[PEN-L:30164] Re: The reluctant imperialists

["ken hanly" <khanly@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

This is a good parody of US history.

Cheers, Ken Hanly


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From: "Sabri Oncu" <soncu@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "PEN-L" <pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>; "ALIST"
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Sent: Sunday, September 08, 2002 9:37 PM
Subject: [PEN-L:30124] The reluctant imperialists


> The reluctant imperialists
> By Gerard Baker
> Financial Times, September 8 2002
>
> It must be one of the cruel jokes history plays on the world from
> time to time that the one good consequence of September 11 was
> also the quickest to dissipate.
>
> Events a year ago produced waves of sympathy for America. Much of
> it poured forth from predictable sources, albeit in unfamiliar
> garb - the Queen ordered the guards at Buckingham Palace to play
> the "The Star-Spangled Banner"; Nato members invoked Article V in
> the name of collective defence. But plenty came, too, from some
> unlikely places. When Iranian mullahs, French editorialists and
> Chinese Communist party officials rush to express support for
> Americans, you know something large has happened in international
> relations.
>
> Sadly, the post-mortems on Americaphobia proved premature. The
> old curse twitched back to life during the initial prosecution of
> the war on terrorism in Afghanistan, as civilian casualties and
> the treatment of captives unsettled allies. Within months, George
> W. Bush's "axis of evil" speech and his support for Israeli
> suppression of Palestinian violence had nursed it back to full
> health. Now, with the growing threat of war against Iraq and a
> new stridency in Washington foreign policy generally,
> anti-Americanism is as robust as ever.
>
> It is important here to disentangle the new from the old. It has
> been the lot of the world's sole superpower to find itself the
> object of an odd mixture of fear and contempt for years. If
> anti-Americanism was in vogue during the perilous years of the
> cold war, when the US stood as the only reliable bulwark against
> tyranny, we should not be surprised that it has flourished in an
> era when there is no such obvious threat.
>
> The current resentment also stems from a newer but equally silly
> dislike of US economic power: the dominance of American companies
> and products in the world and the pervasive sense of cultural
> conformity they impose.
>
> Silly, because the tautology of free markets is that products
> (and indeed markets) succeed because people like them. No one
> ever forced a Frenchman to eat a Big Mac. No Arab leader ever
> ordered the haunting call of the muezzin to be replaced by the
> siren squeal of Britney Spears. The prosaic truth is that America
> is a big, successful economy that exports its success around the
> world by satisfying the demands of consumers.
>
> The bigger and more serious objection to American power today is
> that, thanks to a combination of post-September 11 insecurity and
> unrivalled military might, the US is about to embark on a new age
> of imperial adventurism.
>
> The focus, of course, is confrontation with Iraq. But more
> troubling still, even for some reliable friends of America, is
> the sense that this may be only phase one of the new global
> strategy. Indeed what many critics fear is not US failure in Iraq
> but success attended by bold plans for regime change to roll back
> unfriendly governments everywhere.
>
> This may be too pessimistic a view. It reckons without the
> aspirations, ideals and plain common sense of the American
> people. It is worth remembering amid the hysteria that the US is,
> and has proved itself for a couple of centuries, a reliable
> democracy and a reluctant imperialist.
>
> It is far from clear, for instance, that support for a strategy
> of reshaping the world is widely shared in the US. So far the
> most gung-ho proponents of a "new realism" on Iraq, the Middle
> East and beyond ranges from Richard Perle on the far right to,
> well, to Paul Wolfowitz on the far right.
>
> The self-reinforcing creed of the neo-conservatives flourished in
> the shadowy counsels of the Pentagon and the National Security
> Council for months. But it has not fared too well in the less
> forgiving light of public discourse in recent weeks. Critics now
> include old-fashioned isolationists such as Patrick Buchanan and
> Dick Armey, diplomatist-pragmatists such as Brent Scowcroft and
> James Baker, former military types such as Chuck Hagel and
> General Norman Schwarzkopf. And that is just inside the
> Republican party. There is a range of contrary views out there
> beyond the American Enterprise Institute and the Weekly Standard;
> and polls suggest public support for military interventionism is
> waning fast.
>
> It is also worth remembering, amid all the talk of fundamental
> divides between the US and the rest of the world, that Mr Bush
> was awarded the 2000 election after a tie. If 286 votes in
> Florida had been counted the other way, Mr Wolfo- witz and Mr
> Perle would have been peddling their views in discussions far
> removed from the Situation Room.
>
> Convincing the US public of the need for action is tough, even
> when that action is not pre- emptive. History suggests Americans
> do not like to act alone. The enduring genius of America's
> founders was that it can be devilishly hard for a president to
> get his way for controversial measures.
>
> In 1990, faced with the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, a crystal-clear
> breach of international law by a member of the United Nations, it
> took five months of persuasion before the US public and its
> political leaders accepted the case for action.
>
> Most important, even if the Bush administration eventually wins
> authorisation for a big military campaign in Iraq, it will be
> because it has persuaded Americans of the seriousness of the
> threat from Saddam Hussein (not such an absurd notion). It is
> highly improbable that authorisation will be extended for a
> tyrant-smashing campaign of regime change around the world.
>
> Critics will contend this is a hopelessly Panglossian view and of
> course Americans do not always get it right. And yes, perhaps the
> pessimists are correct: the exceptional circumstances of
> post-September 11, post-cold-war America could yet tip the world
> into an abyss of military adventurism, an accelerating global
> cycle of violence and terrorism.
>
> Or, just possibly, the US may continue to let its benign writ run
> in a largely stable world, intervening occasionally, perhaps as
> in Iraq, when it sees a direct and immediate threat to its people
> but otherwise content to let the world revolve, unruled, on its
> axis.
>
> I know which my money is on.
>
> Article at:
> http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/
> FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1031119147745&p=1012571727088
>