The war on terror is over.
The "war on terror" approach has backfired, straining our military to the breaking point while allowing the threat of terrorism to grow. "War on terror" is a slogan designed for politics, not a strategy to make the United States safe. It is a bumper sticker, not a plan. Worst of all, the "war on terror" has failed [emp. added].
So says 'John Edwards' in his entry into a series of essays laying out the foreign policy platforms of the Democratic (and Republican) contenders in Foreign Affairs, the journal of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). His name gets scare quotes because of course these documents aren't drafted by the candidates themselves, but teams of advisors -- and on foreign policy, there's good reason to be skeptical of the team Edwards' has assembled in the past.
More skepticism after the jump...
Unfortunately, once you get past the welcome denunciation of the neocons' rhetorical war, Edward's essay quickly returns to the comfortable confines of the bipartisan foreign policy establishment (of which the CFR is as close as it gets to the institutional incarnation). In this light, it's instructive to contrast his essay with Obama's to see just what's on and off the table.
If the war on terror is over, how does one deal with the challenge posed by bin Laden? The closest thing to a response Edwards' offers actually precedes the previous quote:
As commander in chief, I will not hesitate to apply the full extent of our security apparatus to protect our vital interests, take measures to root out terrorist cells, and strike swiftly and forcefully against those who seek to harm us.
Does "the full extent of our security apparatus" include extraordinary rendition? Secret prisons? Unilateral, preventive warfare? Obama is wise enough to explicitly renounce the first two in his essay; I'd like to think Edwards would as well, but a quick skim of Google doesn't reveal any statements on the issue. (Anyone? Drop a link in the comments if you turn one up...) As for unilateral military action, Obama embraces this article of the Bush administration's security doctrine, and some of his language could be taken to allow for an endorsement of preventive war as well. Edwards is, again, disappointingly silent.
Beyond a vague aside calling for transcending the hard/soft power divide in favor of 'smart power,' one searches Edwards' essay in vain for a unifying thread or concept through which to approach the international challenges of the 21st century; there's nothing here like 'containment' (whatever you think about it) or an 'axis of evil'. While Jerome a Paris has drawn out the undercurrents of Obama's essay, and the primacy he accords military force, in contrast to Edwards, Obama's essay is at least loosely organized around the principle of interdependence:
The security and well-being of each and every American depend on the security and well-being of those who live beyond our borders.
Recognizing our interdependence seems like a promising start, but of course this recognition can just as easily be a pretext for the sort of crusading foreign policy the Bush administration has excelled at. The fact that both Obama and Edwards make an admirable attempt to integrate climate change into their foreign policy agenda only to end up framing it in military terms, as a potential source of upheaval and threat, is not reassuring.
By now, the candidates' positions on withdrawing from Iraq are probably familiar: both support something less than a full withdrawal. It may still be worth noting that in Foreign Affairs Obama argues that a declaration that the US will not maintain permanent bases in Iraq is needed for credible diplomacy; Edwards states (for the first time?) that "we will also need some security capabilities in Baghdad, inside the Green Zone, to protect the U.S. embassy and U.S. personnel."
Before we award any points to Obama, note he states withdrawal "could be temporarily suspended if the Iraqi government... meets the benchmarks to which it has committed." And of course, both candidates believe there's a need to keep a fair amount of firepower 'over-the-horizon' (Edwards places it in Kuwait). Of course, what happens should any of these forces come under attack or suffer heavy losses? Either they all come out or we go all in, and the smart money's not on the former.
Obama goes on to offer a model diplomatic program, wherein withdrawal from Iraq -- necessary because it is the only leverage to force a political settlement -- can then free up the U.S. to focus on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Edwards offers nothing as ordered as this sequence, and instead his essay takes a quick tour of the current hotspots.
Both candidates serve up the requisite denunciations of Iran, North Korea, et. al, and statements of support for Israel.
Intriguingly, Edwards gives a bullet point to India, and suggests the country be granted a seat on the UN Security Council -- nowhere in his essay does he say a word about Pakistan, implying he's prepared to initiate a major adjustment in America's historical tilt toward the latter at the expense of the former. It's the one of the few real departures from the way the so-called 'war on terror' has been waged until now that Edwards really suggests.
Late in the essay, Edwards also writes that "we see radicalism rising" in "Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia..." The inclusion of Somalia could be read to suggest that his team is still seeing these countries as fronts in a unified war, precisely the mentality his essay rejected at its start. The persistence of this way of thinking will not be easy to unseat.
The major point of contention that emerges between the two candidates in these essays is the question of 'force structure;' in english, the size of the military. Obama calls for an increase of 92,000 troops, and Edwards blasts this position:
It is tempting for politicians to respond to this situation by trying to outbid one another on the number of troops they would add to the military. Some have fallen right in line behind President Bush's proposal to add 92,000 troops... giving little rationale for exactly why we need this many men and women, particularly with a likely withdrawal from Iraq. But the problem of our force structure is not best dealt with by a numbers game. We must be more thoughtful about what the troops would actually be used for.
Edwards ultimately declines to offer a number pegged to the use of force he envisions, but does adopt the ISG's recommendation that the US develop a 10,000 strong corps of civilian volunteers for reconstruction operations. (I think this is a wise measure, but the perceived need for such a corps suggests they won't be short of work.)
Finally, Edwards proposes pumping an additional $3.75 bil into foreign aid, including a "$3 billion annual effort to educate poor children in countries with a history of violent extremism" and another $750 million annually for those ever-popular micro-credit programs. Obama sees him and raises him: he proposes roughly doubling U.S. foreign aid to $50 billion. But even Obama's sum would only place us roughly on par with where France, the UK, and Germany have been for years, proportionally (see the OECD's numbers -- PDF). We have a long way to go.
A spike in foreign aid isn't sexy, but it is not only a crucial dimension of a more coherent approach to the threat posed by 'extremism' of any stripe, but I'd argue a moral obligation in its own right. But neither Edwards nor Obama offer the sort of systematic reconsideration of our country's place in the world that we should've undertaken 6 years ago.
Granted, the actual work of diplomacy will always be more complicated than any reductive concept, and will always proceed on multiple fronts at once. Still, I don't think I'm the only person who's groped about for some new frame or concept or principle that would dispel the fog of the 'war' and lend coherence to a genuinely progressive foreign policy.
Barring this, the danger is that even if a candidate such as Edwards is willing to reject the rhetoric of the 'war on terror,' that much of the policies will continue intact. Rhetorical commitments to non-proliferation, the environment, and confronting global poverty are long overdue, but even if they're born out, they're not incompatible with Guantanamo, Iraq, and a global American military presence.
Bottom line: neither Obama nor Edwards has much if anything to say about the major foreign policy questions raised by the Bush administration: the role of international law, the use of unilateral force (which Obama, again, supports), preventive warfare, and the circumstances under which 'humanitarian intervention' is justified (if ever).
Update: As I wrote in the comments somewhere downthread, I think saying the 'war on terror' has failed and that it's over are basically the same statement. But this is clearly getting in the way of the discussion I was trying to raise, so I've amended the title of the post.