Mark N. Katz: The Costs of American Interventionism

In a New York Times op-ed published on February 2, 1981, Henry S. Bienen, then an Africa specialist at Princeton University, discussed how “globalists” and “regionalists” advocated differing foreign-policy approaches for the United States. “Globalists,” Bienen noted, “believe that weakening military positions will lead ineluctably to weakening economic ones and that, in any case, security interests, defined first in military terms, must be paramount in any discussion of United States policy.”

 

Bienen declared that he preferred the regionalist approach, however,

 

"since this perspective starts with the assumption that unless one knows what is possible in specific contexts, and unless one has a good understanding of local factors that are operating, policies are likely to fail or to be counterproductive. No accurate analysis of the trade-offs between costs and benefits of different policies can be made without a deep understanding of the specific configurations of power in given countries."

 

The Cold War is long over, but what Bienen wrote about American foreign policy back in 1981 is also true with regard to American foreign policy in the post–9/11 war on terror. Globalists have been primarily concerned about the “global threat” posed by al-Qaeda and its allies (both actual and perceived) and with defeating this threat militarily. Regionalists, by contrast, have been fearful that America’s deepening military involvements in Afghanistan and Iraq were so unpopular locally that they were creating more enemies than they were eliminating. But just as with the Cold War, it was the globalists and not the regionalists who were in control of formulating American foreign policy in the war on terror—especially during the George W. Bush administration...