American primacy in international
affairs-INDEPENDENT-03-02-2012
User Rating:
/ 0
PoorBest
/ 0
PoorBest
Friday, 03 February 2012
Author / Source : Kazi Anwarul Masud
Madeline Albright
felt a tectonic shift had taken place with the change of guards from Clinton to
Bush administration. Bush administration proved to be
sinister, aggressive, and felt it could take unilateral military actions
without fear of retaliation from the aggrieved or the international community.
This gung-ho attitude was reflected in the Doctrine of Pre-emption and Bush
National Security Strategy of 2002. Popular perception that the NSS of 2006
would undergo a perceptible change towards multilateralism proved to be wrong.
Lawrence Korb and Caroline Wadhams (Center for American Progress) argued that
the 2006 NSS continued to confuse pre-emption with preventive war, emphasized
the unachievable goal of “ending tyranny” throughout the world, and failed to
make a realistic assessment of threat to the US and the Western world.
Bill Clinton left a prosperous and safer America. His efforts to sincerely try to solve the Middle East crisis reflected in the historical handshake by Yasser Arafat with Yitzhak Rabin, or Jimmy Carter’s historical get-together between Anwar Sadat and Menacham Begin on US soil will always be remembered. President Reagan’s request to Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall was not heeded but it was not followed by American military prowess. Neither did Eisenhower and Johnson employ military power to prevent Soviet Union’s military interventions in Hungary and Poland in 1956 and then in Czechoslovakia in 1968.
President Bush on the other hand remained totally committed to what he called for eradication of “Islamic fanaticism”. It is not known whether Bush administration had made a cost-benefit analysis of the doctrine of pre-emption before embarking on what is now commonly realized as an adventure in Iraq that turned costly both financially and materially. President Bush received encouragement from people like Melvin Laird, US Defence Secretary at the fag end of the Vietnam war, who urged President Bush that Iraq war must carry the message that the US was fighting in Iraq to bring about freedom and liberty to those “yet unconverted” to western values, little realizing that the Orient was no longer an Antarctica of freedom nor was wedded to the values of communal benefit at the expense of individual liberty or what is touted as Asian values as opposed to Western values. By contrast Kim Holmes and James Carafano(defining the Obama Doctrine, Its Pitfalls, and How to Avoid Them September 1, 2010) have noted President Barack Obama’s declaration “ that America would reach out to other countries as “an equal partner” rather than as the “exceptional” nation that many before him had embraced; that “any world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will inevitably fail”; and that “[o]ur problems must be dealt with through partnership” and “progress must be shared.”
He has laid out in his public statements the tenets of a doctrine that, if enacted, would enable his administration to remake America as one nation among many, with no singular claim either to responsibility or exceptionalism”.
But neo-conservatives like Robert Kagan in his recent book The World America Made continues to reassert that it would be folly for the US and the world at large to let the Americans to take time-out from its global responsibilities.
He considers it as “illusion” political scientist John Ikenberry’s argument that even with diminished American power “ the underlying foundation of liberal international order will survive and thrive” for several reasons. Kagan argues that great powers rarely decline suddenly.
Besides measuring a nation’s relative power depends on some basic indicators: the size and influence of its economy relative to those of other competing powers; magnitude of its military power; and the influence it wields in international affairs. In 1969 the US produced a quarter of the global economic output and it remains so even today. China may become the largest economy in the world in a few decades but there is no guarantee that the short term economic decisions now being taken in an authoritarian system will remain constant in the long term when a richer middle class may not wish to barter away its freedom any longer for material gains.
On the question of reducing US troops abroad it has been argued that in 1953 about a million troops were deployed abroad and in 1968, during the Vietnam war, troops abroad was more than one million while in 2011 200000 were deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan with another 160000 deployed elsewhere. On the question of defence cut it has been argued that such cuts would have little effect on one trillion dollars annual deficit that the US economy would be saddled with for coming few years.
Kagan argues that American isolationism would make sea lanes of vital interest to global trade unsafe, raise possibility of nuclearization of Japan and South Korea to face off Chinese perceived threat, war among global powers may break out without US influence preventing such wars from happening, and result in a less stable and freer world. But then Samuel Huntington had observed in 1999 that the US had become a lonely super power hated for its “intrusive, interventionist, exploitative, unilateralist, hegemonic, hypocritical” behaviour. Besides the global economic meltdown has brought into sharp focus the acceptability of the “Washington Consensus” and most certainly rejection of Milton Friedman and Chicago School’ s prescription for amelioration of the global financial difficulties.
Despite MIT Sloan School of Management’s Lester Thurrow’s premature declaration of the death of globalization( Head to Head) and admitting that globalization though problematic, as seen in the financial instability of 1997-8 and 2008 economic crises and growing inter and intra-state inequality of income, has registered robust growth and appears to be irreversible.
In the process China has emerged as the principal actor as the world’s largest exporter, possessing largest trade surplus, and largest reserve of foreign exchange. As global economic development is closely related with the earth’s limited natural resources ( we have already consumed about one and a half “earth equivalent” of resources and are projected to consume two earth equivalent by 2030) the world is likely to witness a race for the acquisition of natural resources among the rich and the powerful nations.
The least developed and least globalized regions of the world, defined by US Naval College Professor Thomas Barnett as the “non-integrating gap”, is likely to be mired in hard power conflicts regressing their economies still further.
Would the world then need hegemonic stability which posits that an assertive hegemony can act as a stabilizing force in the international system? Supporters of the theory cite Edward Gibbons’ admiration of Pax Romana in Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire admiring a period of human history when the Romans ruled by the sword, slavery and destruction; modern day proponents of hegemonic stability like Charles Kindelberger and Robert Gilpin have approached the concept from the point of view of the hegemon providing collective goods for economic development and focusing on security implications of hegemonic governance.
The more powerful is the hegemon the less the chances of instability in the international order. The incapacity of the UNSC in getting unanimity for the Anglo-US resolution on the invasion of Iraq and the short duration of the unipolar moment for the US testified to the fragility of the theory of hegemonic stability. The world then and now seeks multilateralism and remains opposed to a single power giving direction to global affairs. The Muslim world, in particular, is hesitant to give the US sole authority due to lack of trust in the US’ impartiality in the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Successive American administrations, Democrat and Republican alike, have openly supported Israeli occupation of Arab lands and her brutality of the Palestinians. Western leaders’ assurances that the so-called war on terror is not a war on Islam have failed to reassure the Islamic world of their sincerity and their scepticism is reinforced by the anti-Muslim sentiment pervasive among Westerners.
Europeans more than the Americans are convinced of Islamic-fascism propagated through political and administrative actions forcing the Muslim Diaspora to navigate a second class citizenship in the countries of their birth. In his latest State of the Union address President Obama spoke in glowing terms of the Arab Spring. At the same time Obama reiterated the old line of “ironclad commitment” to Israeli security.
As the race for the White House is heating up economic issues and not foreign policy are expected to grab the attention of the candidates and the voters. Until a tolerable solution of the economic problems is found religion will have to take a back seat in American politics and of the world at large.
The writer is a former secretary and ambassador
Bill Clinton left a prosperous and safer America. His efforts to sincerely try to solve the Middle East crisis reflected in the historical handshake by Yasser Arafat with Yitzhak Rabin, or Jimmy Carter’s historical get-together between Anwar Sadat and Menacham Begin on US soil will always be remembered. President Reagan’s request to Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall was not heeded but it was not followed by American military prowess. Neither did Eisenhower and Johnson employ military power to prevent Soviet Union’s military interventions in Hungary and Poland in 1956 and then in Czechoslovakia in 1968.
President Bush on the other hand remained totally committed to what he called for eradication of “Islamic fanaticism”. It is not known whether Bush administration had made a cost-benefit analysis of the doctrine of pre-emption before embarking on what is now commonly realized as an adventure in Iraq that turned costly both financially and materially. President Bush received encouragement from people like Melvin Laird, US Defence Secretary at the fag end of the Vietnam war, who urged President Bush that Iraq war must carry the message that the US was fighting in Iraq to bring about freedom and liberty to those “yet unconverted” to western values, little realizing that the Orient was no longer an Antarctica of freedom nor was wedded to the values of communal benefit at the expense of individual liberty or what is touted as Asian values as opposed to Western values. By contrast Kim Holmes and James Carafano(defining the Obama Doctrine, Its Pitfalls, and How to Avoid Them September 1, 2010) have noted President Barack Obama’s declaration “ that America would reach out to other countries as “an equal partner” rather than as the “exceptional” nation that many before him had embraced; that “any world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will inevitably fail”; and that “[o]ur problems must be dealt with through partnership” and “progress must be shared.”
He has laid out in his public statements the tenets of a doctrine that, if enacted, would enable his administration to remake America as one nation among many, with no singular claim either to responsibility or exceptionalism”.
But neo-conservatives like Robert Kagan in his recent book The World America Made continues to reassert that it would be folly for the US and the world at large to let the Americans to take time-out from its global responsibilities.
He considers it as “illusion” political scientist John Ikenberry’s argument that even with diminished American power “ the underlying foundation of liberal international order will survive and thrive” for several reasons. Kagan argues that great powers rarely decline suddenly.
Besides measuring a nation’s relative power depends on some basic indicators: the size and influence of its economy relative to those of other competing powers; magnitude of its military power; and the influence it wields in international affairs. In 1969 the US produced a quarter of the global economic output and it remains so even today. China may become the largest economy in the world in a few decades but there is no guarantee that the short term economic decisions now being taken in an authoritarian system will remain constant in the long term when a richer middle class may not wish to barter away its freedom any longer for material gains.
On the question of reducing US troops abroad it has been argued that in 1953 about a million troops were deployed abroad and in 1968, during the Vietnam war, troops abroad was more than one million while in 2011 200000 were deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan with another 160000 deployed elsewhere. On the question of defence cut it has been argued that such cuts would have little effect on one trillion dollars annual deficit that the US economy would be saddled with for coming few years.
Kagan argues that American isolationism would make sea lanes of vital interest to global trade unsafe, raise possibility of nuclearization of Japan and South Korea to face off Chinese perceived threat, war among global powers may break out without US influence preventing such wars from happening, and result in a less stable and freer world. But then Samuel Huntington had observed in 1999 that the US had become a lonely super power hated for its “intrusive, interventionist, exploitative, unilateralist, hegemonic, hypocritical” behaviour. Besides the global economic meltdown has brought into sharp focus the acceptability of the “Washington Consensus” and most certainly rejection of Milton Friedman and Chicago School’ s prescription for amelioration of the global financial difficulties.
Despite MIT Sloan School of Management’s Lester Thurrow’s premature declaration of the death of globalization( Head to Head) and admitting that globalization though problematic, as seen in the financial instability of 1997-8 and 2008 economic crises and growing inter and intra-state inequality of income, has registered robust growth and appears to be irreversible.
In the process China has emerged as the principal actor as the world’s largest exporter, possessing largest trade surplus, and largest reserve of foreign exchange. As global economic development is closely related with the earth’s limited natural resources ( we have already consumed about one and a half “earth equivalent” of resources and are projected to consume two earth equivalent by 2030) the world is likely to witness a race for the acquisition of natural resources among the rich and the powerful nations.
The least developed and least globalized regions of the world, defined by US Naval College Professor Thomas Barnett as the “non-integrating gap”, is likely to be mired in hard power conflicts regressing their economies still further.
Would the world then need hegemonic stability which posits that an assertive hegemony can act as a stabilizing force in the international system? Supporters of the theory cite Edward Gibbons’ admiration of Pax Romana in Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire admiring a period of human history when the Romans ruled by the sword, slavery and destruction; modern day proponents of hegemonic stability like Charles Kindelberger and Robert Gilpin have approached the concept from the point of view of the hegemon providing collective goods for economic development and focusing on security implications of hegemonic governance.
The more powerful is the hegemon the less the chances of instability in the international order. The incapacity of the UNSC in getting unanimity for the Anglo-US resolution on the invasion of Iraq and the short duration of the unipolar moment for the US testified to the fragility of the theory of hegemonic stability. The world then and now seeks multilateralism and remains opposed to a single power giving direction to global affairs. The Muslim world, in particular, is hesitant to give the US sole authority due to lack of trust in the US’ impartiality in the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Successive American administrations, Democrat and Republican alike, have openly supported Israeli occupation of Arab lands and her brutality of the Palestinians. Western leaders’ assurances that the so-called war on terror is not a war on Islam have failed to reassure the Islamic world of their sincerity and their scepticism is reinforced by the anti-Muslim sentiment pervasive among Westerners.
Europeans more than the Americans are convinced of Islamic-fascism propagated through political and administrative actions forcing the Muslim Diaspora to navigate a second class citizenship in the countries of their birth. In his latest State of the Union address President Obama spoke in glowing terms of the Arab Spring. At the same time Obama reiterated the old line of “ironclad commitment” to Israeli security.
As the race for the White House is heating up economic issues and not foreign policy are expected to grab the attention of the candidates and the voters. Until a tolerable solution of the economic problems is found religion will have to take a back seat in American politics and of the world at large.
The writer is a former secretary and ambassador
No comments:
Post a Comment