OxBlog

Wednesday, December 18, 2002

# Posted 9:20 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

FAREED BETWEEN THE LINES, PART THREE: Click to read parts one and two. If you already have, here's part three:

...but this view misinterprets history and misunderstands the unique place that America occupied in twentieth-century diplomacy. America was the most powerful country in the world when it proposed the creation of an international organization, the League of Nations, to manage international relations after the First World War. It was the dominant power at the end of the Second World War, when it founded the United Nations, created the Bretton Woods system of international economic coöperation, and launched most of the world's key international organizations. For much of the twentieth century, America embraced international coöperation not out of fear and vulnerability but from a position of confidence and strength. If the Bush Administration rejects this approach, it is indeed, as Richard Holbrooke has charged, making "a radical break with fifty-five years of a bipartisan tradition that sought international agreements and regimes of benefit to us."

Zakaria is right that Kagan’s approach can not explain the coincidence of American power and American multilateralism. But Zakaria cannot explain why America has now turned toward a more unilateral approach. The answer is that America prioritizes its ideals over the means of putting them into practice. Always Wilsonian (even before Wilson), America has pragmatically alternated between unilateral and multilateral methods to achieve Wilsonian ends.

…The fundamental questions about America's approach to the world are about ends. The Bush Administration has often used America's extraordinary power effectively, getting its way on a host of specific issues, from the A.B.M. treaty to Iraq's weapons production. But what do these issues add up to more broadly? What are the purposes of American hegemony?

The historical answer to that question is to be found in the British missionary movement of the nineteenth century, whose stated aims—to civilize developing countries, abolish the slave trade, act against human-rights abuses, and ostracize despotic governments—were adopted by the liberals, most prominently William Gladstone. In modern times, this Anglo-American vision of an idealistic foreign policy is most closely associated with President Woodrow Wilson.
Wilson was, in many ways, a failure as a politician. A stern man with few skills at negotiation or mediation, he was unable to get his own country to accept his most important project, the League of Nations. The Senate killed it, unwilling to commit America to the defense of something as vast and as vague as world order.

Zakaria shrewdly argues that Wilson’s unilateralism (vis-à-vis the Senate) was what prevented his ideals from becoming reality, thus implying that if Bush resorts to similar methods to achieve his ideals he will fail as well. Yet this argument reflects an outdated and inaccurate account of Wilson’s diplomacy. As historian Thomas Knock has demonstrated, the Senate did not resist Wilson because it would not “commit America to the defense of something as vast and vague as world order.” Rather, the Senate believed that the League charter imposed too many restraints on America’s freedom of action. Ironically, Wilson was too stubborn to recognize that his multilateralism would not prove acceptable to a more unilateralists Senate and public. Bush seems to have learned this lesson well. He has compromised at home but not abroad.

…Of course, like every powerful nation, the United States has pursued its own interests, often harshly—for instance, in Central America. And when the Cold War seemed most threatening—during the Vietnam War and amid rising Soviet expansion in the Third World—Americans turned to calculation and Realpolitik, carried out most intensively by Henry Kissinger. This raison d'état is still evident in our support of dictatorships from Saudi Arabia to Turkmenistan. But when the United States' position in the world has felt secure its goals have been the broad, idealistic ones that Wilson embodied. "We have it in our power," Ronald Reagan often used to say, quoting Thomas Paine, "to begin the world over again."

Rather than commenting on this paragraph, I will simply note that my master’s thesis is, in essence, a hundred page-long refutation of it. (You can look it up in Oxford's online library catalogue here.) If you happen to have a lot of free time on your hands, I will be happy to send you a copy via e-mail. But for the moment I will move on, since this point doesn’t bear all that directly on my analysis of Zakaria.

George H. W. Bush is often seen as a narrow-minded realist, and he would certainly not accept the label "Wilsonian." Yet, when searching for a way to describe his hopes for the world after the Cold War and the Gulf War, he grasped for one of Wilson's most famous ideas. "What is at stake," Bush said, "is a big idea—a new world order, where diverse nations are drawn together in common cause to achieve the universal aspirations of mankind: peace and security, freedom, and the rule of law." A few weeks later, in a speech to a joint session of Congress, Bush evoked "a world where the United Nations, freed from Cold War stalemate, is poised to fulfill the historic vision of its founders. A world in which freedom and respect for human rights find a home among all nations."

Bush is considered a realist precisely by those who confuse realism with unilateralism. Bush and other presidents have rejected the label “Wilsonian” because it carries connotations of a multilateralism so extreme that it led to the appeasement of Hitler. But Bush’s ends are consummately Wilsonian.

…in what was billed as an important speech, delivered in June at the West Point commencement, Bush began to outline a world view. He described the dangers of the new era and then asserted that "America has, and intends to keep, military strengths beyond challenge, thereby making the destabilizing arms races of other eras pointless, and limiting rivalries to trade and other pursuits of peace." It is a breathtaking statement, promising that American power will transform international politics itself, making the millennia-old struggle over national security obsolete. In some ways, it is the most Wilsonian statement any President has made since Wilson himself, echoing his pledge to use American power to create a "universal dominion of right." This claim is at the center of Bush's new National Security Strategy document, which says on its first page, "Today, the United States enjoys a position of unparalleled military strength and great economic and political influence. In keeping with our heritage and principles, we do not use our strength to press for unilateral advantage. We seek instead to create a balance of power that favors human freedom."

Note the that Bush believes “American power will transform international politics”. That is the essence of Wilsonianism, not the multilateralism of the League of Nations.

To be continued...
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