We are witnessing the abject failure of American foreign policy on major fronts. It may help to count the ways: the mismanagement of Iraq and rise of ISIS after the fall of Baghdad; Russia’s invasion of Georgia and acquisition of Crimea; the inability to deter Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine; the abdication of responsibility after declaring a “red line” in Syria; the Taliban victory in Afghanistan after a 20-year war; China’s belligerence, bullying, and harassment of U.S. assets operating in international waters and airspace; countless attacks by Iran’s surrogates in Yemen, Syria, and Lebanon, and, now, its support of the Hamas attack of Israel, naval provocations in the Persian Gulf, and unrelenting march toward nuclear capability. And North Korea has test-fired about 100 missiles since the beginning of 2022. There is no international fear of provoking the United States, as the Wall Street Journal’s Walter Russell Mead describes in “A World Without American Deterrence.”

The common denominator of these policy failures is the naivete of the American foreign policy establishment — which has spanned several administrations. 

Following the fall of Baghdad in 2003, the U.S. did not sufficiently heed the ferocity of the Sunni–Shiite divide, which has antecedents dating to the death of the prophet in A.D. 632. Disagreement over the credentials of a caliph as well as Sunni control of Shiite majorities created historical antagonism, ultimately resulting in a Sunni backlash in the form of ISIS that responded to U.S. support of a new Shiite government in Iraq. Removal of Saddam Hussein, a secular Sunni Muslim, gave Shiite Iran an entrée to increase its influence in Iraq, where it now backs local militias that attack U.S. assets. Dissolving the Iraqi army, marginalizing Baathists, and firing thousands of professionals were yet another miscalculation that resulted in dysfunction of Iraq’s infrastructure and negativity.

The misperception over Ukraine started in 2008 with the Bucharest Declaration. 

As well explained by respected University of Chicago political scientist John Mearsheimer in the Economist, the Bush administration committed at that time that both Ukraine and Georgia would become members of NATO. While NATO sees itself as a defensive alliance, no one seemed to care about perceptions from Moscow. The Russian invasion of Georgia in 2008 and acquisition of Crimea in 2014 were met with a feeble response from the Bush and Obama administrations, not thinking those could be precursors of adventurism yet to come.

In 2013, President Barack Obama did not enforce a so-called red line declared the previous year with regard to the use of sarin gas by the military of Bashar al-Assad. The lack of U.S. response to the use of WMD emboldened Russia and Iran, which now have a significant military presence in Syria, directly and through proxies supported by the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of Iran. 

The chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 and subsequent Taliban takeover signaled that the U.S. had badly underestimated the resolve and capability of the enemy. Not only that, but much of the 20-year presence in Afghanistan was based on counterinsurgency (COIN), the misguided notion that the American military, untrained in nation building, could win over local tribes through good deeds in their villages, in a land that supplies most of the world’s opium, recently estimated by the United Nations at 29 percent of the country’s agricultural value. 

Much has been written about how China has upped the ante of assertiveness with respect to Taiwan, its border with Ladakh, the Indian state of Arunachal, the Doklam region of Bhutan, and, most recently, the Philippines in the South China Sea. And early this year, a high-altitude Chinese spy balloon was allowed to traverse the United States before being shot down after a week. A fundamental miscalculation with China was that following its admittance to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, it would observe both established rules for trade and investment and the sovereignty of others — in short, that it would be like us. (RELATED: Time for an Asian NATO?)

The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, also known as the Iran nuclear deal of 2015, was believed tightly constructed with regard to blocking enrichment of uranium and the production of weapons-grade plutonium — and various sanctions remained in place, with provision for inspections for compliance. However, the nuclear deal was fundamentally flawed: It was not linked to aggressive behavior and adventurism against the U.S. and its allies in the Arabian Peninsula, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Gaza. Obama represented that the choice was fundamentally between this nuclear deal or war with Iran — rather than a better nuclear deal. The Obama administration was too anxious to make a deal, and the Biden administration was a supplicant in its efforts last year to renew the same accord. 

The connecting theme of these serial policy failures is a parochial, naive understanding of ferocious tribalism and ethnic conflict; post-colonial emotions, resentments, and aspirations; and the rise of the Global South. These failures call into question the qualifications of those principal recommenders and decision makers in the foreign policy establishment. Earnest, well-meaning, and high-minded, in search of the moral high ground, well read in political theory from Plato to Thomas Paine to Alexis de Tocqueville, and schooled in area studies and languages — one must wonder if they recognize and comprehend the encroaching heart of darkness. Too willing to engage, make concessions, relax sanctions, and release blocked funds, their culture is a tentative staff one, as opposed to “getting it done” and asserting American interests at the risk of giving offense. Facing off against jihadists, a former KGB operative, the mullahs of evil countenances (to borrow two words from Nobel Laureate Rudyard Kipling), and the Chinese Politburo are not in the domain of area studies experts.

What are needed are analysts and decision makers with operating experience in the sensitive and dangerous parts of the world, where things that are not what they seem will invariably befuddle the naive. 

Frank Schell is a business strategy consultant and former senior vice president of the First National Bank of Chicago. He was a Lecturer at the Harris School of Public Policy, University of Chicago and is a contributor of opinion pieces to various journals.