Swing states hold key to US
domination By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - The United States should
focus increasingly on courting Brazil, India,
Indonesia and Turkey, four "global swing states"
critical to the preservation of the
Western-dominated international order, according
to a new report released on Tuesday by two major
US think tanks.
With the post-World War II
global order facing challenges such as the rise of
China, the fiscal difficulties of Western
governments, and unresolved crises over North
Korea's and Iran's nuclear
programs, these
four nations, if given incentives, can play a
crucial role maintaining and renewing the strength
of existing international institutions, it says.
"The United should... seize the
opportunity to enlarge the international order's
base of supporters to include Brazil, India,
Indonesia, and Turkey," according to the two main
authors, Daniel Kliman of the German Marshall Fund
(GMF) and Richard Fontaine, president of the
Center for a New American Security (CNAS), a think
tank that has enjoyed significant influence with
the administration of President Barack Obama.
"These four nations each possess a large
and growing economy, a strategic location in their
region and a commitment to democratic
institutions. And critically, each nation's
precise international role is now in flux," they
noted.
As with "swing states" in the US
electoral system, focusing on the four countries
"can deliver a geopolitical payoff, because their
approach to the international order is more fluid
and open than those of China or Russia," according
to the report.
"In addition, the choices
that [they] make - about whether to take on new
global responsibilities, free ride on the efforts
of established powers or complicate the solving of
key challenges - may, together, decisively
influence the trajectory of the current
international order."
The new report comes
amid a lengthy debate sparked in major part by the
2008 financial crisis and the subsequent euro
crisis and the widespread perception - or reality
- that the West, including the US, is in decline
relative to "the Rest", notably China and other
emerging powers.
How Washington should
react to this perception or reality - particularly
with respect to preserving an international
structure of institutions that have served the
West well - has been the subject of a flood of
books and reports, not to mention an endless
number of think tank discussions. Some, like
neo-conservative thinker Robert Kagan, argue that
Washington and its Western allies can and must
maintain their dominance to maintain world order.
Others, such as realist Charles Kupchan at
Georgetown University, have argued that such a
quest will actually hasten the West's decline and
that Washington must accommodate itself to the
rise of new powers that won't necessarily share or
acquiesce in the West's liberal values or the
global institutions that supposedly embody them.
Kupchan, a fellow at the Council on
Foreign Relations, praised the report as a "useful
contribution to the growing debate about how the
United States should prepare for global change",
particularly its recognition that "emerging states
have distinct interests and objectives, and we
need to engage them on their own terms."
Another helpful aspect, he told IPS, was
addressing not only the importance of giving them
more representation in international institutions,
but also how "they can share more global
responsibility, whether it's peacekeeping or
contributing to global public goods."
At
the same time, he said, the "implicit assumption
in the report that, because they have democratic
institutions, they will line up behind us as a
matter of course, is questionable. … I think
emerging powers - democratic and non-democratic
alike - will seek to change the system in ways
that advantage their particular interest,"
according to Kupchan.
Yet another liberal
internationalist school led by John Ikenberry has
contended that the Western-created global order,
as represented by the UN Security Council, the
Bretton Woods institutions, and various military
alliances, has proved sufficiently resilient and
beneficial that rising powers will not be tempted
to either reject it or create new or parallel
institutions.
The new report, "Global
Swing States: Brazil, India, Indonesia, Turkey and
the Future of International Order", appears to
fall into the last camp and calls for very
specific measures to be taken with each country -
from seeking bilateral free-trade agreements to
increasing military training assistance - to coax
them toward enhancing their stake and
participation in the existing order.
"The
rise of four powerful democracies - Brazil, India,
Indonesia and Turkey - could bolster today's
international order," according to the report,
which notes that each of them for its own reasons
remains skeptical of various elements of that
order. "America's engagement with these four
countries is critical and can influence their
choices and enlarge their capacity to take on new
responsibilities - but it remains a work in
progress."
The report divides the current
order into five components - trade, finance,
maritime, non-proliferation, and human rights -
and notes each country's record - and areas of
agreement and disagreement with the US - with
regard to each component.
It notes, for
example, that Brazil has reluctantly accepted most
of the international non-proliferation regime but
has opposed new measures on the grounds of
preserving sovereignty and also tried (with
Turkey) to broker a nuclear deal with Iran.
With respect to the financial order, it
notes that Indonesia has both supported the
International Monetary Fund and also facilitated
the emergence of an Asian alternative, the Chiang
Mai Initiative.
Among many other
complaints, the report also noted Brazil's and
India's balking at global trade liberalization,
Turkey's "outsized [maritime] claims in the
eastern Mediterranean", and Brazil's "red line"
against the use of military force to halt human
rights atrocities. Nonetheless, the four countries
can be considered "promising partners", it says.
"Although they desire changes to the
international order, they do not seek to scrap
it," according to the report, which notes that, in
many cases, they hold interests in common with the
US.
The report's authors depict China - as
well as the financial difficulties of the West
itself - as the major challenges to the existing
system, citing, among others, Beijing's trade
practices (particularly those of its state-owned
enterprises), its bypassing of the World Bank in
its bilateral aid program; its efforts to shift
the international monetary system away from the US
dollar, and its alleged challenges to freedom of
navigation in the South China Sea.
Thus,
among its recommendations, the report suggests
that Washington could work with all four swing
states to address unfair commercial practices by
state-owned enterprises, and calls for upgrading
naval and maritime ties with both India and
Indonesia, as well as with Brazil.
It also
urges Washington to "partner with India, Brazil
and Turkey to establish a model for development in
Africa" as a potential "robust alternative to
China's bilateral lending".
In addition to
more extensive bilateral engagement and
encouraging the swing states to increase their own
global engagement, the report urges Washington to
"at last partially address the desire of those
nations for greater recognition in key
international institutions" and strengthen "their
domestic capacity to more actively support the
international order".
Jim Lobe's
blog on US foreign policy can be read at
http://www.lobelog.com.
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