# Posted 12:43 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

SUDDENLY AFRICA MATTERS: The iron law of American press coverage is that whatever the President does is front page news. Thus, now that President Bush has touched down in Africa, both the NYT and WaPo have come up with long, thoughtful, front-page essays on US-African relations.

In the editorial that goes along with its front page essay, the Post spins the President's trip as an indication of Africa's rising importance as a strategic front in the war on terror. While it is right about Africa becoming more important, the Post is mistaking the forest for the trees.

Consider the closing sentences of the Post's editorial:

In a world where "failed states" and regions of perpetual conflict are breeding grounds for terrorism, Africa is no longer as far away as it once seemed. Like it or not, its conflicts are now America's problem, too.

Now try this: strike the word "Africa" from the first sentence and replace it with "Southeast Asia", "Latin America" or any other place on earth. The sentence will still make just as much sense as it did before.

Why? Because the war on terror is global. And in a world with one superpower, nowhere is off limits.

Consider this argument from the NYT editorial arguing for intervention in Liberia:

Liberia's turmoil also has a regional dimension. Continued mayhem there will feed further instability in neighboring Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast and Guinea. If the world fails to act now, the region's problems will probably grow worse, requiring more extensive, and expensive, intervention later. A multinational military force will provide no instant cure. But it can buy time for more lasting political solutions.

That sounds sort of like Lyndon Johnson's argument for going into Vietnam, doesn't it? Now, I'm all for intervention in Liberia. But we have to recognize that the logic behind our intervention is an updated version of the Domino Theory.

Even though it fell into disgrace after the war in Vietnam, the Domino Theory continued to express certain fundamental truths about the Cold War. Above all, it served as a reminder that no strategist -- not even the most dispassionate Kissingerian realist -- could decisively write-off even a single region as irrelevant to the outcome of the Cold War.

Thus, the lesson of Vietnam is was not that peripheral conflicts are unimportant, but rather that the United States must not invest all of its resources in the defense of a single domino. After all, some of them manage to fall without knocking over their neighbors.

In advance, it is often impossible to know which dominos matter. Thus, the constant reassessment of our commitments will be just as important as our initial decision to go in. Thanks to the war in Vietnam, the American media has become adept at constantly asking whether any given intervention has become a quagmire. If anything, the greater danger is that the United States will cut and run at the first sign of trouble.

Perhaps more than the success or failure of any given intervention is the way in which the United States conducts itself abroad. In the final analysis, the tragedy of Vietnam was not that the United States lost, but rather that in the process of doing so it demonstrated its brutal disregard for those it was trying to save.

At any given moment, there will be a temptation to sacrifice principle for short-term advantage in terms of security. It was that sort of thinking that led the United States to install the Shah of Iran, work with corrupt generals in Vietnam and with violent reactionaries in the jungles of Nicaragua.

In the long-term, however, the United States has far more to gain from living up to its self-image as the champion of freedom. It was that sort of enlightened self-interest that led us to promote democracy in Japan and accept membership in an Atlantic alliance grounded in partnership rather than subordination.

If we are to prevail in the war on terror, we must remain true to our selves, even at the moments when doing so seems to be most dangerous.

UPDATE: DN responds

You write:

"That sounds sort of like Lyndon Johnson's argument for going into
Vietnam, doesn't it? Now, I'm all for intervention in Liberia. But we have to recognize that the logic behind our intervention is an updated version of the Domino Theory.

Even though it fell into disgrace after the war in Vietnam, the Domino Theory continued to express certain fundamental truths about the Cold War. Above all, it served as a reminder that no strategist -- not even the most dispassionate Kissingerian realist -- could decisively write-off even a single region as irrelevant to the outcome of the Cold War."

The answer [to your quesiton about Johnson] is either "sort of" or simply "no."

The Domino Theory essentially argued that great powers could not let any peripheral state fall to an adversary. The argument was based on a number of assumptions, but I list the two most important below.

(1) Failure to defend one ally, no matter how insignificant, may destroy the credibility of a great power as an ally. In consequence, other, strategically important allies, will be more likely to accommodate or even bandwagon with an adversary.

(2) Each and every loss adds to the resources of the enemy, and thus increases their capacity to expand.

None of these arguments are at work in what you call an "updated" Domino Theory. Instead, the assumption is that in some areas -- and this is clearly true in western Africa -- instability in one country is likely to destabilize others. Since terrorist networks have, and likely will, make use of "failed states" it is a good idea to move quickly to prevent regional instability (e.g., the interventions in Bosnia and
Kosovo, despite what most neoconservatives argued at the time, were good things because they prevented them from becoming bases of operation for Islamicists).

Think about it this way: one need not agree with the Domino Theory to believe that political instability can cross borders. One need not
agree with the Domino Theory to believe that "failed states" often provide safe harbors and opportunities for terrorists. If you were
indeed discussing anything like the Domino Theory, you would argue that failure to _prevent_ terrorists from "conquering" or "destabilizing" one state would lead other states to doubt the resolve of the US (the logic in number 1), and (2) that each state they conquered brought them closer to conquering the homeland. While there is a superficial similarity, the arguments are not the same. Indeed, the reason most scholars reject the DT is because its mechanisms remain unpersuasive. States are not likely to respond to such losses by bandwagoning; if anything, such losses make them more likely to see a great power's enemy as a threat and to balance with the great power (consider ASEAN in the late 1970s and 1980s). States such as Vietnam had absolutely no real impact on the balance of power, and did not (nor would they be likely to) add to the resource base of the USSR. If anything, we now know that the marginal benefits of expansion in places like Cuba and Vietnam were probably net negatives for the USSR. I would venture to
argue that the net drain on the US from defending Vietnam was more deleterious to the overall balance of power than the loss of Vietnam was. There are a bunch of other reasons I won't go into. The point is, and I repeat myself here, that these are about different mechanisms than the ones involved the justification for intervention in Liberia.

My respone to DN:

I don't think we are all that far apart on the domino theory. If failed states facilitate terrorist organization, than the spread of regional instability would seem to fulfill the second assumption you list as critical to the domino theory. However, instead of "each state they conquered [bringing] them closer to conquering the homeland," each state destabilized brings them closer to launching another devastating attack on American territory.

Or perhaps French territory. Osama has a wicked sense of humor. (0) opinions -- Add your opinion