Imagination (Part I)

I powered through our final proofs today, and re-read a lot of the transcripts about the US’s role in the world back in the late nineties and early 21st century. It was interesting how different the conversation was pre-9/11 or even pre-Iraq-invasion. One ‘rhyming chorus’ I did find was that people argued that the United States was involved in the 1998 Kosovo bombing campaign to establish strategic military control in the region.

One theme that jumped out to me in several pieces was world leaders—Clinton, Peres, and a few others—who all called for more imagination in shaping the future. I usually think of imagination as being the province of inventors, writers, and children, but I really think there’s something there. I know we can’t have better policy without better analysis and a deeper understanding of history. I buy that a critical mistake in the execution and the conception of the Iraq war was the lack of discussion of Iraq’s history. I spent a lot of college trying to learn modern world history and only got more aware of how little I understood. I also came to realize that “understanding” history could be misconstructed to create bad policy—the emphasis on age old tribalism in early journalism about Rwanda and Kaplan’s book, Balkan Ghosts—particularly when it makes the present seem inevitable rather than logical.

But as crucial as history is in understanding the world today, I’m starting to feel like imagination is what’s crucial in moving forward, and one big thing that’s missing. Whenever I hear American leaders talk about foreign policy, it’s in this very narrow frame of pull out/stay in Iraq, engage with Iran or North Korea or don’t engage, trade with Cuba or don’t, ignore Sudan or promise to act at some future date. Maybe it’s a lack of vision or a lack of knowledge, but I think it’s also a lack of imagination.

The Marshall Plan always strikes me as really radically imaginative foreign policy. I don’t know if it was in its time—maybe it just seemed inevitable then—but it was so different than the way that every other victor had ever treated every other loser in world history. Other nominees for imaginative policy: the creation of the UN, the Berlin airlift. I also think the idea of “smart sanctions” or “luxury sanctions” is innovative. My understanding is that when accompanied by a very narrowly targeted bombing campaign, they were fairly successful against Milosevic.