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If a better future is truly our goal, we must learn the lessons of failed interventionism. We must learn from the endless wars where lives have been discarded like losing lottery tickets. We must realize that if we attempt to export freedom to the world at the point of a gun, not only will we fall short of this goal, we will inevitably stain our souls with innocent blood.

https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/condoleezza-rice-wont-learn/

by James Wile

Condoleezza Rice recently wrote an article entitled “The Perils of Isolationism” in Foreign Affairs giving her thoughts on the United States’ place in the modern world. As the title implies, the article’s main theme is her fear that the United States will abandon its role as the global hegemon and turn inward. She claims a return to isolationism will result in Russia, China, and other tyrannical governments overrunning the world and oppressing its inhabitants.

Theoretically, this article should present a convincing argument. Rice served as national security advisor and secretary of state under George W. Bush, so she should be a foreign policy expert. Unfortunately, the biggest takeaway from the article is that Rice learned nothing from the failures of the Bush administration. She presents her case for more interventionism without meaningfully addressing the undeniable devastation caused by U.S. interventionist policies. The result is an article that reads like a fairy tale meant to comfort readers who wish to remain blissfully removed from reality.

Few passages demonstrate this lack of self-awareness more than Rice’s appraisal of U.S. involvement in the Middle East. When describing the benefits of the post-World War II global order, Rice displays what can only be described as denialism by writing, “As the United Kingdom and France stepped back from the Middle East after the 1956 Suez crisis, the United States became the guarantor of freedom of navigation in the region and, in time, its major stabilizing force.”

It is disturbing that any member of the Bush administration could describe the U.S. as a “major stabilizing force” in the Middle East. Decades of the American “stabilizing” the Middle East led to 9/11, the worst terrorist attack in our nation’s history. The Bush administration’s answer to this attack was not to focus on bringing the attackers to justice but rather to topple the governments of Afghanistan and Iraq. The United States paid a hellish price in money and lives in a vain attempt to spread democracy, but the result was a less stable Middle East. The Barack Obama administration expanded the destabilization by bombing and blockading even more countries despite his campaign promise to end forever wars.

Rice seems to hope her readers are willing to forget or ignore these foreign policy disasters. I can think of no other reason she would expect anyone to believe the U.S. has been a “stabilizing force” in the Middle East. The U.S. has stabilized the Middle East about as well as ten shots of Tequila would stabilize the decision-making skills of a college freshman.

“The Perils of Isolationism” presents equally egregious views on the war in Ukraine. Rice makes it clear that deterring further Russian aggression is paramount, but she continues to show her complete lack of self-reflection by writing, “The question of postwar security arrangements for Ukraine hangs over the continent at this moment. The most straightforward answer would be to admit Ukraine to NATO and simultaneously to the European Union.”

This reasoning could seem plausible if we lived in a different timeline where the “Nyet Means Nyet” memo of 2008 was never leaked. CIA Director Williams Burns wrote this memo when he was the ambassador to Russia and sent it to Rice when she was secretary of state. In this memo, Burns says in no uncertain terms that further NATO expansion, especially to Ukraine, runs the risk of inciting a military reaction from Russia. After watching the events leading up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine unfold just as Burns had predicted they would, it is preposterous to think admitting Ukraine into NATO could be a path to security. But Rice, choosing denial over self-reflection, clings to the idea of NATO expansion.

It is a poetic irony that earlier in Rice’s article she laments that Vladimir Putin is able to rely on a “poorly informed population” when she obviously aims to benefit from her readers’ inability or unwillingness to question the regime-approved narratives.

When Rice looks at the global stage as a whole, she sees us standing on the brink of a Third World War. According to Rice, it would be a costly error for the United States to “turn inward” at this dire hour. But as I read her account of the international scene, I see the rising tension as an inevitable consequence of American meddling in the affairs of other nations.

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