(http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20080501faessay87304/richard-n-haass/the-age-of-nonpolarity.html)
I read Foreign Affairs for the party line on a certain key segment of elite ruling class thinking. However there are times when the cluelessness is actually amazing. They keep blinking and moaning about how US power is in decline. Yes. It is. Their policies were designed to do precisely this.
Think about it. Our starting point is 1945. US had some 50% of the effective GDP of the planet as near to everyone else had been near destroyed by a world war. Germany and Japan were occupied and had ceased to exist. China was transitioning from a decade plus of war with Japan to a civil war that would devestate what was left. The British Empire was bankrupt and would within a year need North American aid to feed London. The US had never been stronger but mostly because everyone else was so much weaker.
Our policy since then was to rebuild Europe and Japan while holding out the hopes that the rest of the world could join the party once they dumped Leninism, stopped trying to invade their neighbors and joined the usual Western created international organizations [UN, GATT, WTO etc.]. Surprise - we won/it worked. Evil Empire is gone and without another war in Europe/ On the Beach. China is still ruled by something that calls itself a CP but is nothing Lenin or Mao would approve of. Brazil may finally be the giant of the present instead of the country of the future. Yes, there are still failures - Africa, Burma, some laggards in South America - but taken as a whole world is a MUCH better place than 1945 and most of it was because of things we supported and helped bring about.
So now the same elites that gave us these programs whine that this means US power is relatively MUCH less. Wasn't that the entire point? If they wanted a US hegemony [I don't and neither do the American people] they picked policies designed to do exactly the opposite. Overall those policies have produced a world of peace and plenty. The wars that are left are mostly internal wars of failed third world states. Except for the perpetual Palestine problem even the potential/likely wars are mostly between failed states and their neighbors. Again yes there are a few exceptions [US-Iran, Second Korean War, War of Pakistani Suicide, Taiwan Straights War] but by world historical standards there aren't that many flash points.
Similarly the whine about the growth of non-state actors is the quite pushed for result of policies our elites have pushed for on everything from civil society to human rights to financial liberalization. Unlike the direct state to state policy much of this had ripple effects the tranzies / rootless cosmopolites at places such as the Council on Foreign Relations claimed not to have anticipated. YMMV on how honest they are being [i.e. much of this was pointed out by nationalists and paleo-cons 1945-2008 and was dismissed by elite opinion as reactionary twaddle]. However from preaching the Atlantic as a common cultural community to flower revolution this was in the main a Trans-Atlantic elite project and in the main it worked.
Yet now that we live in the Brave New World our betters pushed for we get whining such as this about how the independent and increasing powerful actors [state, transnational and supernational] have their own agendas and won't take US direction. DUH! As world civilizations we are the children at the table. Even Brazil was a century old before Jamestown. Others had to pay some attention to our whims when we were the only source of wealth and protection. Those days are LONG past. Others will pursue their own interests whether or not be approve. The trick is not to pine for the long lost 'more powerful' US of 1946. It is to adjust to our place. We are a major power. We are a source of much technology and pop culture. We are not the next Rome. We should accept that many times the world will not agree with us. And sometimes that means accepting that some situations are beyond our power to fix unilaterally. W seems to have accepted this with NK and their nukes. We can be part of a solution. We cannot force a solution. The other powers involved [Japan, China, SK, Russia] have their own mix of interests and find NK nukes less scary than other things such as an NK implosion or intrusions on state sovereignty. Sixc power talks may fail but they are the only option.
Yet the same administration that accepts this on NK refuses to accept this on Iran. Issue is not would the world be better off if Iran didn't have nukes. Issue is that the rest of the world does not agree with us [China, Russia, India] or puts higher priority on energy supplies and commercial transactions [EU, Japan]. We are going to live in a world where Iran has nukes and Iran and Israel may have a nuke war. Limits of power.
US cannot right every wrong, decide every matter etc. US is stronger when it picks its fights VERY carefully. This is so obvious as to be absurd. Our rulers may get us all killed/bankrupt yet. Sad.Labels: our clueless ruling class
posted by scott 4:46 AM