Masters of Illusion American Leadership in the Media Age Phần 2 ppsx

P1: FCW

0521857449c02 Printer: cupusbw CUNY475B/Rosefielde 0 521 85744 9 November 3, 2006 11:50

28 National Security in the New Age

Soviet Union the world was relatively unchanging on its political surface.

The two superpowers and their alliances grappled for advantage with the

threat of nuclear annihilation keeping the contest within bounds (although,

as we shall see, only barely). But underneath the surface great changes were

in the making.

The sudden collapse of the Soviet Union issued in a new world in which

the new currents suddenly broke to the surface and flowed more strongly.

There is a current of economic advance in east Asia – the Asian economic

miracle that is real and of enormous significance, thrusting China to the

forefront of geopolitics; there is a current of revolution in the Arab world

that has now drawn much of the world into its ferment and to which we

refer as terrorism; there is a current of American economic, technological

and military leadership that make it the sole superpower; there is a current

of moral and economic weakening that suddenly has left Russia fractured

but strongly armed; and there is a current of finished business that left the

close alliance between the United States and Western Europe against the

Soviets obsolete.

These currents, now racing along the surface of the international order,

bring with them impatient demands for change. Rising powers insist on

recognition; new aspirations demand to be satisfied. Yet there is in inter￾national relations an enormous inertia. Change is often accompanied by

turmoil; but the international system seeks quietude. It is a principle of

today’s international community advanced by its primarily European advo￾cates that the avoidance of war is the central objective of the system. But

where change is necessary, can peaceful means alone accommodate it; and

if there is no risk of war, will any advantage of importance be relinquished

to a current have-not? Hence, our focus on avoiding war is coupled with an

implicit support for the status quo.

Yet the world is changing very much. Some nations are growing and

strengthening; others are declining and weakening. Change is inevitable, but

if we provide no mechanism for it, then a cause for war is supplied. Conflict

is often not sought for itself, but is a symptom of a change that needs to

be made. Despite our attempts to preserve peace and to keep change in the

world within narrow boundaries, the untidy globe keeps bubbling.

Of all the states (more than one hundred) in existence in the world in

1914, only eight escaped a violent change of government between then and

the early 1990s.12 Change of a dramatic nature is very common and to

anticipate stability in a world in which economics and demographics are

rapidly altering is another form of wishful thinking – wishing to escape the

hard work of accommodating large scale change among nations.

P1: FCW

0521857449c02 Printer: cupusbw CUNY475B/Rosefielde 0 521 85744 9 November 3, 2006 11:50

Long-Term Economic Realism 29

Order in the world must conform to the realities of economic power that

is changing fast. So the world order must change. When the world changes

and the world order does not, great conflict ensues. The reason the peace

of Versailles after World War I didn’t last, but gave way instead to World

War II was that the Versailles peace “conformed neither to history, nor to

geography, nor to economics.”13

Strategy and leadership are most important in international relations.

For example, the sudden change in the Palestinian situation in the winter of

2005 was due to a change in the strategic setting in the Middle East as a result

of the removal of Saddam Hussein from the leadership of Iraq, and the death

of Yasser Arafat. Saddam’s replacement removed a strong support for the

violence in Palestine, and Arafat’s death removed a leader who had a personal

agenda and a particular political base and commitment to tactics which

caused him to support violence. Absent the change in the strategic situation

caused by the American invasion of Iraq, and the change in leadership caused

by the removal of Saddam and Yasser Arafat from the scene, the prolonged

violent stalemate between Israel and the Palestinians would have continued

without a new effort for accommodation. It was these two changes that were

necessary – in strategic situation and in leadership – and all the commentary

focusing on other factors for the four years previously was simply irrelevant

verbosity.

But even in the Middle East American leaders seem afraid of dramatic

change. The inclination of the United States to support the status quo ante,

whatever it may be, is evident in the approach we’ve taken to Iraq. We have

tried to preserve the unity of the country, even though there are strong

reasons for not doing so, including that Iraq was cobbled together with little

rhyme or reason by colonial powers after World War I. But our leadership

lacks the vision to either dismantle Iraq or include it as a whole in some

broader unity within the Arab world – either of which might be a better

solution than trying to stick the country together again.14 The United States

could have divided Iraq in three; then held oil revenues as incentive for the

regions to work out peace – by unity, federation, or peaceful separation.

Alternatively, we might have forced Iraq into a wider federation with Saudi

Arabia and Kuwait. We did neither. Such actions need boldness of concept

as well as of action. Modern American administrations sometime act boldly,

but never think boldly.

The challenge to the American president is to lead modifications in the

international order that are required by the dramatic changes underway,

and in order to do so to gain the support of an electorate mislead by public

culture.

P1: FCW

0521857449c02 Printer: cupusbw CUNY475B/Rosefielde 0 521 85744 9 November 3, 2006 11:50

30 National Security in the New Age

PRESIDENTIAL CANDOR

How should a leader deal with a gullible public, largely uninformed about

history and about events abroad, and subject to manipulation by partisan

opponents?

Plato addressed the issue more than two thousand years ago. He con￾cluded, “If anyone at all is to have the privilege of lying, the rulers of the

state should be the persons; and they in their dealings either with enemies

or with their own citizens, may be allowed to lie for the public good.”15 We

make very different demands on our presidents in the United States today.

We ask that they be candid with us about what they are doing and why. This

is part of the idealism of our public culture. It is a total denial of the essence

of diplomacy (or of cocktail party etiquette), which holds it polite to conceal

opinions and motives that might offend another. But there is something to

be said for it in a democracy, in which the electorate cannot be properly

informed without honest communication from the nation’s leadership.

Public trust in America in leaders in all fields continues to drop. In this

environment, silence, denial and closed door decision making are almost

always interpreted as evidence of bad faith.16

The new maturity of the American people, limited though it is, may

permit more candor in presidential communication and thereby point a

way out of the current morass of distrust. The opportunity offers three key

things for American political leadership:

It may be possible for a president to act militarily with the full support of

the American people, quite unlike the situation in Vietnam; Americans

are in general savvy enough to understand presidential leadership offered

honestly in a cold logic of defense grounded in a necessary geopolitical

orientation; and

It may now be possible for a president to lead Americans in our defense

without either the complete cynicism of Old World power politics or the

wishful thinking of overly ambitious schemes to remake the world in our

own image.
There may be a role for deception in tactical operations, where surprise

is often the difference between life and death for soldiers and between

success and failure for the mission. But in matters of basic strategy, what

we are doing and why, then deception, especially for momentary political

gain, usually is found out and the results – U.S. citizens slowly realizing

that they have been betrayed by their country – are both irreversible

and unfortunate. At the least, people are confused about objectives and

don’t know what they should do to support them. At the worst, people

P1: FCW

0521857449c02 Printer: cupusbw CUNY475B/Rosefielde 0 521 85744 9 November 3, 2006 11:50

Long-Term Economic Realism 31

cease to trust the government. Fearing distrust, the government goes to

increasing lengths to try to salvage falsehoods, and so digs itself into a

deeper and deeper hole. In such a circumstance, success can be perceived

as failure, and the world turned upside down. The best policy for an

American government is that suggested by a father to a daughter in the

movie Moonstruck: “Tell them the truth, Dear. You might as well. They

find out anyway.”

Examples are readily available in recent American history. Lyndon

Johnson was bitterly attacked when it was discovered that the Gulf of

Tonkin resolution, which played an important part in the initial justi￾fication of the Vietnam War, was based on an incident the significance

of which had been much exaggerated. And Richard Nixon was as bit￾terly criticized when he gained support for his presidential bid in 1968 by

promising that he had a plan to exit the Vietnam war, and then expanded

the fighting into Cambodia in May 1970.

Because of the unwillingness of political leaders to be candid with the

public about threats and their objectives in choosing how to meet them, a

promising new approach that is well fitted to the new sorts of dangers facing

the United States is likely to be discarded with an increasingly unpopular

war.

It is na¨ıve to suggest that political leaders can be completely candid; this

violates basic norms of diplomacy. The White House must always weigh

the value of the truth against its cost, said a high official of the Clinton

administration to us. “Often the cost of candor is too great, and the White

House can’t tell the truth.”

The current predilection of American administrations for posturing

about moral motives while making plans and taking actions based on more

realistic assessments of international situations is certain to create massive

distrust in periods longer than a few months. This doesn’t mean that we

should abandon objectivity, but rather that we should be much more mod￾est about moralizing.

We favor sophisticated candor, in which there is honesty about strategic

aims, but not na¨ıve recounting of unnecessary detail. Being a master of

illusion entails telling people how things seem, and how we need to cope

with imponderables, as a counter to wishful thinking, deceitful or otherwise.

Atthe core of the challenge to American leadership in these times is to address

successfully counter arguments that insist that there are no threats other than

those posed by misunderstandings or our own actions threatening others.

For example, it is argued that because Iraq was apparently not involved in the

P1: FCW

0521857449c02 Printer: cupusbw CUNY475B/Rosefielde 0 521 85744 9 November 3, 2006 11:50

32 National Security in the New Age

attack on the World Trade Center, it was not a legitimate target of terrorist

activity. By this standard, Nazi Germany – which was never informed by

Japan of the attack on Pearl Harbor until after it occurred and played no

role in the attack – was not a legitimate target of American arms during

World War II. Unless a President can address successfully arguments of this

type, he cannot lead effectively in the modern world.

The probability is our country will always have inadequate presidents,

partisan media, and citizen misperceptions. The inadequacy of leadership

lies in the inability of presidents to either select a proper course or to com￾municate it persuasively to the public, or both. The roots of the limitations of

American presidential leadership lie in the attitude of the electorate toward

issues of foreign policy (specifically, the lack of historical knowledge and the

emphasis on domestic concerns), the selection process for presidential can￾didates (which emphasizes partisanship and exaggerates the strength of the

extremes in both parties), and the character of the public culture (with its

emphasis on the immediate versus the middle and long term, its preference

for sensationalism and partisanship rather than accuracy, and its projec￾tion of our own values onto other cultures). Each of these factors can be

altered, but efforts so far have been largely unavailing and a serious effort

to address all three at once is not currently on the horizon. The best that

can be hoped for is some advance in each arena, perhaps as a partial result

of studies like this one that may raise a bit the consciousness of the public

about these issues. Forewarned by studies such as this, the great strength of

the American democracy which arises from the energy and commitment of

its people may again redress the shortcomings of its leadership.

CHAPTER 2: KEY POINTS

1. America has changed since 9/11; there is a new maturity and objectivity

about international threats which is in conflict with our dominant

public culture. It is possible that our national leadership can seize the

opportunity to be more candid with the American people about the

threats we face and the appropriate ways to counter them, wherever

our leaders aren’t themselves befuddled by our public culture.

2. Country-by-country analysis doesn’t work in realistically assessing

national security threats. The world is full of interrelations and

complexities; so that things are often done indirectly. The public cul￾ture has no patience for these complexities, and simplifies to a degree

that reality is lost.