[Kabar-indonesia] 1 of 2: NYRB: The Foreign Policy the US Needs

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The New York Review of Books
Volume 53, Number 13 · August 10, 2006

Review

The Foreign Policy the US Needs

By Stanley Hoffmann

America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power, and the
Neoconservative Legacy
by Francis Fukuyama
Yale University Press, 226 pp., $25.00

Taming American Power: The Global Response to U.S.
Primacy
by Stephen M. Walt
Norton, 320 pp., $17.95

Diplomacy Lessons: Realism for an Unloved Superpower
by John Brady Kiesling
Potomac, 320 pp., $28.95

1.

During the cold war Americans believed that in order
to eliminate risks of nuclear war, a policy of edgy
coexistence with the Soviet Union was worth pursuing.
Few believed that America should prepare for a
military showdown with Moscow. In the debates between
doves and hawks, everyone assumed there would be a
very long contest with the Communist world.

The rapid collapse of the Soviet Union left the US as
the only superpower, or so it seemed. George H.W. Bush
talked about a new world order, in which the "real
world" of American supremacy and the formal world of
the UN Charter would somehow merge. But Bush Senior
was soon gone, and Clinton had no large international
vision. This may have been a blessing, and relations
improved with allies, including France and Germany,
which had occasionally been miffed by shrill official
statements about the US as the "indispensable nation"
endowed with greater foresight than others.

People such as Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, who
had long thought it time to proclaim US hegemony, were
enraged by Clinton's failure to do so. When George W.
Bush came to power, September 11 provided what seemed
an unchallengeable opportunity for a drastic change in
strategy and in diplomacy. The "war against terrorism"
was now seen as a kind of World War II reborn, yet it
was without a clear enemy and without allies
comparable to Stalin's Soviet Union, or even
Churchill's British Empire. A brief era of American
triumphalism—or imperialism—led to but did not survive
the disaster in Iraq and the fall in American
popularity and influence abroad that the war provoked.

The US is back to debating what to do next but the
setting of this debate is quite different from that of
the past. In addition to the familiar world of
interstate conflicts, some of the most horrible wars
of recent years have been internal; and some of the
most spectac-ular acts of violence have been committed
by private groups of terrorists not allied to any
state. More than a few of the members of the
UN—Zimbabwe, Somalia, Uzbekistan—are "failed" or
murderous states, whose inhabitants live in a
nightmare of chaos and violence. The "realists," i.e.,
those who believe national interests are
fundamental—must now take into account the UN, which
for all its flaws serves to certify legitimacy, as the
current administration discovered when it defied the
predominant opinion of the Security Council in
attacking Iraq.

It is also a world in which globalization—partly under
American leadership—erodes effective sovereignty of
states (although least for the US) and creates a world
economy that offers a very complex combination of
permanent competition—especially for oil— and
incentives to cooperate, not only for states but for
private interests. There is now a transnational
society that includes multinational corporations,
nongovernmental organizations, criminals, and
terrorists. This global economy, with its
unprecedented combination of private and state
capitalisms, can be immensely destructive, as when it
eliminated millions of jobs in developed countries. It
deepens inequality—at home and abroad. It lacks an
adequate network of regulatory agencies and what
international governance exists is stronger for
economic relations through such organizations as the
IMF and WTO than for political ones. So far, violence
between states competing in the global economy has
been limited, but in the contest for energy sources
military force is already being used, for example in
Nigeria, and could well increase. This, then, is the
kind of world in which the "sole superpower" (as well
as the largest source of global warming) must act: a
world that is anything but flat.

America is now being widely criticized as a new
empire. Already toward the end of World War II De
Gaulle wrote about FDR's will to power, a will that
soon took the form of an American-controlled network
of unequal alliances, military bases abroad, and
economic dominance. The harshest criticisms of US
imperial aims were made against Bush after 2001: the
US and much of the rest of the world fell out over
America's new unilateralism and its refusal to accept
the International Criminal Court, the Kyoto Protocol,
and arms control generally. Most nations were appalled
by America's flaunting of its dominance; its use of
preventive war, particularly the invasion of Iraq, was
widely seen as proof of a will to reshape and dominate
the Arab world.[1] America's new mixture of patriotism
and religiosity annoyed many secularists at home and
abroad, and the American way of fighting terrorism by
bombing and torturing Iraqis and mistreating Afghans
shocked many previously well-disposed allies.

Another category of criticisms concerns the American
belief that globalization should come only in the
orthodox form of American free-market and pro-business
policies. Many Europeans see this as a denial of the
state's responsibility to provide social justice,
public services, and safety nets for the poor, the
unemployed, and workers. Other sources of dismay were
America's reluctance to include in international
agreements provisions for standards of health or
workers' rights, or to accept codes of conduct for
multinational corporations, as well as the connections
between American corporations and American political
agencies —not only in occupied Iraq.

The most flagrant and widely deplored contradiction is
between America's self-image as a force for democracy
and human rights and a reality in which many rights at
home are sharply limited, the death penalty continues
along with the torture of "enemy combatants," while
the US repudiates the international laws of war.
Abroad, the US support of dictators and its failure to
protect victims of genocide in Rwanda and Darfur[2]
have contributed greatly to anti-Americanism.
Foreigners can observe for themselves, on the one
hand, the weakness of public services throughout the
US, the cult of low taxes, and the distrust of any
redistributive role for government and, on the other
hand, the formidable apparatus of American military
and intelligence services throughout the world and in
the US itself. The strength of America's destructive
power and the lack of American interest in
nation-building and development abroad have become all
too evident.

Anti-Americanism is also fostered by various American
illusions: "all human beings want what we want—
freedom," to paraphrase George W. Bush; hence
democratization should be easy.[3] Democratization has
become confused with elections, and the legal
institutions and protection of rights needed for a
workable democracy are neglected. America sometimes
downplays or denies its own nationalism in its
rhetoric, and yet America has asserted its sovereignty
more forcefully than any other advanced nation in
recent history (including Mrs. Thatcher's Britain).
Most other countries are more affected and limited by
US policies than the US is by anyone else's. Therefore
most countries are very uneasy about a world in which
the US is the single superpower.

Thus, while the mighty US faces a huge number of
problems that affect other nations as well—including
those of global warming and the depletion of natural
resources—at the same time it distrusts or attacks
global institutions such as the International Criminal
Court that could be of some help. It shows little
understanding of the pride, fears, and humiliations of
others, and has damaged its "soft power"—the power of
influencing others through persuasion and example—by
its policies in Iraq, its recent abuses in Abu Ghraib
and Guantánamo, and its restrictions on foreigners
eager to come to the US.

2.

Several recent books have tried to go beyond such
failures of the Bush foreign policy, particularly the
war in Iraq and the violence committed in carrying it
on.[4]

Francis Fukuyama's book might have been called
"Goodbye to Neoconservatism," which has dominated the
Bush administration. He describes neoconservatism as a
doctrine with four components: (1) "a belief that the
internal character of regimes matters and that foreign
policy must reflect the deepest values of liberal
democratic societies," (2) a belief that American
power "has been and could be used for moral purposes,"
(3) "a distrust of ambitious social engineering
projects," and (4) "a skepticism about the legitimacy
and effectiveness of international law and
institutions to achieve either security or justice."
He discusses how these aims have been contradicted by
American support for dictatorship in the
Transcaucasus, and its failure to provide adequate aid
for people in Darfur or for the eradication of AIDS in
Africa. He now calls for "multi-multilateralism,"
involving "new institutional forms," public and
private, national and international, mainly aimed at
meeting the economic needs of the global economy. He
thinks such multilateral relations will be more
efficient than treaty-based formal institutions such
as the UN and its specialized agencies.

Since he believes this multilateralism is necessary,
he criticizes America's attachment to absolute
sovereignty. He also denounces the negative effects of
American economic and political domination, which
"rests on a belief in American exceptionalism that
most non-Americans simply find not credible." Nor is
it tenable, since "it presupposes an extremely high
level of competence" which we don't have, and a
domestic political system with greater attention to,
and willingness to finance, foreign policy goals than
the American one. Moreover, "although political reform
in the Arab world is desirable, the US has virtually
no credibility or moral authority in the region."

Fukuyama believes that US power is most effective when
it is latent and not seen (he mentions for example
recent relations with India and other parts of East
Asia), and most important when it is used to shape
international institutions. He is obviously very far
from his former neocon allies. Success in promoting
democracy abroad depends on the past historical
experience of a country, on the willingness of its
government to organize free elections and thus "permit
some degree of freedom for the groups that are part of
civil society to organize" (as in Serbia or Ukraine),
and on the political will within a society to overcome
"bad governance, weak institutions, political
corruption." His model for an "engine of institutional
reform" is the European Union's process of admitting
new members, which requires them to satisfy democratic
requirements before being allowed to join the EU.

Why did Fukuyama, in view of his emphasis on
multilateral institutions, ever sympathize with
neoconservatism in the first place? The "realistic
Wilsonianism" he now embraces, along with his
condemnation of excessive use of American force and
threats abroad, is obviously very far from the
neoconservatives' credo. Also, how could he fail, as
he does, to emphasize a crucial element in
neoconservative doctrines— imperial ambition and
pride? It has served to connect the neoconservatives
and the apostles of brute force— like Cheney and
Rumsfeld—who don't take seriously the democratic
proselytizing of the neoconservatives. The imperial
nationalism of both groups reminds one of that of the
French Revolution, which wanted both to export the
"principles of 1789" and to expand French rule of
other countries. In neoconservative thought, the idea
of expanding hegemony was as important as that of
encouraging democracy. The neoconservatives failed to
understand the difficulties of both.

Stephen M. Walt's book is no less critical of the Bush
administration's record than Fukuyama's. Walt and his
former colleague John Mearsheimer were prescient
opponents of the invasion of Iraq. His book is,
however, primarily an incisive analysis of how the
world's other countries have responded to American
supremacy and tried to limit it. His chapter on "the
roots of resentment" is particularly impressive. It is
not only American power and official policies that are
resented but also—in varying parts of the world—
American political values, cultural products, and the
activities of "US corporations, foundations, media
organizations, and various nongovernmental
organizations." He writes that "the combination of a
universalist political philosophy and a strong
evangelical streak" is "bound to be alarming to other
countries, including some of our fellow democracies."
Walt deplores Americans' failure to understand foreign
hostility. American leaders and much of the public, he
charges, suffer from "historical amnesia," fostered by
"US textbooks and public rhetoric" which portray
America's international role as "uniformly noble,
principled and benevolent."

Walt finds that while there have been few formal
alliances to contain the US, other countries resort to
"soft balancing," defined as "the conscious
coordination of diplomatic action in order to obtain
outcomes contrary to US preferences." The refusal of
the main European countries to back the war in Iraq is
the most obvious example. At the moment, Venezuela,
Bolivia, and Cuba have formed an alliance against
American power in the Caribbean and Latin America, and
in one degree or another, Brazil, Argentina, and
Mexico are resisting American economic and diplomatic
pressures. Some states, he writes, are also mobilizing
their domestic resources in ways that limit the US
capacity to pressure them. Such a strategy can
emphasize conventional military power, as can be seen
in the growing strength of Chinese military forces. It
can also take the form of terrorism and building
weapons of mass destruction, both apparently aims of
the current regime in Iran. The US should try to
discourage other nations from taking such measures,
Walt argues, by seeking "to convince most states that
they have little to fear from US power unless they
take actions that directly threaten vital US
interests." He believes a principal task of US policy
is to persuade other nations that its "privileged
position is legitimate," which requires that the US
respect established international law and procedures,
something it has failed to do before and throughout
the war in Iraq.

Some nations, he believes, have collaborated with the
US for protection against threats, as for example
Lebanon and Jordan, which wanted US help against the
threat of Syria. Some foreign leaders "bond" with
Bush—Blair being a cautionary example. He also
mentions the efforts of foreign powers to influence
Congress and the administration, the most flagrant
case being the Israel lobby, the subject of his
taboo-breaking essay with John Mearsheimer in the
London Review of Books and of Michael Massing's recent
article in these pages.[5]

Writing as a traditional realist, Walt argues that
America's national interest demands that it try to
achieve a just peace between Israel and the
Palestinians. If that fails because of Israel's
unwillingness to grant the Palestinians a workable
state, the US should continue to support Israel's
existence but no longer act as if Israel's interests
and US interests were identical. Instead, the US
should end its excessive military and economic support
of Israel.

Moreover, he argues, large US forces are no longer
needed in Europe and only air and naval bases are
needed in Asia. The US should avoid preventive war,
intervene in the Middle East only with the
participation of others, and withdraw from military
engagements, if they become necessary, after a "threat
has been thwarted." The US should also deemphasize its
nuclear weapons programs so as to decrease "other
states' incentives to get nuclear weapons of their
own." Bush, by putting North Korea and Iran in the
"axis of evil," only ensured that they would act more
aggressively.

Similar conclusions are reached by John Brady
Kiesling, for nineteen years a career foreign service
officer with wide experience in the Near East and in
Greece; he resigned publicly— with a strong letter
explaining his decision to Colin Powell—when he became
convinced that the Bush administration was determined
to invade Iraq.[6] His book provides the invaluable
perspective of someone who has seen American foreign
policy from the inside. What we learn from his lively,
often witty, and incisive report is invaluable. The
Bush administration hoped that some Greek leaders and
much of the public would support its invasion of Iraq
in view of past US aid to Greece and collaboration
with its military. In fact, he writes, the Iraq war
was unpopular throughout Greece and US standing there
suffered because of it. American success depends "on
respecting domestic politics in other states as well
as our own. Those politics ultimately compel America
to embrace the rule of law...as the basic principle of
effective diplomacy."

Notwithstanding the advice of Kiesling and others, the
administration simply didn't understand that a Greek
politician who supported the war would be in trouble.
He also argues that "when the US promotes local and
regional security and prosperity, even to the
short-run benefit of tyrannical regimes, it creates
the soil in which democracy can grow." This happened
in Taiwan, where US protection helped to allow
democratic forces eventually to take power.

Kiesling gives his own account of conflict between two
types of foreign service officers: US diplomats "whose
playing field is the foreign country in which they are
posted," and those he calls bureaucrats, such as the
Bush administration's champions of

    self-aggrandizement and political fantasy at home,
whose job is reinforcing the prevailing inclination of
the chief policymakers. Lurking in some obscure or
less obscure university is all the intellectual
underpinning required for any fatuous scheme.

He mentions the neoconservatives who, in the months
before the Iraq war, introduced Professor Bernard
Lewis to Dick Cheney.

Successful counterterrorism, Kiesling writes, requires
respect for the lives of innocents. Iraqis, for
instance, see dozens of their innocent fellow citizens
again and again being sacrificed in American bombing
attacks that often are not successful against
terrorists in any case. Yet their dismay and anger are
not understood. Kiesling's condemnation of torture is
eloquent: "The US war on terrorism is at heart a war
to strengthen the rule of law in societies whose
citizens are themselves often helpless victims of
illegitimate violence." The use of torture by the US
only makes a mockery of attempts to sustain the rule
of law. As a working diplomat, he was appalled by
bureaucrats who "took the word of their president that
preemption of terrorism required unilateral violence
and the death of innocent civilians."

Kiesling argues that US insistence on expanding its
own nuclear arsenal destroys any effective
nonproliferation strategy. He finds secret
intelligence operations often damage US interests—for
instance, when the CIA backed corrupt warlords in
Afghanistan. "Secrecy's role in the US government is
to keep senior officials from learning from their
mistakes." The "war on terrorism" for Kiesling has
been a "failed reprise" of the moral clarity of the
cold war. It has turned the most powerful nation into
the most frightened one. He hopes for a political
leadership "brave enough" to bring into the open the
"hidden environmental, social, and other costs" of the
American way of life. He writes in the tradition of
George Kennan when he argues that while Americans may
argue that their security depends on the spread of
morality and justice abroad, they should first
practice both at home.

3.

What would be the outline of a decent and effective
American foreign policy?

The first prerequisite, in my view, is to improve
America's own economic and moral condition, a change
that would be well received abroad. This would mean a
return to the rule of law and to the protection of
civil liberties, and an end to efforts to escape from
the obligations of international law in the fight
against terrorism. The US should accept, despite its
flaws, the Kyoto Protocol on global warming and try to
improve it; and it should sign the International
Criminal Court treaty. Accepting both would undo some
of the damage of recent years.

The US also needs a fiscal policy that would take
seriously the reduction of America's deficit and debt,
and therefore of American dependence on foreign
countries that are willing to subsidize the US by
buying its debt in exchange for what we provide in
return—security for Japan, access to US markets in the
case of China. Otherwise the US will remain, in
Charles Maier's words, an empire of consumption.[7]
Greater investment at home in technological and
educational progress is indispensable. A serious
effort, including a tax on carbon emissions, to reduce
the consumption of oil in favor of new sources of
energy is essential for several reasons: to preserve
the global environment from global warming and other
dangers, to escape from dependence on corrupt and
tyrannical regimes in the Middle East and elsewhere,
and to protect against the temptation to seize control
of oil production in, say, Iraq as an insurance
against possible trouble in Saudi Arabia.

A second prerequisite is a willingness to break
dramatically with the foreign policies of both
Republicans and Democrats. Throughout the postwar era,
and especially after the fall of communism, these
policies have oscillated from multilateralism to
imperialism, but they have assumed, as Walt does, that
the world could only benefit from American primacy,
seen as both a fact of power and a condition of world
security and prosperity. Even Democratic critics of
neoconservative hubris and critical commentators such
as Walt have not put in doubt the need for the US to
set the course for its partners and for the world. Nor
have the merits of the US being the world's only
superpower been seriously questioned, except on the
isolationist fringe and among the libertarians of the
Cato Institute. These deeply ingrained views, by now
as ritualized as the late thoughts of Mao, need to be
changed. They do not correspond with the realities of
power.

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