OxBlog

Tuesday, December 17, 2002

# Posted 9:04 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

FAREED BETWEEN THE LINES, PART DEUX: Continued from yesterday...

…[In the 1990s] foreign problems, no matter how distant, seemed to end up in Washington's lap. When the crisis in the Balkans began, in 1991, the President of the European Council, Jacques Poos, of Luxembourg, declared, "This is the hour of Europe. If one problem can be solved by the Europeans it is the Yugoslav problem. This is a European country and it is not up to the Americans." It was not an unusual or an anti-American view. Most European leaders, including Thatcher and Helmut Kohl, shared it. But several bloody years later it was left to America to stop the fighting. By the time Kosovo erupted, Europe let Washington take the lead. During the East Asian economic crisis, East Timor's struggle for independence, successive Middle East conflicts, and Latin-American defaults, the same pattern emerged. In many cases, other countries were part of the solution, but unless America intervened the crisis persisted. During the nineteen-nineties, American action, with all its flaws, proved a better course than inaction...

American Presidents, however, were slow to embrace their imperial destiny. Bill Clinton came into office promising to stop worrying about foreign policy and to focus "like a laser beam" on the economy. But the pull of unipolarity is strong. By his second term, he had become a foreign-policy President. George W. Bush, in his campaign, reacting to what he saw as a pattern of overinvolvement in international affairs—from economic bailouts to nation-building—promised to scale back America's commitments. Today, the President who urged that America be "a humble nation" issues diktats to the world community, supports nation-building and bailouts, and is increasing America's foreign-aid budget by fifty per cent. The shift was made complete last month, with the publication of the White House's "National Security Strategy," an unapologetic acceptance of American hegemony.

In stating that “the pull of unipolarity is strong”, Zakaria implies that American power rather than American idealism led it to assume an active international role in the 1990s. Why then, did the United States pursue an active role in the 1940s? The pull of “bipolarity” perhaps. Still, this sort of power-based explanation cannot account for American activism in the 1890s or 1790s. Regardless of its weakness or strength relative to others, America has pursued an active role in the world because of it idealism. While often tempted to be no more than a model for others, the United States has always ended up using force to compel others to do right (and sometimes wrong).

As America's power became more apparent, foreign governments voiced their growing distaste for it. Clinton's chief economic advisers, Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers, and their de-facto subordinates at the International Monetary Fund were frequently accused of arrogance as they travelled in developing nations. Diplomats like Madeleine Albright and Richard Holbrooke were disparaged in Europe for acting as if America were, in Albright's phrase, the "indispensable nation." The French foreign minister, Hubert Vedrine, devised the term "hyperpower" to describe Bill Clinton's America.

Once again, Zakaria assumes that power determines behavior and that growing power produces an automatic backlash. Developing nations may accuse the US Treasury and the IMF or arrogance, but they continue to grant them ever broader rights to interfere in their domestic politics. As for Europe, Robert Kagan has compellingly showed how Europeans protest the 'excess' of American power when it feels secure, but becomes deeply concerned that America is not strong enough when Europe is threatened. (Kagan, "The Benevolent Empire", Foreign Policy, Summer 1998 [no permalink]) On a related note, how can Zakaria account for the Europeans’ interest in having America solve European problems such as Bosnia and Kosovo? The answer is that Europe trusts America’s ideals much more than it resents America’s power.

…Even when the [Bush] Administration has ended up pursuing policies multilaterally it has done so muttering and grumbling—as it has in taking its case against Iraq to the United Nations—so that much of the good will it might have generated has been lost. Some neoconservative writers assert that such rancor is an unavoidable by-product of hegemony. In an influential article published this summer in the journal Policy Review, Robert Kagan argues that European and American differences over multilateral coöperation are a result of their relative strengths. When Europe's big countries were the world's great powers, they cared little for international coöperation, and celebrated Realpolitik. Europe is now weak, he writes, so it favors rules and restraints. America, for its part, wants complete freedom of action: "Now that the United States is powerful, it behaves as powerful nations do."

This passage is critical to Zakaria’s argument. He is right to criticize Kagan (as I have) for justifying American behavior in terms of American power. But note that Zakaria uncritically adopts a vital but implicit assumption in Kagan’s work: that cooperation is the antithesis of Realpolitik. This, however, is a comparison of apples and oranges. Realpolitik entails the ruthless pursuit of one’s objectives by whatever means necessary. Multilaterialism prescribes cooperation as a preferable means regardless of one’s objectives. Interestingly, what Realpolitik and Multilateralism share is an agnostic approach toward one’s ends. In contrast, Wilson idealism believes one’s ends are paramount. Thus, the Wilsonian United States often rejects Multilateralism as a restraint on its ability to achieve its ethically defined ends. As such, the critical question for both Zakaria and myself is this: What is more important to Europe? Multilaterial means or Wilsonian ends? If the former, America’s soft power will turn out to be fragile. If the latter, America’s soft power will prove to be durable.

To be continued...
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