There's a brilliant piece in The Wilson Quarterly this month by Andrew J. Bacevich, Professor of International Relations at Boston University, excerpted from his upcoming book, "The New American Militarism"
(No link to story provided yet). His essential point is a critique of the myth that the War on Terror is the Fourth World War (the Third being the Cold War). Bacevich believes that The War on Terror is actually simply the newest escalation in a World War that was declared 25 years ago by Jimmy Carter.
In his 1980 State of the Union Address, Jimmy Carter declared the Fourth World War. In what would become known as the Carter Doctrine, Carter declared that Persian Gulf was vital to American's national interests and that America would do whatever was necessary to maintain the stability of that region including military force if necessary. From that point forward, the protection of the flow of oil from the Middle East became a sacrosanct principle of American foreign policy, adhered to by the presidents of both parties.
Bacevich writes,
What prompted Jimmy Carter, the least warlike of all recent U.S. Presidents, to take this portentous step? The Pentagon's first Persian Gulf commander, Lt Gen. Robert Kingston, offered a simple answer when he said that his basic mission was "to ensure to unimpeded flow of oil from the Arabian Gulf." But General Kingston was selling his country and his president short. What was true of the three other presidents who had committed the United States to world wars--Woodrow Wilson, FDR, and Truman--remained true in the case of Carter and World War IV as well. The overarching motive for action was preservation of the American way of life.
Carter had declared his doctrine after realizing some sad truths about Americans' expectations of their country. Bacevich goes on to write,
By the beginning of 1980, a chastened Jimmy Carter had learned a hard lesson: It was not the prospect of making do with less that sustained American-style democracy, but the promise of more. Carter had come to realize that what Americans demanded from their government was freedom, defined as more choice, more opportunity, and, above all, greater abundance, measured in material terms. That abundance depended on assured access to cheap oil--and lots of it.
In enunciating the Carter Doctrine, the president was reversing course, effectively renouncing his prior vision of a less materialistic, more self-reliant democracy. Just six months earlier, this vision had been the theme of a prescient, but politically misconceived, address to the nation, instantly dubbed by pundits the "Crisis of Confidence" speech, though, in retrospect, perhaps better called "The Road Not Taken."
Carter believed that if America allowed itself to become perpetually dependent on oil for its subsistence, it would distort America's strategic interests and ultimately American democracy.
So on July15 he summoned his fellow citizens to change course, to choose self-sufficiency and self-relience--and therefore true independence. But the independence was to come at the cost of collective sacrifice and lower expectations...
The fundamental issue in Carter's view, was that Americans had turned away from all that really mattered. In a nation once proud of hard work among strong, religious families and close-knit communities, too many Americans had come to worship self-indulgence and consumption. What you owned rather than what you did had come to define human identity. But according to Carter, owning things and consuming things did not satisfy our longing for meaning. Americans were learning that piling up goods could fill the emptiness of lives devoid of real purpose.
Make no mistake. Beyond all the positioning and rhetoric, there is indeed a solution to Terrorism. It is not, however, the Colonial Militarism the Republicans overtly, and the Democrats more tacitly, suggest. The solution is this: the road we were not strong enough to take in 1979, the road of self-reliance and sacrifice. Our grandfathers fought and won two World Wars because they were willing to sacrifice. We, on the other hand, are on the verge of losing this one because we refuse to do the same.
When 9/11 occurred, America was forced to confront, finally, the World War it had created in the Middle East through its refusal to set aside its self-indulgence. As the leader of the party of Militarism, the choice for George W. Bush was simple, to use the powerful military we had created to fight outright the Fourth World War, couching it in the terms of an abstract War on Terrorism. It was foolhearty and ill-conceived, but not necessarily illogical from a political standpoint.
The next Democratic president should have no such delusions that he will have these options. The choices are increasingly becoming more stark and binary. IMHO, eventually we will have to choose either to continue in one form or another down the hopeless road of Militarism leading to endless loss of life, military overstretch, weak economies and budget deficits, and the continuing erosion of our civil liberties--far more, ultimately, than we may realize--or we can choose a less attractive but more safe and realistic option: self-reliance.
As Democrats, we should begin searching our hearts. Are we prepared to make the kind of political and even personal sacrifices it would take to lead America away from the bargain it made with the proverbial devil all those years ago? Are we willing to count the costs of what it would truly mean to live in a more peaceful world? My heart tells me our future in many ways will depend on whether in the coming years we are willing make the right choice. And to be honest, I can't say I've made it myself yet.
[Note]: If you would like to read Carter's speech you can do so here.