Conservative Article That Should Be Required Reading For All Bush-Lovers.
Skip Freeman
http://www.amconmag.com/10_06_03/cover.html
The Cost of Empire
President Bush’s war policy marks the beginning of the end of
America’s era of global dominance.
By Christopher Layne
The administration’s U-turn decision to ask for United Nations
help in Iraq, and President George W. Bush’s request that
Congress appropriate $87 billion to fund the occupation and
reconstruction of that country send a very clear message: the
administration’s Iraq policy is a fiasco. And a foreseeable one
at that.
U.S. intelligence agencies predicted that American troops occupying
Iraq would not be welcomed as liberators but would be resisted. A
pre-invasion State Department report warned that the administration
had the proverbial snowball’s chance of transforming Iraq into a
Western-style democracy (a conclusion reinforced by a recent Zogby
poll of Iraqis that found only 38 percent of Iraqis favor democracy,
while 50 percent believe that “democracy is a western way of
doing things and it will not work here”). Similarly, it was
obvious that the administration’s go-it-alone hubris, combined
with its sledgehammer diplomacy, would chill Washington’s
relations with the other major powers and trigger a worldwide backlash
of hostility toward the United States.
Those—here and abroad—who opposed Washington’s
reckless march to war can say we told you so. But that is not the
point. More than that, it is necessary to step back from day-to-day
events and place the Iraq war in the context of its longer-term
significance for the United States. A good place to start is by asking
why the administration embarked on war while ignoring
widespread—and accurate—predictions that even a successful
military campaign could lead to postwar disaster. In other words, what
were the administration’s war aims?
We know what they were not. Iraq was not an imminent threat to the
security of the Middle East and Persian Gulf. (Did anyone say
“weapons of mass destruction”?) And—the
administration’s manipulation of public opinion
notwithstanding—Saddam Hussein was not involved in Sept. 11 and
was not in bed with al-Qaeda. But, as both U.S. and British
intelligence warned, by going to war with Iraq, the administration has
created a terrorist threat where none existed previously, making the
U.S. less, not more, secure than it would have been had we not invaded
Iraq.
The real reason the administration went to war had nothing to do with
terrorism. Indeed, many of the administration’s architects of
illusion—Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, and Richard Perle, among
others—put Iraq squarely in their geopolitical crosshairs while
they were out of power during the 1990s. The administration went to
war in Iraq to consolidate America’s global hegemony and to
extend U.S. dominance to the Middle East by establishing a permanent
military stronghold in Iraq for the purposes of controlling the Middle
Eastern oil spigot (thereby giving Washington enormous leverage in its
relations with Western Europe and China); allowing Washington to
distance itself from an increasingly unreliable and unstable Saudi
Arabia; and using the shadow of U.S. military power to bring about
additional regime changes in Iran and Syria.
It is fashionable to say that 9/11—and the subsequent war with
Iraq— “changed everything.” But this is not true.
Before Sept. 11 the biggest debate among students of international
politics and analysts of U.S. foreign policy was about American
hegemony. Re-christened as a debate about the wisdom of American
empire, it still is. The big fault line in this debate is over which
of two theories—yes, academic theories about international
relations really do reflect and influence real-world
policy—about how states can best attain security for themselves
in the competitive arena of world politics is correct.
“Offensive realism” holds that the best way for a state to
gain security is to amass overwhelming power—that is, by
becoming a hegemon. In plain English, being a hegemon means being like
Leroy Brown—badder than old King Kong and meaner than a junkyard
dog. A hegemon can use its power to eliminate rivals—by
conquering them, co-opting them, or intimidating them—and seek
to create a congenial world order that reflects its own ideology,
values, and preferences. Since World War II, offensive realism has
undergirded American grand strategy, although the current
administration’s policy is offensive realism on steroids. If the
Duchess of Windsor had been an administration strategist she would
have said that the U.S. can never be too rich, too powerful—or
too well-armed or too willing to employ force against its adversaries.
Hegemony is a superficially appealing grand strategy. After all, if
power counts in international politics—and every realist knows
it counts big time—then it seemingly makes sense for the U.S. to
grab as much power as possible.
Traditional realists like Hans Morgenthau, George Kennan, and Walter
Lippman reject the logic of offensive realism because they believe
that when one state becomes too powerful all the others fear for their
security. They respond by building up their own military capabilities
or by forming alliances with others to act as a counterweight against
a hegemon’s power (or both). This is what students of
international politics refer to as “balancing.” And,
indeed, the historical record pretty conclusively shows that hegemony
is a self-defeating grand strategy, not a winning one. Every hegemonic
aspirant in modern international history—the Hapsburg Empire
under Charles V, Spain under Philip II, France under Louis XIV and
Napoleon, and Germany under Hitler—has been defeated by
counter-hegemonic balancing.
American policymakers have come up with a number of (far too) clever
rationales to convince themselves that the U.S. will escape the fate
that invariably befalls hegemons. For example, they claim that the
United States is a different kind of hegemon—a
“benign” or “benevolent” one that is
non-threatening because it acts altruistically in international
politics and because others are attracted to America’s
“soft power” (its political institutions and values, and
its culture). There is no reason, they say, for others to balance
against the United States. Other proponents of American hegemony take
a different tack: they claim that the United States can throw its
hegemonic weight around as it pleases because its
power—economic, military, and technological—is so
overwhelming that it will be a very long time before other states can
even think about balancing against the U.S.
These are not compelling arguments. In international politics,
benevolent hegemons are like unicorns—there are no such animals.
Hegemons love themselves, but others mistrust and fear them. Others
dread both the over-concentration of geopolitical weight in
America’s favor and the purposes for which it may be used.
Washington’s (purportedly) benevolent intentions are ephemeral,
but the hard fist of American power is tangible—and others worry
that if U.S. intentions change, they might get smacked. As for the
argument that the U.S. is too mighty to be counter-balanced, history
reminds us that things change fast in international politics. The
British found out toward the end of the 19th century that a seemingly
unassailable international power position can melt away with
unexpected rapidity.
Perhaps the proponents of America’s imperial ambitions are right
and the U.S. will not suffer the same fate as previous hegemonic
powers. Don’t bet on it. The very fact of America’s
overwhelming power is bound to produce a geopolitical
backlash—which is why it’s only a short step from the
celebration of imperial glory to the recessional of imperial power.
Indeed, on its present course, the United States seems fated to
succumb to the “hegemon’s temptation.” Hegemons have
lots of power and because there is no countervailing force to stop
them, they are tempted to use it repeatedly, and thereby overreach
themselves. Over time, this hegemonic muscle-flexing has a price. The
cumulative costs of fighting —or preparing to
fight—guerilla wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, asymmetric
conflicts against terrorists (in the Philippines, possibly in a failed
Pakistan, and elsewhere), regional powers (Iran, North Korea), and
rising great powers like China could erode America’s relative
power—especially if the U.S. suffers setbacks in future
conflicts, for example in a war with China over Taiwan.
At the end of the day, hegemonic decline results from a combination of
external and internal factors: over-extension abroad (imperial
overstretch) and domestic economic weakness (endless budget and
balance-of- payments deficits). It comes as no surprise that the
imperial overstretch debate of the late 1980s—about the costs of
empire and America’s ability to afford them—which was
aborted by the Soviet Union’s sudden collapse, has re-emerged
with a vengeance. And there is ample reason to worry about whether the
U.S. can sustain the burdens of hegemony. A recent report commissioned
by the U.S. Treasury Department, but buried by the Bush
administration, pointed out the magnitude of the fiscal crisis
confronting the U.S. in funding health care and pension commitments to
the rapidly aging “baby boom” generation. As Niall
Ferguson and Laurence Kotlikoff suggest in an important article in the
Fall 2003 issue of the National Interest, the looming imperative of
achieving fiscal solvency through a combination of painful tax
increases and spending cuts eventually will spur the realization that
America’s imperial ambitions are unaffordable. Over time,
America’s fiscal troubles will erode its economic
power—which is the foundation of its military might—and,
as the relative power gap between the U.S. and potential new great
powers begins to shrink, the costs and risks of challenging the United
States will decrease and the pay-off for doing so will increase.
American policymakers should want to avoid the fate of hegemons. In
the late 1890s, Great Britain—widely regarded as at the zenith
of its hegemonic power—had its own counterpart to American
unilateralism: splendid isolation. But as speculation grew that the
other European great powers would form a coalition to balance against
Britain, London realized its isolation was far from splendid. As the
British military analyst Spencer Wilkenson said the time, “We
have no friends, and no nation loves us.” A recent New York
Times article on other nations’ perceptions of the U.S. suggests
that it is not much of a leap to conclude that, because of its
hegemonic strategy, the U.S. risks facing the nightmare scenario
depicted by Wilkenson.
The administration, however, is not worried because it believes that
American hegemony is an unchallengeable fact of international life.
But this does not hold up because the rest of the world draws the
opposite conclusion: that the United States is too powerful, and its
hegemony must be resisted. The administration has dug the U.S. into a
deep hole in Iraq and, more worryingly, in terms of its relations with
the rest of the world. So, what is to be done?
Realists have tried to do something. Nearly every major realist
scholar of international politics in the U.S. opposed going to war
with Iraq. No surprise here. During Vietnam, realists like Kennan,
Morgenthau, and Kenneth Waltz were among the first—and most
prescient—in warning that the war would become a quagmire that
would undermine, rather than further, U.S. interests. While
understanding the ineluctable role of power in international politics,
realists also understand that military force is a blunt instrument and
that its use often has unforeseeable consequences. While understanding
that unilateralism is the default strategic option for great powers,
realists also know that, when possible, it is best to work with others
(especially in the real war on terrorism, which cannot be won by the
U.S. without the co-operation of other states). Realists also know
that it is foolish to antagonize other states needlessly or to destroy
institutional frameworks of co-operation through which the U.S. can
work with others to advance its own interests.
Now that the Iraqi debacle has underscored the risks of the
administration’s imperial ambitions, a new group called the
Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy is organizing to push for a
more prudent U.S. strategy. Composed of leading realist scholars from
academe, think-tank analysts, and mainstream members of the political
establishment, the Coalition is a group that transcends partisan and
ideological divides. It is united by the “desire to turn
American national security policy toward realistic and sustainable
measures for protecting U.S. vital interests in a manner that is
consistent with American values.” Perhaps as the 2004
presidential campaign unfolds, someone like a Howard Dean or a Wesley
Clark will recognize the virtue of reaching across party lines to
staff a foreign-policy team dedicated to reconstructing American
foreign policy on a sounder, non-imperial basis.
One thing is certain: unless the call for the United States to
exercise self-imposed grand-strategic restraint is heeded, the rest of
the world will act to impose that constraint on Washington. If that
happens, the Bush administration will not be remembered for conquering
Baghdad but rather for a policy that shattered the pillars of the
international security framework that the United States established
after World War II, galvanized both hard and soft balancing against
U.S. hegemony, and marked the beginning of the end of America’s
era of global preponderance. For this, it must be held accountable. .
GWashin891
A concervative wrote this? Damn. This guy makes alot of sense. Really.