Proponents of a multilateralist foreign policy have treated the consequences of the post-9/11 foreign policy of the Administration of GW Bush as a sort of proof of the merits of multilateralism over unilateralism.

Part of the problem with this argument is that, while the invasion and occupation of Iraq was essentially unilateralist, the earlier invasion and occupation of Afghanistan was multilateralist, and that invasion doesn't seem to have been a comparative success.

Moreover, politically weakened when the Rumsfeld strategy failed, the Administration was compelled to pursue a multilateralist policy with respect to Iran and to North Korea. Again, the policy does not seem to have worked.

In fact, the war with Iraq was not begun under that Administration, nor was it begun unilaterally. It was begun in early 1991, as a multilateral policy under the Administration of GHW Bush, and continued as such under the Clinton Administration. After more than twelve years of undeclared multilateral warfare, forceably embargoing Iraq and lobbing missiles at them, and the deaths of an enormous number of Iraqis, with Saddam Hussein trying to bide his time until it became impossible for the United States to remain in Saudia Arabia, the United States switched to a unilateral war policy.

Also during the Administration of the elder Bush, the United States participated in the multilateral invasion and occupation of Somalia. (At its outset, the mainstream media celebrated it as a sort-of proof-by-expectation of the merits of the UN.) That wasn't exactly a success either. (But, somehow, not taken as proof-by-outcome of the deficiencies of the UN.)

Now, proponents of multilateralism variously argue that they just need(ed) more time, that the specific implementations have been defective but the general approach is none-the-less appropriate, or that their policy is imperfect but less of a failure than the alternative. Unilateralists present the isomorphic arguments got by swapping uni and multi.

The last form of argument, that the policy is better than the alternative hangs on the notion that the only one alternative exists; that we must have either unilateralist entanglements or multilateralist entanglements. Well, that's certainly not logically true. Logically, we might simply avoid entanglements altogether. Instead of having our diplomats author or co-author Strongly Worded Declarations, we might tell our diplomats to just shut-up. Instead of trying to police the world in-or-out-of NATO, we might send our troops over-seas exactly and only when specifically attacked within our own territory.

I don't know that military isolation would spare us any grief. While a very large share of the present problems of America are caused by the past misdeeds of the United States, I'm of the opinion that indeed a large part of the world hates America because they see its liberalism (tattered as it may be) as an obscene rebuke to their own cultures, and dread that, in the absence of violence, that liberalism would over-sweep their cultures. And that part of the world would use the past sins of the United States as an excuse to fly planes into our buildings for decades after the United States tried to withdraw. But, in spite of my practical doubt, and in spite of my not knowing just how to transition, I'm convinced that we need to move towards military isolation, and to keep moving until we get there and can stay there.

In any case, when you evaluate the foreign policy of the United States, consider the invasion of Iraq, but also consider the dozen years of war before that; consider Afghanistan, consider Iran, consider North Korea, consider Somalia, consider the Sudan. Don't compare practical unilateralism to mythical multilateralism.

Tags: Afghanistan, diplomacy, Iran, Iraq, isolationism, multilateralism, NATO, North Korea, Somalia, Sudan, unilateralism, United Nations

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