The New Domino Effect

Newt Gingrich said recently that we may as well call the mess in the Middle East "World War III." He may be more accurate than he thought.

Remember the "Axis of Evil"? Those were the good old days, the ones where the US administration felt on top of the world, yodeling from the Alps of global power. The US could pick out a few countries it really doesn't like, turn them into larger-than-life threats to America and Humanity and open up political and military fronts along their borders. One of them was invaded and occupied. The other two have taken the threats to heart. North Korea - at the time engaged in "sunshine diplomacy" with South Korea (which is still angry at the Bush administration for screwing that up) - now practices its missile launches, thus prompting the US to say "see?" Iran develops further its nuclear technology, discovers the US is more bark than bite now that it's bogged down in civil war in Iraq and fighting a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan, and takes advantage of the situation to play itself up as the major regional power it has long aspired to be.

What's the common thread here? One was invaded and is now an utter hopeless mess about to turn into full-scale civil war between Shiite and Sunni. Tens of thousands of people are displaced within the country, perhaps 100,000 civilians are dead, the US basically still lives within its own private Green Zone, and the stable democracy that has been "just around the corner" for three years now looks farther than ever from being a reality. Many - Iraqis and even former Western diplomats - say that, frankly, Iraq was better off with Saddam Hussein. It's difficult to agree outright with that statement, but the fact that it exists speaks volumes about the occupation. More broadly speaking, the common thread is that, even if some of the domestic US audience still consumes administration optimism, the entire rest of the world views Iraq as both a failure for Iraq and a sign of serious American weakness. The bubble of singing from the hills is burst.

The second common thread is that North Korea and Iran, as well as other major geopolitical states such as China, Russia, India, and Venezuela, have all taken the opportunity presented by an incompetent American administration and its relatively weakened military capacities and seriously damaged political leverage to strike out on their own without the constraints of American wishes. The earlier threat of using nuclear weapons on Iran is itself a sign of weakness, given that nuclear weapons, regardless of their precision, are (and should be) always a very last resort under extreme circumstances. The threat itself seems to be more a matter of frustration than of level-headed foreign policy. The Bush administrations seems able only to continue to demonize its perceived opponents while engaging in negligible covert activities.

The third thread is that military grumblings are now coming from across the planet. Let's talk about a Domino Effect here.

The first assumption claims that, because states are attracted to power and consistent demonstrations of strength, the more powerful a coalition leader is and the more clearly and reliably its power is projected, the more likely others are to align with it. It follows that a decline in a coalition leader's relative position causes defections--often to the rival side--on the part of its allies and potential partners (the unaligned). The second assumption claims that the more similar two or more states are ideologically, the more likely they are to unite politically. Lastly, it is assumed that certain ideologies (on account of their precepts) can render tight, insular coalition bonds as well as acute competition between rivals.

Previously, the idea regarding Iraq was - on good days - that a democratic Iraq would prompt democratic reforms around the Middle East in a kind of domino effect once everyone saw how well Iraq was doing. That notion today looks as misguided as ever, especially as Iraq tumbles further towards civil war and Israel hints at full-scale invasion of Lebanon. The new and very real Domino Effect is a product of the situation of military and political leverage incapacity that American policies have wrought for itself. The Bush administration simply can't hold together a consistent set of allies where the glue is shared ideology or a clear policy vision. Frankly, it's unclear what these are. The US is thus relatively emasculated. This is what it means to call Iraq a "quagmire," not simply that the US has no clear exit strategy.

Furthermore, the overall foreign policy centered on Iraq or on the "War on Terror" is quickly failing. Thus, we've seen three years of shifting goalposts, different policy expectations, tangled visions, inconsistent and contradictory policy objectives, and unforeseen outcomes. Policymakers and politicians have to respond to contingencies, so we shouldn't give too much weight to supposed hypocrisies between policy decisions made at one point in time and those made at another point in time. What we can give weight too, however, is the lack of control over these contingencies. When one loses control over one's responses to various contingencies, one is in deep trouble.

A number of developing issues renders the entire foreign policy scene even cloudier:

First, Al Qaeda has apparently been strengthened by the Afghanistan and Iraq occupations. Here and there, the US wins a battle and kills a high-profile enemy, but the broader "War on Terror" is going the wrong direction from the US's stated interests.

Second, the Israeli offensive against Lebanon has quickly dropped the pretense of being an effort to retrieve the kidnapped Israeli soldiers. Lebanon itself - probably the most liberal, diverse, and cosmopolitan democratic state in the region - had been gradually recovering over the past fifteen years from its long civil war (largely by giving the Muslim population a larger voice in government, and through the recent withdrawal of Syrian troops). Over the course of a few days Lebanon's promising development has been drastically set back (see also here). What is Israel doing? It seems to think that it is setting Hezbollah back by a decade. One answer calls it a "war of extermination." One rightwing American commentator appears to agree approvingly. Charles Krauthammer suggests that,

Just as in Kuwait in 1991,what must follow the air campaign is a land invasion to clear the ground and expel the occupier. Israel must retake south Lebanon and expel Hezbollah. It would then declare the obvious: that it has no claim to Lebanese territory and is prepared to withdraw and hand south Lebanon over to the Lebanese army (augmented perhaps by an international force), thus finally bringing about what the world has demanded -- implementation of Resolution 1559 and restoration of south Lebanon to Lebanese sovereignty.

Regardless, it is doubtful that Hezbollah can be defeated with a prolonged and painful regional war. Southern Lebanon was left to impoverishment and Hezbollah has built schools and clinics. Its influence is deeper than military. Neither can Hamas be defeated through prolonged war. Even in the event, it's highly unlikely that Israel would see any reduction in hostility towards its presence, but rather increased long-term hatred by the general population. It's difficult to appease families with dead relatives. And it's difficult to see this as a step in the right direction of Israeli security.

Third, other spheres are opening up as we speak. Turkey has made noices about invading Iraqi Kurdistan. Turkey has been a fragile ally of the US for years - the tide is turning the wrong direction on this alliance as anti-US sentiment grows. Taiwan ostentatiously showed off its deterrence capabilities today to China ("Paratroopers posing as Chinese communist soldiers floated to the ground, simulating an airborne assault...."). Pakistan is pressured from both its Middle Eastern front and its relation with India, since the Mumbai bombings. And so on....

Fourth, is the loss of moral authority. Here are three pessimistic reports from today: on Abu Ghraib, on Israeli bombardment as war crime, and on censorship of media coverage (echoing the US) in Israel. I've written quite a bit about the issue of moral authority. It's not unimportant. Some apparently feel that enough bombing, enough torture, and enough humiliation can force others into submission. Has that ever really been the case historically? What actually happens when a powerful state indiscriminately and disproportionally attacks a much less powerful state or group is that world opinion is likely to move against that first state, thus decreasing its actual power. Power is not only military and economic. It's also moral. The Bush administration has wrecked the United States' moral authority in the eyes of the world. We can pretend otherwise, but there is no doubting this. Israel is following suit right now. Americans from the top to the bottom of the political scale seem to have little understanding that moral authority, legitimacy, is the basis of international power. This is especially true when the military is bogged down and other states are willing to seek economic trade alternatives even to the detriment of losing a market.

What, then is the Domino Effect here? It is that invasion, occupation, and humiliation of a people has consequences that may be much more far-reaching than expected. This is not to say that the Iraq occupation is directly related to Taiwan firing missiles into the China Sea. It is to say that the military quagmire, loss of moral authority and legitimacy in the international sphere, and the general global view that the administration is incompetent have all led to an international climate in which obnoxious allies feel emboldened by the administration's penchant for war, and enemies are emboldened by the administration's inability to competently prosecute it.

UPDATE:

Daniel Nexon at Duck of Minerva has a nice piece on a different facet of the same issue: the question of collapsing American hegemony.