War and Foreign Policy, American-Style

Zbigniew Brzezinski

The central question in world affairs today can be encapsulated in a parody of an old pacifist slogan: Can America make war while loving peace? The fact is that American power--including the presumption in special circumstances of its coercive application--provides the indispensable basis for global stability. The only real alternative to it is global anarchy.

The fundamental truth of the foregoing proposition--however offensive it may be to those who resent the prevailing international reality--can be easily tested. Just consider the likely consequences of a Congressional vote mandating the prompt withdrawal of all U.S. forces from South Korea, the Persian Gulf, and Europe. Inevitably and almost immediately, a massive outbreak of violence around the world would follow. No similar scenario can even be envisioned in regard to any other existing power. Like it or not, America is--and will probably remain for a generation or so--the linchpin of global stability. ¹

This reality places a premium on America's capacity to use its current preponderance of power responsibly and strategically (while it still lasts) to promote the gradual sharing of global responsibilities with willing regional powers, preferably ones that share America's democratic vocation. The effective pursuit of this task, however, requires an America that has the ability both to employ skillful diplomacy and to impose--if necessary--decisive dominance. And because America is a democracy, that ability must be sustained by the political culture from which America's international conduct is derived. [End Page 172]

It is in this context that I turn to Tocqueville's reflections on the American democracy's capacity to wage war and to make peace. This observant Frenchman showed an extraordinary ability to grasp the novel character of the American experience and to anticipate its universal relevance to the emerging democratic age. Yet upon reading his observations with the recent Kosovo military operation still fresh in my mind and with the wars in Vietnam and Korea registered in my memory, I am also struck by his curious mixture of brilliantly enduring insights and dogmatic misjudgments.

Tocqueville's comments on the character and role of the military in a democracy were especially skewed. Never fearful of sweeping generalizations, he placed particular emphasis on what he perceived to be the basic contradiction between the central values of a democratic society and the imperatives of a martial spirit. In a democracy, he asserted, "military ambition is indulged only when no other is possible. Hence arises a circle of cause and consequence from which it is difficult to escape: the best part of the nation shuns the military profession because that profession is not honored, and the profession is not honored because the best part of the nation has ceased to follow it" (II, 267).

That observation, most applicable in recent times to the antimilitary atmosphere that prevailed in America during the Vietnam War and perhaps also the interlude between the two World Wars, led him to the far-reaching conclusion that democratic armies "are constantly drawn to war and revolutions" as a means of accelerating the social advancement of their officer corps. He minced no words: "A restless and turbulent spirit is an evil inherent in the very constitution of democratic armies and beyond hope of cure" (II, 269). While suspicious of the personal ambitions of the officer caste, he reserved his most scathing comments for the noncommissioned officers (NCOs), perceiving them to be congenital enemies of the democratic constitutional order, "bent on war, on war always and at any cost; but if war be denied them, then they desire revolutions" (II, 274). Lest readers conclude that his observations were derived from his encounters with the American military and hence applicable particularly to America, Tocqueville added categorically: "It would be an error to suppose that these various characteristics of officers, non-commissioned officers, and men belong to any particular time or country; they will always occur at all times and among all democratic nations" (II, 274).

The American experience, in fact, collides with Tocqueville's generalizations. The U.S. military--whether in times of universal military service or when staffed primarily by professional soldiers--has internalized the notion of the constitutional legitimacy of civilian control to a degree unmatched until very recent times by any other state, democratic or not. Even as recently as World War II, "ministers of war" in most foreign cabinets were senior military officers, at best [End Page 173] reluctantly respectful of civilian authority and even then preferably only from a distance. By contrast, in America military challenges to civilian supremacy have been rare. Hence the very few exceptions to the rule, such as General MacArthur's somewhat ambiguous recalcitrance in 1951, are vividly remembered. ²

The several U.S. military academies have played an especially important role in constitutional indoctrination, a mission that Tocqueville had not anticipated. They have shaped generation after generation of military commanders to be unswervingly loyal to the democratic system while also imbuing in them a commitment to the highest standards of military professionalism. Indeed, the U.S. military academies (and in more recent years, an entire spectrum of more advanced "war colleges") have been remarkable in their ability to instill in their graduates a dedication to political democracy, a respect for the professionally specialized military vocation, and a sophisticated appreciation of the technological dimensions of warfare, all at the same time. Much the same can be said of American NCOs, whose record of performance and uniquely high level of operational responsibility have become the envy of other nations' armies.

The American Way of War

Tocqueville came closer to the mark when discussing the larger issues of peacemaking and war-waging. He correctly noted the inherent resilience of the democratic system when faced with external adversity--thereby anticipating the performance of the British in 1940 and the Americans in 1941. As he put it, "When a democratic people engages in war after a long peace, it incurs much more risk of defeat than any other nation" (II, 277). That initial risk arises, in his view, because in peacetime the democratic population has little respect for the military and the military tends to become progressively demoralized. Once an external threat has arisen, however, "there is a secret connection between the military character and the character of democracies, which war brings to light" (II, 278). A democracy at war then enjoys the benefits of truly popular passion, reinforced by a revolutionary spirit that "allows extraordinary men to rise above the common level" (II, 278), providing the needed innovative leadership in combat and making the necessary sacrifices. In the end, therefore, democracy prevails.

Of course, Tocqueville could not have anticipated the novel combination of ideology and technology that gave twentieth-century wars their unique and dramatically changing cast. He could not have foreseen either the evolution of war into conflicts of nearly total extinction or the even more recent tendency to recast wars into more limited quasi-police actions. Yet that has been the central experience of warmaking in the twentieth century--an experience to which the [End Page 174] U.S. military adapted but also one that, to some extent, the American way of war prompted.

The American military, particularly in the light of its experience in the Civil War, has customarily placed enormous emphasis on firepower and on logistics, adapting the latest technological innovations to these ends. The result has been an American warmaking tradition that, on the whole, has been tactically cautious in combat and more solicitous than most other armies of its own soldiers' lives (allocating a higher proportion of the military budget than any other state to first aid on the battlefield). At the same time, it has placed greater emphasis on inflicting heavy destruction on the enemy than on daring maneuvers to disrupt his operations. ³

The evolution of warfare in the twentieth century has tended to reinforce these American propensities. Ideologies--in the first instance, of populist nationalism, and then of the Nazi and communist varieties--stimulated mass mobilization for combat, and that mobilization in turn was facilitated by technological innovations that strengthened the grip of political power. At the same time, the technology of war vastly increased the military's capability to inflict truly massive slaughter on combatants, as was seen on the battlefields of World War I. Lethality was further enhanced during World War II, especially for noncombatants, with conflicts waged until the "unconditional surrender" of the vanquished.

During World War II, the American way of war made its own technological contribution to that evolution through the "Flying Fortresses" and eventually through the two atomic bombs, which both were dropped on essentially civilian concentrations. To state that fact is not to cast moral aspersions on the American military but rather to note that the technological evolution of warfare actually played to the tactical and organizational strengths of the American military tradition.

While winning a total victory, America led the world into the nuclear age. After losing its monopoly over atomic weapons, America pioneered in the formulation of the strategic doctrine of deterrence, which stipulated that maximum force should be employed only as a last resort. In other words, the availability of virtually total destructive power meant that its actual exploitation should be kept to a minimum and used primarily as a threat to deter its use by an enemy. Real war thus became rare and more restrained.

To be sure, the half-century-long Cold War was punctuated by military clashes. The world did come "to the brink," so to speak, more than once. But the truly novel aspect of that era was the degree to which America, the preponderant nuclear power for much of the Cold War, carefully abstained from waging all-out military campaigns to destroy its opponents. Instead, in the Korean War, the United States settled for the status quo ante; in the Vietnam War, the United States [End Page 175] avoided attacking the aggressor forcefully; and in the Gulf War, the United States refrained from matching its military success with a political triumph. In all three cases, the opponent was incomparably weaker than the United States, but the risks of seeking a total victory were prudently viewed as too high. Pressing harder could have risked precipitating wider international conflicts, thereby threatening (especially in the first two cases) the delicate structure of nuclear deterrence.

This American restraint was a rational reaction to the dangerous realities of the atomic age. It also reflected a gradual change that occurred in the dominant American culture, especially over the last three decades. In terms of public attitudes, to put it in a nutshell, crusading was down and consuming was up; self-sacrifice was down and self-satisfaction was up; passion was down and caution was up. Among the political elite itself, military service became increasingly rare and was certainly no precondition for attaining public office at the highest level.

In the changed international and domestic context, all-out wars have come to be supplanted by military operations increasingly similar to police actions. As a matter of fact, the Korean, Gulf, and Kosovo conflicts were so described and defined by the United States. They were designed to cope with a specific evil but not to root it out. Like most police actions, they were limited by concern for the wider political and social environment and focused only on the specific transgression. Not surprisingly, they produced no sense of popular engagement nor, even when successful, of national triumph. Generals Eisenhower and MacArthur, who were hailed as victors over Germany and Japan, respectively, found no counterparts in Korea, in Vietnam, or in Kosovo. Only wars are perceived as having been won by heroic commanders; police successes are viewed more routinely.

The Future of American Engagement

But can American democracy sustain a serious global engagement when its use of force is increasingly applied in remote police actions that the public does not perceive as responding to a direct threat or motivated by a grand cause? So far, the answer appears to be a very qualified "yes." The Korean War became a focus of contention during the 1952 presidential elections. The Vietnam War generated the most intense antiwar sentiments. The Gulf War was approved in the Senate by a very small majority; only after the sweeping and surprisingly swift military success did public sentiment become more favorable. Yet even then the president did not dare to turn the police action into a politically focused war.

The recently concluded NATO action in Kosovo provides further [End Page 176] grounds for concern regarding the prospect of public support for a sustained American global police role. While the public generally supported the Kosovo action, the U.S. role became the subject of rancorous and very partisan debate in the Congress. Even more revealing was the U.S. political leadership's obsessive fear of casualties, which betrayed its deep mistrust of the depth of public support, while conveying the impression that the cause (which the Clinton Administration proclaimed to be just and moral) was not worth risking the life of a single professional warrior.

Indeed, some aspects of the military operation in Kosovo were suggestively similar to the conduct of the police response to the school slayings in Littleton, Colorado. Even though a wounded victim there was left bleeding to death in the school area where most of the shootings occurred, the police refrained for several hours from penetrating the building lest hostile fire be encountered. In brief, police actions, viewed as routine even when necessary, do not invoke the passionate commitment--and the willingness to run risks--typical of wars waged on behalf of a compelling ideal or in response to a collectively perceived threat. Antiseptic professional combat has little in common with warfare motivated by principle.

Tocqueville was distinctly pessimistic about a democracy's capacity to conduct a rational foreign policy. Noting "the propensity that induces democracies to obey impulse rather than prudence" (I, 235), he argued that "foreign politics demand scarcely any of those qualities which are peculiar to a democracy" (I, 234). He concluded that "almost all the nations that have exercised a powerful influence upon the destinies of the world, by conceiving, following out, and executing vast designs, from the Romans to the English, have been governed by aristocratic institutions" (I, 236).

He may well be right, but America is and will remain a democracy, and its global engagement must therefore ultimately be inspired by some ideal and some commitment. By contrast, a policy of narrow national interest eventually is likely to produce some form of isolationism. Inevitably people will ask, "Why bother about some distant foreign crisis?" Reliance on antiseptic police operations might work for a time, provided they are relatively painless. But will this always be the case? A purely "realistic" foreign policy focused on a narrow definition of the national interest (for example, limited only to direct personal security or prosperity) will not keep America involved. It would not have provided even the limited support that the casualty-free military operation in Kosovo enjoyed nor sustained the more extensive support that it took to wage the Cold War. In both instances, "the right thing to do" enjoyed popular support because something larger--freedom and human rights--was perceived to be at stake.

Given that America is above all a democracy, it cannot practice [End Page 177] Tocqueville's notion of aristocratic foreign policy. Thus the only basis for sustaining the commitment of the American people to global engagement, including the occasional use of military force, is the policy that Presidents Wilson, Truman, Carter, and Reagan all have tried to pursue--combining reliance on power with a commitment to principle. These presidents recognized that the American national interest is linked to the persistent--even if prudent--promotion of democracy. In the post-Cold War era of more contained warfare, global stability depends on an America that continues to hold to this course.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, U.S. National Security Advisor during the Carter administration, is professor of U.S. foreign policy at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University and counselor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The most recent of his many books, The Grand Chessboard, was published in 1997.

Notes

1. I address the geostrategic implications of the foregoing more fully in my book The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives (New York: Basic Books, 1997), which--not surprisingly--provoked the strongest reactions in France, Germany, Russia, and China.

2. In fairness to Tocqueville, it should be noted that he also argued that "the least warlike and also the least revolutionary part of the democratic army will always be its chief commanders" (II, 273). He ascribed such pacifist inclinations to the complacent desire of the socially promoted generals to preserve--and not to jeopardize--their positions.

3. Not surprisingly, the epitome of the American field commander has been General Omar N. Bradley, not General George S. Patton.