The American
Elections,
And The Lessons Of Spain
By Gabriel Kolko
16 March, 2004
Sydney Morning Herald
We
are now experiencing fundamental changes in the international system
whose implications and consequences may ultimately be as far-reaching
as the dissolution of the Soviet bloc.
The United States'
strength, to a crucial extent, has rested on its ability to convince
other nations that it was to their vital interests to see America prevail
in its global role. But the scope and ultimate consequences of its world
mission, including its extraordinarily vague doctrine of "preemptive
wars," is today far more dangerous and open-ended than when Communism
existed. Enemies have disappeared and new ones - many once former allies
and even congenial friends - have taken their places. The United States,
to a degree to which it is itself uncertain, needs alliances, but these
allies will be bound into uncritical "coalitions of the willing."
But the events in
Spain over the past days, from the massive deadly explosions in Madrid
to the defeat of the ruling party because it supported the Iraq war
despite overwhelming public opposition to doing so, have greatly raised
the costs to its allies of following Washington's lead.
So long as the future
is to a large degree - to paraphrase Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
- "unknowable," it is not to the national interest of its
traditional allies to perpetuate the relationships created from 1945
to 1990. The Bush Administration, through ineptness and a vague ideology
of American power that acknowledges no limits on its global ambitions,
and a preference for unilateralist initiatives which discounts consultations
with its friends much less the United Nations, has seriously eroded
the alliance system upon which U. S. foreign policy from 1947 onwards
was based. With the proliferation of all sorts of destructive weaponry,
the world will become increasingly dangerous.
If Bush is reelected
then the international order may be very different in 2008 than it is
today, much less in 1999, but there is no reason to believe that objective
assessments of the costs and consequences of its actions will significantly
alter American foreign policy priorities over the next four years.
If the Democrats
win they will attempt in the name of internationalism to reconstruct
the alliance system as it existed before the Yugoslav war of 1999, when
even the Clinton Administration turned against the veto powers built
into the NATO system. America's power to act on the world scene would
therefore be greater. Kerry voted for many of Bush's key foreign and
domestic measures and he is, at best, an indifferent candidate. His
statements and interviews over the past weeks dealing with foreign affairs
have been both vague and incoherent. Kerry is neither articulate nor
impressive as a candidate or as someone who is likely to formulate an
alternative to Bush's foreign and defense policies, which have much
more in common with Clinton's than they have differences. To be critical
of Bush is scarcely justification for wishful thinking about Kerry.
Since 1947, the foreign policies of the Democrats and Republicans have
been essentially consensual on crucial issues - "bipartisan"
as both parties phrase it - but they often utilise quite different rhetoric.
Critics of the existing
foreign or domestic order will not take over Washington this November.
As dangerous as it is, Bush's reelection may be a lesser evil because
he is much more likely to continue the destruction of the alliance system
that is so crucial to American power. One does not have to believe that
the worse the better but we have to consider candidly the foreign policy
consequences of a renewal of Bush's mandate.
Bush's policies
have managed to alienate, in varying degrees, innumerable nations, and
even its firmest allies - such as Britain, Australia, and Canada - are
being required to ask if giving Washington a blank check is to their
national interest or if it undermines the tenure of parties in power.
Foreign affairs, as the terrorism in Madrid has so dramatically shown,
are too important to simply endorse American policies. Not only the
parties in power can pay dearly for it; more important are the innumerable
victims among the people.
Germany has already
called for European Union action to prevent repetitions of the Madrid
catastrophe but nations that have supported the Iraq war enthusiastically,
particularly Great Britain, Italy, and the Netherlands, have made their
populations especially vulnerable to terrorism, and they now have the
expensive responsibility of protecting them - if they can.
The way the war
in Iraq was justified compelled France and Germany to become far more
independent, much earlier, than they had intended, and NATO's future
role is now questioned in a way that was inconceivable two years ago.
Europe's future defense arrangements are today an open question but
there will be some sort of European military force independent of NATO
and American control.
Germany, with French
support, strongly opposes the Bush doctrine of preemption. Tony Blair,
however much he intends acting as a proxy for the U.S. on military questions,
must return Britain to the European project, and his willingness since
late 2003 to emphasise his nation's role in Europe reflects political
necessities. To do otherwise is to alienate his increasingly powerful
neighbors and risk losing elections. His domestic credibility is already
at its nadir due to his slavish support for the war in Iraq.
In a word, politicians
who place America's imperious demands over national interest have less
future than those who are responsive to domestic opinion and needs.
The tragedy in Madrid and the defeat of the ruling party in last Sunday's
Spanish election is a warning that no politician in or out of power
will ignore.
This process of
alienating traditional close friends is best seen in Australia, but
in different ways and for quite distinctive reasons it is also true
elsewhere - especially Canada and Mexico, the U.S.' two neighbors. In
the case of Australia, Washington is willing to allow it to do the onerous
chores of policing the vast South Pacific and even take greater initiatives,
at least to a point, on Indonesia.
But the Bush Administration
passed along to it false intelligence on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass
destruction, which many of Australia's own experts disputed, and Bush
even telephoned Prime Minister John Howard to convince him to support
America's efforts in innumerable ways. As Alexander Downer, the foreign
minister, admitted earlier this month, "it wasn't a time in our
history to have a great and historic breach with the United States,"
and the desire to preserve the alliance became paramount. But true alliances
are based on consultation and an element of reciprocity is possible,
and the Bush Administration prefers "coalitions of the willing"
that raise no substantive questions about American actions - in effect,
a blank check. Giving it produced strong criticism of the Howard government's
reliance on Washington's false information on WMD and it has been compelled
to endorse a joint parliamentary committee to investigate the intelligence
system - sure to play into opposition hands this election year.
Even more dangerous,
the Bush Administration has managed to turn what was in the mid-1990s
a blossoming cordial friendship with the former Soviet Union into an
increasingly tense relationship. Despite a 1997 non-binding American
pledge not to station substantial numbers of combat troops in the territories
of new members, Washington plans to extend NATO to Russia's very borders--Estonia,
Latvia, and Lithuania especially concern Moscow - and it is in the process
of establishing a vague number of bases in the Caucasus and Central
Asia.
Russia has stated
that the U.S. encircling it warrants its retaining and modernizing its
nuclear arsenal - to remain a military superpower - that will be more
than a match for the increasingly expensive and ambitious missile defense
system the Pentagon is now building. It has over 4,600 strategic nuclear
warheads and over 1,000 ballistic missiles to deliver them. Last month
Russia threatened to pull out of the crucial Conventional Forces in
Europe treaty, which has yet to enter into force, because it regards
America's ambitions in the former Soviet bloc as provocation.
"I would like
to remind the representatives of [NATO]," Defense Minister Sergei
Ivanov told a security conference in Munich last February, "that
with its expansion they are beginning to operate in the zone of vitally
important interests of our country."
The question Washington's
allies will ask themselves is whether their traditional alliances have
far more risks than benefits - and if they are necessary.
In the case of China,
Bush's key advisers were publicly committed to constraining its burgeoning
military and geopolitical power the moment they took office. But China's
military budget is growing rapidly - 12 percent this coming year - and
the European Union wants to lift its 15-year old arms embargo and get
a share of the enticingly large market. The Bush Administration, of
course, is strongly resisting any relaxation of the export ban. Establishing
bases on China's western borders is the logic of its ambitions.
The United States
is not so much engaged in "power projection" against an amorphously
defined terrorism by installing bases in small or weak Eastern European
and Central Asian nations as again confronting Russia and China in an
open-ended context which may have profound and protracted consequences
neither America's allies nor its own people have any interest or inclination
to support. Even some Pentagon analysts have warned against this strategy
because any American attempt to save failed states in the Caucasus or
Central Asia, implicit in its new obligations, will risk exhausting
what are ultimately its finite military resources.
There is no way
to predict what emergencies will arise or what these commitments entail,
either for the U. S. or its allies, not the least because - as Iraq
proved last year and Vietnam long before it - its intelligence on the
capabilities and intentions of possible enemies against which it is
ready to preempt is so completely faulty.
Without accurate
information a state can believe and do anything, and this is the predicament
the Bush Administration's allies are in. It is simply not to their national
interest, much less to their political interests or the security of
their people, to pursue foreign policies based on a blind, uncritical
acceptance of fictions or flamboyant adventurism premised on false premises
and information. It is far too open-ended both in terms of time and
political costs.
If Bush is reelected,
America's allies and friends will have to confront such stark choices,
a painful process that will redefine and perhaps shatter existing alliances.
Independent, realistic foreign policies are likely to be the outcome,
and the dramatic events in Spain over the past days have reinforced
this probability.
But America will
be more prudent and the world will be far safer only if the Bush Administration
is constrained by a lack of allies and isolated.
The author is a
leading historian of modern warfare. He wrote 'Century of War: Politics,
Conflicts and Society Since 1914" and, in 2002, 'Another Century
of War?'
Copyright ©
2004. The Sydney Morning Herald.