America in the World | Notable arguments

John Tkacik: Democracies must reach consensus to balance China's rise

John Tkacik of The Heritage Foundation concludes that China's existing policies provide an unwelcome indicator for the future - and will soon be combined with a more formidable economic and military weight than America has yet faced. He calls for America to do more to build up an international consensus in opposition to a rising, authoritarian China:

"Managing China's rise requires a quiet, coherent, multi-dimensional, and disciplined strategy that must be coordinated with allies and friendly democracies. Crucial to achieving America's strategic policy goals is consensus among the world's democracies to "balance" China's rise. The key obstacle to consensus is China's sheer economic weight and its willingness to use that weight to punish its adversaries and reward its friends. Unless the United States is able to focus our own friends on the magnitude of the task at hand and lead them in addressing it, the world's democracies will ultimately acquiesce in the undemocratic and irredentist nature of Beijing's worldview.

"America has confronted assertive authoritarian dictatorships with absolute authority over large economies in the past. But, false perceptions of the Soviet economic strength aside, in the past century the United States has never had to deal with a competitor of such economic, industrial, political, and—soon—military weight.

"Some U.S. politicians hope to wish the problem away and "look to China" to do the right thing. President George W. Bush is "optimistic about China's future" because, he believes "young people who grow up with the freedom to trade goods will ultimately demand the freedom to trade ideas." A soothing thought, but history suggests that "freedom to trade goods" never, of itself, leads to democracy, which is why the Chinese Communist Party is comfortable with it."

Gideon Rose: American guarantees risk moral hazard

Gideon Rose, the managing editor of Foreign Affairs, writes an important article reflecting both on US backing for Georgia and Taiwan in light of the notion of moral hazard: "offering insurance to somebody often leads them to take greater risks than they otherwise would".

"If Georgia had not been led to believe that the United States might back it in a crisis, it probably would have played its hand more carefully -- and whatever compromises it might have had to make, it would have been better off as a result. This sort of thing happens all the time, and shows why great powers need to be careful lest their dependents embroil them in unnecessary conflicts."

"It is only natural for small democratic states living in bad neighborhoods to seek American support and protection, and in certain cases it is entirely appropriate for the United States to give it to them. But when it chooses to do so, the U.S. should make clear that along with the backing comes the responsibility to act prudently -- and should, without sentiment, use all the tools at its disposal to enforce the deal. The Bush 43 team has recognized this in Asia but forgot it in the Caucasus. How forcefully it would handle a third such case in the Middle East during its final months remains unclear."

See also America in the World's commentary on this article.

Seth Jones and Martin Libicki: History suggests intelligence and cooperation with local actors are key to defeating terrorism

Seth Jones and Martin Libikci are the authors of How Terrorist Groups End: Lessons for Countering al-Qaeda. Their report examines the data on more than 600 terrorist groups over the last forty years and applies the lessons learned to the counterterrorist efforts of the United States and her allies. The Middle East Institute has summarised their event with the authors:

"Jones contended that by examining the historical record of past counterterrorism endeavors, the United States could formulate a more efficient and suitable strategy for combating al-Qaeda."

"Jones detailed the findings of his report. Upon testing various causal factors against historical data, Jones and Libicki concluded that the vast majority of terrorist groups have terminated due to political settlements (43%) or policing and intelligence activities (40%). Military operations, by contrast, accounted for only 7% of successful defeats. Furthermore, the authors discerned no statistical correlation between terrorist groups’ devolutions and economic conditions, political institutions, and breadth of goals.

"What implications do these results have for current US counterterrorism policy? Jones asserted that military force continues to represent a counterproductive strategy for defeating al-Qaeda because it inflicts a high civilian death toll and emboldens terrorists’ “holy war” rhetoric. Instead, Jones posited, by leveraging legitimate local actors and surreptitiously targeting key players, the United States could more credibly and effectively pursue its strategic interests. In practice this means that the US government should support indigenous police forces, target key leaders, and engage in clandestine intelligence gathering and analysis. It should also empower organizations such as the State Department, CIA, and FBI, in conjunction with the Department of Defense, to develop and implement counterterrorism policies in the United States and abroad.

"Thus far, these tactics have accrued auspicious success in places like Ramadi, Iraq where large numbers of Sunni insurgents, with American backing, have joined Iraqi police forces to help rout al-Qaeda in Iraq. Additionally, the use of local Pakistani informants and intelligence agents has led to the capture and arrest of key terrorists like Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Sheikh Mohammad (in March 2002 and 2003, respectively). Although Jones admitted the potential failure of these strategies if local populations refuse to cooperate or possess conflicting strategic visions, he reemphasized that the “war on terror” could not be won by military force alone."

Ted Galen Carpenter: Washington can no longer ignore core Russian interests

Ted Galen Carpenter of The Cato Institute reflects in The American Conservative on lessons for Washington of the Georgia crisis:

"[I]t is ... likely that Russia’s strategic aims are modest, largely confined to its own neighborhood, and typical for a major power. Moscow’s actions also appear to be more defensive than offensive ... Russia’s actions in Georgia are not much different from the typical conduct of other great powers—including the United States—in their neighborhoods."

"The reality is that the United States can do little to protect vulnerable client states in Russia’s neighborhood—unless Washington is willing to risk a military confrontation with nuclear implications. That remains true even for clients such as the Baltic states, which are formal members of NATO."

"Russia may be capable of establishing a modest sphere of influence along its perimeter, but it does not have the strength to reconstitute the Soviet empire—much less pose an expansionist threat to the heart of Europe as the USSR did during the Cold War. American opinion leaders need to curb their alarmism. Moscow’s conduct in Georgia may have been brutal, but it is not out of the norm for a great power to discipline an upstart small neighbor. There is no credible evidence that Moscow has massive expansionist impulses. And even if it did, Russia lacks the power to achieve such goals. Russia is not the Soviet Union, and it certainly is not the equivalent of Nazi Germany. U.S. policymakers need to take a deep breath, accept that Russia has returned to the ranks of major powers, and realize that Washington can no longer ignore, much less trample on, core Russian interests."

Victor Davis Hanson: Right now, Europeans have the best of both worlds

Even some of Europe's elites who are so critical of America will often grudgingly acknowledge America's value, argues Victor Davis Hanson in The American.

"Europeans understand that there are advantages to the present relationship between a militarily powerful America and its hypercritical but mostly unarmed European dependent."

"Right now, Europeans have the best of both worlds—an easily caricatured but very cooperative United States. Indeed, Europeans have found relatively little fault in Bush’s second term, during which time conservative governments have taken office in France, Germany, and Italy. The United States has been sending massive AIDS relief to Africa, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Europe on Darfur, pursuing peaceful diplomacy with Iran and North Korea, and offering gracious thanks for European participation in Afghanistan. And who else in the West, other than the United States, is Vladimir Putin worried about?"

"For all their grievances against Bush, Europeans realize that most of the world’s problems either antedated or transcend the current U.S. president and will be here long after he’s gone. Gas prices skyrocketed largely because both importing and exporting governments have not invested enough in petroleum maintenance and new exploration, and because of the voracious appetites of new consumer classes in China and India. Rogue regimes like Russia, Iran, and Venezuela have enough oil wealth that they need not care about the consequences of irritating the West. Bush did not cause global warming, soaring food prices, Islamic terrorism, or the rise of China. And blaming him for the “fiasco” in Iraq is also problematic: the violence there has declined enormously, and Iraqi democracy continues to move forward."

"A few Europeans even acknowledge that, contrary to popular belief, the Iraq war has not “created” jihadists who migrated to Europe. In fact, it has done just the opposite: radical Islamists more often traveled to Iraq—many of them from Europe—where they were killed in large numbers. Iraq, in other words, may well help explain the weakening of al-Qaeda and its increasing inability to replicate the London and Madrid bombings."

John Lewis Gaddis: America must aspire to end tyranny

In the latest edition of The American Interest, Yale's John Lewis Gaddis has a comprehensive account of America's historical role in promoting democracy and opposing tyranny.

Gaddis begins by noting that the normal expectation as the Bush Administration closes ought to be that he will bequeath no foreign policy doctrine to his successors. Very few do - arguably this could be claimed only of President Monroe and President Truman. If Bush leaves a doctrine behind, it will be understood in terms of his second inaugural address: “it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world”.

Prerequisites for democracy
Gaddis explains some of the reasons history has shown such a doctrine can prove problematic:

"Periclean Athens, which blundered into and then lost the Peloponnesian War, and the Roman Republic, which sank so deeply into corruption and violence that its citizens welcomed the benign authoritarianism of Caesar Augustus.

"It’s not just ancient precedents, though ... World War I, which laid so much of the groundwork for despotism, began with widespread public enthusiasm. A free election brought Adolf Hitler to power in Germany in 1933, and he retained the support of most Germans well into the war he started. A persistent American fear throughout the Cold War was that much of the rest of the world might voluntarily choose communism; that led to enlightened counter-measures like the Marshall Plan, but also to unsavory alliances with anti-communist dictators. And the post-Cold War collapse of Yugoslavia together with the events in Rwanda evoked an even more disturbing vision: that people could hate one another to such an extent that ethnic cleansing, even genocide, might have democratic roots.

"Today it seems clear that the people of Russia, if they could have re-elected their increasingly authoritarian President, would overwhelmingly have done so ... Reasonably fair elections have at last been held in the Middle East, but the results have empowered Ahmadinejad in Iran, Hamas in the Palestinian territories, and—despite the courage with which Iraqis risked their lives to vote in three successive elections in 2005—a government in Baghdad that has yet to establish order despite the full military support of the United States and its coalition allies.

"So if ending tyranny is what you want to accomplish, promoting democracy in and of itself may not be enough. Something more seems to be required."

To survive, Gaddis argues, democracy first requires the prerequisites identified by Fareed Zakaria in The Future of Freedom: "personal security, political stability, economic sustainability, the rule of law, the sanctity of contracts, a working constitutional structure. You can’t just topple a tyrant, hold an election and expect a democracy to emerge. How, then, did the idea get started that democracy could sprout where it had no roots?"

Kim Holmes: The choice for America is between global leadership and deference to international consensus

In a column for the Washington Times last week, Kim Holmes of The Heritage Foundation set out his view of the choice America must make about her role in the world:

"In America, there are basically two competing visions. One -- based on our history and the ideas and founding principles embodied in our Constitution -- is of a nation that safeguards and advances the cause of liberty. The other is of an America whose leadership always defers to international bodies, including the whims of the United Nations and the European Union.

"All Americans should reflect on this: If we do not take up the burden of leadership, who will? And, who would we rather have make decisions over our lives?

"If we allow our actions to be determined by other nations that aspire to some evolving idea of 'international law' and 'international consensus,' we should not be surprised by their indifference to our security.

"In such a world, the UN could block a raid we want to conduct to destroy a terrorist camp that launched another brutal attack on America. Or our Secretary of State could be hauled up before a European court to answer charges of 'war crimes' in Iraq.

"The UN or other international body even could decide how Texas, Florida or any other state in the union convicts criminals or manages prisons."

Daniel Larison: US interests do not dictate entering into open conflict with Pakistan

As Pakistani troops are deployed to repulse future American incursions, Daniel Larison of The American Conservative notes the support within both of American's main parties for continuing to send American troops into Pakistan to fight the Taliban:

"[T]hese incursions have been administration policy for the better part of a year, and they are the recommended policy of a future Obama administration, and the conventional wisdom among both Bush and Obama supporters is that this is a brilliant idea.  Trotskyites and Obamacons agree–stand up to Pakistan!  By stand up, of course, they must mean fight, since that is what implementing their plan will require.

... [This situation] requires reconsidering what U.S. interests dictate, and it seems fairly clear that they do not dictate entering into open conflict with the Pakistani military.  Were our forces to engage Pakistan’s military, the consequences would be dire for the cohesion of the country, which is indeed every bit as artificial and unstable as Iraq, and for regional stability.  Let’s be very clear about this: if we stir up Pakistan against our presence in that part of the world, we will end up losing whatever gains we have made in Afghanistan and will turn one of the largest Muslim states in the world, and the only one with nuclear weapons, from an unreliable ally to an open enemy."

Osama bin Laden: The irresistibility of weakness

Hardly a new argument but no less notable for that.  Here are Osama bin Laden's words from the summer of 1996 and his view that America had become weak:

"Few days ago the news agencies had reported that the Defence Secretary of the Crusading Americans had said that "the explosion at Riyadh and Al-Khobar had taught him one lesson: that is not to withdraw when attacked by coward terrorists". We say to the Defence Secretary that his talk can induce a grieving mother to laughter! and shows the fears that had enshrined you all. Where was this false courage of yours when the explosion in Beirut took place on 1983 AD (1403 A.H). You were turned into scattered pits and pieces at that time; 241 mainly marines solders were killed. And where was this courage of yours when two explosions made you to leave Aden in lees than twenty four hours! But your most disgraceful case was in Somalia; where- after vigorous propaganda about the power of the USA and its post cold war leadership of the new world order- you moved tens of thousands of international force, including twenty eight thousands American solders into Somalia. However, when tens of your solders were killed in minor battles and one American Pilot was dragged in the streets of Mogadishu you left the area carrying disappointment, humiliation, defeat and your dead with you. Clinton appeared in front of the whole world threatening and promising revenge, but these threats were merely a preparation for withdrawal. You have been disgraced by Allah and you withdrew; the extent of your impotence and weaknesses became very clear. It was a pleasure for the "heart" of every Muslim and a remedy to the "chests" of believing nations to see you defeated in the three Islamic cities of Beirut, Aden and Mogadishu."

Justin Webb: The world wants the modernity that America provides

Justin Webb, BBC North America Editor, from his book on anti-Americanism, Have A Nice Day:

"The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, criticises Americans in 2008 for being less-caring imperialists than even the British had been. He went further. The problem was wider than American imperialism: Western modernity itself "is eating away at the soul". I like Western modernity. It allows my children to survive diseases that would have killed them only decades ago. It creates educational opportunities their ancestors never had; opportunities for leisure and fun and fulfilment. And it is protected, guaranteed around the world (to the extent that it is guaranteed at all) mainly by American power. It is not guaranteed by China or Russia or Tehran or Brussels. Yes, this modernity, particularly at its American extreme, also creates opportunities for type 2 diabetes and crushing ennui, and for the kind of queasy feelings from which the gentle Archbishop apparently suffers. But to focus on the downside of Western modernity is not to tell the whole story. People want it. And America provides it."