Critique of US Foreign Policy

For John, BLUF:  "Nasr offers the zero-sum, realpolitik focal point of great power competition with China as the “bedrock” that should shape US grand strategy in the Middle East."

A book review from Small Wars Journal, The Dispensable Nation:  American Forward Policy in Retreat.

Vali Nasr’s book, The Dispensable Nation: American Foreign Policy in Retreat, is a dark offering.  Nasr is clearly disillusioned with the process and results of America’s foreign policy in recent years, asking “why, despite our overwhelming power and potential, our influence is diminishing.  The answer lies in how we exercise our power and how we see our role in the world.”  In crafting this answer, Nasr’s book ranges well beyond the Afghanistan-Pakistan issue (on which he was the senior advisor to U.S. Special Representative on Afghanistan and Pakistan, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, from 2009 to 2011) in an attempt to reestablish the foundational logic of America’s foreign policy in the Middle East.

Nasr pulls no punches in stating his case.  “We have abandoned Iraq and Afghanistan to instability, pushed Pakistan away, destabilized but not ‘denuclearized’ Iran, let down countries of the Arab Spring, and still managed to also alienate authoritarian allies in the Persian Gulf.”  Nasr’s goal is much larger than his criticized interpretation of events and actors in Afghanistan and alleged hagiography of Richard Holbrooke.  He wants the US to do more in what he sees as “the single most important region of the world.”  We should have done more in Iraq, we must do more in Afghanistan, and we should do more in Syria, Bahrain, Egypt, and the Gulf.  Nasr’s activist bent does not follow the neoconservative or liberal interventionist logics that have driven America’s recent military adventures.  His argument rests on a classical realist foundation: the coming great power reckoning between the US and China.  “The Middle East will be at the center of that clash when it happens,” he warns (emphasis added).

There are links embedded at the original.

Having just read the review and not yet the book, I would assert that we need to really shift a lot of focus to the South, toward Mexico and nations further South.  Otherwise we will find a lot of problems boiling up down there.

Just one more book that needs to be read to understand what is going on.

Regards  —  Cliff