Early post-Cold War world order: lost opportunites

Review of War in a Time of Peace: Bush, Clinton, and the Generals by David Halberstam

This book is about in the early post-Cold War world order, written to influence events as they were evolving. With the collapse of the USSR, the US was the only superpower. It’s a study of leadership failure: Presidents George H. W. Bush and then Bill Clinton did not want to pay attention to the disintegration of Yugoslavia until it reached murderous proportions; instead, they let the European leaders of the early 1990s dawdle. According to Halberstam, not only were there innovative, largely untested technologies newly available – precision bombs and the B-2 stealth aircraft that could quickly take out the infrastructure with virtually no collateral civilian damage – but there was a new crop of young American leaders who were willing to take the task on and were not allowed to do so. Furthermore, the author claims, there was a crusty layer of mediocre bureaucratic leaders below Bush and Clinton, who were wary of entering a “new Vietnam”, throwing up political barriers and misleading them as to America's strengths.

Halberstam concentrates on the technological advances that had recently emerged and how Pentagon doctrine tended to lag behind: drones and precision-guided missiles can now deliver powerful explosive devices within a few feet of their targets, a gain in accuracy over earlier bombs that surpasses several orders of magnitude. We were entering the era of "smart bombs" and Halberstam dissects the debates they engendered at the top levels of the military. This is very powerful stuff and is changing our lives.

According to Halberstam, younger leaders, in particular the diplomat Richard Holbrooke and the army commander Wes Clark, had unusual skills and phenomenal brainpower. They were interesting and very difficult characters – Holbrooke an arrogant, pushy type with too many enemies and Clarke your prototypical Rhodes Scholar super-preppie – who in the end were able to accomplish a great deal, though only after the political fallout of the disaster had become so great that Clinton finally recognized the necessity of action.

As Holbrooke and Clark pursued their policies, both of them set fundamentally important precedents. Holbrooke helped to expand the role of the US beyond the Weinberger doctrine, according to which only vital threats to the US alone called for serious diplomatic and military commitments; he also negotiated the Dayton accords for the middle east. Clark helped to bring Milosevic down with the Kosovo bombing, which destroyed his political base in Serbia. Under extremely challenging political pressures, Halberstam writes, Clarke's operation was a turning point in the history of warfare, that is, a victory via airpower alone, which ranks with the introduction of tank warfare as a revolution in military strategy. Clarke and Holbrooke changed forever the way the US could wage war as well as demonstrated what types of diplomacy were possible.

As Halberstam points out a bit pedantically, lessons would include: lack of clear leadership can hinder talented teams from coming together. Not only were goals ill-defined, but people cannot gain the mandate and clout to oppose the hidebound bureaucrats that failed to recognize radically changed conditions in the early post-Cold War era. However, Halberstam relates, once Clinton paid attention and accepted the risks involved as unavoidable, Holbrooke, Clark and others were allowed to do their thing with extraordinary results. After it was all over, the author notes, bitter Pentagon bureaucrats took their revenge on Clark, getting him fired by subterfuge and ending a remarkable career prematurely. Halberstam goes into fascinating detail on the politics and clashing cultures of the US military and civilian leaders, both of whom regard each other warily for many legitimate reasons.

Halberstam also goes into great detail about the situations in Yugoslavia, Somalia, and Haiti. While I had seen the breakup of Yugoslavia as both inevitable and full of such deep hatreds that none of the actors would come out clean, Halberstam argues that the Serbians were indeed the worst aggressors and needed to be stopped before perpetrating the worst genocide in Europe since World War II. Here, the reader is treated to the depth of his moral qualms as well as his penetrating questions about what America should do with its then-preeminent power. This is not a simple repeat of his Vietnam questions (in The Best and The Brightest) on the inevitability of local revolution, but a far more mature look at a different world, in which the US was the undisputed superpower yet reluctant to use its might.

One of the marvels of Halberstam's reporting talent is that the reader sees policymakers and warriors as real people who are making decisions as best they can and within the limits of their education and outlook. It is too easy for us to ignore that there are many possible courses of action and many ways that things can turn out. As a close reader of the political scene, Halberstam's view is consistently trustworthy in my opinion. He seems to me to have a perfect pitch regarding politics, at least in the many areas I followed somewhat closely: I found myself agreeing with his slant on things and hence believing him when he reported on the things I knew less about. While this book does not develop the narrative momentum and eloquence that The Best and The Brightest does, the author still sets the highest standard for political reporting, an example to which all writers should aspire. He was, simply, one of the best.

Of course, this book is dated: its coverage ends before the presidency of George W. Bush hit its stride after the 9/11 bombings in 2001. In that case, the US not only overreached, but it did so for the wrong reasons – Saddam’s nonexistent “weapons of mass destruction” – that led to prolonged wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that combined occupation of vast territories and guerilla-war attrition. These were terrible tribal wars in situations so fraught and complex that I doubt the “young talents” could have done much to improve or end them. The US occupied huge countries it poorly understood and simply hunkered down for the duration. While the acceleration of the drone attacks continued apace under Obama, they could not enable the US to prevail.

Thus, in retrospect, I think Halberstam’s book addressed questions relevant to limited engagements, that is, situations that could be resolved quickly with the application of surgical force, followed by creative diplomatic initiative. These situations are rare and call for flexible and highly nuanced approaches, which we’ve never done well. Moreover, Halberstam’s new leaders are gone, particularly in light of the hysterical denunciations of the “deep state” –  another missed opportunity. Finally, our current political polarization ensures that obstruction and political theatre will dominate our foreign policy. We may be entering an era of isolationism and, of course, we have lost our monopoly on superpower status.