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PIPES'
LINE
A weekly column by Daniel
Pipes, President George W Bush's controversial
appointment to the board of directors of the federally
funded United States Institute for Peace.
Is America
overly aggressive?
As the
overthrow of Saddam Hussein showed, American
conservatives believe that preemption, the overwhelming
use of force, and going it alone are at times necessary
to bolster United States national security.
Liberals beg to differ. The New York Times,
speaking for many of the latter, editorializes against
what it calls President George W Bush's "lone-wolf
record [and] overly aggressive stance", saying that
these risk undermining his goals by provoking the
world's enmity. All nine of the Democratic presidential
candidates raise similar criticisms, as do the American
Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial
Organizations, countless columnists, religious leaders
and academics.
Beyond differing with the
administration's specific actions in Iraq, the liberal
argument challenges broader conservative assumptions
about the utility of an assertive US foreign policy. The
Bush administration, for example, was practically alone
in rejecting two treaties (the International Criminal
Court and the Kyoto Protocol) and two near-agreements
(on small arms and on chemical and biological weapons).
It also took other forceful steps (such as negating the
Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty with Russia and expanding
the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) up to
Russia's borders).
"Bush is creating new enemies
faster than he is deterring old ones," is how Gerard
Alexander of the University of Virginia sums up the
liberal accusation - one that he incisively refutes in
the November 3 issue of The Weekly Standard. Alexander
discerns two elements to the liberal claim: other powers
for the first time feel threatened by US actions; and
they are responding by taking steps against Washington.
Let's consider each of these elements.
Newly threatening: Looking back
over the past half-century, Alexander notes many
occasions when other powers felt alienated from
Washington.
1950s: US allies formed a West European-only
bloc. France created an independent nuclear capability.
1960s: France withdrew from NATO's military
structure. Most US allies vehemently protested the US
war in Vietnam.
1970s: The Organization of Petroleum
Exporting Countries directed its oil weapon primarily
against the Americans to protest US policies in the
Middle East.
1980s: In something of a preview of today's
situation, Europeans disdained then-president Ronald
Reagan as a simpleton and a "cowboy", took to the
streets in great numbers to protest US theater nuclear
weapons, and broadly opposed US policies to build a
missile defense system, reform the United Nations, and
isolate the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. On some issues,
such as the Law of the Sea treaty, they unanimously
opposed Washington's stance.
1990s: The European Union repeatedly clashed
with the US on trade issues. It also announced the
creation of a unified military force separate from NATO.
Today's tensions, in short, have a somewhat
familiar air to them.
Taking steps against
Washington: "Watching what people do and not
simply what they say," Alexander points out, "remains
the best test of what people really think of America."
However noisy unfavorable opinion polls and rival
diplomatic efforts may be, they do not in themselves
amount to a crisis. A crisis would require other
powerful states to take at least one of two steps:
Invest heavily in improving military capabilities
through enhanced arsenals and larger troop
mobilizations: This has not occurred. Alexander finds
"little evidence that a buildup, as a hedge against
future American actions, is even in its earliest
stages". European Union states generally devote one-half
to one-third what Washington does to military spending,
and this general proportion has not changed in the past
two years, with the exception of some small increases
designed to address new terrorist priorities.
Build explicit military alliances: Here, too,
Alexander finds that "there is no evidence that
cooperation between major EU members and Russia [or
China] extends to anything beyond opposition to an
invasion already over".
The response to recent
American actions has been limited to words, and so has
limited significance.
"By all the usual
standards, then," Alexander argues, "Europeans and most
others are acting as if they resent some aspects of US
policy, are irritated by America's influence, oppose
selected actions the administration has taken, and
dislike President [George W ] Bush more than his
predecessor, but remain entirely unthreatened by the
United States." Annoyance hardly counts as enmity.
There is no persuasive evidence "that US policy
is provoking the seismic shift in America's reputation
that Bush's critics detect".
Translated into
political terms, this means those critics need to find
themselves another issue.
Daniel Pipes
(www.DanielPipes.org) is
director of the Middle East Forum and author of
Militant Islam Reaches America (W W Norton).
(Copyright 2003, Daniel Pipes)
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