America in the World

The Value of Resolve Part I: the Green Lantern Theory of Geopolitics

Matthew Yglesias' book of earlier this year, Heads in the Sand, has two ambitious aims. Yglesias tries to discredit the Republican Party's foreign policy since 11 September 2001, and to argue that the Democrats' poor handling of what ought to have been an electoral advantage has meant that come an election, foreign policy and national security issues nonetheless benefit the Republicans. It is a multifacted argument, making many points persuasively. One of his critiques of some conservative thinking on foreign policy he sums up as the "Green Lantern Theory of Geopolitics". Yglesias describes this theory in terms of "the American right's valorization of willpower as the primary variable in successful war-fighting":

"In this view, there are essentially no objective limits to U.S. military might... As a premise for a foreign policy ... it leaves much to be desired. Unfortunately, since at least the wake of the Vietnam War, U.S. conservatives have tended to espouse a Green Lantern Theory of Geopolitics, believing that U.S. force can achieve essentially anything as long as the will to use it exists."

For a further elucidation of the Green Lantern Theory, Yglesias first talked about it (named, by the way, after a series of comics) in a blog post two years ago.

Even if this overstates the degree to which anyone holds to quite this formulation, this argument does get across a point about opportunity costs and setting priorities that those who advocate American global leadership cannot ignore. Will and resolve do dictate how much, if anything, America will choose to sacrifice in order to see her interests or values defended. But objective factors must and do also play a major role. American power and influence are clearly substantial, but just as considerable are the many troublespots around the world. America lacks not so much the will to assert herself against every regime and terrorist group with contrary values and interests as the military resources.

As in all things, finite resources means trade-offs and opportunity costs, and getting involved in a certain conflict or a particular part of the world makes it much more difficult to become involved in another in the same way. There is a degree to which the fiercest supporters of American global intervention make their case as a mixture of a moral obligation and an imagining of what would happen in the worst case scenario - but divorced from any question of cost or available resources.

But it is precisely in order to concentrate American power where it matters most that such considerations must form the part of any reasoning on foreign policy, and priorities must be set. This, in turn, may mean showing less resolve in some parts of the world because, by a brutal least-worst calculation, allowing something unwelcome to happen matters less there than elsewhere.

Everyone accepts this reality to some extent, but discussion of foreign policy that ignores it - that talks of facing off one looming threat without paying lip service to the issue of finite resources, without acknowledgeing that troops in one part of the world cannot be in another - is missing something vital.

We all made (and make) America

All this week AmericaInTheWorld is spotlighting six key arguments from Justin Webb's 'Have A Nice Day: Behind The Chiches, Giving America Another Chance'.  You can purchase your copy here.

The most potent image of America remains the Statue of Liberty.  America at its best remains the land that welcomes immigrants:

"Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:

I lift my lamp beside the golden door."

America's attitude to immigration is discussed by Justin Webb.  Mr Webb has been working in America for the BBC.  He and his wife are British but his daughter, Clara, by being born in the USA is as American as Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama.  Webb:

"To get her British passport, there were hoops to be jumped through, stipulations to be noted, and requirements to be fulfilled.  For the US passport there were none.  She is American because she was born here.  Her parents do not matter, nor does her colour or creed, her ancestry, or the cut of her jib.  She is a natural-born citizen, to use the rubric of the constitution, and provided she lives in the US for a bit and pays her taxes and achieves the age of 35, she can be president.  She is as American as any of her 300 million fellow citizens."

By 2025 15% of US citizens will have been foreign born.  Ronald Reagan would have approved.  This was what he wrote in his Christmas message of 1982:

"I know we're crowded and we have unemployment and we have a real burden with refugees, but I honestly hope and pray we can always find room. We have a unique society, made up of cast-offs of all the world's wars and oppressions, and yet we're strong and free. We have one thing in common—no matter where our forefathers came from, we believe in that freedom. I hope we always have room for one more person, maybe an Afghan or a Pole or someone else looking for a place... where he doesn't have to worry about his family's starving or a knock on the door in the night..."

Justin Webb concludes his book with these words:

"America is imperfect.  It has no divine right to be the world's leading nation.  It has no unique insight into the human condition.  And yet something about it sings.  Something about it works.  And we built it: all of us from every corner of the globe whose histories and cultures impacted on the minds of the people who created America and recreate it daily.  It could do with improvement, but it is ours."

> Read AmericaInTheWorld's briefing on immigration.

Do guns make Americans safer?

All this week AmericaInTheWorld is spotlighting six key arguments from Justin Webb's 'Have A Nice Day: Behind The Chiches, Giving America Another Chance'.  You can purchase your copy here.

The popular view is that guns make America more dangerous.  Is that true?  AITW's briefing on 'America and crime' makes it clear that murder rates are higher than most developed nations but other forms of crime are less evident.  This, thinks Justin Webb, could be related to America's attachment to gun ownership:

"I don't want to get bogged down in an argument about statistics, but anecdotally there is simply no question that the right to defend a home changes the dynamic when someone comes calling without permission in the middle of the night.  British people know this.  They might be told that gun violence in the US is appalling, and in many respects it is, but in gun-free (legal gun-free) Britain do we feel safer?  Or are we whistling in the dark?"

> Also see "America's safety-catch" by Justin Webb.

> The three previous parts of this series have looked at: Americans and foreign travel, America's capacity for self-correction and America as the flawed but still best hope for humanity's oppressed. 

The number of Americans with passports doesn't tell us that much

All this week AmericaInTheWorld is spotlighting six key arguments from Justin Webb's 'Have A Nice Day: Behind The Chiches, Giving America Another Chance'.  You can purchase your copy here.

One of the most frequent criticisms of America is the suggestion that Americans are insular.  The fact that 'only' 34% of Americans own a passport is often used to substantiate this point (although the extent of ownership is often understated).

Justin Webb tackles this perception in his book:

"Anti-Americans complain about the attitude of Americans towards the rest of the world, about the insularity of American life, about the percentage of Americans who have passports or have been to Vladivostock or speak fluent Swahili. Yet outsiders - particularly Europeans - often have only the vaguest idea of where Kansas is, or Rhode Island, or indeed New Mexico. And how many British people - proud owners of passports - actually use them only to travel to France or Spain, the equivalent of a jaunt from Chicago to South Carolina, to get some sun and pop home?"

That's the key point.  Do most Brits hold passports for mind-exploring travel?  How many use their passport simply for a beer-fueled weekend in Prague or to enjoy the clubs of Ibiza?  We're not trying to say that holidays in Prague or Ibiza are necessarily wrong; only that a European sense of superiority may be misplaced.

The American landmass is 9,826,630 km²; forty times greater than the land mass of the UK (244,820 km²).  Within the borders of the USA is almost every form of natural attraction.  America is more of a continent than a nation.

Webb turns the tables on Europeans.  Europeans are sniffy about American ignorance of Europe but how many Europeans know that much about America:

"You can be ignorant about how a light bulb works but still cut it in polite society if you know what Proust was getting at.  Similarly among the sophisticates of the world, a knowledge of the geography of Europe (where is Lichtenstein?) counts for a lot more than similar knowledge about the United States.  Where is Nebraska?  Don't care."

So far in this series we have also looked at America's ability to self-correct its mistakes and its status as the last, best but inadequate hope for those still yearning for freedom across the globe.

America's capacity for self-correction

All this week, AmericaInTheWorld is spotlighting six key arguments from Justin Webb's 'Have A Nice Day: Behind The Chiches, Giving America Another Chance'.  You can purchase your copy here.

Few things have done more damage to America's global standing than Guantanamo Bay.  America has been condemned across the world.  Leaving aside for the moment (1) that the condemnation has sometimes come from nations with much inferior human rights records and (2) from human rights organisations that go soft on more serious abusers, it is right that the United States does clean up its act in this area.  But, writes Justin Webb, it should not be forgotten that the decisive pressure for change has come from within the USA:

"Guantanamo was a disaster for the Bush administration because of home-grown protest.  Amnesty International they could have coped with. The Council of Europe they could safely have ignored. Foreign public opinion as well. It has been the relentless drip drip of American legal opinions, including those of the Supreme Court itself, that has undercut the ability of the Bush team to do what they wanted to do at Guantanamo.  Even the European attack, led by the Swiss MP Dick Marty, relied on US news reports for its evidence of US wrongdoing. It was the Washington Post - an American institution in every sense of the word - that reported the CIA was "hiding and interrogating some of its most important al-Qaeda captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe".

Dainty lawyers and dainty reporters trumped a president in his pomp in the midst of a war. For all the power that the Bush White House accrued to itself, for all the intentions it had to fight the war with radical Islam in semi-legal shadows, the upshot has been row after row with Americans who will not stand for this behaviour in their name. And in 2008 they choose two presidential candidates, both of whom were genuinely implacably opposed to torture, both in name and in fact."

America has all of the institutions - a free press, an independent judiciary, a super-competitive democratic system, a good people - that make self-correction possible.  It is still a nation that makes mistakes.  Sometimes big mistakes but unlike alternative world powers - Russia, China, the EU and the UN - it is better at putting those abuses right. 

In the first part of the series, yesterday, we noted that America remains the last, best hope of people - even people it has let down.

"America is a dream. Even to those who it lets down."

All this week, AmericaInTheWorld is spotlighting six key arguments from Justin Webb's 'Have A Nice Day: Behind The Chiches, Giving America Another Chance'.  You can purchase your copy here.

Ayman Nour is an Egyptian democrat.  Mr Nour stood against Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak in the 2006 elections.  He won 7% of the vote but today sits in a Cairo jail on politically-motivated charges of electoral fraud.

He took America at its word and the suggestion by George W Bush that his administration would support democrats in every corner of the planet. This is what the President said in his second inaugural:

"All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: the United States will not ignore your oppression, or excuse your oppressors. When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you. Democratic reformers facing repression, prison, or exile can know: America sees you for who you are: the future leaders of your free country. The rulers of outlaw regimes can know that we still believe as Abraham Lincoln did: "Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves; and, under the rule of a just God, cannot long retain it.""

America has been criticised for doing little to speak up for Mr Nour.  Egypt is a massive beneficiary of US aid but Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice failed to mention Mr Nour's predicament in a meeting with the Egyptian President.

But finds Justin Webb, America remains the last, best hope for Mr Nour's wife and another Egyptian democrat, Hala Mustapha.  He writes this after meeting them:

"They aren't making plans to appeal for help from China or Russia or the European Commission.  They know where help should be located: they know where they think help might one day lie... Although both have been let down, both are sticking with America."

> Briefing: America and human rights