As we close out the remainder of the year, it is time for people to make their New Year’s resolutions.
Average Americans, however, are not the only ones who should be sitting in their living rooms drawing up a list. If there is any section of society that could use an improvement heading into 2019, it is the men and women who propose, formulate, and execute U.S. foreign policy.
As the country gets closer to the new year, here are three resolutions that the foreign policy establishment should make and, more importantly, uphold.
1. Stop referring to your opponents as ‘isolationists’
Those advocating for a more sober, realistic, and intellectually honest reappraisal of U.S. national security interests across the board (from how to effectively manage security partnerships to what conflicts are worthy of U.S. investment) are increasingly in vogue on both sides of the political aisle. Conventional foreign policy thinkers who have ruled the roost for decades and continue to insist that maintaining American primacy is the smartest choice are feeling squeezed.
Yet rather than engage sincerely and cordially on the issues with colleagues who support more restraint in Washington’s foreign policy and grand strategy, too many interventionists take the low road and play with ad hominem attacks and childish name-calling. A favorite buzzword of the establishment is “isolationism.” The term is a pejorative designed to paint everyone and anyone who has the gall to challenge the liberal internationalism and neoconservatism of the post-Cold War era as somehow unconcerned about national security. It is a word conjuring up the ugly American uninterested in the world around him, even when supposed dangers lurk in the background.
The isolationism attack, however, is a lazy trope that muddies the waters and skews the wider debate over foreign policy. The public deserve a proliferation of viewpoints, some of which may diverge from the comfortable but oftentimes failed status quo insiders in the Beltway latch onto. Consulting a dictionary and actually understanding what words like “isolationism” and “isolationist” mean (or, better yet, dropping them from the conversation entirely) would go a long way in creating a more substantive debate.
2. Stop equating defense spending with U.S. security
There is a widespread, bipartisan belief inside the Beltway that U.S. security runs through the Pentagon. The formula goes something like this: If the Pentagon budget does not grow year-on-year or takes a cut, however insignificant in the grand scheme of things, the U.S. military will have less money to work with and therefore be less capable or prepared to defend the country.
While this may sound logical, this argument skates on thin ice. Ultimately, U.S. national security is predicated far more on the strategy choices policymakers make and the priorities they set than the amount of money Pentagon officials are given during the fiscal year.
Indeed, if money was the answer, U.S. national security policy would resemble a string of successes; Washington spends more on its armed forces than the next seven countries combined. As former Clinton administration defense budget official Gordon Adams has confided over the years, what matters even more than the amount of money at the Pentagon’s disposal is the strategy and how Pentagon officials spend the dollars they do have.
U.S. security is far broader than the defense budget. It also includes the robustness of the economy, the state of our infrastructure, the innovation of the workforce, and the size of federal government’s national debt. If all of these areas are in the red, it won’t matter how many hundreds of billions of dollars the U.S. military has.
3. Be more humble
As the world’s sole superpower, the United States has the power and might to do amazing things. It can retaliate against an adversarial force in a span of hours and dispatch B-1 bombers from Missouri to Northeast Asia in record time. It can win any conventional war against any enemy while dealing with other security contingencies in other regions of the world. Despite the last recession, the U.S. economy remains the envy of the world and the backbone of the global financial system.
But just because the U.S. has the power doesn’t mean it should use it unconditionally. There are many armed conflicts in the world (think of the proxy wars in Yemen and Syria, ethnic strife on the African continent, border spats between the Turks and the Kurds, and the sectarian-laced hatred between Iraq’s Shia and Sunni communities) that Washington doesn’t have a fight in. In many cases, U.S. involvement merely drags out these conflicts and provides the parties with a misplaced sense of security that Washington will solve their problems. With the U.S. acting as a guardrail and referee, the parties have less of an incentive to resolve the disputes themselves.
America is an exceptional nation, but it is also a nation with limits. The U.S. cannot right every wrong or do everything for everyone — nor would it be in the country’s interest to try. Often, being restrained rather than reflexive is the only alternative on the table.
Daniel DePetris (@DanDePetris) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a fellow at Defense Priorities.
