Attila Ilhan, a prolific poet-writer who penned numerous essays on the topic of national consciousness, used to look behind the universal ideas, concepts and even iconic people, showing his readers the dichotomies in their thinking and splits in their public persona. His highly critical books on such chiasms hidden behind universally shared concepts and persons also had intriguing titles: "Hangi Sol" ("Which Left"), "Hangi Sağ" ("Which Right"), "Hangi Batı" ("Which West"), "Hangi Seks" ("Which Sex") and "Hangi Atatürk" ("Which Atatürk").
I have a similar question after reading two seminal analyses on the U.S. institutions, their infights and their development in peace and war times: Which America? Where we should be looking to understand if or ever the U.S. can be a dependable ally?
I have two sources in mind right now to find an answer. One source is George Friedman, an internationally recognized geopolitical forecaster and strategist on international affairs and the founder and chairperson of Geopolitical Futures. I cited Friedman in my earlier piece regarding his observations on how the American people changed and became unhappy about their country’s role as the “gendarmerie of the world” and the “instigator of the endless wars.”
The other one is an excellent piece written by Nicholas Kass, in The American Conservative review titled “Our Terrorist Ally in Syria.”
Friedman’s analysis of how the institutional cycles work in the U.S., in his book, “The Storm Before the Calm: America's Discord, the Coming Crisis of the 2020s, and the Triumph Beyond,” and his “The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century” are fundamental studies on the make-up of American politics, economy and diplomacy.
He succinctly summarizes the processes that made what the Founding Fathers sought to invent to be a regime run by three equal powers a system "overwhelmingly controlled" by one of them: the president. Friedman says the moral project of the Founding Fathers turned into a “culture of war”; the American people (“the real but artificial construct” consisting of “the Cowboy, the Inventor and the Warrior”) came to venerate the warrior because of geopolitical reasons. The invention of America started with the wars with the British and the Indigenous people, and among themselves in the Civil War. It has been crystallized with the world wars, the Korean War and the Vietnam War, and finally the so-called “wars with jihadists.”
Friedman also explains the cultural component of the "warrior" occupying a unique place in America: “The United States is a nation, all nations fight wars, and the warrior occupies a special place that men – and now the women – crave. But the United States differs from other nations in that. ... The morality and the weaponry are joined together in American culture. After World War II, the intimate connection between war as a moral project and technology intersected to create a new foundation of American society.”
This trend turned the president into the sole power to declare war and his bureaucrats into expert technocrats. The federal government is so fragmented in its structure, the expertise has been so diffused that Congress cannot exercise its power to declare wars and cannot control their management. Friedman says it is not the case only in international relations but also, say, health care: “Institutions built on expertise are no longer working. ... And this further shifted the balance of power. The balance of powers has become unhinged.”
Neither Friedman nor anyone else says that the U.S. Congress has become a relic. No, it has only become a talking head. But the “diffusion” has diseased the federal government to the point that even the right hand of the government does not know what the left hand is doing.
My second source is Nicholas Kass’ recent article in The American Conservative, a publication of The American Ideas Institute. Kass is a senior fellow for European affairs at the Center for the National Interest. He served in the U.S. government for 31 years in various capacities as deputy assistant secretary of state, director for European Affairs (twice), director for intelligence programs at the National Security Council and deputy national intelligence officer for Europe at the National Intelligence Council. He worked for many years at the U.S. Embassy in Ankara. He also served at the CIA as an intelligence briefer to the director. In short, if Kass says that the U.S. allies with terrorists in Syria, he knows what he is talking about, and what sort of implications such an alliance could have for the other ties the U.S. has in the region in particular and in the world, in general. The terrorist group Kass means is the PKK's so-called “Syrian Democratic Forces” that the United States Central Command (CENTCOM) elected to partner with in its operations against remnants of Daesh.
Retired Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie, former commander of CENTCOM, in a recent New York Times article called on the government to indefinitely continue its military presence in Iraq and Syria and its partnership with the terrorist group. However, Kass reminds McKenzie and his readers that the U.S. presence in Iraq and Syria is not beneficial for the U.S. from many perspectives, but a presence based on an alliance with terrorists hardly “befits a country promoting ‘democracy’ and the ‘rules-based order.'”
Kass provides background information about how the PKK terrorists in Iraq and Syria have been harmful to the local people and Türkiye’s security. He reminds us how U.S. officials tried to rebrand the PKK terrorists as a “democratic” group in Syria. Of course, the former commander of CENTCOM knows all the points Kass makes in his article. But yet as a U.S. general, he defends the idea. Why, you ask. The answer is in Friedman’s conclusion: “The president surrounds himself with experts, with the Cabinet no longer playing the role of chief advisors, and the Congress acts more or less as an onlooker. The experts are focused on the issue at hand rather than on the broader question of American interests.”
Attila Ilhan should have written one more book about which America we can lean on as a dependable and trustworthy ally.
