arab governments are not authoritarian enough and that they tolerate too much liberalism. Not only does he want to eliminate Israel, but also Arab governments. It is secularism and modernism that he is set against.
His basic strategy is to use terrorism to expel the US from the Islamic world by raising the cost of a continued presence to intolerable levels. He then wishes to turn these states into proper theocracies. It is therefore non-theocratic governments in Islamic countries which are most at risk if al Qaida should prosper. This leaves countries like Egypt and Pakistan in the odd position of wanting to see al Qaida crushed, yet nervous about taking conspicuous steps to support such an effort. Syria has greater freedom of action because it dealt with its own fundamentalists by massacring them in the early 1980s (although Hamas does remain based in Damascus).
The idea that US foreign policy has demonstrated a consistent anti-Islamic bias does not stand examination. By and large, Washington has worked closely with mainstream Arab opinion in first supporting and then opposing Iraq, in opposing the Soviet Union in Afghanistan and in pressing Israel to moderate its policies (although clearly this does not go far enough for Arab tastes). Meanwhile, away from the middle east and central Asia, the US has often acted in support of persecuted Muslim groups, for example during the Bosnian and Kosovo wars. In the case of Bosnia, the US was generally seen to have adopted a more pro-Muslim policy than its European allies and this extends to its greater support for Turkey.
The anti-Americanism found in the west is different from that in the third world or in groups like al Qaida. Western anti-Americans, who are largely from the old left, are not in revolt against modernism. They are not moved by religious inspiration, nor are they homophobic or oppressive of women. They have points to make about failures in Saudi, Egyptian, Israeli and US policies, but do not demand the extermination of Israel and the imposition of theocracies in Pakistan and Egypt. Few would claim that the Taleban has been good for Afghanistan. In short, their critique does not provide an accurate guide to the grievances which drove the 11th September terrorists.
Choices in foreign policy are rarely easy because the nature of the international system makes it necessary to work with unattractive regimes. Diplomacy by definition involves compromise and thus provides plenty of opportunity for sanctimonious commentary. There are many examples of hypocrisy and double standards. Working back from terrible situations, it is always possible to identify a moment when a different policy might have produced a better situation. The expedient moves of one generation create nightmares for the next. And because the US is by far the most powerful country in the world, it is inevitable that its policy choices have disproportionate consequences. This is true whether it is passive or active. And the unintended consequences of policy choices can be as important as the intended.
The complete indifference to the real dilemmas of foreign policy produces an indiscriminate critique. The litany I have described is tendentious, selective in the use of evidence and shows scant regard for international context. It gives no weight to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, or Iraq?s invasion of Kuwait and its pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, and it fails to notice that on many critical issues (other than Israel) the US has worked with rather than against Muslim states. It also ignores the fact that even if Iraqi sanctions were lifted and the Palestine issue solved, al Qaida would not be appeased.
September 11th was a punctuation mark in the history of US foreign policy. Before then, the US was drifting towards a disengagement from international responsibilities, or at least engagement on a take-it-or-leave-it basis. It has since been obliged to relearn the importance of coalition-building and working through international institutions. If the litany against US foreign policy is correct, then the world would be a better place if America played little part in its affairs. Yet on the many issues that al Qaida seeks to exploit, from the Balkans to South Asia to the middle east, active US involvement is a necessary, if by no means a sufficient, condition of progress.
