It's that time of year again, folks. People are busting out their ornate decorations, I have to wear my ridiculously cool German camouflage jacket to stay warm, and the leaves are turning into wonderful shades of orange and red. Of course, my favorite part of Autumn is the holiday of freight: Halloween. There isn't anything better than busting out my copy of The Blair Witch Project on October 31st to give myself the spooks.
When I was a young boy, the frightful costumes of my sister's friends would scare me. I didn't necessarily understand that behind the masks, they were just regular people. So my Halloween fun was drowned out by my fear of empty threats. I think this has a valuable lesson for the national security apparatus; sometimes states and groups seem much scarier than they actually are. You have to peel back their mask in order to get a good look at who they really are. America has a tendency to over-exaggerate the seriousness of a potential adversary, resulting in either an unnecessary response or ill-placed resources.
The primary threat I usually like to talk about is terrorism. While terrorism is in no way an empty threat, the ungodly amount of resources we devote towards mitigating its effects is ridiculous. We've sunk tens of billions into creating massive domestic spying systems, over a trillion dollars in Afghanistan, and another trillion into various counter-terrorism Department of Homeland Security programs. None of this makes since economically, of course. As the Economist pointed out in 2011, to justify current levels of DHS-CT spending, we would have to prevent well over 1,500 domestic terrorist attacks per year. To give you some context, this would make us a more dangerous terrorist safe-haven than Pakistan. So if the United States government underestimated the threat emanating from terrorism prior to 9/11, then we have certainly overestimated its seriousness in the post-9/11 security environment. This has resulted in an atrophy of resources to our domestic ills. We've neglected basic duties of government--such as highway matinance, the lack of which kills 14,000 per year--in order to deter a literal boogeyman from attacking us again.
In reality, a sensible and economical counter-terrorism program would absolutely gut DHS spending, end NSA domestic spying, and withdraw conventional American forces from Afghanistan. Instead of massive, conventional responses, the U.S. government ought to further invest into indirect action, building partnership capacity programs, drone strikes, and an energetic diplomatic campaign to encourage multilateral solutions to complex problems. Despite my problems with Obama's foreign policy, he has put far more emphasis on creating such a strategy than his predecessor did.
However, there are certainly other examples. In 1953, one of the worst foreign policy mistakes of the Cold War was made as the U.S. government decided to aid Britain in its coup d'etat of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossaddegh. The British were motivated by oil interests in Iran, and managed to convince Eisenhower that there was a link between Mossaddegh and the Communists. There was, but the threat was far overstated. The Tudeh Party of Iran and the National Front had a mutual interest in liberating Iranian oil from the clutches of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, but nothing more. Mossedegh desperately needed a political ally to support his goal of nationalization, and the Tudeh happened to be that ally. However, the relationship was fragile and weak at best. The long term viability of the Tudeh in Iran was nil, and Mossedegh pursued the relationship out of necessity.
Economically, Mossaddegh's vision was to put Iran on a level in which it could profit from selling oil, and allow for open, competitive markets to form in Iran. Politically, he wanted to fully democratize the Iranian government. Neither of which is particularly in line with Communist thinking. Unfortunately, the Red Scare mentality permeated American foreign policy thinking. Instead of adapting to the new political change in Iran, accepting the economic benefits of Iranian nationalization, lowering the incentive to work with Communists by offering an olive branch, and attempting to mediate a diplomatic solution to British-Iranian disagreements, we decided to implement forced regime change. This set the undertones for the Iranian Revolution in 1979, which created the Iranian government we now have to contend with as a major strategic adversary.
So ultimately, while threats should never be understated, overstating their significance and threat is equally as dangerous. Whether it be from the fear of a terrorist suicide bombing in the U.S., or political change in another country. It is important for rationality to dominate policy making, and for the intelligence community to peel back the masks of our enemies. Otherwise, we risk deadly foreign entanglements and unnecessary conflicts abroad.
--Tom
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