Michael Lind is to be commended for recognising the tenuous nature of American power in the world today and for having the courage to demand a rethinking of the grand strategy or "roadmap" of American foreign policy. Since Paul Kennedy published his book The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (1987), a fundamental debate in American foreign-policy circles has concerned the relative power of the United States vis-à-vis other nations.
In reaching the conclusion that the US must see itself as one among a number of world powers, Lind's essay confirms the insights of the declinists. While this reflects underlying trends, especially the decline of American economic might, it has been accelerated by the foreign policy failures of the administration of George W Bush. The fiasco in Iraq stands as the crowning debacle of a thoroughly disastrous foreign policy that has not only undermined America's strategic position but discredited the US in the eyes of much of the world.
Mark Luccarelli is responding to the article by Michael Lind:
"What next? US foreign policy after Bush"
(12 February 2007)
Also in openDemocracy:
Mary Kaldor, "America's Iraq plight: old and new thinking"
(13 February 2007)
Richard Falk, "On a collision course with the future"
(14 February 2007)
Sankaran Krishna "Looking into America's dark places"
(15 February 2007)
Mark Kingwell, "A question of moral legitimacy"
(16 February 2007)
As I write, it appears as though the administration is determined to conduct a more aggressive military campaign in an ill-conceived attempt to avoid what threatens to become a stunning defeat for the US. For his part, Lind still thinks it possible to avoid defeat by enlisting Franklin D Roosevelt's old dream of a concert of great powers that could be mobilised to pressure the conflicting parties into negotiations leading to a settlement. This settlement, Lind argues, could be the opening to a new era of peaceful multilateralism.
In my view, Lind's solution is impossible due to three factors:
- the extent to which American foreign policy has come to reflect economic strategies that stand in the way of multilateralism
- the lack of an organised alternative in American politics that would support such changes
- timing: one cannot expect a concert of great powers to be assembled in time to address the deteriorating situation in Iraq.
Lind's key proposition, that the "solution" to the Iraq problem can be found by conceiving of the conflict in global terms, would require a fundamental re-ordering of the American global roadmap and a retreat from the assertive unilateral posture that has been the vogue since the administration of Ronald Reagan. Inertia and opposition generated by the powerful American right are enormous obstacles in themselves, but there is a more fundamental problem. For decades now, American economic fortunes have been linked ever more closely to the exercise of American military and political power. This accelerated under the current Bush administration, which must cover the weakness evident in the massive balance-of-trade and federal-budget deficits.
We should remember that the Bush administration's decision to initiate the Iraq war was itself part of a global roadmap to maintain America's position as the world's one indispensable nation-state. Along the way, Bush was driven to secure the strategic oil reserves in the middle east and central Asia and to rely on - indeed to valorise - US military might in a global "war on terror". Yet this strategy was itself a response to the serious failure during the 1990s to consolidate the global order under the aegis of American-sponsored globalisation.
The rejection of the "Washington consensus" in Latin America, the failure of liberal capitalism in Russia, the spread of radical Islamism, the accelerating decline of American industry and the rise of catastrophic trade deficits in the US - these all point(ed) to the continuing problems of American-led global capitalism. As the hope of globalisation with an American face receded, Bush & Co latched onto a new strategic road map, backed up by the president's commitment to rebuilding the military-industrial complex.
Mark Luccarelli teaches American studies in the Institute for Literature, Area Studies & European Languages at the University of Oslo. He is the author of Lewis Mumford and the Ecological Region: The Politics of Planning (Guilford Press, 1995) and is working on a book entitled The Unmaking of American Civilisation
Also by Mark Luccarelli in openDemocracy:
"Norway's election: right next time?"
(19 September 2005) with David C Mauk
The fear is that a retreat from American unilateralism would leave the American economy vulnerable to oil shortages and disinvestment as the world might well begin to lose confidence in the inevitability of American power. Of course, the US could deal with such threats, but to do so would require a new economic strategy linked to environmental priorities and a willingness to get behind international agreements like the Kyoto protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Yet this would require fundamental reconstruction of the American economy and way of life.
The Republicans have suffered a defeat in the US mid-term elections, to be sure; but that simply amounts to an electorate that - finally doubting the wisdom of the Iraq war - is retreating to the default position of the American public: isolation and withdrawal from the world. America lacks a leader, or even a potential leader, with the vision to push for fundamental changes - changes that would take enormous political strength in the face of the institutional opposition.
Furthermore, as it stands, Russia and perhaps even China feel they have much to gain by seeing the US humiliated in Iraq. They would be in no rush to embrace multilateralism just as the world's great super-power is about to suffer a major defeat. In my view this leaves only one option: to follow the advice of the Iraq Study Group (also known as the Baker-Hamilton commission) and seek a regional solution to the conflict. The US will be forced to come crawling back to the same "moderate" Arab states that Bush had hoped to replace with democracies, to acknowledge Iran as a major regional power, and, most importantly, to pressure Israel into a comprehensive peace agreement with the Palestinians.
