Washington's geostrategic
shift By Michael A Weinstein
In quick succession on January 18-19, US
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced
major changes in the operational dimension of
Washington's global diplomatic strategy.
Wrapped in the language of the Bush
administration's campaign to encourage democracy
around the world and explained under the rubric of
"transformational diplomacy", Rice laid out plans
to reposition diplomatic resources from Europe and
Washington to
emerging power centers in
Asia, Africa, South America and the Middle East.
As well, the administration of foreign aid
will be reorganized by creating the post of
director of foreign assistance, a job that would
entail coordinating aid programs currently
dispersed among several agencies and bringing them
into line with Washington's broad foreign-policy
goals.
Rice's announcements culminate a
major revision of Washington's overall geostrategy
that has been in the making since 2004 when the
failures of the Iraq intervention exposed the
limitations of US military capabilities and threw
into question the unilateralist doctrine outlined
in the administration's 2002 National Security
Strategy.
Through the second half of 2004,
Washington appeared to function in a policy void,
as the neo-conservative faction in the security
establishment, which had already edged out the
traditional multilateralists, lost influence with
no competing tendency strong enough to take its
place. That picture changed in 2005 when Rice
became secretary of state and moved to fill the
policy vacuum by implementing her realist vision
based on classical balance of power.
In a
January 18 speech at Georgetown University, where
she sketched out how US diplomatic resources would
be repositioned, Rice left behind the scenario of
the neo-conservatives and their allies in Vice
President Dick Cheney's office that is premised on
the ability of the US to achieve sufficient
military superiority to allow it to act alone to
secure its global interests in the long term.
Rather than thinking in terms of a unipolar
configuration of world power dominated by the
United States, Rice embraced multipolarity and the
acknowledgment of Washington's limitations that
follows from it.
Nearly echoing the
analysis of Beijing's 2005 defense white paper,
Rice asserted that "states are increasingly
competing and cooperating in peace, not preparing
for war". The complex web of convergent and
divergent interests occurs within the context of a
dispersion of power among regions - the hallmark
of multipolarity: "In the 21st century, geographic
regions are growing ever more integrated
economically, politically and culturally." Within
regions, dominant power centers are rising: "In
the 21st century, emerging nations like India and
China and Brazil and Egypt and Indonesia and South
Africa are increasingly shaping the course of
history." The 21st century, in Rice's view, will
not be a second "American century"; it will be a
global century defined by what PINR (Power and
Interest News Report) has called "the new
regionalism".
The shift in Washington's
geostrategic thinking from what it was from
September 11, 2001, through the Iraq intervention
in 2003 could not be more pronounced. It proceeds
from the time-honored rule of international
relations that policy follows power. Rice's
analysis was preceded by a change in the
Pentagon's perspective through 2005 in which
military planners introduced the idea that
Washington was entering a "long war" to secure its
interests against Islamic revolutionaries and a
long-term attempt to contain rising regional power
centers that would require partnerships and
stabilization efforts around the world.
Rice's view is no longer one voice among
several in the administration of President George
W Bush; her growing prominence and influence
represent an acceptance in Washington of the
reality of multipolarity. This realization brings
the United States into line with the consensus
among other world powers and is likely to persist
in succeeding administrations.
Now that
Washington has begun to accept a world in which
the US does not shape the course of history
according to its own agenda, but is a major player
in an intricate and evolving pattern of
cooperative and competitive relations, it has
positioned itself to develop strategies for
restoring some of the influence that it has lost
as a result of the Iraq intervention and, far more
important, as a consequence of the redistribution
of global power that was beyond its control. Such
strategic innovation in response to polycentricity
is behind Rice's State Department reforms.
Diplomatic repositioning Rice's
Georgetown speech is a curious mixture of the Bush
administration's current ideology - advanced in
the president's 2005 inaugural address - that the
US would "seek and support the growth of
democratic movements and institutions in every
nation and culture", and a statement of concrete
measures that would - if they can be implemented
successfully - represent steps toward a realistic
adaptation of US diplomacy in a multipolar world.
Promotion of democracy abroad has been a
recurrent theme of US presidents for nearly a
century and has always run up against the fact
that Washington's perceived interests often
require it to cooperate with non-democratic
regimes and movements, and to undermine democratic
tendencies. It is not to be expected that the Bush
administration will close the familiar gap between
rhetoric and practice; indeed, in her speech, Rice
singled out for praise "good partners like
Pakistan and Jordan", neither of which is a
democracy.
If the democracy language has
any concrete import, it refers to the belief in
sectors of Washington's security establishment
that US interests are best served by
market-oriented governments that allow enough
popular participation and sufficient independence
of civil-society groups to dissipate anti-US left
and right oppositions. As is the case with every
state, the US above all wants regimes that are
favorable to its perceived interests. All other
things being equal, Washington would prefer that
those regimes follow democratic forms. When - as
in Georgia's Rose Revolution and Ukraine's Orange
Revolution - people power combines with
market-oriented and pro-Western leadership,
Washington will back the democratic movement.
Awareness of that has caused governments around
the world to look on Washington with suspicion and
to distance themselves from it.
The high
concept of Rice's version of the democratization
ideology is "transformational diplomacy", which
she defines as "a diplomacy that not only reports
about the world as it is, but seeks to change the
world itself". Here, either Rice is only
rephrasing what all states have always done, or
she is announcing a policy of soft regime change
to replace the hard version of military regime
change represented by the Iraq intervention. If it
is regime change that she has in mind, it is not
clear that a public announcement of a policy to
destabilize in order to try to gain greater
stability serves Washington's interests.
The significance of Rice's new diplomatic
strategy does not reside in its ideological
rhetoric, which can be pared away without loss,
but in its concrete measures to reposition
Washington's diplomatic resources that begin what
is likely to be a long-term trend in US foreign
policy regardless of which political party
controls the presidency and what ideology it
adopts.
Taking up the thinking of 2004
Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry's
foreign-policy and security team, Rice noted in
her speech that in light of the probable peaceful
future of relations among great powers, "the
fundamental character of regimes now matters more
than the international distribution of power".
Among the threats to US security, she identified
terrorism, pandemics, arms proliferation and
failed states, all of which can only be countered
by cooperation with regional powers and access to
trouble spots.
At the heart of Rice's plan
to respond to the emerging threat pattern is the
redistribution of US diplomats to the rising power
centers around the world, starting immediately
with 100 and reaching, according to analysts, as
many as one-third of the 4,000 foreign service
officers during the next decade.
The
mission of US diplomacy will also be redefined
through a series of measures ranged under the idea
of "forward deployment", in which diplomats will
go into the field and administer programs in
addition to their traditional duties. Regional
public-diplomacy centers will be created to
counter anti-US media, "American Presence Posts" -
sometimes staffed by only one diplomat - will be
set up outside capital cities, and there will be
"Virtual Presence Posts" - local interactive
websites - to appeal primarily to youth. Diplomats
will work directly on projects to improve health
care, reform education, set up businesses, fight
corruption and encourage democratic practices.
Diplomats will also coordinate more
closely with the US military through political
advisers, and the State Department's Office of
Reconstruction and Stabilization will have access
to up to US$100 million from the Department of
Defense to manage post-conflict situations -
recognition of the shortcomings in planning for
the aftermath of the Iraq intervention.
Although Rice claims her revision of US
diplomatic strategy is a "bold" initiative, it is
actually only a first step toward making
Washington a more effective player in a multipolar
world, and it promises only limited success. Most
important, to be successful the reforms will have
to be backed by adequate funds, which are unlikely
to be made available under the conditions of
persisting budget deficits.
There are also
questions about how security will be provided for
the American Presence Posts, and the effectiveness
of public diplomacy has yet to be proved in
regions, such as the Middle East, where anti-US
sentiment has become deeply entrenched and is
bound up with opposition to US policies. Finally,
it remains to be seen how much access regimes that
are suspicious of Washington's aims will grant its
diplomats.
Rice's reforms follow a pattern
that has been established by the Pentagon in its
redeployment of troops from Europe and South Korea
to smaller bases within the "arc of instability"
that stretches from East Africa through Central
Asia. That policy has been limited by failures to
gain access when Washington has provoked hostility
from local regimes, such as in Eritrea and
Uzbekistan. The same problem is likely to come up
when Rice's strategy is implemented.
When
Rice's reforms are considered as a whole, their
most significant components are her forthright
acknowledgment that "partnership" is necessary in
order to manage threats to US security and the
simple shifting of diplomats to emerging regional
power centers. What those diplomats will do and
how effective they will be will depend more on
Washington's positions in inter- and intra-state
conflicts than on the mechanics of forward
deployment.
Centralization of foreign
aid Having laid out her revision of US
diplomatic strategy, Rice moved on January 19 to
announce her reorganization of foreign assistance
to the staff of the US Agency for International
Development (USAID). Here, the heart of Rice's
reform was the centralization of the
administration of foreign aid, along the lines of
the Bush administration's 2004 restructuring of
the intelligence apparatus, aimed at coordinating
assistance programs to serve the goals defined in
her statement of diplomatic strategy.
To
bring the various aid programs controlled by the
State Department under unified guidance, a new
post of director of foreign assistance (DFA) has
been created. The new director will superintend
the Office of Global AIDS Coordinator, the
Millennium Challenge Corporation and USAID. The
DFA will also be the USAID administrator, bringing
that agency, which has previously been
independent, under greater State Department
direction.
Accounting for $14 billion of
the yearly $18 billion US foreign-assistance
budget, USAID had been given its relative
independence to ensure it would pursue its mission
of providing long-term development aid unfettered
by temporary changes in foreign policy. Although
Rice assured USAID's staff that its mission would
be unimpaired by the reform, she also made it
clear that foreign assistance would be "aligned"
with the objectives of her transformational
diplomacy.
There is little doubt that Rice
does not intend the reorganization to be merely
cosmetic and that she wants to diminish the power
of USAID to allocate funds - the "dual-hatting" of
DFA and USAID administrator will not serve to
bring all foreign assistance under the development
agenda, but will gear development programs to
serve strategic aims.
Rice's reform plan
met with predictable criticism from elements
inside and outside USAID who believe that
Washington's long-term interests are best advanced
by insulating development programs from political
pressures. While that argument has merits, so does
Rice's view that Washington needs to mobilize its
diplomatic and financial resources to restore its
global power - a process that will demand genuine
sacrifices.
As is the case with her plan
to reposition diplomats, Rice's reorganization of
foreign assistance has strict limitations.
Outgoing USAID administrator Andrew Natsios has
identified congressional earmarking of aid as a
greater problem than deficiencies in coordination,
and earmarking will not be touched by Rice's
reform. In addition, the State Department will not
gain control over assistance programs that are
currently dispersed among the Defense, Agriculture
and Commerce departments. It is also likely that
there will be resistance within USAID to
integrating its organizational culture into the
State Department's. Again, Rice's reorganization
is more a first step than a bold transformation.
Conclusion Reflecting
Washington's diminished position in the global
configuration of power, Rice's revisions of US
diplomatic strategy and her reorganization of
foreign assistance will have limited immediate
effect and will be hindered from long-term success
by constraints resulting from the likelihood of
budgetary austerity. Nonetheless, Rice's reforms
are significant because they are embraced by a
multipolar perspective on world politics that
brings Washington into line with the other major
power centers. Her reforms put into place concrete
measures that follow from that perspective, even
though they are - as should be expected - just a
beginning.
Rice has made it plain that the
new diplomatic strategy is predicated on a
sustained effort that will take at least a
generation to bear fruit - another long war like
the one envisaged by Pentagon planners. That
effort - even if it were successful - would not
restore the US to the dominating position that it
held temporarily after the fall of the Soviet
Union, but it might stem Washington's loss of
power and even strengthen its position if it were
deft at manipulating regional balances of power.
Within the context of the general
consensus that world politics are structured by a
complex web of competition and cooperation that is
stressed by Islamic revolution, competition over
natural resources, the eruption of populism, state
failure, environmental degradation and the
possibility of pandemics, other power centers will
welcome Washington's acknowledgment of
multipolarity at the same time that they will be
challenged by it.
Published with
permission of thePower and Interest News
Report, an analysis-based
publication that seeks to provide insight into
various conflicts, regions and points of interest
around the globe. All comments should be directed
tocontent@pinr.com
.
