BRATTLEBORO-With wars raging in Ukraine and Gaza, plus a very uncertain presidential race in the United States, the Windham World Affairs Council's annual Galbraith Lecture featured a wide-ranging and candid discussion that touched on Afghanistan, Cuba, Ukraine, the Leahy Amendment as it applies to Hamas and Israel, and other hot foreign policy issues.
"A Meeting of the Minds: Peter Galbraith and Tim Rieser Discuss What Lies Ahead - U.S. Foreign Policy Today and After the Election" featured two long-time insiders: one a former ambassador known for his pointed and honest commentary, and the other a long-standing Congressional aide who, because he is still being employed by Congress, had to take a more measured stance, Galbraith said.
The lecture series is named for the late ambassador, economist, author, and professor John Kenneth Galbraith, a part-time resident of Townshend for almost 60 years.
After his death it has been continued by his family, mostly by his son, Peter Galbraith, also an ambassador, author, and part-time Vermont resident.
Instead of a free public lecture at the Centre Congregational Church in downtown Brattleboro, this year's took shape as a fundraiser for WWAC at the School for International Training. Approximately 125 people attended.
Also new this year was the format. Instead of speaking alone, Galbraith shared the stage with a longtime friend, Tim Rieser, who has been working as a Congressional aide for 39 years, most of that time as senior policy advisor for now-retired U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy. He now works for Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt.
Galbraith and Rieser began by discussing the war in Ukraine, which began in February 2022 with Russian President Vladimir Putin's decision to invade that nation. Both men strongly support Ukraine in this struggle. Galbraith said he believes the war is a threat to world peace.
"I think there's a huge amount at stake that goes far beyond Ukraine," said Galbraith, adding that the conflict is "about the entire international system that has kept peace in the world since 1945."
"Obviously, it's not a perfect peace, but if you compare it to what came before, we have actually lived in the most peaceful, democratic, least violent time in all human history," he said.
U.S. failures in Ukraine
Rieser is one of many Americans who feel that President Joe Biden's response to the invasion of Ukraine is inadequate.
"I've actually been pretty disappointed by this administration's foreign policy on Ukraine," Rieser said. "I think that it's very important that the United States support Ukraine and help Ukraine defend itself under the circumstances."
It is about "much more than Ukraine," he said.
"We have our own interests, and certainly our allies in Europe have a strong interest in this war," Rieser continued. But my own view is that the Ukrainians are not going to defeat the Russians, so the question is what is a solution that will protect us and preserve the sovereignty of Ukraine, but at the same time stop this war, which has become just a catastrophe for the people."
Galbraith said he thought Biden had done the right thing by at least moderately supporting Ukraine.
"Embodied in the United Nations Charter is that once you're a member of the United Nations and there's no dispute about your territory, then no country can attack, take your territory, and successfully annex it," Galbraith said.
"And think about it," he continued. "That is what caused so many wars, including World War II. And the only really big attempt since 1945 until 2022 was Saddam Hussein seizing Kuwait [in 1990]. And that did not end well for Saddam."
The real issue now in Ukraine is how that war will end.
"My sense is that this will end the way the U.S. war in Vietnam ended," Galbraith said. "Also the way the Soviet war in Afghanistan ended, and the way the American war in Afghanistan ended, which is that elites, and particularly the children of elites, turn against the war."
Galbraith said that Russians will, in the end, need to control Putin's desire for expansion.
"If you're a Russian, your country is isolated," Galbraith said. "Economic conditions have declined. You're a pariah state. Being a Russian now is sort of like being a white South African in the 1980s. And who is it that you're killing? You're killing people that look very much like you. They basically speak a very similar language."
Galbraith said his Russian friends tend to agree with him.
"You can see it in the body language," Galbraith said. "Even in some of Putin's meetings, it was quite clear that even the people close to him did not think this was a great idea. So my sense is that at a certain point, the price of this is going to be too great."
Otherwise, Galbraith said, "I don't see any way that a Ukrainian leader can agree to give up territory, particularly in these circumstances, so that the best you might hope would be some kind of ceasefire."
A messy ending in Afghanistan
Rieser then mentioned the way that the United States left Afghanistan. He called it "horrible" and "a catastrophe" for many Afghans.
"I spent an hour and a half on the phone today with Molly Gray, our former lieutenant governor, who's devoting every day to trying to help Afghans who are resettled here in the United States," Rieser said. "Many of them don't have green cards. Their families are back in Afghanistan. They have no idea when they're going to be able to reunite with their families, if ever.
"There are tens of thousands of Afghans scattered around the world trying to find some stability in their lives as a result of what happened when we left Afghanistan. And while we did evacuate over 120,000 Afghans, there were many more who remain in great jeopardy, who helped the United States, who trusted us, and who we basically walked away from.
"And so now we're focused on the several hundred Afghans in Vermont who are in kind of a state of limbo. But that whole episode really bothered me the way it ended. It had to end, but it did not have to end like that."
Galbraith, who briefly served in 2009 as deputy U.N. envoy to Afghanistan, gently offered a different view.
"Look at the successive administrations of George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden," he said. "I would put them in descending order of culpability for the disaster."
First, "and most responsible," he said, "is the George W. Bush administration."
"They entered Afghanistan with a local partner, the Northern Alliance, with a handful of special forces and some B-52 bombing. And the Northern Alliance won," he said.
But Galbraith said that instead of turning Afghanistan over to the Northern Alliance "and saying, 'OK, now you solve the problem of Afghanistan. We're here to help you, but if you want to deal with the Pashtuns, you figure it out in an Afghan way,'" the U.S. imposed a highly centralized state.
"Actually, Afghanistan always had a highly centralized constitution, but the Afghans never took that seriously," Galbraith said. "We put in a highly centralized constitution and took it seriously. So all power was concentrated in Kabul, in the president, in a country that's the most diverse, ethnically and geographically. So that was fault number one."
And then, he said, "Obama had a surge, and again, basically centralized things. Trump signed the surrender deal, basically, with the Taliban. And by the time Biden took office, there were only 2,500 troops. So what do you do?"
The responsibility for the fiasco in Afghanistan rests firmly with Trump, Galbraith said.
"He was the guy who negotiated what effectively was a surrender deal," Galbraith said. "And Joe Biden had 2,500 troops, so his choice was put in another 50,000 or carry out the Trump surrender deal. And the way in which this guy Trump simply tries to get around his own responsibility is appalling."
The deal Biden made was that the Taliban would not attack until the U.S. had pulled out. But the Taliban broke the deal.
"Because 2,500 troops can't defend very much," Galbraith said. "So it was either go back in or finish the pull-out. Now if you start to pull out all your friends, you are basically, at that point, saying the whole thing's going to collapse. You're going to cause the collapse. When you're looking forward, after all, you have an Afghan army that's three times the size of the Taliban.
On one side, you had "the Afghan army, with state-of-the-art American equipment," and on the other, "the Taliban, with a bunch of guys with pickup trucks with machine guns."
"It's not unrealistic to think that they could have held out," Galbraith said.
"But if you start pulling everybody out, you're guaranteeing the result we got. To me, the core responsibility for the failure of Afghanistan rests with people that we don't like to criticize, namely the U.S. military and particularly General [David H.] Petraeus, who sold the idea that this was a counterinsurgency."
A counterinsurgency, he said, is defined as military or political action taken against the activities of guerrillas or revolutionaries. Petraeus's doctrine stated that to successfully counter one, you need a local partner. That way, your forces can clear the insurgency and also provide security - a good administration and economic development, Galbraith said.
"But there was never a partner in Afghanistan," he said. "Our creation was corrupt, ineffective, and after repeated fraudulent elections - including one that led to my recall - illegitimate."
Galbraith recounted a conversation he had with Petraeus a few days after the fall of Kabul.
"I said, 'How could you have this strategy work if you don't have a partner?'" he recounted. "He said, 'Well, you go to war with the partner you have.'
"I'm sorry," Galbraith said. "If your strategy depends on a magic wand and all you have is a stick, you don't keep saying it's a magic wand."
Foreign policy and Harris
Rieser described Vice President Kamala Harris, now the Democratic Party nominee for president as "so far, a cipher on foreign affairs."
"I really have no idea what she thinks about much that's going on outside this country," he said.
"She didn't really have a role other than to a limited extent on migration and Central America, but I don't think she handled it particularly well," Rieser continued. "And we really need to rethink how we approach that problem and our relations with those countries. And I think the same could be said in terms of our policies in the Middle East, or our policies, of course, in China."
Both men agreed that new ideas and new people would be essential to the success of the American government.
"We need some new ways of approaching the role of the United States," Rieser said. "I think it's important that the United States be a leader in the world. But I also think that we need to think about what does that actually mean for purposes of building strong alliances and really defending the principles and the values that distinguish us from other countries?"
The bottom line, he said, is that "we can do a lot better, and I hope that the next administration is one that will think somewhat differently about our role in the world and how best for the United States to play a very constructive role."
The United States, however, cannot solve the problems of the world by itself, Rieser said.
"We need to build alliances with partners and other like-minded countries," he said. "And, obviously, if Donald Trump is elected, there's no hope in that."
The Gaza crisis
This led to a discussion of the tinderbox situation in the Middle East.
Rieser was part of the group that created what is now known as the Leahy Amendment, or the Leahy Law, which says that U.S. human rights laws prohibit the U.S. Department of State and Department of Defense from providing military assistance to foreign security-force units that violate human rights with impunity.
The Leahy Amendment has been cited many times as a reason to end U.S. support of the right-wing government of Israel's president, Benjamin Netanyahu.
Rieser said that he never thought the amendment would "become a topic of such conversation as it has today."
"And if there's anything good that comes out of this catastrophe in Gaza, it's that people are asking about the Leahy Law," he said.
Those who believe that Israel is clearly attempting genocide against the Palestinians argue that this law should prevent the U.S. from sending weapons and money to Israel.
But the Leahy Law has never been applied here.
Rieser said the Biden administration "has said that the law is being applied to Israel in the same way that it's being applied everywhere, which anyone who is in my job knows is not true. It has never been applied."
In four recent cases, Secretary of State Antony Blinken determined that certain units of the Israeli Defense Forces committed gross violations, but in each case, he determined that adequate steps were being taken to bring those individuals responsible to justice.
"Which no objective person could say was happening," Rieser said.
"And so, we have been very disappointed. Because we think that if the Leahy Law had been applied as was intended, as it was written, if it had been interpreted as any rational person would understand it, it might have made a difference," he continued.
"It might have deterred some of the actions that have been taken by the Israeli Defense Forces against Palestinians, not just in Gaza, but in the West Bank," Rieser said. "And you know there will be some consequences. But there hasn't really been any pattern of accountability on the part of the defense forces."
Galbraith was frank about his anger that Netanyahu has been waging war on civilians.
"You cannot lawfully bomb a hospital because there's a tunnel underneath," he said.
He contrasted Israel's approach with what he witnessed firsthand in northeast Syria.
"If the U.S. could see a prized terrorist target in a car with his wife and children, they wouldn't blow the car up," Galbraith said. "They would wait until the car got someplace and the man, the fighter or the terrorist leader, was separate from the women and children. Then they'd take out the terrorist leader. Sometimes they wouldn't even take out a really important target because of the collateral damage."
When Hamas attacked and killed, raped, tortured, and kidnapped young people at a music festival last October, it knew exactly what Israel would do, Galbraith said.
"They entirely expected what happened," Galbraith said. "What did they think would be the result? It inflamed Arab opinion. It inflamed Muslim opinion. I'm not sure Hamas even realized just how much they could inflame American opinion. That's a big plus for them. And who's playing into their hands? Who's been their ally? Netanyahu and his extremists."
The only feasible solution is a two-state solution, Galbraith added.
"And if you go to a one-state solution, well, Israel ends up annexing the West Bank," Galbraith said. "Maybe Gaza."
Galbraith predicts that Israel will not let the Palestinians vote, "not this government."
"But sooner or later, there's going to be an election," he said. "In Israel, the left will win, because no party remains in power forever. And they will win with Arab votes. There'll be Arab members of the Knesset [Israel's analogue to a parliament or a house of representatives].
"What's the first thing they're going to do? Extend the franchise. Because why wouldn't you? That's what you do when you're in power. And the end result could well be not a Palestinian state, not a Jewish state, but a secular, democratic state."
Galbraith said that during his first visit to Israel, 40 years ago, he had lunch with Abba Eban, then Israel's long-time foreign minister.
"He said, 'Israel can be two of the following three things: It can be a democracy. It can be a Jewish state. And it can have the West Bank and Gaza. But it can't be all three.' That was 40 years ago. That's absolutely true today. It cannot have all three."
In normal times, any criticism of Israel in the United States invites a backlash from the strongly supportive Jewish-American community.
"And no member of Congress wants to have to answer to it," Galbraith said. "And so it's easier just to go along. That has been the tradition. And I don't think it's actually served the United States. I don't think it's served Israel, and I think the situation today kind of bears that out."
The U.S. has an interest in defending Israel, Galbraith said.
"They're surrounded by enemies, and there's a long history there," Galbraith said. "But that doesn't mean that we should do so unconditionally, and particularly when the current government of Israel opposes every policy that has been long-standing with respect to how to resolve the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.
"Why would we support a government that undercuts our own policy every day? It makes no sense.
"You can support Israel, but you can do so in a way which also is consistent with our values, our principles, human rights - everything that we stand for in terms of how this conflict needs to be resolved," Galbraith said.
China, and the election
A member of the audience wanted to ask if Galbraith and Rieser consider China as much of a threat to the United States as it seems to be from the Biden administration's words.
Galbraith emphatically said "No!"
"This is an exercise of strategists looking for an enemy," he said. "Where is the United States and China going to fight? Do we really care about a bunch of reefs in the South China Sea? There's no freedom-of-navigation issue. The entire world's commerce does not depend on what happens in the South China Sea."
Some people point to China's growing footprint around the world as an indication that the country is competing with the United States for influence, if not for territory.
"Maybe all the money they're spending in Africa?" Galbraith continued. "Well, what are they going to do with it? They're going to make the African countries communist? No, because China's not communist. Are they going to settle Chinese there? Well, no. And anyhow, China has a big demographic problem. Its population is declining rapidly."
The only big issue is Taiwan, according to Galbraith.
"Now, let's be blunt about it," he said. "We recognize, and basically the entire world recognizes, that China and Taiwan are one country. There are a handful of countries that recognize Taiwan as the Republic of China, but almost everybody else recognizes the People's Republic of China includes Taiwan.
"Some kind of invasion would not be easy for the Chinese, but it's something to be managed to avoid provocation. And otherwise, what is there for the U.S. and China to fight about, except for strategists who want to justify their existence by thinking in these terms?"
The U.S. should look for ways to cooperate with China, Galbraith said.
"Obviously, we have big differences," Galbraith said. "We compete in many ways. But we also have many areas where we could be working more cooperatively with the Chinese.
"We can't fight a war with China. It would be a disaster. And why would we? But we certainly ought to be talking differently, because there seem to be members of Congress who would like us to fight with China over Taiwan.
"My view is: Let's talk to the Chinese differently about ways that we can work together on issues that we both care about. And instead, if the strategists ever got their way, they can forget about all their cell phones."
A political plea
At the end of the talk, Galbraith and Rieser both made pleas to the audience to support the Democratic ticket and actively work for Harris's election.
"If you're looking for change, it's going to be in the present," Galbraith said.
"And whatever you may feel about the Biden administration and the vice president, who's part of it, you have to look at the alternative.
"What has Donald Trump said? He said, 'Finish the job, Netanyahu.' What has JD Vance said about Ukraine? 'I couldn't care less about Ukraine.'
"You have to decide," Galbraith said. "And if any of you have relatives in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona, and God knows why, Nevada, but apparently that seems to be important, too, then you might have a conversation with them."
Disclosure: Among the organizations collaborating with the Windham World Affairs Council to stage the Galbraith Lecture was Vermont Independent Media, the organization that publishes The Commons.
This News item by Joyce Marcel was written for The Commons.