[A-List] US imperialism: the best there is

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Gerard Baker is the token Democrat in the FT's panoply of columnists: Amity
Shlaes is the token Republican, although the paper has started using
Christopher Caldwell from the Weekly Standard on a regular basis, suggesting
a little bias in terms of mainstream US politics, unless it is deliberately
revealing how widespread is the insanity amongst the US ruling class. Well,
Baker, for all his critique of Bush, shows just how pitiful the Democrats
have been and are with regard to Iraq.

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The finest superpower in the world
By Gerard Baker
Financial Times: February 27 2003

Through the miasma of French posturing on Iraq, it is just possible to
discern the contours of a coherent world view. This is not based, as the
more spiteful critics say, on oil, or commercial interests, or even fears of
domestic terrorism. It is in essence a challenge to the world order as we
have come to know it in the decade or so since the end of the cold war.

Jacques Chirac, the French president, has hoisted a standard around which he
expects much of the world to rally. Its emblem is not exactly
anti-Americanism, but non-Americanism. It symbolises a belief that the
unipolar world is an unsafe and unsettling one. America's economic, military
and political supremacy cannot be regarded as essentially benign. What the
world needs is an alternative pole that runs, it just so happens, smack
through the middle of the Elysée Palace. Iraq is the turf on which Mr Chirac
has planted his banner. The Russian, German and Chinese legions are
rallying, uncertainly, to it.

Supporters of America, such as I, have to confront the painful fact that
this view is not just that of the usual crowd of Americaphobes, but
increasingly represents the consensus of European public opinion. Let us
review what exactly this menacing unipolar world has brought us so far. I
take it that all but the most virulently anti-American minds would allow
that US leadership in the cold war was essentially benign, and indeed
primarily responsible for the liberation of hundreds of millions of people.
It was not perfect but, on balance, it was a superb example of resolve in
the face of an unparalleled threat. But what about US behaviour since the
end of the cold war? How has America exercised its unprecedented hegemony in
the unipolar world?

There have been several conflicts. In every one, European critics attacked
the US, sometimes for being too interventionist and, confusingly, sometimes
for not being interventionist enough. All of them were successful, at least
as judged by the little matter of whether or not the oppressors were stopped
and the oppressed liberated.

There was Kuwait, where an opportunistic dictator became the first United
Nations member to swallow whole a fellow member of the world body and was
repulsed, thanks to a US-led response. There was Bosnia, where, after much
European cavilling, firm US action freed a population from another tyrant.
There was Kosovo - ditto. Then there was Afghanistan. You can quibble about
it but for many Afghans life is transformed.

And then there were conflicts where US engagement of the non-military sort
ended or at least arrested decades of bloodshed. Northern Ireland has moved
further towards a peaceful resolution of its conflict than at any time in
the past century, thanks in no small part to the diplomatic efforts of the
US. India and Pakistan have been twice brought back from the brink of a
potential nuclear war by the US using its muscle to enforce restraint. Of
course, Israel-Palestine remains the great cancer in the world's political
anatomy. But has any country worked harder than the US in the last decade to
secure peace there? All in all, hundreds of millions of people have
benefited from US engagement since the end of the cold war.

Now let us examine the record of those offering an alternative pole. Start
with the French. The Balkans, as already noted, was not their finest hour.
To that we can add an intervention in Rwanda that more or less paved the way
for genocide. Nor has their role in Iraq for the past dozen years been
glorious. If it had been left to the French in 1991, Kuwait would still be
the 19th province of Iraq with, presumably, Saudi Arabia as the 20th. Since
then, French policy has consistently undercut UN efforts to enforce its
mandate. And we have other powerful examples of French leadership, which
organisations such as Greenpeace could tell us about.

What about Germany? Its one big exercise in leadership in the post-cold war
period was a clumsy and catastrophic diplomatic intervention in Croatia,
which more or less precipitated the bloodletting in the Balkans. Its current
idea of global leadership is complete abdication in the face of a dictator's
defiance.

Russia? I suppose you could ask the eastern Europeans whether they fancy
going back to a world in which Moscow represented the alternative pole to
Washington. Or you could ask the Chechens whether their post-cold war
experience makes them confident that Russia is a reliably benign leader. Or
perhaps the Iranian people could say what they think about the efforts of a
certain ex-superpower to supply material for the manufacture of nuclear
weapons by theocrats.

Even some of those who accept this recent historical calculus will object
that, with Iraq, it is different. Perhaps. But ask yourself whether you
really want to side with those who believe the right way to deal with Iraq
is to leave in power, indeed to strengthen in power, one of the ugliest
dictators on the planet. Ask the Iraqis what they think of US imperialism.
No, better, wait a few months when you will get a clearer, less constrained
answer to that question.