Even Colin Powell Ignored the Powell Doctrine. Now, America Is Starting to Listen.
by Emma Ashford
October 23, 2021
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/ ... ice-516795
Introduction:
The remainder of the article further discusses the Powell Doctrine.(Politico) Colin Powell was a paradox: He was a key enabler of perhaps the most tragic example of U.S. foreign policy overreach in recent memory. Yet for most of his career, he struggled mightily — and frequently in vain — against precisely that kind of overreach.
Powell’s career was bookended by two wars in Iraq, a parallel repeatedly highlighted in last week’s obituaries. The 1991 Gulf War was a textbook example of his view that military force should be used sparingly but decisively to safeguard the national interest, while the 2003 Iraq war was the polar opposite: A war fought for murky reasons with no clear end state in mind. But what many obituaries didn’t note is that during the years in between, arguably the apex of Powell’s influence, U.S. foreign policy departed dramatically from — even outright rejected — his restrained theory of American military power.
Powell, who passed away this week, will be forever associated with two things. The first and likely more historically significant is his ill-fated Iraq War advocacy in front of the U.N. Security Council, which paved the way for the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and directed the course of U.S. foreign policy for two decades. For those interested in the future of America’s role in the world, however, the second legacy may be as important: His advocacy, particularly during the 1990s, for a set of principles limiting the use of military force that became known as the Powell Doctrine.
The mismatch between these two legacies is the ultimate irony of Colin Powell’s career. His compelling vision of constrained U.S. military power, forged during the Vietnam War, was out of step with a post-Cold War zeitgeist that saw America as the “indispensable nation.” Powell failed to sell the foreign policy establishment on the idea that the military should be used sparingly and prudently. Worse still, after a decade of resisting the missionary impulse in U.S. foreign policy in the Balkans and elsewhere, he himself would fall victim to the zeitgeist, accepting the need for a foreign policy more assertive than his instincts suggested and acting as a trusted proponent of the Bush administration’s flawed case for war in Iraq. Still, Powell may yet have the last laugh: Today, with 20 years of post-9/11 wars evoking the same feelings of regret that inspired the original doctrine, the arc of American foreign policy seems finally to be bending back in the direction of his prudent guidance.
