The Potemkin Pier and Our Rotten Foreign Policy

The pier was a pitiful effort to distract people from U.S. complicity in one of the worst man-made famines in decades.

Stephen Walt discusses how incompetence weakens U.S. foreign policy:

If the main institutions charged with conducting America’s foreign relations—the National Security Council; the departments of state, defense, treasury, and commerce; the intelligence services; and various congressional committees—are not very competent, all the will in the world will not convince others to take our advice and follow our lead. The Berlin airlift in 1948 was a clear signal of Western resolve, for example, but it would have backfired if the United States and its partners had been unable to pull off a complicated logistical effort successfully. Building a superfluous pier in the Mediterranean and having it fall apart about 9 days later sends a rather different message.

Walt is right that poor execution and ineptitude are damaging to America’s reputation, but the reason for the floating pier stunt is even more discrediting for the U.S. The floating pier was a half-baked gimmick that the administration came up with because they are afraid to challenge a client government over its use of starvation as a weapon. It was a pitiful effort to distract people from U.S. complicity in one of the worst man-made famines in decades.