If a modern Rip Van Winkle nodded off in 1980 and suddenly woke up, he might inquire — were he of a political turn of mind — about the fate of that brave freedom fighter, Osama bin Laden, or those nasty villains, the Russians.
He might wonder about the health of that nice chap, Saddam Hussein, or of those wily, untrustworthy folks in Uzbekistan.
What a difference a decade or two makes. In the steps leading up to the current bombardment of Afghanistan, American diplomats hurriedly built a coalition to help the nation avenge the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Former foes such as Russia and Uzbekistan suddenly became best buddies — while, conversely, a former 1980s pal such as bin Laden was transformed into an adversary, having earned that status in the 1990s by supporting and directing anti- U.S. terrorism. Hussein was our friend in 1980 when he opposed our enemy, Iran, but became our enemy a decade later when he invaded our friend, Kuwait.
Positing terrorism as the No. 1 enemy, the United States has been wheeling and dealing with regimes that, under other circumstances, we might find unsavory. Instead of wagging a finger in their faces with disapproval, we’re crooking that same finger in a summoning gesture: Come, join us. We need you.
In our courtship of the Northern Alliance, the rebels who oppose Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban party, the United States risks creating another Al Qaeda, the terrorist group masterminded by bin Laden.
We’re not always able to control our creations.
Yet having Russia on our side means overlooking that nation’s treatment of rebels in Chechnya. Persuading China to come on board requires us to keep mum about the Chinese government’s abysmal record on human rights and its bullying of Taiwan. Getting chummy with Pakistan is tricky too: Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the nation’s ruler, has been been notoriously tolerant of armed Islamic extremists in its midst. Moreover, the United States now is required to hush up about Pakistan’s lack of democracy and its nuclear testing — testing that could carry ominous consequences in Pakistan’s long-simmering dispute with India over Kashmir.
Balance of power
More subtly, but ultimately more fraught with peril, America’s friend-making spree in the Middle East threatens to upset the fragile balance of power there; our wooing of Iran, Egypt and others may necessitate some lessening of support for Israel, hated by most Muslim nations. To get what it wants, the United States may have to hold its tongue — and perhaps its nose as well.
It is a plot repeated in fiction as well as fact.
In “The Godfather, Part II,” Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) advises, “Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.”
American military and diplomatic strategy now seems to follow the proverb, reportedly of Arab origin, that declares: The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
The issue has even surfaced in the comic strips. Aaron McGruder, creator of “Boondocks,” which is carried by the Tribune and approximately 250 other newspapers, has repeatedly made much of the widespread allegation that CIA operatives trained and funded bin Laden in the 1980s, when the United States was determined to expel the Soviet Union from Afghanistan and bin Laden was eager to help. Once the Soviets were gone, bin Laden was dropped.
“We define an enemy and we can’t imagine living without that enemy — and then that enemy becomes an ally and we get another enemy,” said Richard Fried, a history professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Peter Hahn, who teaches history at Ohio State University, concurred: “The United States has, like all other countries, engaged in shifting alliances. It’s perfectly natural and all powers have done it over the course of time. In post-World War II American diplomacy,” he added, “Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were considered allies [of the United States].”
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Now, of course, they are our mortal enemies.
Courting bin Laden
When the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, bin Laden was among the Arab militants who, reportedly with American backing, fought the Soviets on behalf of the country and Islam. Bin Laden reputedly used his Saudi family inheritance to bankroll the Afghan resistance. Hussein, meanwhile, received American support in his war with the Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran. After long decades of considering Russia the zenith of evil, we now look upon that nation as a valuable friend. Uzbekistan, once a jumping-off point for Soviet troops bound for Afghanistan, hence our enemy, has pledged support for America’s anti-terror plan.
And before it was our sworn enemy, Russia was a friend during World War II when it joined the United States in opposing Hitler’s Germany. Go back far enough in time, of course, and you’ll find that even Great Britain was once our dreaded enemy.
You can’t tell the countries — or our feelings about them — without a scorecard, or perhaps a calendar.
Matter of pride
And if America were just any old country, that would be fine; it would seem like business as usual in a cutthroat world in which power rules absolutely.
But we have always prided ourselves on being more than just any old country. And that, scholars say, often puts American diplomats in a peculiar position: Fond of invoking high ideals but, like all nations, subject to the stark realities of a perilous world. When principle butts heads with pragmatism, the latter must prevail.
Or must it?
“Our own ideology trips us up,” said Peter Maguire, journalist and author of “Law and War: An American Story” (Columbia University Press) who has traveled extensively in southeast Asia. “We’re supposed to be good democrats and foreign policy is inherently undemocratic. This is a brutal, brutal world.”
It is also a world in which today’s canny deal may be tomorrow’s headache, as Chalmers Johnson declared in his book, “Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire” (Holt/Owl), an op-ed piece in The Los Angeles Times and an article in The Nation.
When “Blowback” was released last year, it received little attention and sold less than 10,000 copies, said the retired history professor. Since Sept. 11, however, demand has intensified and the publisher is printing an additional 20,000 copies, Johnson reported.
“It’s a lousy way to sell books,” he added grimly.
Johnson believes that cutting deals with unsavory players in the international arena can have unintended consequences — the “blowback” of his title, a word that first surfaced in the mid-1950s to describe the unexpected results of the CIA’s involvement in overthrowing the ruling power in Iran, Johnson said. He pointed with dismay to the CIA’s alleged tutelage of bin Laden and its support for the factions that upended Chile’s Salvador Allende in 1973.
Johnson writes primarily about under-the-table deals, and the coalition built by the United States since Sept. 11 has been public. But his point — that choosing the lesser of two evils still means choosing an evil — remains valid, Johnson said. “These alliances [in the wake of Sept. 11] are totally expedient. And we have a long history of this.”
Many commentators have warned of the potential downside of building the current coalition, with anti-terrorism the only criterion for membership. Are we, in our zeal to resolve the present crisis, unwittingly underwriting the next bin Laden?
“Any time a country engages in a war, the law of unintended consequences always kicks in. In diplomacy, the same thing applies,” Hahn said. “You set something in motion for a short-term purpose and you can’t predict long-term consequences.”
In our strategic interests
Richard Immerman, chair of the history department at Temple University and a specialist in diplomatic history, said the United States generally has been able to swallow its doubts about certain nations if it was in our strategic interest to do so.
“If you’re schooled in the realist tradition of international diplomacy, whom you align yourself with is irrelevant. It’s driven by your own interest. The character of the government with whom the United States is allied really doesn’t make much of a difference.
“The only real, fundamental exception to that norm was World War I, when Woodrow Wilson decided that rather than be allied with the British and French, we’d be `associated’ with the British and French.” Wilson had reservations about those nations, Immerman said, suspecting they sought territorial gains and might not agree with the United States on how a post-war Europe ought to look.
Since then, however, American diplomats have been far less squeamish about our associations around the world, he added. “As [former Secretary of State Henry] Kissinger has written, Wilson’s efforts to distinguish the United States from other states according to what we represented was counterproductive. Statesmanship had to be based on hard, cold, clinical, pragmatic grounds.
“It doesn’t matter who is more committed to democratic principles. It’s whoever can fill the role.”
And if a partnership with a nation that doesn’t share our values creates a problem down the road?
“Most diplomats are focused on the immediate term. They want to solve the problem,” Immerman said. “They hope it won’t spiral into a bigger problem — but if it does, it’s usually on someone else’s watch.”
On the plus side . . .
The very swiftness with which it was concocted may be a point in favor of the current coalition to combat terrorism, Immerman pointed out.
“The United States has less of a history of long-term sustained engagement on the international scene than many other nations. Our memory of long-term gains and losses is shorter. Our tradition is to dive into an international situation, resolve it, then get out.”
And for the first time in history, the American public’s lack of historical knowledge may be a plus: When American diplomats suddenly appear to be switching sides as they work for a new goal, there are fewer people to remind them about former alliances, fewer people to say, “Huh?”
“The American people are probably underinformed about major trends in American history,” Hahn said. Fried added, “I occasionally have students who think we won World War II against the Russians.”
But given the musical-chairs nature of modern diplomacy, the readiness of nations to shift alliances on a dime, historical memory may not matter much. The war in which we are now engaged, Maguire said, has forced the United States to be less grounded in a romantic past and more committed to a grisly present.
“The [Sept. 11] bombing has redefined the world,” he said. “This will take a long time. We’ll wage a dirty war and use some seedy operatives. We’re finally having to come of age.”
And those who blanch at our unsavory alliances need to wise up, Maguire declared. “That’s like taking the rules of ballroom dancing and applying them to war.”
FRIENDS TURNED FOES
Saddam Hussein
The United States, still reeling from the 1979 seizure of American hostages in Iran, gave a green light to Iraq’s Saddam Hussein when he invaded Iran in 1980, initiating a vicious, eight-year battle between the two countries.
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Saddam Hussein
Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990 ignited the Gulf War, and the Iraqi leader was instantly branded an enemy of the United States. His belligerent stance since the war has engendered continued economic and military reprisals.
Manuel Noriega
The United States allegedly was pleased when Noriega, a former CIA operative, took over the leadership of Panama in 1983 from Gen. Omar Torrijos.
Manuel Noriega
The relationship soured by 1988, when Noriega was indicted on racketeering and drug charges by the U.S. Surrendering after a 1989 U.S. invasion of Panama, he was convicted in 1992 and is serving a 40-year term in Miami.
Augusto Pinochet
Pinochet led the 1973 military junta in Chile that toppled the freely elected socialist government of Salvador Allende, reportedly with the support of the U.S., especially the CIA. It was one of the activities that led Congress to rein in the CIA.
Augusto Pinochet
After stepping down in 1990, Pinochet was accused of torturing his citizens and of condoning a 1976 terrorist act against his foes on American soil. He was arrested in London in 1998 and returned to Chile, where he awaits trial.
Fidel Castro
Castro has led Cuba since 1959, the year he and his supporters ousted the dictator Fulgencio Batista, allegedly with an approving nod from the U.S. At the time of his victory, Castro was a popular favorite among U.S. leaders and the American public.
Fidel Castro
By 1961, the U.S. government had severed diplomatic ties with Castro because of his Communist agenda, whose true outlines came to light only after his ascension to power.
Josef Stalin
With Adolf Hitler threatening Europe in World War II, Stalin was a valuable friend to the U.S. Stalin himself had once been Hitler’s chum, but was shocked when the Nazi leader turned on him by ordering the military invasion of Russia.
Josef Stalin
Shortly after the end of the war, the Soviet Union’s military ambitions became clear and Stalin was suddenly an enemy. The Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union had begun.