The American Order and Afghanistan

Andrew Sullivan thinks that President Obama is seeking to "unwind the American empire" with his new strategy in Afghanistan:

How best to unwind the empire? By giving McChrystal what he wants and giving him a couple of years to deliver tangible results.

While I think this is the narrow goal of the president's surge strategy, I think it's wrong to characterize this as some kind of broader repudiation of America's strategic posture. Quite the contrary. In his speech, President Obama explicitly situated the surge in Afghanistan as a piece with past American efforts to sustain international security:

Since the days of Franklin Roosevelt, and the service and sacrifice of our grandparents, our country has borne a special burden in global affairs. We have spilled American blood in many countries on multiple continents. We have spent our revenue to help others rebuild from rubble and develop their own economies. We have joined with others to develop an architecture of institutions - from the United Nations to NATO to the World Bank - that provide for the common security and prosperity of human beings.

We have not always been thanked for these efforts, and we have at times made mistakes. But more than any other nation, the United States of America has underwritten global security for over six decades - a time that, for all its problems, has seen walls come down, markets open, billions lifted from poverty, unparalleled scientific progress, and advancing frontiers of human liberty.

In other words, far from repudiating an "imperial" foreign policy, President Obama is positioning the surge within the continuum of America's post World War II role as global leader.

Only this time, instead of the economically and strategically vital areas of Europe and Asia, and instead of facing a superpower threat, we're going to attempt to micromanage a tribal dispute in the mountains of a country that has never been, and likely will never be, a pivotal international power.

And we do not simply because we face a legitimate security threat from international terrorism, but because we now have such an extravagant idea of what is necessary to keep America safe. President Obama:

What we have fought for - and what we continue to fight for - is a better future for our children and grandchildren, and we believe that their lives will be better if other peoples' children and grandchildren can live in freedom and access opportunity.

President Obama is not the first president to express such a universalist sentiment. And it's difficult to tell if this was included as a sop to his critics who accuse him of being a monster realist, or a genuine statement of strategic purpose. Either way, it doesn't seem to signal an unwinding of anything.

(AP Photos)