This Isn’t the Foreign Policy Trump Campaigned On
It may be too early to tell for sure, but Donald Trump is looking more and more like a phony. He’s also looking like a weakling. And a political ingrate.
The strategy failed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It will fail in Syria, too.
By now the U.S. foreign-policy elite should understand that regime change is a bad idea.
The three most recent cases—Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya—are far from models of success. Afghanistan is now America’s longest-running war with no end in sight. Iraq is a close second and yet another example of the folly of trying to impose Western-style democracy in a tribal society with a Sunni-Shia divide. Moreover, deposing Saddam Hussein created a vacuum that first gave rise to al Qaeda in Iraq and then ISIS. Libya has turned out to be a smaller-scale version of Iraq. Another dictator deposed, but even President Obama had to admit regime change “didn’t work.”
Which brings us to Syria, an ongoing military mission that is still a work in progress. Clearly, the Obama administration—via a combination of arming anti-Assad rebel factions and air strikes—was unable to topple the regime in Damascus. One view amongst the foreign-policy elite is that we must work with local partners in Syria but “we must choose the right partners.” Exactly who those right partners are is not entirely clear and our track record picking the right partners in Afghanistan and Iraq gives rational thinkers cause for pause. Indeed, there may not be any right partners and it is incredulous to think that it’s possible to create them, as some have suggested.
The problem with regime change is not whether we can use military force to topple a regime. We certainly did that in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya—in different ways and at varying costs. But regime change is not about just getting rid of a regime. It’s about replacing it with a new government crafted in our image.
All about America is "short term" .. quarterly report, weekly unemployment #s .. for building a nation you need many centuries, probably 500-1000 yrs.
America has neither knowledge, neither understands, nor willing or interested to, in all those different parts of the world with entirely different civilization and culture and values.
.
