SPEAKING
FREELY Opening the door to
international chaos By W Joseph
Stroupe
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Since the
Iraq crisis presented itself last year, the world has
been handed two "new" doctrines for acceptance - US
President George W Bush's Preemptive War Doctrine and,
as a supplement to that doctrine, British Prime Minister
Tony Blair's International Community Doctrine. These two
doctrines and the events and trends that prompted them
carry enormous significance, but not in the way the two
leaders might think.
Whether it is by design or
because of an inability to think strategically, or even
because of a lack of ability to lead internationally,
the two leaders, by putting forward their doctrines for
consideration and acceptance at the United Nations and
by the United Nations, have missed the real issue and
risk doing irreparable damage to the principle of state
sovereignty. Such damage, if it comes about, will not
pay the hoped-for rewards in the fight against terrorism
and its state sponsors.
A little historical
background is needed here to show what the real issue is
and why President Bush and Prime Minister Blair are
missing it with their two doctrines.
The
post-Cold War challenge When the Cold War was won
in 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Empire, the sole
superpower, the United States, was left to dominate the
international system. This presented enormous risks but
also enormous opportunities. The most important
opportunity was that of the creation of a New World
Order, that of a benign but powerful Pax Americana. This
prospect was alluded to in 1992 in the first State of
the Union Address after the collapse of the Soviet
Empire.
On January 28, 1992, president George H
W Bush said:
I mean to speak tonight of big things, of
big changes and the promises they hold, and of some
big problems and how together we can solve them and
move our country forward as the undisputed leader of
the age. We gather tonight at a dramatic and deeply
promising time in our history, and in the history of
man on Earth. For in the past 12 months, the world has
known changes of almost biblical proportions. And even
now, months after the failed coup that doomed a failed
system, I am not sure we have absorbed the full
impact, the full import of what happened. But
communism died this year.
Much good can come
from the prudent use of power. And much good can come
of this: a world once divided into two armed camps now
recognizes one sole and preeminent power - the United
States of America. And they regard this with no dread.
For the world trusts us with power - and the world is
right. They trust us to be fair and restrained; they
trust us to be on the side of decency. They trust us
to do what's right.
The prospect of
benign yet strong international leadership by the United
States to construct a New World Order based upon mutual
respect and multilateralism seemed a very real one
indeed. And the US had just demonstrated how this could
work when, in the lead-up to Gulf War I, it had put
together a true international coalition, obtained UN
sanction for action, and went on to evict Iraqi forces
from occupied Kuwait. The US had even demonstrated the
benign quality of its global dominance by respecting the
principle of state sovereignty and refraining from
marching all the way to Baghdad to occupy another
sovereign nation. The wisdom of such self-restraint and
of modestly recognizing one's limitations (and
consequently, of one's need for others) is now painfully
clear to thinking persons, is it not?
Notably,
the vision of that New World Order was not one led
primarily by the UN, but rather by the US. The UN would
play a supporting role, not the dominant one. That is an
important distinction. For some reason or reasons, the
New World Order of the benign Pax Americana never
materialized. The promise that the United States would
never abuse its unquestioned global power has been
violated time and again as the last superpower has
become ever more muscular, insensitive and unilateral in
its approach to international affairs. The quiet
American strength, modesty and multilateralism so
evident in 1991 gradually gave way to extreme national
hubris, threats of military intervention and the
authentic earning of America's current reputation as an
international "bully". The United States has mostly
squandered its marvelous post-Cold War opportunities
because it has failed to follow through on its promise
of respectable international leadership.
Despite
appearances and the proffering of the two new doctrines
as noted above, the US still has not mastered, nor even
embraced, its opportunity for respectable international
leadership. Global domination is not international
leadership. International leadership is not domination
of the kind the US has been seeking, either. The United
States has evidently failed to see and properly
understand the complex and immensely important forces at
work in the geopolitical system since it was assigned
the role of sole superpower in 1991.
The
weakened bulwark of state sovereignty Our
international system is becoming ever more interrelated
and interconnected. The forces of globalism along with
all its attendant high-tech advances in communications,
travel and transportation, and the establishment of
international institutions and organizations, are like
big waves continually crashing against the bulwark of
state sovereignty. That bulwark is already significantly
weakened. Those forces have shown the repeated ability
to transcend state boundaries, and even do so without
the invitation of the sovereign leadership of a nation.
But in addition to those forces, the last
superpower has been making its own massive assault
against state sovereignty. This has come in the form of
repeated military intervention against sovereign states
which, in the opinion of the last superpower, are
illegitimate. The 78-day North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO) air campaign against Serbia in 1999
is a notable example of this. The 2003 invasion of Iraq
is the most recent example of the violation of the
principle of state sovereignty. These are not minor,
inconsequential developments - they establish important
precedents and they are also like massive waves crashing
against that state sovereignty bulwark.
In
actuality, they are being undertaken in lieu of true and
respectable international leadership by the United
States. Both the Preemptive War Doctrine and the
International Community Doctrine contain a shortsighted
recourse to overly muscular "solutions", which solutions
mostly miss the target of identifying and pursuing the
real issue - respectable international leadership by the
US to address the problems in our world.
Further, by centrally involving the UN in the
debate and by seeking somehow to redefine and weaken the
principle of state sovereignty so as to facilitate the
shortsighted, overly muscular approach, the United
States and the United Kingdom are seeking to alter the
international stance of the UN. They evidently wish to
see the UN adopt a forward-leaning and much more
muscular stance toward the "bad guys", permitting and
even ordering violation of state sovereignty by military
intervention as a "solution" to certain crises. Like Mr
Bush, Mr Blair warned in his recent speech that if the
UN would not do so, then the US and the UK would.
In effect, whether they even know it or not,
they wish to put the final touches on the complete
destruction of the principle of state sovereignty, even
codifying it at the United Nations. They imagine they
can destroy the state sovereignty of the "bad guys" like
Saddam Hussein while preserving the integrity of state
sovereignty in their own case. How foolish! The US no
longer controls or even dominates the UN. The Iraq
crisis has demonstrated that fact very clearly. So what
makes the two leaders think they will suddenly be able
to control a UN with a much more forward-leaning stance,
one that will have codified the preemptive war and
international community doctrines, tearing down the
bulwark of state sovereignty in the process? Tomorrow
such a new stance may be used against one of the "bad
guys". But next week or next month, who is to say it
won't be used against the US itself? In taking away
completely the veil of state sovereignty so the "bad
guys" cannot hide behind it, the US and the UK will have
also denied themselves (or their successors) a veil to
hide behind in the future. The slippery slope heading
toward the abolition of state sovereignty gets more
slippery for everyone, and not just for the "bad guys".
Under attack from two sides The US and
the UK have very effectively made the case that despots
like Saddam Hussein violate and consequently discredit
the principle of state sovereignty in their case by
their mistreatment of their own subjects. This is indeed
true. However, it is not only such "bad guys" who weaken
and damage the principle of sovereignty. It is also
undermined by those who too readily, and without genuine
cause, resort to military invasion before exercising
other, more effective and less risky options.
Consequently, state sovereignty is under attack from two
sides - both from those who misuse it as a veil from
behind which they conduct atrocities against their own
people, and from those who, in the name of national
security or humanitarian concern, violate the
sovereignty of a state by military invasion. We are
moving steadily toward international chaos from the
current international instability, and the violation of
the principle of state sovereignty (by military
intervention) is intimately and inseparably intertwined.
Moving toward endowing the United Nations with
the prime or central role in such weighty decisions is a
gross mistake. The UN role is best that of a forum,
sanctioning the course already agreed upon in private
negotiations between the major players, as the
diplomatic process in the lead-up to Gulf War I
demonstrated. You go to the UN only after you have
negotiated successfully with your strategic partners,
after your coalition has been created and fleshed out.
If your efforts have been successful there, then you
will carry the day at the UN. But at present, Bush and
Blair appear to have little interest and/or ability to
cultivate, in private, the strategic partnerships
necessary. Instead, they wish to modify the stance and
power of the UN itself (give it "teeth", as it were),
and they wish to weaken and remove the principle of
state sovereignty which, in their shortsighted vision,
appears as an obstacle to their overly muscular approach
to foreign policy. Consequently, suffering from
geopolitical shortsightedness, their aim is misaligned.
Does this mean the UN should be marginalized and
even pushed aside, as has been done repeatedly by the
last superpower? No, that is not the intent. But when
you seek to place organizations into a role they are
neither prepared for nor able to fulfill, then you are
asking for greater difficulty and increased problems.
The march toward an international government with
significant, real authority, in the hands of the UN
(whether they know it or not, they are setting the world
on that path), is not any more a solution to the world's
problems than the unilateral, unipolar world order of
the last superpower has been. And every march begins
with a first few steps. Is empowerment of the UN,
facilitated by the further weakening and possible
demolishing of the principle of state sovereignty, the
proper course?
The difficulty of 'regime
creation' But if the aftermaths of the NATO
bombing of Serbia and the 2003 invasion of Iraq have
taught us anything, it is that "regime destruction" is
relatively easy (for a superpower), but that "regime
creation", winning the peace and producing a stable and
productive government in the place of the old one, is
terrifically expensive and difficult, in fact
impossible, even for a superpower, to do mostly alone.
International effort and resources are required to
accomplish such a task, and even then, progress is very
slow, risks are extremely high, and the drain on
international resources is very great. The lesson is
that military interventions and occupations, ie "regime
changes", should be the absolute last resort, not the
first. Yet Bush and Blair clearly wish to place that
shortsighted muscular option much nearer to the top of
the option list than it currently is at the UN.
If the prime justification for the bombing of
Serbia was the humanitarian crisis, then the muscular
"solution" made the problem much worse, directly
generating more than a million refuges in the early days
of the bombing. And if the primary justification for the
Iraq invasion of 2003 was to prevent Saddam from
proliferating any WMD (weapons of mass destruction)
assets to terrorists, then the muscular "solution"
failed miserably. How so? If, as many of us may still
believe, Saddam did possess chemical and biological
weapons before the invasion, then where are they now? In
Syria? In Lebanon? In the hands of some fanatical
terrorist with a death wish? The US failed utterly to
secure those dangerous assets and keep them out of the
hands of the enemy. In fact, if they did exist, then the
invasion most probably spread them right into the hands
of the enemy, as ill-advised and premature surgery would
do if conducted on a cancer patient.
Hence it
should be readily apparent that a United States and a
United Kingdom that advocate preemptive war and thus
destruction of state sovereignty over threats ("If you
don't do it, we will!") is a US and a UK unable or
unwilling to lead the international community toward
workable solutions short of military intervention. It is
a US and a UK failing to create the benign but powerful
Pax Americana to maintain world order by multilateral
means, under US leadership. What the United States and
the world could have used in 1991 and thereafter was a
diplomatic and geopolitical coup. How so? And is it too
late now to consider better solutions than those being
offered by Bush and Blair?
Unilateralism vs
multilateralism Mostly in response to growing US
unilateralism and the progressive militarization of US
foreign policy, Russia and China submitted a joint paper
on the principles of a multipolar world to the United
Nations in the spring of 1997. In that paper, the two
partners outlined a geopolitical system and a world
order quite different from the benign US-led one the
first president Bush outlined in his State of the Union
Address in 1992, and also quite different from the
not-so-benign US-dominated one that had come into being
by 1997. It was a vision of a world in which
multilateralism ruled international relations, in which
one superpower did not dominate international affairs.
Implicit in that vision is a significant weakening of
the power of, and limiting of the reach of, the last
superpower, so that unilateral military actions on its
part would cease. Also implicit was the significant
strengthening of the other poles of power so as to
counterbalance the strength of the last superpower, in
order to modify its destabilizing behavior and to
curtail its ability to use military intervention around
the globe. All this is true in spite of the repeated
statements by the proponents of the multipolar world
order, who said it is not aimed at any one nation. But
it was: squarely at the last superpower.
The
United States had the opportunity, and it should have
exercised its option, to steal that issue of
unilateralism vs multilateralism and take away from its
proponents the agenda of the creation of a multipolar
world order. This would have been a diplomatic and
geopolitical coup for the US. Shedding its extreme
nationalistic hubris inherited mostly from its Cold War
victory in 1991 and thereafter and adopting a national
modesty, the US should have recognized what it surely
now knows after the Iraq occupation - even a superpower
has real limits, vulnerabilities and a desperate need
for the help of the other powers that exist in the
international system. It should have recognized the
forces, like continuous big waves crashing inland, that
smash against the bulwark of state sovereignty and that
eventually preclude even a superpower from unilaterally
following its own agenda independent of the rest of the
world.
By stealing the issue of unilateralism vs
multilateralism, and by stealing the agenda of creating
a multipolar world, the US could have ridden on the
crest of the wave, mostly in control of how the
geopolitical system shakes out, rather than floundering
in its wake as it clearly is doing now, unable to
exercise sufficient control over how things shake out.
The US has mostly lost control as the other powers, and
even the UN, find that a course of independence from the
US, while including certain pitfalls, also includes many
benefits. Increasingly, no one wants to play the United
States' unilateral game.
However, if the US had
thought matters through strategically, it would have
seen the wisdom of taking the helm in the establishing
of a multipolar world order. It would not have come to
be in its current unenviable position of unprecedented
international isolation. It would have made true and
deep strategic partners out of Russia and many others,
instead of squandering those opportunities and valuable
partners. Despite the calming rhetoric on both sides, it
is clear to thinking people that strategic partnership
with Russia is now quite lost, quite impossible. To be
sure, the US could not do so (cultivate true strategic
partners) on the cheap. Such prospective partners must
be generously rewarded for their cooperation in
isolating and weakening the "bad guys". However, the
benefits would have far outweighed the costs and risks.
And look at the costs the last superpower has
incurred now in the pursuit of unwelcome global
dominance. Further, look at the deep and widespread
risks to the national security of the US in the
atmosphere of distrust, resentment, isolation and
ill-will that has been produced by US unilateralism. But
if the United States had staged that recommended
diplomatic and geopolitical coup, the "bad guys" would
right now be facing terrible isolation and a weakening
of their ability to carry on. Reserving military
intervention for only the rarest and most severe cases,
there is a terrific amount of pain that multilateral
international action can inflict on the "bad guys"
without violating the principle of state sovereignty and
thus opening the door to international chaos. The pain
that can be inflicted ranges all the way from diplomatic
isolation to economic sanctions to naval blockade and
interdiction. In the multipolar world that could have
been constructed under US leadership, with all the major
powers of the world on board and generously rewarded, it
is extremely doubtful any of the "bad guys" could have
stood up for long. Of course, even that world order
would not have been any true solution to the world's
problems. But multilateral international cooperation led
by a modest and benign United States is much preferable
to the way the world looks currently. And this is also
the only kind of action, coordinated deep international
cooperation, that has any chance to defeat terrorism.
Such international leadership by the US has been
sorely lacking in recent administrations. And not much
of it appears on the horizon. Bush's and Blair's
proffering of doctrines and recommending UN action to
damage state sovereignty further, opening wide the door
to international chaos, does not change that regrettable
state of affairs. Is it too late for the recommended
diplomatic and geopolitical coup? Have the international
waters of cooperation and respect already become too
poisoned to allow successful US leadership in that new
direction? Ominously, it seems readily apparent that
only a severe crisis, one of sufficient proportions to
bring the US to a complete about-face, away from its
unilateralist direction, could increase the chances for
a more stable world order to come into being. However,
under those kinds of circumstances the US would not
enjoy the respect and resulting position of leadership
it could have enjoyed if it had been modest enough and
wise enough to stage the diplomatic and geopolitical
coup when the opportunity came knocking.
