Most people associate McNamara with the atrocities of the Vietnam war, and cold-calculations that led to the deaths of tens of thousands of American soldiers and millions of Vietnamese. In his life McNamara was also an associate professor at Harvard, president of Ford Motor company, and president of the World Bank. In the film McNamara offers several lessons that he learned in his years, and one was particularly striking to me.
Lesson 1: "Empathize with your enemies"
This is a very valuable lesson but unfortunately many policy makers are not sufficiently empathetic to their enemies. To be sure, empathy is not sympathy. To empathize with an opponent is to step into their shoes and try to see the world as they see it. Empathizing is valuable because it allows you to understand your opponent, the way they see the world or a particular conflict, and the way they rationalize decisions.
During the Cuban Missile crisis, McNamara said one of the reasons the crisis was averted was because Llewellyn Johnson, one of JFK's advisers, had lived in Russia and knew the culture and people relatively well. When JFK received the infamous two letters from Khrushchev, Johnson encouraged the President to ignore the public (more angry) letter, and only respond to the private letter. This was the right move.
McNamara admitted that no one in LBJ's circle had experience or knowledge of Vietnamese culture or a strong sense of the history. They were unable to empathize or understand Vietnamese motivations and strategies during the war. Consequently, the US's overtures to reach a treaty with the Vietcong were often ignored, to the bewilderment of the government. Vietnamese officials later stated that they could not go to a negotiating table with the US while bombs fell regularly on their villages and the US was engaging in "genocide" against its people. The continued bombing suggested to the Vietnamese that the US wanted to completely destroy the North and all opposition, and dominate the land the way the Chinese and French had tried to do historically. It wouldn't take a tremendous amount of empathy to realize that this would be the perception on the Vietnamese side, and the US could have taken tangible steps to quell that perception and move towards an agreement.
Applying this lesson to Somalia
Empathy is needed today just as much as ever. Bush's 'global war on terror' desperately lacked empathy, as it lumped together as "terrorists" diverse groups of people with very different motivations and conflicts. In the case of Somalia, their is so little understanding of the country by actors around the world that the policies towards the country are often misguided and more harmful than beneficial.
Take for example what I consider to be one of the worst policy decisions by the Bush administration- the support for the Ethiopian occupation that forced out the Islamic Courts Union. There was such an utter lack of empathy on the part of those who made the decision. They made exaggerated (and largely un-proven) claims about the ICU's connections to al-Qaeda and the danger the government posed to the region. It was a policy that considered all Islamist governments to be the same, regardless of where they are located and how they came to power.
The US ignored the popularity of the ICU, their success at establishing stability in a war-torn country and their moderate approach. Instead the US supported the ouster of the ICU, and this directly lead to the Ethiopian occupation, the rise of the radicalized al-Shabab insurgency, and the subsequent abyss that Somalia is in today. The US realized this 'mistake' by the time Obama came to office, and is now trying desperately to reinstall the former head of the ICU- Sheikh Sharif- into power. The entire situation and context in Somalia has drastically changed, so no one should expect Sheikh Sharif to re-create what the ICU was able to do a few years ago.
The failure to empathize- to really understand the perspective and motivations of the ICU when it first came to power- led the US to make one of the worst foreign policy blunders ever. A blunder that has resulted in dire consequences for Somalia today, and can lead to instability around the globe if the conflict is not resolved soon. Hopefully the US will learn from this mistake- learn from McNamara's first lesson- and be sure to really know its opponent before subscribing value judgements that can turn out to be false. When its war, peace and human lives we are dealing with, policy makers cannot afford to make mistakes.
