Posted on 09/09/2005 4:56:21 PM PDT by strategofr
For all the national angst over Afghanistan and Iraq, historians will come to appreciate that sometime after 2001 the United States embarked on a radically different, much riskier, and ultimately more humane foreign policy — one of both pulling in our horns while at the same time promoting risky democratic reform in targeted areas.
Such a complex and hard-to-define change explains why conservative realists are chagrined by its Wilsonian traits, even as leftist isolationists are equally furious that it is imperial. Mainstream out-of-power Democrats don’t like what we are doing because of George Bush, while traditional Republicans stay the course mostly because it is now the party line.
But examine the policies of the last four years in some detail and the current charges about empire, hegemony, imperialism, and all the other common invective increasingly make little sense.
The United States, at some risk to its own economy, has essentially opened its entire market to the Chinese — not just to force global competitiveness within its own industries, or even to flood us with cheap goods, but also to bring the quasi-Communist giant back into the world community.
While Democratic leaders demand hammering the Chinese, and the Europeans erect barriers, U.S. willingness to incur trade debt and not regulate foreign investment has almost overnight jumpstarted China as a global player — dangerous of course, but perhaps less so if it has a stake in the world commercial order.
India is the same story. Tens of millions of its citizens have overnight seen a revolutionary material improvement in their standard of living. This has mostly been due once again to classical liberalism on the part of the United States, which resisted protectionism and allowed billions in capital and millions of jobs to be outsourced to the Indians — often at terrible costs in unemployment and readjustment here at home.
As a result while a socialist, subsidized, and protectionist Europe racks up trade surpluses, despite its utopian rhetoric, it does far less to bring others up to Western standards of commerce and consumerism. That might explain why, if the Germans and French do not appreciate us, the Indians and Chinese apparently do. How odd that we worry over the infantile rants of 140 million envious and ignore the begrudging admiration of 2 billion increasingly confident.
Far from being imperial, the United States, aside from its efforts to close military bases here at home — often bitterly resisted by Democratic congressmen — is trying to bring troops home from nations that quite unrealistically do not shoulder their own defense responsibilities and seek cover for that abdication through cheap shots at America for both leaving and staying. It was not the Clinton administration that began withdrawing soldiers in large numbers from Germany, took all American troops out of Saudi Arabia, and began redeploying contingents from the DMZ in Korea — with promises of much more to come.
Confusion also reigns over the American rebuke needed to reform the United Nations. Critics should ask themselves, was the U.N. of 1999 in better shape than today? Then, it was in the midst of a still covered-up, billion-dollar Oil-for-Food scandal, while the shenanigans of the Secretary-General’s son went unknown, and horrific regimes served on the U.N.’s human rights commissions. Now, Kofi Annan and other U.N. bureaucrats themselves are suddenly decrying scandal and inefficiency, and calling for reform. We should ask them: why is all that happening now?
And why are troops out of Lebanon today when they were not in 1995? Why is Hosni Mubarak at least going through the motions of holding rigged elections that he would not, say, in 1992? Are the Palestinians better off with the Arafat dynasty of the Oslo days or with the semblances of a democratically elected government — and did the latter have anything to do with, first, the ostracism and, second, the ignominious death of Arafat, who once was so dearly beloved in European and American capitals?
Despite the torrent of abuse following the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, are Arab intellectuals more or less certain today (than say 1995) that the United States only cares about realpolitik — and does nothing to promote the democratic aspirations of the Arab people?
Is multilateralism an objective good in all circumstances or only a useful slogan to trash current policies in Iraq? Thus are current efforts to involve many nations to pressure North Korea bad or good? And is the outsourcing of the Iranian bomb problem for a time to the multilateral Europeans cowboyish or prudently communal? Indeed, some who last year called for US unilateral intervention to save Darfur (in the manner they had earlier demanded such steps in Mogadishu) are the first to castigate our efforts in Iraq that have won more of an allied presence than any adventure in the Sudan might.
What, then, is going on under the radar, as leftists here at home continue to fault American foreign policy, even as it is caricatured abroad by European elites?
In some sense, the United States is reverting to its isolationist past by wanting to downsize in South Korea and Europe, convinced that our presence is only resented — and that if Germany cannot be trusted after 60 years, or if after 50 South Korea cannot take care of itself, then there is not much more we can do anyway.
In other aspects, we are readjusting, taking the pulse of Japan and India and offering them closer ties if they wish — to allay their worries about radical Islam and Chinese expansionism, but in a way far more subtle than John Foster Dulles’s globe-trotting.
By the same token, the United States intervened in Iraq and Afghanistan in the long-term hope that its terrorists and oil-dollar weapons would no longer be threats, and that by constitutional reform there, we could eventually lessen our military presence in the region.
Thus the odd spectacle of Iraqi and Afghan reformers worried that we will not stay long enough, even as the Pentagon is worried that we have stayed too long. The Saudis, Palestinians, and Egyptians are angry that we are too disengaged from them and too intimate with Iraqi, Afghan, and Lebanese reformers. Meanwhile, Muslim Brotherhood types and other Islamists say we are too cozy to autocrats even as they mobilize to subvert the elections we alone are promoting — while the fearful autocrats damn us as too naïve and too readily caving in to radicals masquerading as democrats.
I don’t know what we should call all of this. But so far, no foreign-policy expert has come up with a non-partisan and intellectually honest diagnosis.
Perhaps it is a Zen-like mood we are in, of gradually allowing others to come to the fore, albeit with a warning “Go ahead, make my day, and see if you can do any better on your own.”
With the smoke of gunfire yet in the air, the marshal is backing slowly out of the crowded and creepy saloon, but staring down outlaws and with six-guns still drawn.
But this article is a "potboiler" IMHO.
It's not a good idea to count on lasting gratitude between nations. France and Germany were grateful to us once, too.
The conflict between isolationism and internationalism or interventionism has to do with our relations with Europe, and to a lesser degree, Asia. For a very long, time, isolationism wasn't an option in our relations with Mexico or Central America or the Caribbean. We intervened in their affairs as a matter of course. Today it looks like we're taking the same approach with the Middle East. Whether it will work or not is something we'll find out soon enough.
It's one thing to damn the U.S. unfairly for conducting business with China, but it's also maniacal to damn someone for pointing out that the U.S. is facilitating the next global replacement of Germany.
What has China done with it's newfound wealth? At least in part it has insinuated itself globally, even into the Americas. At least in part it has spent vast sums modernizing it's military, allowing it to at least think it can obtain by military means, long held goals. At least in part, it has emboldened the Chinese government to seek alliances that would see it partnered with Russia and more than one middle eastern nation, against us.
It has also set up a situation where China is competing with the west for energy sources, namely oil.
Is this a better China than say a 1990s China? Some would say so. Not supriseingly they are the same folks that would like us to place all our chips on the bet that the west's trade with China will bring about different results than the west's trade with Germany and Japan pre-WW II.
There is a zen-like mood out there alright. Sadly all the swooning is being practiced by those who refuse to learn anything from the run-up to past wars.
Germany and France are a joke when it comes to foreign policy, specificly the Middle-East. However, when it comes to China, they've definately seen the handwritting on the wall.
Mini, mini tekel u parsen. You've have been weighed in the balance and found wanting.
Anyone who can take a look at what China is doing with it's new-found wealth, and not think we're playing Chinese Roulette, just isn't playing with a full deck IMO.
And even If I'm wrong, I still think you did some good writing. I'm not sure what it means for China, but then what's China got to do with good writin.
Regards...writin that is!
LOL, regards back at you... for responses that is.
Your writin is good and crisp and clear.
But what the heck has China to do with it?
The United States, at some risk to its own economy, has essentially opened its entire market to the Chinese — not just to force global competitiveness within its own industries, or even to flood us with cheap goods, but also to bring the quasi-Communist giant back into the world community.
Does this guy really think we're bringing China back into the world community? It's taking our money and using it to build a force and alliances to confront us with. At least that's the way I see it.
BTW, I'm taping Sgt. York right now. I'll be burning it to DVD in the next couple of days.
I'll have to keep my eye open for that one. Sounds good. Thanks. I've heard of it before, but haven't seen it air since I started my madd campaign to record the world...
LOL
It is just that America is an advanced civilization that other countries are behind in mentality with hatred of America just because of their cheap pride of nationalism or brainwashed by communist and religious propaganda. Our ideology of "justice" spreading freedom, liberty, and democracy could not be compromised.
I will do more than admire your style, I will also commend your thinking.
Thanks. I appreciate it.
Ping.
Ask yourself what Ronald Reagan did with Soviet Russia. Did he see their 'evil empire' and decide to rain world class trade in upon them? No, he ran them into the dirt and forced them to change their stripes.
While Russia may still be problematic, it's by no means the world class threat it was decades ago. Despite this example, the U.S. has determined to do precisely the opposite with regard to China.
What have the results been? We are so far off track that it would be hard to get the locomotive back on it.
Trade with China should end immediately. It should never have started, and it's a sellout of every principle we've ever espoused to have even started it.
We have another evil empire, and it is we who have capitulated, not China. This makes me sick. We have taken a stand that is devoid of moral compass, and is no better than the policies that primed Germany for WWII.
"Does this guy really think we're bringing China back into the world community? It's taking our money and using it to build a force and alliances to confront us with. At least that's the way I see it."
Much truth to your view. In the short run you are right. Maybe in the long run too. What were really doing with China is playing the capitalist game. One bottom-line question, there is, how close is what's going on in China to capitalism, and how much does a resemble slavery?
One key question that is difficult to answer is, what will really happen in China over the medium term? Perhaps 300 million people in China are now living in severe poverty. if their income drops, they will start starving to death.
The Chinese Communist government cannot embark on true capitalism and simultaneously maintain true communist tyranny in the political sense. Nor probably will this communist government relinquish any political power whatsoever. So the ultimate potential of Chinese prosperity under under communism is much more limited than most observers can understand. This ultimately puts limits on their military power as well.
Of course, Communism could genuinely fall in China, freeing them up for greater economic development, but then the political consequences of China for the US would be much improved.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.