Let’s apply the Powell Doctrine to a current foreign policy issue. Not a grave, portentous geopolitical foreign policy issue like the Middle East. That’s too complicated. We’d be here (like the Middle East has been there) for thousands of years. Let’s apply the Powell Doctrine to a less sweeping foreign policy issue closer to home: illegal immigration.
The United States has deployed more than six thousand troops on the Mexican–American border to stop illegal immigration. Put that to the Powell Doctrine test.
1. Is a vital national security interest threatened? Well, ragtag bands of Guatemalans, Salvadorans, and unemployed campesinos hardly make for a Red Dawn scenario. And, say what you will against illegal immigrants, their cuisine is a lot better than the commies’.
2. Do we have a clear attainable objective? No immigrants at all? I’d be digging potatoes in County Mayo.
3. Have the risks and costs been fully and frankly analyzed? Mexico, I’ve been told, is paying for the costs of the wall, but there seems to be some risk that the check will get lost in the mail.
4. Have all other nonviolent policy means been fully exhausted? There are 16,600 (reasonably) nonviolent border patrol agents assigned to the region, and they are exhausted. But if we gave them some energy drinks to keep them up all night they could stand in a line along the two-thousand-mile international boundary and be only about 600 feet apart. Or we could reform our immigration process so that applicants for residency got a quick, clear answer without arrest, detention, and years of bureaucratic wrangling.
5. Is there a plausible exit strategy to avoid endless entanglement? Other than conquering Mexico? We tried that already. Of course, if we’d left well enough alone in 1846 the people now trying to sneak across our border would be Californians. Frankly, I’d rather have the people we’re getting.
6. Have the consequences of our action been fully considered? No. If it weren’t for illegal immigrants I couldn’t find anybody to mow my lawn.
7. Is the action supported by the American people? In the “paid for” sense of supported? Considering our deficit and national debt, Americans aren’t supporting anything these days.
8. Do we have genuine broad international support? Ha! Our strongest international supporters are busy trying to get into America illegally.
Of course no doctrine is perfect. Powell himself inadvertently violated the Powell Doctrine—if unwittingly—when, as secretary of state, basing his decision on imperfect and distorted intelligence reports, he countenanced the Iraq War. (Didn’t work.)
But at least General Powell devised a rational means of thinking about a collective enterprise with an individual mind.
If we applied the Powell Doctrine rigorously to American foreign policy, I wonder how many things we’d find that are even more absurd and perilous than deploying the military to the middle of nowhere to prevent my lawn from being mowed?
On a Personal Note . . .
Colin Powell is a man I respect and admire. And I really like him too, even though I’ve met him only a few times.
I interviewed him in the early 2000s when I was working for the Atlantic and he was secretary of state. The Atlantic is a magazine that takes itself very seriously, something Secretary Powell does not. (He tells a great story about the relentless tendency of government to govern, no matter what. Shortly after he’d retired he had his initial encounter with private life air travel. He bought a first-class one-way airline ticket to New York City, at the airline ticket counter, with cash, and without a reservation. As a result, at the security checkpoint, he got a full body search and complete luggage dissection—from TSA agents who recognized him. “Hi, Secretary Powell! We’ll be done here in a moment, sir!”)
My interview—the Atlantic being the Atlantic—was supposed to be very serious, probably about the Powell Doctrine or something. But Secretary Powell likes cars and so do I, and we spent the hour in his vast, trappings-of-power secretary of state office talking about cars.
Powell is a fan of old Volvos. And my Atlantic editors were not wildly pleased when I came back with an hour-long tape-recorded on-the-record discussion of Volvo PV544s, 122s, 140s, 164s, and P1800 Ghia-bodied sport coupes.
But I thought it was valuable information. Old Volvos are an important element in certain vital security issues, such as your kids starting to drive.
Years later, when my eldest daughter turned sixteen, I got her an old Volvo—a 2007 XC70 with a hundred thousand miles on it. Of course—sixteen-year-olds being sixteen-year-olds—she had an accident. She was driving down a back road with a Toyota ahead of her and a Honda behind. A deer ran in front of the Toyota whose driver slammed on the brakes. My daughter rear-ended the Toyota, and the Honda rear-ended my daughter. The Toyota’s trunk was bashed in almost to the rear window. The Honda’s hood was crumpled up to the windshield. The Volvo? A broken taillight.
My eldest daughter is now off at college. Her younger sister is driving the XC70. And she’s about to pass it down to her kid brother.
Thank you, Colin Powell, for more than just the Powell Doctrine.
The Inaugural Address I’d Like To Hear the President—Whoever It May Be—Deliver
On January 20, 2021, the president of the United States will give his or her inaugural address.
If that president is Donald Trump, we already know this is not the kind of thing he’s any good at. And none of the prospective Democratic candidates are riveting public speakers either. But it’s a low bar. Most presidential inaugural addresses are bad.
There’ve been a few exceptions. Lincoln’s second inaugural address was a masterpiece of soaring rhetoric. “With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right.”
Washington’s second inaugural was a model of how all elected officials should speak. Which is briefly. His speech was 135 words long.
Most other inaugural addresses weren’t memorable. Or, if we do remember them, they don’t stand up to scrutiny.
FDR said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” What does that
