LONDON- If you are one of my American readers this could well be my last column for your newspaper. More and more evidence points to the conclusion that America’s interest in the outside world is shrinking faster than a pricked balloon; and the media are setting the pace, rapidly downsizing their foreign bureaus and sharply reducing the space they give to foreign affairs.
Nevertheless, it does not follow that American policy makers and business pace-setters are winding down THEIR interest in the world outside. On the contrary. But this divergence–the media and the populace going one way–to bury their head in the sand–and the leadership going the other, aggressively promoting America overseas is creating serious problems. As Professor Samuel Huntington of Harvard University sums it up in another of his telling essays in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, “The U.S. is unlikely to become an isolationist country. But it could become an isolated country, out of step with much of the world.”
The American public may be more disinterested by the day in the outside world, but the American elite in business, politics, academia and popular culture is intent on filling the space once blocked by the preoccupations of the Cold War, with the added zest that comes from telling itself that it is now a citizen of the world’s sole superpower and the world’s stage belongs to it, alone. As Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, not so long ago observed, “America is the indispensable nation…We stand tall and hence see further than the other nations.”
The worry is, as America reaches out further and further, provoking the rest of the world to gird its loins for defense against it, American public opinion is too ill-informed to realize what is going on. The danger is that at the end of the day–maybe less than a decade hence–America will find itself almost bereft of friends and confronted with a range of reasonably powerful second tier countries–as diverse as Germany, France, Scandinavia, Brazil, Canada, India, South Africa, Japan, not to mention China, who loosely combine to thwart its will and interests at every turn.
The flaw in Washington, for that is where the power of the country in all its aspects is condensed, is not to understand that the momentary opportunity, when Soviet power suddenly and unexpectedly disintegrated, for America to become the sole superpower is now rapidly passing. For a brief few years the bipolar world became a unipolar one, highlighted by the Gulf War and the unique way that President George Bush could rally the world against Iraq, with the UN’s near unanimous approval, to go to war. Nowadays, the world is well on its way to becoming multipolar–the superpower is gradually being cut down to size. The creation of the European single currency, the Euro, is only one of the more telling manifestations of this.
The lesson of history is that major powers have always tried to balance the attempted domination of the strongest among them. “One reads about the world’s desire for American leadership only in the United States”, one anonymousm well-placed British diplomat recently observed, “Everywhere else one reads about American arrogance and unilateralism”.
Whether the argument is over where the European Union would like to buy its bananas from, or, at the other extreme, how Japan should defend itself, foreigners are increasingly resenting American prescriptions. As Professor Huntington puts it, the U.S. is now finding itself “increasingly alone, with one or a few partners, opposing most of the rest of the world’s states and peoples.”
The issues vary–from the non-payment of UN dues, the refusal to sign up for the land mines treaty and the international war crimes court to the targeting of 35 countries with new economic sanctions between 1993 and 1996. Added to this is the malign cultural influence of American mass-appeal television and cinema which are over-obsessed with violence and sexuality.
America needs a re-think. Above all it needs to ask itself why does it maintain such an immense military establishment, because it is largely from this that its misplaced sense of hubris grows, spilling over into commerce, finance, law and even culture.
There is not one country that wishes to challenge the U.S. militarily–a future China is the only possible candidate for such a role, yet its ambition is not to rule the world, only perhaps Taiwan. And that probably can be settled in an amicable manner if Taiwanese politicians don’t push for “independence” and accept the status quo with a little more grace.
As for the “rogues”, Iraq, Iran and North Korea, only a policy of military restraint is likely to diminish their urge to become nuclear.
Practically speaking, American primacy is unrealizable as well as being counterproductive. Even at the height of its power the U.S. couldn’t defeat North Vietnam and American public opinion, whether it be informed or uninformed, has now developed a visceral opposition to any engagement that returns its young soldiers in body bags.
What is encouraging is that at last experienced American voices are beginning to say some of these things, as can be discerned in the pages of Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, International Security et al. But the problem remains unaddressed by rank and file voters– American media editors are, in effect, blocking the American public from understanding the changes afoot in the world outside. If the American people aren’t made aware of the major traffic accident awaiting their country down the road then the pile-up is going to be far worse than it need be. And America will lose far more than just its amour propre.
