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SPEAKING
FREELY
The true
test of leadership
By Anouar Boukhars
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times
Online feature that allows guest writers to have their
say. Please click here if you are
interested in contributing.
Dangerous
times require wise leadership. The measure of how well
US President George W Bush lives up to this standard
remains the principal issue at the heart of contemporary
debate. As in past war junctures, the immediate problem
resides in deciding the fate of the defeated state(s).
The Bush administration has two choices: it can
either pull back from postwar disputes or work with its
allies to help transform Iraq and ultimately the whole
Middle East into a zone of democracy a la Eastern
Europe. Enlightened self-interest explains the benefits
of creating such a grand bargain. Such a prospect, as
Fouad Ajami of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced
International Studies reminds us, would represent "a
break with the false gods of despotism".
Historically, the United States has never felt
at home abroad. The reason is America's divided
identity, Henry R Nau, professor of political science
and international affairs at George Washington
University, tells us. For Nau, the US has always wavered
between "booms" of internationalism and nation-building
and "busts" of nationalism and unilateral policies. The
true test of leadership has always been how to pull the
two halves together. America's great postwar presidents
who passed the test were those who were most adroit at
strengthening policies at home and abroad through
working out all sorts of tensions in a democratic
debate.
The model that Harry S Truman helped
build in the aftermath of World War II answers the
question of why postwar US foreign policy has been so
successful. The Truman Doctrine, which first sent aid to
support Turkey and Greece against the Soviet threat; the
Marshall Plan, which restored economic health to Western
Europe; the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO),
America's first peacetime alliance; the reinvention of
Germany and Japan into civilized nations - these were
all acts of the genius of postwar leadership. The
architects of this postwar order, which is still the
core of today's world order, skillfully managed the
competition to influence America's foreign policy and to
produce over the long run a foreign policy that more
closely attended to the needs and interests of US
society as well as a number of other countries.
The real test the Bush administration faces
today is to demonstrate more cogently that its talk of
democratizing Iraq and spurring reform elsewhere in the
Middle East is not mere rhetoric. "If it's about
democracy, we'll have a broader base of support at home
and more friends abroad," Ronald Asmus, former deputy
assistant secretary to president Bill Clinton, reminds
us. America's traditional allies have serious qualms
about Bush's designs for a post-Saddam Iraq.
Conventional wisdom posits that the state(s) emerging
victorious from major wars own the vanquished state(s).
The Europeans are worried that an unconstrained
superpower pursuing foreign policy for narrowly defined
domestic interests won't keep good on its promises once
Iraq is defeated. There is real concern that once the
threat recedes, the two halves of America's divided
identity will pull apart. Will the United States stay
engaged in the world as it is today? Will it overreach
and pull back to what Bush called a more humble US
foreign policy?
"We are bound to pay the price
of leadership," late president John F Kennedy's national
security advisor, McGeorge Bundy, wrote 41 years ago.
"We may as well have some of the advantages." And indeed
if the Bush administration plays its cards well during
these fluid times, it may very well affect the shape of
the Middle East as America's great presidents affected
that of Western Europe and Japan in the aftermath of
World War II. The strategic restraint exercised by the
US at that time reassured friends and allies and in turn
helped secure their cooperation. The reliability of US
power and predictability in wielding that power explain
the emergence of cooperative relations between the
United States and the states of Europe, Japan and other
democracies.
"America the unilateral imperialist
is far less attractive than America the leader of a
coalition that is enforcing UN resolutions and
preventing the organization from following on the path
of the ill-fated League of Nations," Joseph Nye, dean of
Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government,
rightly noted. It is true that national self-interests
and threat perception have worked to diminish the
overall potential of collective security organizations.
Not all states view threats in the same way; nor are
they willing to resist acts of aggression when it
entails high risks.
This reluctance to use force
is vehemently denounced by opponents of collective
security who view it as a forum inclined to paralysis.
This forum serves as an excuse for inaction, emboldening
aggressors and threatening to eviscerate US sovereignty
and stem the robustness of US power and the willingness
to use it to defend its vital interests. But what the
skeptics of multilateral cooperation miss is that the
United States is no longer immune to global
developments, as was clearly demonstrated by the
terrible terrorist events of September 11, 2001.
There is no doubt that the United States
presides over a unipolar world order and has the
capability to defeat any adversary or a combination of
adversaries through its formidable military might. But
there are world problems that simply cannot be tackled
by one country alone. No one country can monitor all
transfers of technology, stem global exports of
plutonium, highly enriched uranium, and deadly bacteria
and toxins and control all covert money flows that
nourish terrorist networks, and enforce all legal
obligations. The real "test of history for the United
States", as Henry Kissinger has pointed out, "will be
whether we can turn our current predominant power into
international consensus and our own principles into
widely accepted international norms".
In the
coming days, coming weeks, we will find out if history
is a guide to President Bush. Let us all hope that the
president passes his test.
Speaking
Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows
guest writers to have their say. Please click here if you are
interested in contributing.
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