ABANDONMENT OF COERCIVE DIPLOMACY-INDEPENDENT-07-10-2011User
Rating:
/ 1
PoorBest
/ 1 PoorBest
Friday, 07 October 2011
Author / Source : Kazi Anwarul Masud The aim of our foreign
policy of having friendship with all and malice towards none sounds like the
essence of ethical teachings of all religions and something like the Ten
Commandments: Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not commit adultery. Thou shalt
not steal. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour. Thou shalt
not covet thy neighbour's wife or any thing that is thy neighbour's
etc. The aims are laudable. The question that arises is how far such policies are
implementable given the complexities of the changing world with a grim economic
future of the West with which the politico-economic well being of the rest of
the world is closely associated. The global history since the period of the
renaissance is one of conquests and wars. Even the end of colonialism did not
signal the end of conflict. On the contrary as Ralph Peters (Constant
Conflict-Parameters-Winter 2010-11) points out that the world has entered an
age of constant conflict and “information is at once our core commodity and the
most destabilizing factor of our time”. The Internet, says Ralph Peters, is to
the techno-capable disaffected what the UN is to the marginal states: it offers
the illusion of empowerment and community. The non competitive cultures “such as
Arabo-Persian Islam or the rejectionist segment of our own population (feel)
their cultures are under assault; their cherished values have proven
dysfunctional, and the successful move on without them.
The laid off blue collar worker in America and the Taliban militiamen are brothers in suffering”. Peters catalogues the woes of the world beyond traditional crime, terrorism, transnational criminality, civil strife, secession, border conflicts and conventional wars that will continue to plague the world and will require US intervention in some cases. While admitting that the next century will be a troubled one, Peters like Harvard Professor Joseph Nye Jr, is convinced that the century will remain American. But many will not agree given the possibility of deeper recession of the US economy and the likely collapse of the Euro zone with Greece, Portugal and Ireland needing bailouts that only Germany, afflicted by aid-fatigue, can provide as France looks increasingly vulnerable to economic downturn. Robert Kagan assails Europe ( Power and Weakness) of moving beyond power into a self-contained world of laws and rules and transnational negotiations and cooperation as opposed to American binary vision of the world as good and evil and following coercion rather than persuasion. Kagan points out that European preference for multilateralism is because Europe does not have the muscle to adopt a policy of unilateralism and has also lost its centrality in global power complex due to the end of Cold War. But then Robert Kagan is known to be a neocon like some others who adorned positions of power in George W Bush’s administration pushing the world into conflicts, now inherited by Barak Obama (but then given American penchant for “Exceptionalism” it is doubtful if Obama would have followed a different course) and difficulty in extrication from theatres of war increasingly disliked by the American public. New York Times’ David Sanger prefacing his book The Inheritance writes that no American President since FDR had inherited a range of problems so seemingly intractable and complex, or a country less certain of its future than did Barak Obama in the form of two wars, an economic crisis tipping the country towards the Great Depression and a range of new threats- both traditional and non-traditional. The Bush present to his successor was a fractured world, a new crusade against Islam( however illogical yet so perceived by great many Muslims as well as Christians in terms of “us” versus “them”), display of American muscularity at the expense of multilateralism, and dilution of values thought to be primarily American and admired by the world. But the Bush administration’s forays to involve itself in two wars and to democratize the authoritarian regimes in the Middle East ( before the Arab Spring) through coercion made the US intensely disliked in the Islamic world and generated apprehension in many other countries. In the West the Muslims in particular were targeted as “enemies” allowing passage to psychopaths like Andreas Breivik, a right wing extremist who hated Muslims, to massacre large number of unarmed people in Norway. Intellectual backing to “inability of the Muslims to sustain democracy” campaign were given by Bernard Lewis, Francis Fukuyama and Samuel Huntington among others while politicians like Silvio Berlusconi, Giscard D’Estaing, and many other European leaders consider Islam as the problem. Efforts are now underway to reclaim the lost ground of liberal internationalism “which posits that a global system of stable liberal democracies would be less prone to war and the US offer assertive leadership--- diplomatic, economic and not the least military¬ to advance a broad array of goals : self determination, human rights, free trade, the rule of law, economic development, and the quarantine and elimination of dictators and weapons of mass destruction”( Susan Nossel- Smart Power- Foreign Affairs-March/April 2004). Be it liberal internationalism or the doctrine of preemption at the core lies American intervention, though primarily for humanitarian reasons in places like Rwanda, Bosnia and Kosovo, but when felt necessary by the US, regardless of UNSC approval or otherwise, to embark on military adventure should the US consider its national security is under threat. It is difficult to understand whether the US administrations, irrespective of whether it is Democrat or Republican led, firmly believe in the need for subordination of international law to US domestic law allowing “American Exceptionalism” to be interpreted as it suits whichever is the administration that holds power. Since the US is a democracy all candidates for the Congress, the Senate and the Presidency before elections have to tailor their foreign policy agenda as dictated by the lobbies working for the interest of other countries and domestic/foreign entities. In the case of Palestine, for example, due to the pressure of the Jewish lobby, the largest in the US Congress, Barak Obama has decided to oppose the application of the State of Palestine to become a member of the UN, a decision totally unfair and contrary to the US national interest as demonstrated by Professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt in their book The Israeli lobby and US Foreign Policy. In the ultimate analysis, and more so with the shift of power from the Atlantic to the Pacific and the emergence of G-20 major powers may wish to be multilateralists in their conduct of foreign affairs and not consider the UN Charter as a pre-atomic document as John Foster Dulles once did. Since the fate of countries like Bangladesh is at stake persuasion rather than coercion should be the aim of major players at the global stage.
The writer is a former Secretary and ambassador Most Viewed Best Rated
The laid off blue collar worker in America and the Taliban militiamen are brothers in suffering”. Peters catalogues the woes of the world beyond traditional crime, terrorism, transnational criminality, civil strife, secession, border conflicts and conventional wars that will continue to plague the world and will require US intervention in some cases. While admitting that the next century will be a troubled one, Peters like Harvard Professor Joseph Nye Jr, is convinced that the century will remain American. But many will not agree given the possibility of deeper recession of the US economy and the likely collapse of the Euro zone with Greece, Portugal and Ireland needing bailouts that only Germany, afflicted by aid-fatigue, can provide as France looks increasingly vulnerable to economic downturn. Robert Kagan assails Europe ( Power and Weakness) of moving beyond power into a self-contained world of laws and rules and transnational negotiations and cooperation as opposed to American binary vision of the world as good and evil and following coercion rather than persuasion. Kagan points out that European preference for multilateralism is because Europe does not have the muscle to adopt a policy of unilateralism and has also lost its centrality in global power complex due to the end of Cold War. But then Robert Kagan is known to be a neocon like some others who adorned positions of power in George W Bush’s administration pushing the world into conflicts, now inherited by Barak Obama (but then given American penchant for “Exceptionalism” it is doubtful if Obama would have followed a different course) and difficulty in extrication from theatres of war increasingly disliked by the American public. New York Times’ David Sanger prefacing his book The Inheritance writes that no American President since FDR had inherited a range of problems so seemingly intractable and complex, or a country less certain of its future than did Barak Obama in the form of two wars, an economic crisis tipping the country towards the Great Depression and a range of new threats- both traditional and non-traditional. The Bush present to his successor was a fractured world, a new crusade against Islam( however illogical yet so perceived by great many Muslims as well as Christians in terms of “us” versus “them”), display of American muscularity at the expense of multilateralism, and dilution of values thought to be primarily American and admired by the world. But the Bush administration’s forays to involve itself in two wars and to democratize the authoritarian regimes in the Middle East ( before the Arab Spring) through coercion made the US intensely disliked in the Islamic world and generated apprehension in many other countries. In the West the Muslims in particular were targeted as “enemies” allowing passage to psychopaths like Andreas Breivik, a right wing extremist who hated Muslims, to massacre large number of unarmed people in Norway. Intellectual backing to “inability of the Muslims to sustain democracy” campaign were given by Bernard Lewis, Francis Fukuyama and Samuel Huntington among others while politicians like Silvio Berlusconi, Giscard D’Estaing, and many other European leaders consider Islam as the problem. Efforts are now underway to reclaim the lost ground of liberal internationalism “which posits that a global system of stable liberal democracies would be less prone to war and the US offer assertive leadership--- diplomatic, economic and not the least military¬ to advance a broad array of goals : self determination, human rights, free trade, the rule of law, economic development, and the quarantine and elimination of dictators and weapons of mass destruction”( Susan Nossel- Smart Power- Foreign Affairs-March/April 2004). Be it liberal internationalism or the doctrine of preemption at the core lies American intervention, though primarily for humanitarian reasons in places like Rwanda, Bosnia and Kosovo, but when felt necessary by the US, regardless of UNSC approval or otherwise, to embark on military adventure should the US consider its national security is under threat. It is difficult to understand whether the US administrations, irrespective of whether it is Democrat or Republican led, firmly believe in the need for subordination of international law to US domestic law allowing “American Exceptionalism” to be interpreted as it suits whichever is the administration that holds power. Since the US is a democracy all candidates for the Congress, the Senate and the Presidency before elections have to tailor their foreign policy agenda as dictated by the lobbies working for the interest of other countries and domestic/foreign entities. In the case of Palestine, for example, due to the pressure of the Jewish lobby, the largest in the US Congress, Barak Obama has decided to oppose the application of the State of Palestine to become a member of the UN, a decision totally unfair and contrary to the US national interest as demonstrated by Professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt in their book The Israeli lobby and US Foreign Policy. In the ultimate analysis, and more so with the shift of power from the Atlantic to the Pacific and the emergence of G-20 major powers may wish to be multilateralists in their conduct of foreign affairs and not consider the UN Charter as a pre-atomic document as John Foster Dulles once did. Since the fate of countries like Bangladesh is at stake persuasion rather than coercion should be the aim of major players at the global stage.
The writer is a former Secretary and ambassador Most Viewed Best Rated
No comments:
Post a Comment