The Brezhnev Trap

History is filled with ironies. This may be the greatest, and the least-remarked upon.

The same arrogance which destroyed the Soviet Union is destroying us.

The USSR justified its 1980 invasion of Afghanistan by what was called the Brezhnev Doctrine. Named for party chairman Leonid Brezhnev (right) the doctrine held that any move away from socialism, by any socialist country, would justify Soviet intervention in defense of socialism.

To fight this invasion, President Ronald Reagan made common cause with the Afghani Mujahaddin, including Osama Bin Laden. He fought what he saw as Cuban expansion in Nicaragua by supporting the Contras. He fought the expansionistic tendencies of Iran by allying with Saddam Hussein. (left)

He did this based on his reading of what was then a 35 year old Thesis in American foreign policy. This Thesis was behind Nixon’s Realpolitik and the Reagan Doctrine. It was behind the Korean War and the War in Vietnam. George Kennan called it Containment.

This doctrine is now 60 years old. It is completely out of date. And it is still in use.

Think for a moment of how long 60 years is. 60 years back from Kennedy’s election and you’re nearly at the Spanish-American War. 60 years back from there and you’re in the Mexican War. Go 60 years back from that and you’re at the Constitutional Convention.

The point is 60 years is a damn long time. It’s more than a generation. For most people on this planet, it’s a lifetime.

The Reagan Doctrine worked 20 years ago because Reagan spent modestly on his efforts. Kennan’s containment doctrine nearly destroyed us, in Vietnam, which Robert McNamara still sees as “a Cold War activity.” 

See the difference? Maybe you don’t like McNamara. Maybe you prefer George S. Patton (right). Patton would explain it this way. “Let the other poor bastard die for his country.”

The strategy that worked was to let the Soviet Union bleed itself to death. The strategy that nearly failed was to bleed American lives and American treasure, to copy the Soviets.

This was the the Brezhnev Trap.

After Brezhnev died, Mikhaul Gorbachev tried to extricate the bear from this trap. He failed. The system was destroyed. A democratic revolution ensued which, being premature (Russians don’t acknowledge multiple legitimate authorities) was replaced by the Napoleonic (i.e., short) Vladimir Putin.

Thus did we have the great success of the Nixon-Reagan-Bush thesis. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.

But we learned the wrong lesson. We learned exactly the wrong lesson, and set ourselves up to fall into the Breazhnev Trap.

The lesson we learned, the lesson we’re taught, the lesson every Warblogger believes deep in their bones, was that our military won the Cold War.

This is a lie. It is the biggest lie of our time.

Our economy won the Cold War. Our alliances won the Cold War. Our ideals won the Cold War. Democracy and liberty won the Cold War. Our military merely enabled all this to happen. (I don’t belittle that. I respect it, and so does every American. But that’s all it did.)

So it was that when we were faced with a new challenge, by 9-11, we fell into the Trap. The right move was to execute Bin Laden and his henchmen with extreme prejudice. We didn’t have to overthrow the Taliban at all. Just stay in Tora Bora, and if necessary inside Pakistan, until we took out the bastard, and his leetle frahnd. Then use worldwide police efforts to prevent further attacks. That would work because we’d have all nations of the world on our side. At the same time grow the economy, grow away from our dependence on oil, grow our knowledge to save the planet.

It’s just how we won the Cold War. The military keeps us from losing. Our economy and liberty do the heavy lifting.

By 2001 our economy was stronger than Brezhnev could ever have imagined. After the Internet Boom of the Clinton years we could take out the Taliban. We could even take out Saddam Hussein. But the Iraq War is the Brezhnev Trap.

We have ignored even Patton, his maxim that you let the other poor  bastard die for his country. It’s impossible to occupy territory for long against another nation’s will. It saps your strength (just as the occupation of Eastern Europe sapped Soviet strength). It isolates you in the world (as we’re isolated now). It destroys you slowly, by degrees, while your real rivals get stronger.

Our real rival is China. Not Iraq. Not Al Qaeda. China.

The only question, today, is how long we’ll stay in the Brezhnev Trap, and what we will lose before we have the courage to get out of it.

How many more will die? How many more hundreds of billions will be spent? Will everything we have built over 200 years be pulled down by our arrogance, by our prejudice, by this insane idea that “we can’t afford to lose,” when every day we’re there, we lose?

Will China become the Hyperpower? Or can we still save ourselves?

Don’t ask me. Ask yourself. Ask your neighbors. Ask a Republican. And if you have courage, if you have what your forefathers had, fight these Soviets. Fight them as brave men and women within the Soviet Union fought them (although they won too late, and lost everything). You have more weapons than they had. You have democracy, and liberty. You’re Americans, not sheep.

Gorbachev had a word he used for his unsuccessful fight against this arrogance. Glasnost. It means openness.

In the case of America, it means open source politics. It means using our history to create a new myth, based on our true values.