In the openDemocracy debate on the Bush doctrine, Charles Peña, Philip Bobbitt, John Hulsman and Eric Hamilton share a presumption of American supremacy and self-sufficiency. Whether they support or oppose it, they take the doctrine’s “ethical” content as self-evident and sincere.

They focus on what they see as good for America, with little concern for any normative ethical or legal principles of international law, let alone consideration for what the rest of the world may want.

There are important differences between them, however, and their criticisms of each other bring out many points which are valuable for understanding the Bush doctrine and its context.

John Hulsman and Eric Hamilton of the Heritage Foundation, for example, spell out what Philip Bobbitt only hints at, that “the United States simply cannot afford to be subservient to any supranational institution that does not share America’s interests. We do not live in a multipolar world.”

The quick and relatively painless walkover in Iraq this year could indeed have been seen as manifest proof of American unilateral destiny. But the colossus is now walking the globe with outstretched palm, asking for financial and military handouts from developing countries and asking help from the very United Nations it had allegedly rendered irrelevant and outmoded at the beginning of the year.

The US has been a military and economic superpower but a diplomatic pinhead for some time now; never more so than under this administration, whose practice has been almost the reverse of Theodore Roosevelt’s maxim of ‘speak softly and carry a big stick’.

Above all, President Bush’s bold economic experiment of running a massive deficit, a war, an occupation and giving his friends tax cuts at the same time, is coming unstuck. The dollar has declined and foreigners - led by the Chinese government - who now buy 46% of US Treasury bonds, are the lifeline for the deficit and the dollar alike. It remains to be seen how prepared they will be to carry on financing a country explicitly bent on keeping them under its yoke.

How to lose friends and not influence people

In the aftermath of 11 September 2001, the United States commanded an immense degree of sympathy and support. It took a little less than a year to lose it all. The US has alienated many natural allies, and even its most consistent one, Britain, makes embarrassed excuses in private about trying to bridge the gap between the US and reality.

In the context of pervasive American supremacism, one has to admire the more honest conservative critics of American foreign policy. For example, Charles Peña is quite right in his assessment of the Bush doctrine:

“This strange fruit of Wilsonian idealism and neo-conservative ambition is triply misconceived: it will guarantee damaging over-extension of resources, fuel bitter resentment of the United States, and abandon homeland security to the chimera of global control. It is not empire that the US needs, but modesty.”

Peña is also accurate in saying that “the neo-cons would challenge the Clintonites’ preference for working with the United Nations and having the support of the international community.” But he is wrong in concluding that “they arrive at the same end point, the belief that America’s interests are best pursued by spreading democracy throughout the world by means of the direct projection of American military force.”

This is simply not the case. A constant element in American foreign policy for decades has been that it is reactive to perceived threats rather than agenda-setting in support of any positive value such as humanitarianism or democracy.

The Heritage Foundation’s Hulsman and Hamilton are more in tune with real existing Americanism than either the Bush doctrine itself or Philip Bobbitt, whom they charge with “(confusing) democratic outcomes with pro-American ones.”

Peña complains that the Bush administration is committed “in its own words, to using unrivaled American power to ‘defend liberty and justice because these principles are right and true for all people everywhere’ ”. But, like Bobbitt, he makes the mistake of believing them.

In practice, few if any American governments have found it difficult to separate words and actions. President Franklin Roosevelt’s description of Nicaragua’s Somoza as “our son of a bitch” was followed by sponsorship of many unsavoury regimes in Central America and elsewhere as “anti-communist.” Since 9/11, similar benign indifference to the repressive domestic policies of, for example, the Central Asian regimes has rewarded their support against radical Islamism; and the contemporary invocation of weapons of mass destruction as a cause for branding enemies falls before the contradictions of US policy in relation to Israel, India and Pakistan.

Foreign policy by cacophony

US foreign policy formation also follows Tip O’Neill’s truism: “all politics is local.” Most conspicuously, Washington’s policy towards Israel and Cuba has been driven by important lobbying and campaign financing from domestic pressure groups. What should be avenues for democratic access are overwhelmingly dominated by special interests. The result is incoherence or and irrationality in foreign policy. This is why the foreign policy of the United States does not have the intellectual coherence that Peña, Bobbitt, Hulsman and Hamilton and others assume.

A more Napoleonic state would weigh carefully each aspect of external relations – on trade, defence, multilateral treaties, with some degree of cohesion. Rather, Washington has a series of unrelated policies for dealing with foreigners. It is stretching the term to call the sum of these responses to internal initiatives a foreign policy.

Perhaps the most succinct evocation of this internal wrangling was from the Irish diplomat on the Security Council who pointed out that most of the time getting the various Iraq resolutions through was spent in discussions in the P1, (that is, the Permanent One, the US) rather than with the P5 (Permanent Five – China, Britain, France, Russia and United States) on the Council.

Moreover, for a country that displays so little interest in the rest of the world, almost everyone in Washington has a voice – the CIA, the Pentagon, the National Security Council, the White House and various other agencies, in addition to micromanagement by Congress. This puts the professionals in the state department at a severe disadvantage compared with their colleagues in other capitals.

In this cacophony, the president often seems to act like a referee. Interestingly, the professional military seem to have been sidelined in this process; it is militarism as a philosophy in the administration rather than the military itself which seems to be the motivating force.

In particular, Bill Clinton allowed the Pentagon a considerably enhanced voice in foreign policy. Fortunately, for much of the 1990s the generals themselves were aggressive only about their budgets, and contented themselves with blocking American accession to the International Criminal Court, the Landmine convention and promoting Star Wars at the expense of anti-ballistic missile (ABM) treaties.

But in the current administration, the civilian, faith-based ideologues in the Pentagon have gained much more sway in the White House. The key element in this departmental coup was of course, 11 September 2001.

The costs of interventionism

This was perhaps the first time that foreign policy ‘happened’ to Americans, at least since the oil boycott of 1973. Hitherto it had been something that happened to others, and so was of little or no account. Naturally in the face of such an attack, the American public closed ranks with their government: which cynically abused their patriotism. The link between Saddam Hussein and the attacks on the World Trade Center – despite President Bush’s belated disavowal – was sedulously promoted in administration speeches and associated media coverage of the “war on terror.”

In fact, terrible though it was, the 9/11 atrocity was not in itself a significant global event, nor did it threaten the United States in any existential way. It is the US response to it which is indeed significant, both in terms of wasted opportunities for multilateral security developments, and the exploitation and abuse of it both internally and externally to advance an agenda which most of the world cannot accept.

Such a response - from the Patriot Act to labeling all opposition to US designs as terrorism - will, if unchecked, play right into the hands of real terrorists on a global scale. Philip Bobbitt’s endorsement of the Bush administration’s concept of preemptive and preventative war shares this defect of understanding.

Bobbitt improves his argument by calling for “the development of a clear doctrine of intervention that assures any state that meets the standards of the Peace of Paris – free elections, market economy, human rights – will not be the subject of threats of force.”

Yet he also claims that “(o)ne of the necessary understandings of the age we are entering is that legal doctrine and strategic doctrine are not merely linked, but are intrinsically part of each other. A new National Security Strategy for the United States will one day find its counterpart in international law or it will fail”. It is imperial solipsism to assume that if there is a clash between US policy and the law, then the latter must change. Bobbitt’s intervention doctrine is preposterously presumptuous - with the default a free pass to invade other countries.

Indeed, Bobbitt seems to qualify it by implying that since the UN has “failed” the US, the G8 would be able to authorise intervention in future. The G8 includes four of the five current permanent members of the Security Council, including Russia, whose behaviour in Chechnya certainly meets his criteria for intervention. Except for corroding the legitimising role of the UN, his proposal makes no sense.

There are arguments for humanitarian intervention, but experience proves that it is a very dangerous concept. The arrogation of such decisions by the United States with its unilateral attack on Iraq has, understandably set back global acceptance of such developments, and indeed of any US attempt to reform international law in its own image. In contrast, the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty set the default at not invading, unless very stringent criteria were met. The key issue is: who decides which states meet these criteria?

Bobbitt effectively shares many of the imperial visions of the neo-cons. He calls for continuing to spend “an enormous amount of money on its defense budget” even though there is no current threat “because states might then enjoy a competitive position that is now beyond their reach.”

At the same time he uses the administration’s bogeyman phrase “terrorism” to justify expenditure, because “our conventional arms are extremely helpful in countering terrorism – as our experience in Afghanistan, Iraq, Bosnia and Kosovo demonstrates.” But apart from Afghanistan, none of these was a “terrorist” threat in more than the rhetorical sense.

Philip Bobbitt shows no appreciation of the erosion of America’s social and economic competitiveness entailed in such spending on imperial over-reach. Like too many American thinkers, he assumes that the US can isolate itself historically as well as geographically.

In the end Bobbitt is conceptually as much an isolationist as his conservative opponents. All assume that only the United States matters, even though they draw opposite conclusions from it. Neither ‘camp’ seriously addresses a concept of mutual and multilateral interests with the rest of the world.

Charles Peña, by contrast, complains that the Bush policy “is less a national security doctrine designed to safeguard the US in the new era of world terrorism, than a global security doctrine which commits the country to a fusion of its perceived self-interest with that of the planet.”

Peña reveals here his isolationist roots. US interests are indeed tied to the rest of the world, but it does not follow that the US can unilaterally determine what is good for the rest of the world. The key point here is the perception of self-interest. To the rest of the world, it is self-evident that what is good for the planet is almost certainly good for America, even if it is not necessarily good for General Motors. Some people may have genuinely believed that what was good for General Motors was good for America; but few will accept that what is good for General Motors, Halliburton or even America is necessarily good for the planet.

One lesson of 9/11 is that globalisation is a two-way process. The hurricanes battering the Texas coast, the melting glaciers of Alaska, the dollar’s dependence on the goodwill and self-interest of Asian rulers all reinforce the end of isolationism as practical politics.

All hat and no cattle

But even with this in mind, the bizarre thing about the attack on Iraq is that it served no rational interest of the United States. In the words of Talleyrand (or possibly one Boulay de la Meurthe): it was worse than a crime, it was a mistake. Iraq was no threat to US power in the region or globally. It had no discernible connections to al-Qaida. The weapons of mass destruction have proven to be a chimera, and were demonstrably no threat even in the US’s own earlier assessments. The occupation has been incredibly expensive, and promises to become more so. The oil is not flowing, and even it were, the amounts involved do not justify the expense, even if the US were to have clear control of it.

The conflicting reasons given for the invasion, the gratuitous insults to allies, the public denial of international law on every level from Guantanamo detainees to the war itself have sharply reduced American credibility. Making a principle of unilateralism meant that the world’s only superpower could muster a few microstates and dependents to support its enterprise.

At first you almost hope that Hulsman and Hamilton have found the golden balance in their riposte to Peña and Bobbitt: “The challenge for the US is to avoid both neglect and overstretch, and to pursue a realist foreign policy.” But then you discover that their golden balance is a policy “that can ensure its global hegemony for centuries to come.”

Here is the millennial vision of the neo-cons in a nugget of unabashed imperialism. Why the rest of the world should tolerate this explicit ambition is not explained; nor how the US can spend itself into bankruptcy and expect the rest of the world to lend it the money to dominate them.

A lonely heart needs friends

There is no doubt that for the foreseeable future, the United States will play a huge role in the world, both for good and bad. But how do we engage it? The American left, strong in academia but utterly powerless in politics, all too often contents itself with a dismissive self-hatred of its own country, notably over Kosovo.

But paradoxically, the reason why American politicians keep evoking bland and naïve concepts of democracy and justice to cover their actions abroad is because they do indeed resonate with the American public. Americans don’t like to be alone; they wanted allies, accomplices, or at least company in any major overseas enterprise.

Charles Peña is entirely correct: “People love what we are; but they often hate what we do.” He concludes that “The US should not be the world’s policeman (or armed social worker) and intercede in the myriad of situations where tyranny and breaches of human rights prevail”.

What he excludes is multilateral action, of the kind that occurred over Kosovo, and could indeed have averted much of the tragedy of ex-Yugoslavia. Peña’s policy envisages looking with equanimity at the next Bosnia or Rwanda.

The US does need to develop its public diplomacy, and indeed the humility that Peña calls for. A superpower speaking quietly - but with a big stick, and a bunch of friends - is the recipe that is needed. That requires concerted pressure from outside, from close allies like Europe and Japan, matched with internal pressure from the American political process.

Of course it will not be easy. Centuries of isolationist thinking and the relegation of foreign policy both by Clinton in his first term and Bush before 9/11, militate against a quick fix. But one key concept of traditional democracy needs to be articulated: the idea of a “loyal opposition.” The US is digging itself into a hole. Their true friends should use their influence to stop it becoming deeper.

Allies abroad and politicians at home need to shake off any residual spell from 11 September 2001 and challenge the isolationist assumptions at the heart of current policies. They have a window of opportunity. Ambrose Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary is said to have defined “war” as “God’s way of teaching Americans geography”. The opening of the gates of hell at the World Trade Center also closed the door on isolationism.