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Books, Foreign Affairs, Government, Politics, United States

Book Review: The Long Game

AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY UNDER BARACK OBAMA

The Long Game

The Long Game is an apologia by Derek Chollet: a vindication of Mr Obama’s distinctive approach to grand strategy.

WHEN Barack Obama demits presidential office and comes to write his political memoirs they will no doubt be an elegantly persuasive account of the ideas that guided his presidency. But until then “The Long Game”, an apologia by Derek Chollet, is a vindication of Mr Obama’s distinctive approach to grand strategy and is likely to be the closest that anyone will come to understanding the thinking behind U.S. foreign policy that has many critics.

Mr Chollet is qualified and well placed in delivering such a resounding defence of the Obama leadership. He has served in senior positions in the State Department, the National Security Council and the Pentagon and has been close to the action during Mr Obama’s tenure of the White House. His contention is that the foreign-policy establishment in Washington has underestimated the extent of the president’s achievement. Policymakers at home lambast Mr Obama for having overlearned the lessons of Iraq, for his extreme caution and aversion to the use of America’s hard power in support of global order and for a reluctance and unwillingness to shoulder the burdens of leadership. This, say some, has dismayed allies and emboldened foes.

Detractors on the left have been horrified by his cold-bloodied use of drones to kill America’s enemies, his determination to commit to a costly nuclear modernisation programme and his bombing of more countries than George W. Bush. So which is he, asks the author: a woolly-headed liberal idealist or an unsentimental realist?

The answer, as it happens, is neither. Chollet argues that Mr Obama is misunderstood because he likes to play what the writer calls the “long game”. The book portrays the analogy of a president trying to be Warren Buffett in a foreign-policy debate that is dominated and driven by day traders. He has an unwavering view of what is in America’s long-term interests and refuses to be forced by impatient demands for action to intervene in ways that may be temporarily satisfying but have little prospect of success at acceptable cost.

To this end, Chollet asserts with reasonable conviction that Mr Obama has formulated what amounts to a long-game checklist, a series of principles that should be applied to managing American power and making strategic choices. The first of these is balance: balance between interests and values, between priorities at home and abroad, between declared goals in different parts of the world, and between how much America should take on and how much should be borne by allies. And balance, too, in the use of the whole toolbox – military power, diplomacy, economic leverage, and development. Mr Chollet openly contrasts this with the lack of balance Barack Obama inherited from George W. Bush: a tanking economy, more than 150,000 troops deployed in two wars and sagging American prestige.

The other key principles of the Obama checklist drawn upon are: sustainability (avoiding commitments that cost too much to stick with); restraint (asking not what American can do but what it should do); precision (wielding a scalpel rather than a hammer); patience (by giving policies the time and effort to work); fallibility (the modesty of what can be achieved); scepticism (a caution of being wary of those peddling easy answers to difficult questions); and, exceptionalism (the recognition that because of its enormous power and attachment to universal values America has a unique responsibility in the world that cannot be ducked).

For the author this mix of cautious pragmatism and realism finds an echo in the approach of two Republican predecessors, Dwight Eisenhower and the first George Bush, whose reputations have grown considerably since their departure from office. Mr Chollet believes that this president’s foreign policy will look pretty good too once hindsight kicks in.

Perhaps. Eminently sensible, however, the checklist appears to be, rather than setting the appropriate conditions for action, it might also be used as a way to do too little, too late. By and large, and it is worth acknowledging, Mr Obama did manage to get right his policies towards China (the ‘rebalancing’ towards Asia was timely and has been quite effective) and Russia (the ‘reset’ of the first term delivered some benefits; when Vladimir Putin annexed Crimea and opted for confrontation with the West, Barack Obama responded accordingly). But in Afghanistan, Iraq and, significantly, in Syria, the Obama doctrine has had terrible consequences.

In Afghanistan, Mr Obama’s long-debated troop surge was fatally undermined when he announced that U.S. forces would start to come home in 18 months. He repeated the error in May 2014, announcing that the residual American force in Afghanistan would be fully withdrawn by the end of 2016. He has had to reverse that false promise. By setting timetables for forced reductions unconnected to conditions on the ground, Mr Obama has given encouragement to the Taliban and left Afghan security forces wilfully exposed.

President Obama’s decision to pull all American forces out of Iraq at the end of 2011 was even more disastrous. He used the excuse of the difficulty of negotiating a new status-of-forces agreement with the Iraqis to do what he wanted to do all along. Had a few thousand American troops been left in Baghdad, Mr Obama and his administration would have known much more about the Maliki government’s subversion of the US-trained and US-equipped Iraqi security forces, as well as having had some leverage to prevent it. Some might argue that the emergence of Islamic State in 2014, an organisation that has been able to take and hold Iraqi cities, is a direct result of Mr Obama’s insouciance. Right wing elements in America certainly think so.

The catalogue of errors in Syria is far too long to itemise. Mr Obama’s extreme reluctance to do anything to help the moderate rebels, as well as his failure to punish the regime for crossing his previously declared ‘red lines’ on the use of chemical weapons were turning points that has contributed to the scale of the catastrophe which has since unfurled in the country. While Mr Chollet is reluctant to blame Mr Obama, he was among those arguing for the president to take a different course of action.

Undoubtedly, though, the one clear unambiguous policy success that Mr Obama’s long game can claim is the nuclear accord and deal with Iran. Patient and tactful diplomacy, along with the building of international support for a crippling sanctions regime, combined with a credible threat of military action if all else failed, resulted in an agreement that has effectively dealt with concerns about Iran acquiring a nuclear bomb over the next decade or so. If the deal holds, it will be the defining achievement of the Obama presidency. Not every problem facing American resolve can be approached in the same painstaking, deliberative way.

The president is far from being the inept wuss portrayed by his critics. But nor is he the master of grand strategy that Mr Chollet makes him out to be. His loathing and contempt of the interventionist excesses exploited by his predecessor, his wariness of arguments of “doing more”, a disdain for military advice and his ingrained pessimism about the utility of hard power have had the effect of reducing America’s capacity to do good in a brutally torn world. If Mr Obama is succeeded by Hillary Clinton, she is likely to provide a modest and welcome corrective. If Donald Trump is the next president, the long game that has underpinned most of the Obama doctrine, whatever its defects, will be sorely missed.

– The Long Game: How Obama Defied Washington and Redefined America’s Role in the World. By Derek Chollet. $26.99 and £17.99.

 

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Arts, Books

Book Review: Abattoir Blues by Peter Robinson

ABATTOIR BLUES

Sometimes the difference between fiction and reality is paper-thin. Peter Robinson’s Abattoir Blues is a clear example of this. Robinson writes an excellent novel you’ll want to read in as few sittings as possible.

Sometimes the difference between fiction and reality is paper-thin. Peter Robinson’s Abattoir Blues is a clear example of this. Robinson writes an excellent novel you’ll want to read in as few sittings as possible.

THE STORY BEGINS with DCI Banks going straight to his office from the airport on his return from holiday. This isn’t because of his ubiquitous work ethic as a dedicated senior police officer, avid and hardworking as he is, but more to do with that he can’t resist the ‘lure of a bloody crime scene’, as well as being happy to escape his messy private life.

Since his marital breakdown to Sharon, Banks has had a few other partners in his life, including the Italian woman whose parents he has just travelled abroad to meet. But while she seems noncommittal, he needn’t worry. Another interesting prospect will soon come his way.

Back at work, DCI Banks quickly reaffirms his effectiveness as leader of the homicide and major crimes team in West Yorkshire. Abbattoir Blues is another example of Peter Robinson who proves his outstanding expertise as a crime writer as he cleverly takes the reader through the intricacies of a complex plot.

Two young men are reported missing, and after some painstaking police work prove that the youths are linked in a major homicide crime. Bloodstains are found in a disused airfield hangar by Peaches the dog as she runs away from her master, Terry Gilchrist, who has a slight disability from an injury sustained in the Iraq war whilst serving as a soldier in the army. A caravan belonging to one of the youths is also burned to the ground. Things quickly become much more sinister.

Then a retired and successful fund manager finds that his £100,000 tractor has been stolen. There is the suspicion that he might be pursuing an insurance payment, or that the wayward son of the nearby farmer looking after the property in his absence might have been involved.

This case is being supervised by the permanently grumpy DI Annie Cabbot, whose ill humour and staid approach stems from the serious injury following a shooting she sustained in a previous case.

The author creates a storyline where Banks is in the habit of reviewing cases with his team. This is a very effective device for keeping the reader abreast of the story, and keeps the reader guessing as to what might happen next: ‘We’ve got a stolen tractor, two young men we’d like to find and talk to and the makings of a suspicious death at an abandoned airfield.’ The idiosyncrasies of the story are by no means obvious that these events are linked to a single major crime.

Robinson deserves huge credit for his meticulous approach and how a police operation of this nature might unfold. Sometimes the difference between fiction and reality is paper-thin. Peter Robinson’s Abattoir Blues is a clear example of this.

That summary holds good until the various themes are brought together by a fatal accident on a country road. The van involved was collecting animal parts from farms to take them to an abattoir when it skewered out of control and careered over the edge of a cliff-face. Following a search by police, the van also contains human remains. The various incidents hitherto are now linked and forged into a single case.

Unfortunately, though, the task of touring the many abattoirs to find the source of the remains goes to the team’s vegetarian, who finds it demanding and difficult to deal with. Others in the team have issues too. The hapless DC Dougal Wilson is the spitting image of Harry Potter and always becoming the butt of the joke, both with fellow officers and members of the public.

Gradually, a list of suspects emerges. One of them is Malcolm Hackett who has changed his name to Montague Havers, to become less ‘comprehensive school’ and ‘more Eton’. His links to the financial world and to the former trader turned farmer who had his tractor stolen helps to unravel a case that has many twist and turns before it is finally solved. Deceit and deception, unabridged differences in the background of the story’s main character, and the subtle nature by which Robinson writes all add to an excellent novel you’ll want to read in as few sittings as possible.

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Arts, Books, Psychology, Science

Book Review – ‘Headhunters: The Search For A Science Of The Mind’

EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY

IN March 1898, a group of scientists set sail from London for the Torres Straits between Australia and New Guinea. The purpose of their embarkation was to study local islanders in the hope that they would learn important lessons about the way the human brain works.

Equipped with various colour photographs and some ‘footer shirts’, the researchers were confident these would prove irresistible to the natives.

For the following 15 months or so, they conducted a series of tests – one scientist would measure people’s sight, another hearing, another skin sensitivity, and so on. On their return to London, the team presented their findings to the British Association For The Advancement Of Science.

The exercise was a total disaster. Far from showing any major differences between the way in which a Bornean tribesman perceived the world and, say how a Cambridge academic did, their tests revealed almost no variations at all. The Association believed that only one conclusion could be drawn: the tests had been hopelessly botched. As a result the scientists’ efforts were poo-poohed with their reputations smeared and blackened.

Over the next few years, though, doubts began to creep in. Maybe the fact that there were no key differences between people’s senses wasn’t actually a blunder after all, but rather a discovery of huge significance and relevance. Viewed from the aspect that, far from being a human evolutionary ladder – as was generally accepted – in which the British stood at the top with everyone else on the lower rungs, maybe the inference implied by the group was that we were all essentially the same.

With their reputations restored, the scientists set out once again, and were eager to find out and track how the human brain developed in the way that it did. Originally, smell was by far the dominant sense, but as mammals began to evolve such as when they began to live in trees, sight, sound and taste surged to the fore.

The difficult part, as far as the scientists were concerned, was how to measure things that seemed to defy analysis – like pain or the way people react to stress.

One of the members of the original expedition, a psychologist called William Rivers, conducted a series of experiments with a fledgling neurologist. The two men would sit in the neurologist’s rooms in Cambridge, with Rivers pulling out the hairs of his fellow researcher and sticking needles into various parts of his body. The results were recorded.

Not surprisingly, the neurologist found that he could work for only an hour at a time before he started to feel a bit queasy. In between sessions, the two men would engage in bursts of vigorous exercise such as running or horse-riding. The results were encouraging, but what they really wanted was a kind of mass experiment in which large numbers of people could be subjected to the same trauma to see how they reacted. They didn’t have to wait long.

In August 1914, World War I was declared. Within months, Rivers and his fellow scientists were confronted with what amounted to the biggest laboratory on Earth.

A number of different aspects came under observation, but none interested them more than the effects of prolonged exposure to gunfire. Although it was another of the original expedition team members, Charles Myers, who coined the phrase ‘shell shock’, it was Rivers’s work at Craiglockhart Hospital near Edinburgh (where poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen were among his patients) that proved the most significant.

At first, Army doctors would label traumatised soldiers ‘Mental’, ‘Insane’ or even ‘GOK’ (‘God Only Knows’). But as the war went on and it became obvious that soldiers were not faking their symptoms, attitudes started to change and treatments started to improve.

Yet, the psychologists were still feeling their way in the dark. William McDougall, another researcher who had also set sail on the original expedition, treated a soldier called Percy Meek, who had been a basket-weaver in Norfolk before the war. As well as having severe shell shock, Meek was diagnosed as suffering from amnesia.

Under hypnosis, he revealed that he was visited every night by the ghost of a German soldier whom he had killed on the Marne in 1914.

After a while Meek stopped seeing the ghost, but his condition became even worse – his twitching became more pronounced, he lost the power of speech and spent all day playing with dolls. There is an astonishing archive film of him cowering in a wheelchair with a teddy bear on his knee.

McDougall was inclined to write him off as a helpless case, but then, in 1917, something extraordinary happened: Meek made a spontaneous recovery.

His memory and his speech came back, and within another year he was teaching basket-weaving to fellow patients – proof perhaps that the brain is even more complex and mysterious than McDougall and his colleagues had ever anticipated.

As Ben Shepherd proved with his critically acclaimed A War of Nerves: Soldiers And Psychiatrists 1914-1994, the author writes exceptionally well about how the mind functions under duress.

Shepherd’s account of how a small group of scientific researchers defied ridicule in their quest to learn how the brain works is as stirring as it is dramatic. Whilst it is clear from the narrative that he possesses a sharp eye for absurdity, there’s also a broad streak of sympathy that runs throughout.

It’s tempting to see Shepherd’s story as an illustration of how psychology has developed in this country. There may have been quite a few wrong turns as this science has developed, but eventually its pioneers steered a path through a fog of confusion to reach a greater understanding of who we are and how we got to be that way.

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