On January 23, 1980, in his State of the Union address, President Jimmy Carter announced what became known as the Carter Doctrine:
Let our position be absolutely clear: An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.
With these words, Carter committed the United States to a military presence in the Persian Gulf, at the time an area few Americans knew or thought of. Ironically, Carter’s presidency foundered on events in this very region. The Iranian hostage crisis combined with rising oil prices driven by a newly aggressive OPEC made the president appear weak and ineffectual. Thus in 1980, the American electorate turned to the sunshine patriotism of Ronald Reagan.
As James Mann explains in The Rise of the Vulcans, a cadre of neoconservatives (most notably Jeanne Kirkpatrick) exerted a strong influence on Reagan’s worldview. Not simply a group of disaffected Democrats, the neocons represented a fundamental break with Nixon-Kissinger notion of foreign policy. Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger had helped build a system of alliances based on the theory of détente. According to this idea, world politics and economics were dominated by a few great powers, specifically the United States and the Soviet Union (and, later, China). In addition to a strong military, national security depended mutual agreements to limit nuclear proliferation and on the great powers acting in self-interest to protect a sphere of influence. Thus, the Nixon administration abetted the Pinochet coup in Chile, reasoning that -- regardless of what the people of Chile preferred -- America could not tolerate a left-wing government in its own hemisphere. As practiced by the Machiavellian Kissinger, détente became the ultimate expression of realpolitik.
While the first neocons had no problem with the United States intervening in another nation’s internal politics, they took strong issue with the notion that we should deal with our enemies on equal footing. To them, this reflected a view that the United States was in decline, when to their minds it was not. Under Reagan, the neocons established a national security strategy based solely on military might fueled by increased spending. In the bargain, they (and Reagan) successfully argued that America was safer under Republican leadership, pointing to what they regarded as McGovern defeatism and Carter ineptitude as proof that the Democratic Party could not be trusted to secure the country. Fairly or not, Republicans projected an image of strength, whereas Democrats became identified with Michael Dukakis in a tank.
According to the neocons, all that national security required was the buildup of a defense establishment so mighty that no other country would dare challenge America militarily. Over time, neocon thought evolved from the realism of Jeanne Kirkpatrick to the idealism of Paul Wolfowitz: Having accrued unassailable military power, America should use it in a benign way to enable the spread of democracy. Of course, we couldn’t become the world’s policeman and help just anyone, but we did have a vital interest in the Middle East. And, the unfinished business (as they saw it) of the first Gulf War grated on them nearly as much as the Clinton presidency. The events of 9/11 provided a perfect platform for the neocons to bring their ideas to bear in the Middle East, the first step being to bring about regime change in Iraq.
As often happens, the niceties of theory crumbled under the events of reality; the limits of neocon theory are by now clear to everyone except the neocons themselves. But, old habits die hard: Despite six years of cronyism and ineptitude, polls that show Republicans more trusted more than Democrats to handle national security no longer surprise (albeit the gap has narrowed considerably). In part, this explains (although it hardly justifies) continued timidity on the part of Democratic leadership when it comes to taking on the president’s failed Iraq policy. More than being complicit in the catastrophe of that tragic country, party leadership fears being tarred with the brush of defeat, as it was with Vietnam. They continue to look back, entangled in a discredited but still powerful notion of national security.
Trust in the ultimate efficacy of military strength has become the real quagmire for the United States. It prevents us from investment in any number of social goods, from health care to education to the environment. Moreover, it has left us trapped in the Byzantine labyrinth of Middle East politics and sectarian conflict. Perhaps it is time for the party to embrace of new vision of national security equal to the challenges of the new century.
This new vision expands the view of national security so that we don’t put all of our eggs in the basket of force. It would relieve pressure on the military at the same time that it would increase our ability to meet the threats and challenges of a new era. This spirit animates the following Principles of National Security for the 21st Century:
A secure nation is an independent nation. The United States can take no greater step to secure itself than to become energy independent. Energy independence would, once and for all, free us from the chains of the Carter Doctrine. We would no longer be in the position of breeding resentment in the Middle East by supporting unpopular regimes and by stationing troops there. Moreover, we could without self-interest turn our energies to helping resolve the question of Palestinian self-determination, the issue that has torn the region apart for generations. The Ten-Point Plan of the Apollo Alliance proposes a means of accomplishing energy independence. The Democratic Party must strongly identify itself with enacting the AA’s program.
A secure nation is a prosperous nation. The basis of any country’s security is a strong economy characterized by a sturdy and expanding middle class. Reaganism and Bushism declared war on the middle class, and they’re winning. It’s time to reverse that trend by such measures as a fair tax policy, a just wage, protection of union organizing rights, improving literacy, and easing access to higher education. And while we’re at it, let’s end once and for all the Republican war on science that has accomplished nothing save the promotion of ignorance.
A secure nation is a healthy nation. The United States has slowly but surely fallen behind its peers in the developed world in virtually every statistical category that measures health, be it life expectancy, health care access, health care delivery, the cost of health care, infant mortality, or environmental health. Decades of the tender mercies of the free market have left a mess akin to the Augean stables: A bifurcated health care system that offers a high level of care only to the affluent. Unlike Hercules, though, we can’t clean up this heap of horse dung in a day. We should begin by providing better health care access to the 42 million uninsured and the millions more who are underinsured. In terms of the vitality of our country, national health is no less critical than energy independence.
A secure nation is a protected nation. In the 21st Century, securing the homeland is no longer a matter of being able to defeat opposing armies and navies. As 9/11 proved, militarily weak groups can nonetheless strike at us in frightening ways. While the invasion of Afghanistan was justifiable, controlling terrorism requires more than a military response, and is not as simple-minded as building border fences. A successful multifaceted approach includes improving port security, budgeting according to need and not political clout, and using diplomacy to isolate terrorist groups and squeeze their funding.
These measures addresses only the problem of terrorism. Protecting the nation also means adequate preparation for pandemics, as well as the ability to respond effectively to disasters like Hurricane Katrina. Last but by no means least, protecting the nation means developing and executing a policy to address global warming. This particular task demands a commitment not unlike the Cold War: It must ultimately be bipartisan so that it can be carried on regardless of how and when the political winds change direction.
The programmatic approach needed to tackle these matters is exactly what the Democratic Party is good at and, just as important, what the country perceives the party to be good at. Democrats have a golden opportunity to reframe them as matters of national security and at the same time become the party identified with national security. It is critical to the future of our country that people grasp that national security has become a complex matter that cannot be resolved by increasing the defense budget. To the contrary, this aggravates the situation by providing a false sense of security and by depriving equally germane issues of time, talent, and treasure. Redefining national security demands a long-term commitment, as well as a serious investment into changing the national political discourse. But if the Republicans can do it, so can we. As President Bush might say, it requires only our resolve.