Henry
Kissinger is arrogant. At 100 years old, he
still represents all that is smug and
imperious about U.S. foreign policy. Donald
Trump and his fellow denizens of the far right
project the same vibe with their MAGA madness.
A
similar strain of American arrogance can even
be found among liberals, the ones who believe
that Washington possesses all the answers.
Think of Madeleine Albright and her comments
about the indispensability of the United
States. “If we have to use force, it is
because we are America,” the former secretary
of state in the Clinton administration said
back in 1998.
“We are the indispensable nation. We stand
tall and we see further than other countries
into the future.”
Such
comments are risible, particularly in
hindsight after the invasions of Afghanistan
and Iraq. Albright was obviously looking in a
funhouse mirror that reflected back an image
of America as a basketball center rather than
what it so frequently is: an ostrich with its
head in the ground.
Okay,
none of this is news. Hubris and its
consequences: this subtitle can be applied to
pretty much any book about American foreign
policy since the late nineteenth century.
But
here’s the surprising part. Americans on the
left can be just as blinkered and arrogant as
all the figures further to the right that
we’ve criticized repeatedly for the same sins.
So,
for instance, a broad assortment of
pundit-activists from Noam Chomsky to Jeffrey
Sachs have
staked out what they consider “pro-peace” or
“diplomatic” or “progressive” positions on the
war in Ukraine. In open letters, New
York Times advertisements,
and countless blogs/podcasts/tweets, they have
supported “peace now” against the position
held by 65
percent of Americans of
supporting Ukrainians in the defense of their
country.
Here
I’m not particularly interested in debating
this subclass of leftists on their
interpretations of the origins of the current
war, which I’ve challenged elsewhere (for
instance on the role
played by NATO expansion or
the notion that what happened in 2014 in
Kyiv was
a “coup”).
I’m
more interested in two linked aspects of this
position. First, these pundit-activists have
not bothered to consult the victims in this
conflict. They show no evidence of talking
with Ukrainians, reading Ukrainian analyses,
or taking into account Ukrainian perspectives.
Imagine a journalist who interviews Donald
Trump about accusations that he raped a woman
but doesn’t bother to talk to the woman who
made the accusation. That would violate all
the rules of journalism (not to mention common
decency). And yet the victims of Russia’s war
get no hearing from a group of
pundit-activists who have otherwise
specialized in standing up for victims (for
instance, of American wars).
Second,
these pundit-activists believe, with Albright,
that America is the indispensable nation in
this conflict, that it has the power to force
a ceasefire, negotiate a peace, and remake the
European security order. This naïve belief in
the power of American empire flows from a
mistaken understanding of the role the United
States has played in Ukraine (that it
stage-managed the “coup” in 2014, that it has
single-handedly blocked potential peace
negotiations since the invasion last year).
According
to this argument, even if the United States
used its preponderant power for “evil” in the
past, it can turn around like a super villain
that has seen the light and use this
preponderant power for “good.” In this way, a
false reading of the past produces nonsense
policy recommendations today.
But
let’s take a closer look at these two
varieties of arrogance and how they have
managed to infect the American left.
The
Lives of Ukrainians
In an
interview with The
New Statesman last
month, Noam Chomsky outlined his views on
Ukraine. As a longtime admirer of Chomsky, I
was frankly dismayed at his comments. He
repeats several debunked canards, for
instance, that the United States and UK (not
Russia or even Ukraine) have blocked peace
negotiations.
And
he adds some new ones into the mix. Russia, he
argues, is acting with greater restraint in
Ukraine than the United States did in the Iraq
War. It’s hard to come to that conclusion
after looking at pictures of the destruction
of Mariupol and Bakhmut or reading of Russia’s
destruction of 40 percent of Ukraine’s energy
infrastructure. Chomsky also dismisses Sweden
and Finland’s entrance into NATO as having
nothing to do with a fear of Russian attack.
Russia may indeed have no intention or
capacity to attack either country, but there
is no question that Swedes and Finns worry
about the prospect of invasion (or
cyberattack).
Of
course, like many other supposed iconoclasts
on this issue, Chomsky prefaces many of his
statements by noting that Russia committed a
crime by invading Ukraine before going on to
whittle away at Russian responsibility for the
war. It’s all too reminiscent of the
American right’s whitewashing of U.S.
history.
Yes, the authors of the Hillsdale 1776
Curriculum will concede, land was stolen from
the Native Americans and slavery was
“barbarous and tyrannical.” But by glossing
over the particulars of those crimes,
right-wing revisionists miss the centrality of
violence in early American history in their
eagerness to make their ideological points.
So, too, do left-wing revisionists soft-pedal
Russian imperialism in their rush to condemn
the perfidy of the United States.
What
is obvious from the interview, however, is
that Chomsky hasn’t talked to any Ukrainians
to test his hypotheses or his conclusions. He
hasn’t even talked with the Ukrainian
translator of his works. That translator,
Artem Chapeye, had this
to say last
year after the Russian invasion.
I
started as a volunteer translator of “The
Responsibility of Intellectuals” into
Ukrainian—now I’m aghast at how you mention,
in one sentence, the lead-up to this
invasion: “What happened in 2014, whatever
one thinks of it, amounted to a coup with US
support that… led Russia to annex Crimea,
mainly to protect its sole warm-water port
and naval base,” Chomsky said…Before
“overthrowing capitalism,” try thinking of
ways for us Ukrainians not to be
slaughtered, because “any war is bad.” I beg
you to listen to the local voices here on
the ground, not some sages sitting at the
center of global power. Please start your
analysis with the suffering of millions of
people, rather than geopolitical chess
moves. Start with the columns of refugees,
people with their kids, their elders and
their pets. Start with those kids in cancer
hospital in Kyiv who are now in bomb
shelters missing their chemotherapy.
Before
making proposals about negotiations and peace,
the advocates of such positions should stop
talking and listen to peace groups in Ukraine.
They might profitably begin by consulting a
recent statement by Ukrainian NGOs
called a
Ukraine Peace Appeal:
We,
Ukrainian civil society activists,
feminists, peacebuilders, mediators,
dialogue facilitators, human rights
defenders and academics, recognise that a
growing strategic divergence worldwide has
led to certain voices, on the left and right
and amongst pacifists to argue for an end to
the provision of military support to
Ukraine. They also call for an immediate
cease-fire between Ukraine and Russia as the
strategy for “ending the war”. These calls
for negotiation with Putin without
resistance are in reality calls to surrender
our sovereignty and territorial integrity.
American
peace activists might even consult with
Russian anti-war activists who have
sided at great personal cost with Ukrainian
victims against their own government. Listen,
for instance, to
Boris Kagarlitsky,
who has long staked out a lonely, independent
left position in Russia:
from
the Western progressive public, we only need
one thing – stop helping Putin with your
conciliatory and ambiguous statements. The
more often such statements are made, the
greater will be the confidence of officials,
deputies and policemen that the current
order can continue to exist with the silent
support or hypocritical grumbling of the
West. Every conciliatory statement made by
liberal intellectuals in America results in
more arrests, fines, and searches of
democratic activists and just plain people
here in Russia. We do not need any favor but
a very simple one: an understanding of the
reality that has developed in Russia today.
Stop identifying Putin and his gang with
Russia.
But
in their utterly parochial presumptuousness,
those Americans who support “peace now” only
consult themselves.
In
Praise of U.S. Indispensability
On
May 11, after Donald Trump appeared in a
lie-filled extravaganza on CNN, peace activist
Medea Benjamin tweeted in
response to a Wall
Street Journal clip
from the Town Hall: “Watch: Trump Says as
President He’d Settle Ukraine War Within 24
hours. “It’s not about winning or losing but
about stopping the killing.” YES! I wish
Democrats would start saying this!”
So,
after repeatedly demonstrating against Trump’s
lies for four years, how can the Code Pink
activist suddenly turn around and accept on
face value something so outlandish from the
mouth of the ex-president? Like so many of
Trump’s utterances, this one is pure boast.
Trump couldn’t “settle” the war even if he
wanted to do so. After all, he has a pretty
sorry track record in this regard, having not
settled any wars when he was president (North
Korea) and having threatened to launch a
few of his own (Iran,
Venezuela) during the same period.
But
the issue here is not Trump’s mendacity. It’s
the willingness of the credulous to believe
that an American president can swoop in and
stop a war in 24 hours. The war in Ukraine
wasn’t started by the United States and it
won’t be finished by the United States. That
role belongs to Russia, which will either
withdraw voluntarily, be forced to withdraw,
or (very improbably) beat Ukraine into
submission.
A
similarly naïve belief in U.S.
indispensability can be found in a
full-page ad last
week in The
New York Times sponsored
by the Eisenhower
Media Network,
a group of former U.S. military and
intelligence officers funded
by Ben Stein,
of Ben & Jerry’s fame. These military
influencers have obviously had second thoughts
about their former jobs, which were all about
the use of force to achieve national goals.
But in one way, at least, they are consistent:
they remain singularly obsessed with American
power.
Their
statement reads in part: “As Americans and
national security experts, we urge President
Biden and Congress to use their full power to
end the Russia-Ukraine War speedily through
diplomacy, especially given the grave dangers
of military escalation that could spiral out
of control.”
Well,
that sounds sort of reasonable. Except that it
assumes that the United States has that power.
Certainly, Washington is helping to sustain
the war—i.e., prevent Russia from visiting
more atrocities on the Ukrainian population—by
delivering weapons to Kyiv. Does that mean,
then, that the United States should stop
sending weapons, pressure Ukraine to make
concessions at the negotiating table, and
accept a deal where the victims lose
territory, get no compensation from the
aggressor for their losses, and continue to
fear future attacks because membership in NATO
is off the table?
Is
that what these former military and
intelligence officials mean by “full power”?
It still comes down to a belief that the
United States is the only country that can cut
the Gordian knot of geopolitics because,
again, it is the indispensable power. Strip
away the pretty language of diplomacy and the
sad truth emerges: once the agents of American
power, always the agents of American power.
Forever
Arrogant?
Perhaps
it is the fate of Americans to be arrogant,
regardless of where we stand on the political
spectrum. Such is the side effect of
privilege. We Americans are all beneficiaries
of exceptionalism, even those of us who decry
its corrosive impact.
I’m
not immune. I have long argued that the United
States can play a positive role in the world.
I have urged the United States to champion
human rights, democratic practice, economic
equality, and climate justice. But I’m also
acutely aware that the United States has
rarely done any of these things. And I’m
sensitive to the criticism, often from the
Global South, that American “do-gooders” can
have just as malign an impact overseas as
American soldiers, corporations, and
financiers. We are hegemons by birthright.
So,
what’s an American to do?
First
of all, we Americans must be much more modest
about what we can do in international affairs
as individuals and as a country. We need to
jettison our super-hero complex, whether as
liberating soldiers or arm-twisting diplomats.
We need to work alongside partners, not on top
of them.
But
above all, we need to listen. In the
anti-apartheid movement, we listened to our
South African partners. In the struggle for
peace and justice in the Middle East, we
listen to our Palestinian and Israeli
partners. That’s the essence of solidarity.
So,
first step: listen to our progressive
brothers
and sisters in Ukraine and
Russia.
They should be the primary
guides
to our action, not some set of
abstract
principles. Otherwise, even the
harshest
critics of U.S. empire end up
falling
victim to the same assumptions
that
lie at the core of America’s uber-
arrogant
foreign policy.
