BRAUDEL, MEXICO, AND GRAND STRATEGY - The Revenge of Geography - page 236

body count, both American and Iraqi, will haunt American foreign policy debates for dec-
ades, just as Vietnam did. They constitute more than just l'histoire événmentielle .
To be sure, these analysts are not concerned about what to do next in Afghanistan and
Iraq. Instead—again, merging their thoughts—they are asking themselves, what has been
the cost of our blunders already? Can we as a great power be salvaged? And where do
we put our best efforts, in terms of highly selective military deployments and civilian aid,
so that America can help preserve the balance of power in Eurasia and not be inundated
over the decades by Mexicans fleeing a troubled state? As Jakub Grygiel puts it: “Geo-
graphic isolation is a strategic blessing and should not be squandered by an expansionary
strategy.” 5
So how much have we squandered already? Michael Lind, a scholar at the New America
Foundation in Washington, agrees with Bacevich about the foolishness of both the Iraq
War and the escalation of the war in Afghanistan. But he parts company with Bacevich on
whether America can afford such conflicts. Lind argues that relatively little of the national
debt is the result of military spending, let alone of two simultaneous wars, and that redu-
cing health care costs is far more central to America's fiscal solvency than recent imperial-
like adventurism, as much as he opposes it. 6 In fact, a look at some of the blunders of em-
pires past may put the debacles of Iraq and Afghanistan in some perspective, both in terms
of their effect on U.S. foreign policy already, and their effect on our ability to deal with
the future challenges in the Middle East, China, and Mexico throughout the course of the
twenty-first century.
In 1449, returning from a failed campaign in Mongolia, the army of Ming China was
surrounded by Mongol forces. Without water, the Chinese panicked. Trusting in Mongol
mercy, Grygiel writes, “many shed their armor and ran toward the enemy lines.” As many
as half a million Chinese soldiers were slaughtered and the Ming emperor became a pris-
oner of the Mongols. The Ming army adventure in Mongolia marked the start of the long
decline of the Ming Dynasty. The Ming army never again attempted to confront the Mon-
gols in the northern steppe, even as tension with the Mongols would sap the energy of the
Ming leadership. This led to China's retreat from maritime Asia, which would help encour-
age the entry of European powers into the Rimland. 7
Nothing so disastrous has occurred following the America adventure in Iraq—our mil-
itary and economic position around the world, and especially in East Asia, is sturdy and
shows no signs of retrenchment, let alone retreat. We lost under 5,000 troops and 32,000
seriously wounded, a terrible price, but not an entire invasion force of half a million. The
U.S. Army, which bore the brunt of the Iraq fighting, stands at almost half a million active-
duty personnel, and precisely because of its experience in irregular warfare in Iraq is now