I don’t think it is safe to assume that “a reasonably benign post-American balance of power is latent in the structure of international life and will emerge if we will just get out of the way.” But I also don’t think that the status quo is reasonably benign. This is even more true if you think about that status quo that existed the day that President Obama was inaugurated.
It’s true that America shouldn’t hand its influence over to “the Central Powers: Russia, China and Iran.” But we shouldn’t think in such binary terms. The president has wisely refused to conduct U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East as though we are allied with the Sunnis in their regional conflict with the Shiites. We may get along better with Sunni-dominated countries like Turkey, Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia than we do with Shiite-dominated countries like Iran and Iraq, but we don’t have any national interest in their sectarian differences.
In weighing “the risks as Obama tries to reposition the United States into an “offshore balancer” rather than a power that fights expeditionary wars,” we shouldn’t forget that we have allies in the Far East (e.g., Japan and South Korea), the British Commonwealth, and in Europe who have enormous economies and mostly shared values. We are not alone, and we do not have to shoulder the burden of maintaining an international order alone. We don’t have to balance against any nefarious and malign influence from Russia and China alone.
And we are not confronting Iran alone. China and Russia are key members of the negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program. We don’t have to operate like we are still in a Cold War setting.
We need to spread some of the responsibility for the maintenance of international order to other nations that have internalized what we set out to do with the United Nations in the first place. At this point, many nations are more respectful of human rights, international law, and the need for collective security than we are. They may be commercial competitors, but they are mainly commercial partners, and they ought to be ready to step up their investments in security so that we can take a step back.
In this way, we won’t create a void to be filled by the Russians and Chinese, but we will broaden the coalition that takes responsibility for a stable order that promotes commerce, human rights, and conflict resolution. We don’t have to see this as a zero-sum game, and we don’t have to see every commercial advance for Russia and China as a net loss for us. We don’t want our leadership to be replaced by theirs, but we also don’t have to see them as strictly adversaries. It’s important that they also are committed to a stable international order.
Yikes. It strikes me that Ignatius is falling down on the job by giving this too much serious thought:
“Is President Obama an American version of Mikhail Gorbachev, the leader whose well-intentioned reforms led to the demise of his country’s global power?”
There’s all manner of things wrong with that and since I don’t have time right now, I assume many Boomaniacs can see it too.
If we’re talking about the US appearing to lose “global power” because of the situation with Iran, let’s remember a couple of things. The Bush administration was warned about a dominant Iran if Iraq was weakened. It was Bush that chose to jump into a lose-lose situation in Iraq and that criminal misuse of American power is responsible for any perceived weakness. That Obama is not a magician who can roll back so much violent stupidity is not an Obama weakness.
Likewise the Bush administration botched the job in Afghanistan as well. How many years did that situation linger in neglect as Bush directed troops to go kill the man “that tried to kill my Daddy”?
Your overall sentiment is spot on Booman. Other countries need to take responsibility for their own security. Saudi Arabia also needs to put on the big boy pants. It is not the responsibility of the US to intervene with Iran every time it sneezes.
This is incorrect. No true progressive would maintain that “nefarious and malign influence from Russia and China” is something against which someone has to push. To the extent that Russia and China push back against that malevolent influence, they are making the world a more benign place. They’re malevolent too, but you contain power with countervailing power.
The correct progressive position is that US is — in security issues, economic issues, environmental issues, freedom-and-justice issues — an invariably malevolent influence on the world. To the extent that US allies permit, aid, or abet that influence, they’re just as bad.
Actually-existing progressives know that “[A] stable order that promotes commerce, human rights, and conflict resolution” is just a long, roundabout way to say ‘US hegemony’.
For ‘that’ read ‘our’.
Preview’s not a real replacement for edit.
True progressives are so boring.
Ooooooooooooh. The “Central Powers”. Mr. Mead has not been paying attention at all to international affairs and just writing a neo=con’s lament, which Ignatius is mainstreaming. Apparently Israel and Saudi Arabia are not happy with their coming loss of the ability to yank the world’s largest superpower around through fear of scary Iranians. Tossing Iran in as a Central Power is just as gratuitous as George W. Bush’s tossing Iran into the Axis of Evil, implying that Saddam Hussein, Khamenei, and Kim Jung Il were in some implicit alliance.
Mr. Mead is looking for the next enemy, and Ignatius is abetting him.
The United States under Obama is not creating a vacuum. George W. Bush took the “world’s sole superpower” and destroyed the mythology of its power by trying to use it to establish colonial strongholds in Iraq and Afghanistan. These failed for the same reason that Vietnam failed and the same reason the Crusades failed by the way. US troops are culturally incapable of acting as liberators of cultures that are not willing to be Americanized.
By any measure, Iran is not a major military power. In terms of the size if its military budget, it is the equivalent of Mexico. Mead’s strange inclusion in his scary “Central Powers” is just pure propaganda, and not analysis at all. It is a regional power on the Persian Gulf and in Central Asia and has interests in the protection of Shi’ites in other nations, such as Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia. It’s relationship with Israel is reciprocal; at some points even the Islamic Republic of Iran has had temporary alliances with Israel. It’s time for American policymakers and pundits to stop hyperventilating about Iran.
The concern of these folks now about a power vacuum is touching–and shows their political ax-grinding. Thre was a major power vacuums 1989-1993 in the former Soviet Union and the former Republic of Yugoslavia and in Afghanistan. The neo-cons now wringing their hands were then advocating hands off and a “shock treatment” of capitalism that impoverished the people, created a fascist nationalist movement, and eventually put Putin in power. And in Afghanistan, they just cut and ran, leaving the Saudi Wahabists they had armed covertly still in place. In 2009 when Barack Obama took office, there was a political power vacuum in Iraq and Afghanistan. Both of those came from the US military having overthrown the previous regime and a completely legitimate regime not having arisen. In Iraq, withdrawal of US troops took away one complicating factor in Iraqi internal politics–foreign forces killing Iraqis without accountability. Karzai wants that same result in Afghanistan–take away the complicating factor of foreign troops. But unlike George W. Bush, the Obama administration has engaged with the frontline states around Afghanistan and welcomed the actions of Russia and China to create a situation in which frontline states have an agreement that allows US withdrawal without creating a regional power vacuum.
At this moment, the US is in the position that except for North Korea, it has no enemies. Except for indigenous movements opposing Americanization in their own countries and what is left of the al Quaeda franchise, the US has not adversaries; note that all of the adversaries are non-state actors. The US has competitors–for economic resources, markets, power, and status. We are no longer capable of being the world’s bully; there are countervailing powers now, and US power has been shown to be limited. The obvious lesson from that is that the power of all other nations are even more limited has not dawned on the DC foreign policy crowd.
Today there are these mutual security pacts: NATO which covers North America and Europe up to the Russian border; the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which covers Russia, China, and Central Asia with collarborative relationships in the South Asia subcontinent and in Southwest Asia (Iran and Turkey); the Arab League; the African Union; Unasur, which covers the Bolivarian states of South America. There are differences in the comparative international power of each of these mutual defense areas.
There are two institutional arrangements that could allow these mutual defense arrangements to be more stable, less subject to conflict, and less prone to being backfooted by a power vacuum in a single country. First, the membership of mutual defense pacts could overlap. There is no reason for example why Turkey could not be a member in NATO and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Or for Mexico not to be a member of NATO and Unasur. Second, the presence of these mutual defense pacts transforms the membership of the United Nations Security Council with respect to its permanent members. It is clear now that the having UK and France both as permanent UN Security Council members overweights the council to NATO. What is clear is that at least Brazil, India, and South Africa should be made permanent members. And there is a question about whether the European Union should conduct foreign policy for its member states.
The area without a substantial mutual defense pact is Southeast Asia-Pacific, which has depended on US defense protection in what has become an imperial relationship. Probably no better symbol of that imperial relationship is the US effort to muscle through the Trans-Pacific Partnership in spite of the fact that most of the negotiating partners do not like the terms and that the terms have been kept secret from the American people and known only to 600 transnational corporations.
The fundamental question that Mr. Mead’s concerns jump over is exactly who American foreign policy is to benefit and how it is to benefit them. The stated goal of American foreign policy (as of politics) used to be peace and prosperity. If there is any vacuum, it is in the fact that after 72 years of continuous war of one sort or another, the American people have neither. And Mr. Mead wants to destroy the hope that we will ever live outside of a regime of war without end.
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David Ignatius and Walter Russell Meade in their articles are advocating a by-gone policy of the Neoconservatives that took the United States of America to the brink of disaster. It is the Obama administration that’s turning foreign policy around. Welcome to the 21st century, a decade too late.
Nothing in their arguments touch on the weakness of the US dollar, the expenses of two senseless wars resulting in universal security antagonizing our European allies because of NSA espionage. Europe and the US are on the receiving end of terror blow-back due to decades of failed foreign policy. The US making the wrong choices of allies and supporting dictatorial regimes thereby alienating the vast population. George Bush was the last of a long list of presidents and US intelligence assets (CIA) gambling on the wrong leaders fighting ideological wars.
The wise decision not to go to war in Syria has opened the venue of a serie of diplomatic successes. Watch how US Congress in a bi-partisan way and other right-wing extremists of our allies, try to undermine Obama and Kerry’s efforts on a greater Middle East peace. In this proces the US has an ally in Russia with Putin and Lavrov. Be kind to them in 2014.
○ Russian Opinion: US to create two major economic unions without Russia and China
BTW What a stupid remark, Iran belonging to “Central Powers,” sounds like an Evil Axis. Iran can be a pest but cannot muster economic or military power.
○ Obama On Path Towards Grand-Slam In Diplomacy
I keep wondering what it is people like Ignatius and the anonymous arabs feeling abandoned want us to do. We cannot reform arab society. They are a bunch of religious fanatics (and not even “our” religion) who’ve contributed nothing to humanity in the last 100 years except oil and suffering. What would Russia, China, and Iran do in the region that we oppose? Would they endeavor to overthrow Sunni arab despots? I would applaud such a development.
Unless we’re talking about securing the middle east oil supply (and enabling climate change in the process) there is little to be gained by continued US involvement there. The Chinese can have them!
They are feeling abandoned? I cannot believe after over at least 75 years of skimming off the top these guys have not enough money to figure out an exit strategy.
They are feeling abandoned? I cannot believe after over at least 75 years of skimming off the top these guys have not enough money to figure out an exit strategy.
You know, if you think playing Empire is a good thing, maybe we should let China pick up some of the “responsibility” we now currently allot to ourselves as our God-given right as ‘Murrica.
Concepts such as “having skin in the game” work both ways.
You want China to start toeing the line that we drew? Well, how about letting them draw their own line.
If you see problems with China getting to draw lines that others have to toe as a problem, then you’re starting to see why the US drawing lines that others have to toe isn’t a good thing.