Magic & Mayhem.

• Author: Coffey, John
• Position: Book review

Derek Leebaert, Magic and Mayhem: The Delusions of American Foreign Policy from Korea to Afghanistan, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010, ISBN-978-1439125694, 336pp., $26.

The fever of isolationism, a periodic distemper in our continent-sized island, has again broken out. Across the political spectrum, from left-wing critics of American "imperialism" such as Andrew Bacevich and Richard Immerman to George Will on the right invoking the ghost of Robert Taft, (1) the call goes out, "come home, America." Professor Derek Leebaert of Georgetown University joins this chorus with a litany of the folly and knavery marking American foreign policy since the Korean War.

Leebaert lays the blame for America's blundering on our "magical" delusion that we can fashion grand schemes for the world. Six popular "llusions" breed this national conceit: a sense of urgency requiring resolute action; our business "can-do" spirit; a cult of celebrity; wishful thinking obscuring complex realities; the misuse of history to justify policy; and a belief we can reshape other peoples in our image.

Much of the problem, according to Leebaert, stems from America's political appointee system, whereby thousands of White House political appointees occupy the top policy-making echelons of the executive branch. This system fosters amateurism, loss of institutional memory, and the political zealot's passion for global social engineering. The post-World War II growth of a "national security establishment" abets grandiose enthusiasms ("transform the Middle East"), and the Korean legacy of "prevailing" led to Vietnam and Iraq.

Borrowing from John le Carre, Leebaert depicts a public-policy type, "Emergency Men" -- "global architects, the world-order men, the political charm-sellers" -- who convince everyone the world is better off for their manipulations. George Kennan and Douglas MacArthur stand as early exemplars. John F. Kennedy's "heroic leadership" amidst world crisis is the Emergency Man par excellence, and the Wolfowitz/Perle/Feith axis of delusion, as ignorant of the Middle East as the "best and brightest" were of Asia, demonstrates the Emergency Man's "valor of ignorance" in a quest to transform the Middle East.

Robert McNamara and his whiz kids brought the American management mystique to ignominy in Vietnam, while Defense Secretary Rumsfeld exhibited managerial naivete that progress in Iraq could be quantified. Leebaert highlights the American enthrallment with stars in an...