In part one of this article I wrote about books on the Middle East I’ve made available that can be read in full for free on line here.
But
I’ve also had other interests which intertwine with that one,
especially U.S. foreign policy, a topic which is very much present in
such books as Cauldron of Turmoil and Paved with Good Intentions.
This article discusses two additional books and includes links to their full texts available for free.
I
grew up in Washington DC and had a lot of close contact and observation
of the governmental process which has proven to be invaluable in my
work. Academics often do not understand how policy is actually made and
their attempts to develop theories on this point have made their made
misunderstandings even worse.
Once,
I gave a paper at a university on a very detailed comparison of U.S.
decisionmaking on the Iranian revolution and Nicaraguan
counterrevolution. It included such points as why specific individuals,
even far down in the bureaucracy, had played a role at a certain point
and how different agencies competed on pushing their agendas or
perceptions. A professor stood up, said he taught U.S. foreign policy,
and he had no interest in such “dirty” things. I replied that his view
was like that of someone who would be a music expert who had never seen
anyone play an
instrument.
That’s why I wrote Secrets of State: The State Department and the Struggle Over U.S. Foreign Policy. The
title was carefully chosen. The main title is a pun, of course,
(Secrets of State/State Department)
but also reflects a key theme: the greatest secret is how decisions are
made, how they are implemented, and whether they are going to succeed
or fail due to the particular choices selected.
The
subtitle (Struggle) reflects the fact that, in contrast to other
countries, U.S. policy is built out of a struggle between individual
decision-makers and government agencies (State, Defense, White House,
National Security Council, Joint Chiefs of Staff, CIA, etc.). But the
shape of this process is different with every presidency because of that
chief executive’s style and the
people he appoints around him and their relative strengths and
weaknesses.
This
book, then, is a history of the policymaking process and foreign
policy philosophy from George Washington to Ronald Reagan (that’s when
it came out) but is completely up to date on that period and the themes
have continued to the present.
It
explains why American foreign policy is different from other countries.
I had fun with a quote from a Bahraini newspaper about how U.S. policy
was shrouded in mist and inscrutability, a turnaround, of course, on an
American cliché about other countries.
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A second issue that’s fascinated me has been anti-Americanism. My wife, Judy, and myself thus wrote Hating America: A History. It’s a history of a subject that many people speak about superficially but few have actually researched.
The
debate on this issue has often obscured it. There are said to be two
schools one of which says that America is hated because of its policies,
the other due to its values. One problem with this typology is that, of
course, anti-Americanism arises from both factors.
The
other is that this point provides a wonderful case study of what is
wrong today with American intellectual and political life. Liberals are
supposed to say, “Policies!” and conservatives are supposed to say,
“Values!” something like the more taste/less filling debate of a certain
famous beer commercial.
What
does this communicate? That your political stance is supposed to
dictate what you believe to be true, thus replacing the search for truth
with rigid ideology. It also kills the need to build a synthesis. Why
bother to
do research or thinking if one need merely memorize the catechism?
I
will come back to this point in a few seconds but first let me explain
that our book focused on a third explanation: local conditions. The view
of America taken by a foreign intellectual, political figure,
government, country, or movement first and foremost depends on its own
needs and interests.
To
give one example, the view of America in 1780, 1880, and 1980 changed
drastically due not so much to changes in America but to changes and the
state of the political debate in France. Battling forces abroad would
see the United States as a terrible monster or as a liberator or role
model depending on their own stances.
Now
back to the flaws in the contemporary American debate. In the
Introduction to our book there was a clear explanation of the above,
saying that we were attributing anti-Americanism to policies, values,
and the local politics of foreign places involved. And, of course, the
specific time and place determined the balance among those three
factors.
But in the New York Times review,
written—no kidding—by an intern at a leftist institution—it says that
our book was a typical “conservative” example of
blaming everything on “values.” See! No need to think or to read and
comprehend. All you need is to categorize someone and the brain is
turned off. Or, better yet, first you turn off the brain and then you
start giving a political speech in the guise of something else.
At
any rate, the book examines anti-Americanism from the very beginning
(and anti-Americanism existed long before the United States did) down to
the present, including all of its regional variations (especially
European, Latin American, and Middle Eastern).
The
original anti-Americanism insisted, by the way, that no civilized
society could be built in such an environment wracked by climate
problems among other issues and that people who lived there would be
“degenerated,” inevitably weak and feeble.
In
a wonderful scene, in February 1778, Benjamin Franklin held a banquet
in France and asked all the guests to stand against a wall to measure
their height. All of the eighteen Americans were taller than the
eighteen Europeans there. And, Franklin records triumphantly, the
shortest of them all—“a mere shrimp”—was Guillaume Raynal, the famous
French scientist who was author of the theory that Americans were
physically inferior.
Quite a perfect anecdote for today.
This article is published on PJMedia.
This article is published on PJMedia.
Barry
Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs
(GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International
Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest book, Israel: An Introduction, has just been published by Yale University Press. Other recent books include The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab
Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). The website of the GLORIA Center and of his blog, Rubin Reports. His original articles are published at PJMedia.
Professor Barry Rubin, Director, Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center http://www.gloria-center.org
The Rubin Report blog http://rubinreports.blogspot.com/
He is a featured columnist at PJM http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/.
Editor, Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal http://www.gloria-center.org
Editor Turkish Studies,http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~db=all~content=t713636933%22
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