I've no time to comment on this in any detail. Maybe later. For now, let me just say I have always thought it passing strange that commentators who celebrate George H. W. Bush's wisdom in leaving Saddam Hussein in power frequently bemoan the policy of dual containment that followed the Gulf War. The one led inevitably to the other. This was as obvious at the time as it is now.

In other words, let stupid Arabs and Iranians fight each other (for no reason) meantime we "US" supply ammo, false intel, and in the process of doing it we will suck you dry.

BRAVO

Personally I cite the Reagan years. That's when US political discourse and reality became firmly disconnected. The myth that SDI and Reagan's "global Cold War" (not only in Afghanistan, where it had an effect, but also in Nicaragua, Grenada and Angola) destroyed the Soviet Union (which was never Reagan's goal anyway), established itself firmly among the Neocons.

So, the "Rambo mentality" - American overcompensation for loss in Vietnam - was not limited to fantasy lived out in Stallone's films, but became policy. Reagan "redeemed" America even as the country was becoming more obese, oil-dependent and needlessly militaristic than ever, even as the Drug War decimated the black community and led America to have the world's largest prison population (2.3 million).

The result has been a distinctly neurotic America, wholly incapable of identifying and addressing the problems sapping at the roots of its power. This unconscious American elite - at once ignorant and vain - decided to live out its comic-book fantasies of pursuing a Mastermind Villain and fight World War IV against the evil heirs of the Nazis and Communists and foil their plot for world domination. All very cute and fine for Bush & Co., except for all the dead Arabs.

Saddam Hussein told everybody that Kuwait was stealing Iraqi oil by slant drilling beneath the joint border. He told OPEC and sundry other parties, including the GHW Bush administration about it, and asked for some form of opeaceful international mediation. This was denied -- so ineptly by the US State Department that Saddam Hussein was given reasonable belief that America accepted his right to use force to have those oil wells shut down. The official US record is clear about this clumsy response to Hussein's last request.

American refusal of such investigation was more likely the start of national decline.

The "victory" in that first war is extremely challengeable, also. The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait was remarkably peaceable, mainly because the ruling classes in Kuwait fled the country as soon as the Iraqi force started moving. Many of its representatives arrived in Washington and hired a leading PR agency to con the US Senate into approving war action against Iraq. Meanwhile, the Iraqi invasion force set about preparing to destroy those wells that, according to Iraq, were stealing its oil -- possibly in size, the theft of the century, or all time.

Recognizing that the US, having turned away from settling things peacefully when it had the chance, was preparing to settle it militarily, Moscow sent a top negotiator to Baghdad to persuade Hussein to pull out of Kuwait on President Bush's public terms. Hussein agreed and started doing it. In one of the most striking peace moves of the century, in Moscow the foreign ministry phoned around to foreign correspondents to attend a post-midnight press conference to announce the good news from Baghdad. Hooray! Iraqis out! Peace! Tell Washington!

Having got exactly what he demanded, Bush responded by imposing even tougher conditions for the Iraqi withdrawal. The Russian negotiator drove back to Baghdad (he was based in Amman) and again got Hussein's agreement. Another post-midnight press conference in Moscow, meant to bring peace, save lives. Ha!

In possibly the most baffling presidential moment of the 20th century, Bush replied to this excellent news with "It's too late. I can't stop (the war on Iraq)." Thus spoke the commander in chief. The mass slaughter of an army that had agreed not to protect itself or engage in combat, ensued soon thereafter on the Highway of Death, and was hailed as a victory of freedom. The Highway of Death was carrying the Iraqi army home, in peace.

To see Walt still glorying almost a quarter of a century later on the defeat of the Iraqi army in 1989 is also baffling. The US conducted itself in public with no honor, and risked the lives of its military to do so.

The Russian negotiator reported his side of things in six pages of TIME magazine a few months later. I gave up waiting for any official rebuttal several months later. The truth was something dropped into a bottomless well, repeatedly, publicly.

The decline of America was accelerated 12 years later, when the second president Bush told the world that every nation not with America, was against it. And by against it, he meant open to military attack with no overt provocation. Hard to respect governments that talk that way to the whole world, wouldn't you think? Easy to fear them, of course, and global fear, evidently was Bush's aim. This seems not necessarily to have been in the nation's interest.

Both no-fly zones were initiated for humanitarian reasons - to prevent Saddam from attacking the Kurds in the north, and certain Shi'ite populations in the south. But they did have the added effect of containing Saddam regionally, as well.

Maintaining the no-fly zones was expensive, but we could have kept that up for the remainder of Saddam's natural life, much more easily, cheaply and safely than launching the 2002 war. I don't think this was the start of America's decline. That probably started much earlier and more subtly. It could be seen in our crumbling bridges, our lackadaisical education system, skyrocketing health-care costs, even in the trash on the sides of our highways.

But you are right, the war was unnecessary and expensive. It boggles my mind that even today, many otherwise bright people I discuss this with fail to see that the costs of that war have contributed greatly to our current budget and debt woes, and by association, our economic woes and hardships yet to come. The other big contributor was the Bush tax-cut bonanza of 2001 and 2003, which have foregone about a trillion in revenue so far. What idiot pushes for two wars - the most expensive venture a nation can undertake - and cuts revenue at the same time?

I think it is possible to choose various "starting points" for the decline, but with most it was the ensuing mistakes that started the actual decline. Losing the Vietnam war should have taught the US the lesson that attempting to shore up or restore a colonial regime is stupid policy, but I fear that lesson was not widely understood. Nonetheless afterward the US wisely refrained from further major military actions abroad. But then came the first Gulf War. As Walt points out, this war was probably unnecessary and came as the result of clumsy US diplomatic blunders. But I also think Saddam's invasion of Kuwait was the beginning of his attempt to create a pan-Arab nation [although many do not agree with me]. If so, the US should not have gone to war to stop this. An expanded Arab nation would have created a counterweight to Israel and allowed the US to wiggle out of its unwise blanket commitment to Israel. US victory in that war however created al Qaida since it put US troops on Arabian soil and after that the rest, including 9/11, was more or less inevitable.
In a longer perspective I would say the US (and UK) support of the creation of Israel was the beginning of the decline. Without fully realizing the consequences this "last act" of Western imperialism at the expense of Islam made a struggle between the Anglo-Saxons (as DeGaulle called them) and Islam inevitable. Peoples simply do not accept outsiders occupying their territory if they can resist. And by setting itself on a course of multi-secular hostilities toward Islam (on behalf of Israel) the US has made sure of its ultimate defeat as a world power. Even all the power and money of the US cannot win a long term struggle vs over a billion people who have come to hate the Anglo-Saxons. We will lose eventually. Indeed the first real cracks are appearing. The recent budget crisis in which powerful political groups are demanding cuts in federal spending will hit the Pentagon harder than any other sector of the government. If the US cannot afford to maintain its military empire, its reign as the world superpower will gradually come to an end.

The US began declining when its leaders forgot how countries become rich.

Free trade with wave after wave of Asian mercantilist state beginning in the 1960's is how the US collapsed.

Focusing on the wars is a distraction - like saying China would be "richer" if people didn't use throw-away chop sticks or all stopped smoking. Technically true, but how you use your wealth (fighting wars or giving yourself cancer) is analytically distinct from the question of how one becomes wealthy.

The Chinese could re-invest the money they waste on tobacco - but this really isn't the critical issue. Neither is US misadventures in the Middle East.

"Dual Containment" was the product of Martin Indyk, a pro-Israeli lobbyists who was appointed by Clinton to the US State Department even though he wasn't even a US citizen yet. The decline of the US is due to our alliance with Israel, which we can't seem to break out of. It is an albatross around our necks. The invasion of Iraq, and now the warmongering against Iran -- all pushed by pro-Israeli agents that have infiltrated the US Congress and foreign policy circles. Israel will drag this country down.

When did the American empire start to decline? One might ask when America became an empire?? What are talking about here? The Sith empire ?

Well, I’m not sure that I agree that the American Empire is on a uncorrectable decline, but I DO fully agree that the first Iraq War touched off 3rd and 4th order affects that we will have to spend the next 2 generations trying to correct. Vietnam was devastating in many ways to American power around the world, but America was able to rebound…of course, we didn’t have a crushing debt and the rise of so many economically competitive countries to prevent an easy recovery. China is of course a key competitor, but India is just as dangerous and even in our Hemisphere, Brazil will be a bruising competitor, as it continues to grow economically. Americans will simply have to make the supreme sacrifice and get our debt to more manageable level and also push our government to incentivize companies to re-invest in America. The Bush Tax cuts, which amounted in the trillion, along with 2 wars that has cost trillions (dumbest idea ever to fight a war with no massive influx of revenue!!!) were devastating to America’s financial house, but fiscal conservatives want to focus on social security, which is a solvent program that is OWED trillions by the US Government. Talk about misplaced focus and not seeing the forest for the trees…We need to get healthcare under control, we need to increase revenue, we need to cut spending, across the board, and we need to re-invest in education and American industry, but instead people want to use the same failed strategies.

When I started reading Walt's column 2 years ago (or so) there was frequent opposition commentary. I usually disagreed, but now then echo chamber quality of the comments disturbs me a bit. Is this the new liberal version of Fox News?

Arabs are always innocent.

Israel is always guilty.

Walt is always wise.

Simple, see?

to Walt.

During the past decade, the US, while witnessing a reduction in its growth rate, generated somewhere between $100 Trillion and $140 Trillion of combined GDP.

According to Walt, roughly $1.0 Trillion of which was spent on the Iraq war.

This then, according to Professor Walt, means that the US so-called "Empire" is in decline.

And of course as you aptly point out, whenever there is a problem with the world's largest economic and military power, the entire blame should rest with Israel, such is the supposed reasoning of this Harvard professor.

You really have to wonder what runs through this man's head if this is what passes for his intellectual reasoning.

Of course, according to Walt, it must be the Jews that caused the US downfall, after all, if it wasn't for them, everything would have been hunky dory.

Forget the idea of deficit spending, which has provided the US with a huge national debt, somewhere in the realm of $14 trillion. Or as mentioned the hollowing out of our manufacturing base, with jobs flowing abroad.

Or perhaps the idea that we have saddled ourselves to NATO, where our allies have been content to slash military spending in favor of entitlements, not that this shift in butter and guns spending brought them any better level of fiscal prudence, though during the decades while the party was running, perhaps a better lifestyle.

Or maybe, our push to be the world's policeman and fight the Soviets in a cold war lasting decades. No few dollars spent there.

But Walt cuts through the clutter to focus what passes for insight on that key idea, it's the fault of the Jews, that brought this country to its knees.

Dual loyalty doesn't exist.US officals who claim similar loyalty to US and Israel and then put Israel's interests above America's are traitors and should be dealt with accordingly.

Walt- I would set that dated a little further back, to the date of American inspired invasion of Iran by Iraq, with the goal of reversing or stopping the Iranian revolution of 1979 to spread.

That’s the real date when the roll back got started; it’s time for the Americans to admit to the mistake they made.

Walt- I would set that dated a little further back, to the date of American inspired invasion of Iran by Iraq, with the goal of reversing or stopping the Iranian revolution of 1979 to spread.

That’s the real date when the roll back got started; it’s time for the Americans to admit to the mistake they made.

Professor Walt, in his typically sanctimonious screed against US foreign policy, neglects to point out why, exactly, the dual containment of Iran and Iraq, or even Bush's pointless 2003 war, led to a tangible "decline" in US power.

These commitments did not even dent the US's fiscal position, on defense spending or otherwise. By contrast, Bush's tax cuts, and rising healthcare costs, are much more responsible for the US's allegedly dire fiscal position, although I will not believe any of the hype until the day that investors stop doing things like driving DOWN US borrowing costs even as it flirts with technical default.

Jacob Blues is exactly right re: the relative costs of war vs. the US's overwhelming GDP figure. And I applaud his closing dig against Walt re: Israel.

Professor Drezner, elsewhere on FP, has pointed out that, for all the hype about US decline, it is hard to discern who is actually gaining on it. Europe is a shambles as Italy and Spain flirt with insolvency. Japan, Germany, and Russia are demographic basket cases. Even China is not at all what it seems, what with its shaky/shadowy financial system, poor demographics, and an economy whose level of inflation and over-investment/under-consumption likely means that it is nowhere near as healthy as its artificial GDP numbers would seem to indicate. India is still decades away from being a real challenger, though its overall profile is the best of any of the potential great powers.

Look: the US is a vast country with a vast population and vast resources. No other country can really match that across the board, with Russia actually declining in population and China doing the same (its population is 4 times larger than the US today, but will shrink to be only 2.5 times as large by midcentury) while also needing to shop abroad for most of its resources. No matter how inane its policy debates du jour are, it's not going away: it's not a middle-rate island like the UK, the inevitable comparison that always gets made in terms of "empire." Which, overall ,is a silly term to toss around in the 21st century in the first place!

You seem to be forgetting a little conflict the us fought a few months earlier as the wall fell. The world faced the prospect of an era of peace and wealth. But Bush sr decided the peaceful path his comanders in southern command pleaded for was just not butch enough.

in heavily veiled language, the President Obama made an enormously important point about the evolving character of international relations in the 21st century and what that means for the United States and Israel. He also offered his listeners a more candid depiction than might have been expected of the tactical calculations guiding his approach to Arab-Israeli issues over the next several months.

The most important strategic argument contained in President Obama’s AIPAC address was embedded in the following passages:

“[T]he current situation in the Middle East does not allow for procrastination…Here are the facts we all must confront. First, the number of Palestinians living west of the Jordan River is growing rapidly and fundamentally reshaping the demographic realities of both Israel and the Palestinian territories. This will make it harder and harder—without a peace deal—to maintain Israel as both a Jewish state and a democratic state.

Second, technology will make it harder for Israel to defend itself in the absence of a genuine peace.

And third, a new generation of Arabs is reshaping the region. A just and lasting peace can no longer be forged with one or two Arab leaders. Going forward, millions of Arab citizens have to see that peace is possible for that peace to be sustained.

Just as the context has changed in the Middle East, so too has it been changing in the international community over the last several years. There is a reason why the Palestinians are pursuing their interests at the United Nations. They recognize that there is an impatience with the peace process—or the absence of one. Not just in the Arab world, but in Latin America, in Europe, and in Asia. That impatience is growing and is already manifesting itself in capitols around the world…

[T]he march to isolate Israel internationally—and the impulses of the Palestinians to abandon negotiations—will continue to gain momentum in the absence of a credible peace process and alternative. For us to have leverage with the Palestinians, with the Arab states, and with the international community, the basis for negotiations has to hold out the prospect of success.”

The first two points—about Israel’s demographic “time bomb” and the ways in which technology have undermined the utility of occupied territory as a security buffer—are not new, not even in American presidential rhetoric. Obama’s third point—about the need for peace with Israel to be legitimated not just by Arab autocrats but by Arab populations—is new and significant. Among other things, Obama’s words (almost certainly inadvertently) bring the American position regarding the basis for resolving the Middle East’s core conflict closer to that of the Islamic Republic of Iran, HAMAS, and Hizballah.

The President’s fourth point—about the changing international context for Middle East peace efforts—is new in presidential rhetoric and absolutely critical. The language used by the President describes this changing context in terms of an “impatience” with continued irresolution that “is already manifesting itself in capitals around the world” and “is growing”. At the same time, there is a subtly conveyed assessment that this impatience is growing not just in predictable places, like the Arab world and Europe, but also in Latin America (with Brazil in the lead) and Asia (where the world’s greatest concentration of rising powers is found). In other words, impatience is growing in precisely the non-OECD parts of the world that will gain relative power and influence at the expense of the United States in coming years.

That is why, in the President’s words, “we cannot afford to wait another decade, or another two decades, or another three decades, to achieve peace.” Obama justifies his position on the grounds that “the world is moving too fast” and that “the extraordinary challenges facing Israel would only grow”. But what this really means is that, in coming years, America’s ability to continuing shielding Israel from the consequences of its own benighted choices will shrink. America’s commitment to Israel’s security may be, as Obama described it, “unwavering”. But the extent to which that unwavering commitment actually translates into incremental security for Israel will almost certainly decline in the future.

From Obama’s perspective, the inference Israelis should draw from his words is: strike a deal now, before the ability of the United States to protect you in the rather comprehensive way it does now erodes in strategically consequential ways. We have no confidence that Israel, even under whatever ruling coalition follows the current Netanyahu government, will take Obama’s words to heart and act on them. But we are struck that Obama has implicitly acknowledged a reality we have been highlighting for some time—that, in terms of its ability to affect on-the-ground outcomes and achieve its own stated policy goals in the Middle East, the United States is a declining power.

On a more tactical level, the President’s AIPAC speech confirmed that, for the next few months, the Obama Administration’s focus in the Arab-Israeli arena will be forestalling what it anticipates could be a political train wreck for Israel (and, by extension, Obama’s own re-election bid) in New York this fall, where Palestinians may well ask the United Nations General Assembly to recognize a Palestinian state within the June 1967 lines. In an interview with ABC aired on the same day that the President spoke to AIPAC, Obama’s outgoing Middle East peace envoy, George Mitchell, said, see here, that “a major objective of this [endorsement of the 1967 lines as the starting point for negotiating final borders between Israel and Palestine] is to prevent a disaster for Israel from occurring at the United Nations General Assembly in September, when the Palestinians have said they will see a unilateral declaration of statehood.”

Clearly, the endorsement is part of Obama’s efforts “to have leverage with the Palestinians, with the Arab states, and with the international community”—in part, to slow down the drive to Palestinian statehood. Obama explicitly acknowledged this at AIPAC when he noted that his decision “to speak about what peace will require” was taken “in advance of a five-day trip to Europe in which the Middle East will be a topic of acute interest.”

In this context, we also see the tragedy of Barack Obama—a President capable of understanding better than most high-level American politicians the ways in which the world is changing and what that means for the U.S. position, but unwilling to take meaningful risks or spend the political capital it might cost to pursue policies which would actually serve U.S. interests under these conditions.

To assuage the “blow” of his endorsement of 1967 lines as the starting point for negotiating final borders between Israel and Palestine—which, as the President accurately pointed out to AIPAC, is “nothing particularly original”—Obama tanked on the equally important and politically more controversial final states issues of Jerusalem and refugees. At AIPAC, he also made clear that border negotiations would allow “the parties themselves to account for the changes that have taken place over the last forty-four years, including the new demographic realities on the ground.” This signifies Obama’s acceptance of his predecessor’s position, conveyed in a letter to then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, that major West Bank settlement blocs should be contained within Israel’s final borders with a Palestinian state—meaning that those borders would extend well beyond the 1967 lines.

All of that is deeply disappointing for anyone with a serious understanding of “what peace will require”. But even more disappointing—and damaging to U.S. interests—is Obama’s surrender to Israeli dictates regarding HAMAS. As we wrote recently, see here, “It is now absolutely imperative for the United States to revamp its posture toward Islamist movements in the Middle East, including Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and Hezbollah, as well as HAMAS. By continuing the same dysfunctional approach as his predecessors—demanding, up front, that these groups recognize Israel’s right to exist and disarm before negotiations and surrender everything else that makes them distinctive as political actors—Obama is not isolating the Islamists. He is only deepening America’s isolation from some of the most vital political forces in the Middle East today, whose leaders have precisely the kind of democratic legitimacy the President claims to want to encourage.”

Afghanistan would have been Afghanistan even if we had focused on it. Rumsfeld's light-footprint approach was actually quite functional for achieving limited offensive goals, which is precisely what we should have stuck with.

One false-flag torpedo from Israel upon a US warship posturing off the coast of Iran is all that it will take to sink the American empire or enterprise.

How important to Israel is the September UN vote on recognition of Palestine? Important enough to distract the world with a major, major war?