Stephen Glain
Crown Trade 2011[/inset_right]Stephen Glain is an American veteran, not of wars or military incursions, but of more than twenty years’ experience as a foreign correspondent and intrepid journalist. Stationed in various posts in Asia and the Middle East, from Hong Kong to Amman, Glain has been in the ideal position to observe just how his nation comports itself abroad, at a time when the United States completed its inexorable rise to the status of the World’s sole super power.
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According to Glain his new book, State vs. Defense, was written in an anti-war spirit that owed much to the knee-jerk and ill-informed American response to the September 11 attacks. Having spent much of his career abroad observing the effects of US foreign policy and the practically unbroken belt of American military presence stretching across continents, he came to view the overwhelming prevalence of soldiers as representatives of the US as “more consistent with an empire than a republic.” What is more, the post cold-war geo-political climate did not necessitate such overbearing military presence, unless to further US hegemony for its own sake. The militant response to 9/11 exacerbated America’s position as a latter-day empire, relentlessly pushing the frontiers of its control, and—for Glain— has ultimately done more harm than good. Today, it is the tub-thumping rhetoric directed against a supposed threat from China that risks prolonging a military misadventure that has gone on for the better part of a century.
Taking the form of a compelling historical narrative, State vs. Defense seeks to uncover how and why the sword has so consistently been wielded over and above the olive branch in US policy. Glain consults never-before-seen Soviet archives to dispel myths propagated by US security experts, intended to heighten cold-war tensions. He examines a succession of legislation that has, over the years, empowered military figures at the expense of diplomatic missions. And he takes advantage of numerous first-hand accounts of major players in the formation and implementation of US foreign policy—the outspoken General Anthony Zinni is a notable resource, who gives a glowing endorsement of the book on the dust-jacket.
It is a thorough and rigorously researched book, which leaves the reader in little doubt as to the influence of the Pentagon—a massively inflated military organ at the center of an international network costing over 1 trillion dollars. Crucially the Pentagon’s incredible power over policy is shown not to have emerged at the war-mongering heyday of the Bush administration; it is in fact the result of a decades-long story in which military solutions to diplomatic problems have too often been sought.
Despite the layers of history which have contributed to the current militarization of America’s tactics, the recent past is not spared criticism. For keen observers of the Middle East—who will already be familiar with Glain’s trenchant analysis in one of his fields of expertise—the final chapters of the book give astonishing insight into how the US turned its guns upon Iraq and lived up to Glain’s accusations of wanton imperialism. Glain pulls no punches:
[blockquote]The story of how the Bush White House blundered from one destructive misstep to another in its Middle East Wars is as well told as it is scandalous. It is American militarism in its most unalloyed form, and it came about the same way free societies succumb to authoritarian rule: with a leadership that rewards sycophants and the like-minded, co-opts the ambitious, and punishes those in dissent.[/blockquote]
The author goes on to tell a sorry tale of Machiavellian dealings in the corridors of power, in which bullying, egotism and unabashed war-mongering were the order of the day:
[blockquote]Thus did Rumsfeld, Cheney, and their aides, by harnessing the war wagon of their elephantine egos and delusions to the vast resources at their disposal, plunge America into its greatest foreign policy disaster since Vietnam.[/blockquote]
Evidently the work is not a dry re-telling of history, but a cutting analysis of a deeply troubling phenomenon. Indeed, the book is a kind of cautionary tale, which hardly ends on an uplifting note. Glain is careful to point out that under the Obama administration the militarization of foreign policy has gone on unchecked, advancing like a runaway train and giving little sign of slowing. Glain’s parting shot is to draw attention to the testy relationship between the rapidly developing China and the US: If history is anything to go by, a cataclysmic event could be just around the corner.
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In Conversation
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A regular contributor to The Majalla, Stephen Glain was pleased to discuss some of the recent developments of the Middle East, within the context of his new book.
The Majalla: Given your account of the near irreparable militarization of US foreign policy, how do you account for the imminent withdrawal of troops from Iraq, and Obama’s apparent willingness to take a back seat in the recent Libya Campaign?
The drawdown of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan will represent less of a withdrawal than a redeployment of US military might. The Pentagon is already planning on basing combat forces in Kuwait as a hedge against instability in Iraq or Iranian meddling in the region. This of course, would only augment the already massive military presence the US has been growing in the Persian Gulf since the 1990s. It's also worth noting that senior US military officers are talking about reassigning troops departing Iraq to Asia, where an American confrontation with China is looking more and more likely.
The NATO operation in Libya should be interpreted more as a denouement for the alliance than a triumph. If the mission was a successful example of how the alliance can mount an air war inter-operationally and independent of the US, then Washington should declare NATO a success and withdraw from it. In fact, only a handful of NATO members participated in the operation and they proved themselves heavily reliant on American surveillance and command-and-control capability. A generation after the end of the Cold War, NATO remains an alliance in search of a mission and critically dependent on its US patron. And that too is a reason to wind it up.
Q: What do you consider to be the main potential ramifications of this year’s Arab uprisings on US foreign policy?
If Egypt - the political, economic, and cultural fountainhead of the Arab world - succeeds in establishing itself as a viable democracy, then this year's convulsive events would be vindicated and the region may, like Latin America, evolve into a democratic bloc. This of course would undercut Washington's efforts to control the Middle East through pliant dictators on Israel's behalf. Even freely elected Arab leaders, however, will face immense economic problems and unfavorable demographics that threaten political instability. Without a solid economic foundation, democracy will be discredited just as the dictatorships that came before it.
Q: Did you write the book as a cautionary example?
I wrote the book because I believed the mismatch in resources between the Pentagon and the State Department has reached a stage where America is defined more by its armed forces deployed abroad than its statesmanship. Insulated by geography, most Americans are unfamiliar with the consequences of their government's often cavalier use of military might, which I tried to address in the book. It is very much a cautionary tale against the futility of global dominion, particularly as the US edges closer to some kind of armed conflict with China.
