1. Welcome! Please take a few seconds to create your free account to post threads, make some friends, remove a few ads while surfing and much more. ClutchFans has been bringing fans together to talk Houston Sports since 1996. Join us!

Financial Times-How the U.S. Became the World's Dispensable Nation

Discussion in 'BBS Hangout: Debate & Discussion' started by gifford1967, Jan 27, 2005.

Tags:
  1. gifford1967

    gifford1967 Member
    Supporting Member

    Joined:
    Feb 4, 2003
    Messages:
    8,306
    Likes Received:
    4,653
    Financial Times, 25 January 2005
    How the U.S. Became the World's Dispensable Nation
    by Michael Lind

    In a second inaugural address tinged with evangelical zeal, George W. Bush declared: "Today, America speaks anew to the peoples of the world." The peoples of the world, however, do not seem to be listening. A new world order is indeed emerging - but its architecture is being drafted in Asia and Europe, at meetings to which Americans have not been invited.

    Consider Asean Plus Three (APT), which unites the member countries of the Association of Southeast Asia Nations with China, Japan and South Korea. This group has the potential to be the world's largest trade bloc, dwarfing the European Union and North American Free Trade Association. The deepening ties of the APT member states represent a major diplomatic defeat for the US, which hoped to use the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum to limit the growth of Asian economic regionalism at American expense. In the same way, recent moves by South American countries to bolster an economic community represent a clear rejection of US aims to dominate a western-hemisphere free trade zone.

    Consider, as well, the EU's rapid progress toward military independence. American protests failed to prevent the EU establishing its own military planning agency, independent of the Nato alliance (and thus of Washington). Europe is building up its own rapid reaction force. And despite US resistance, the EU is developing Galileo, its own satellite network, which will break the monopoly of the US global positioning satellite system.

    The participation of China in Europe's Galileo project has alarmed the US military. But China shares an interest with other aspiring space powers in preventing American control of space for military and commercial uses. Even while collaborating with Europe on Galileo, China is partnering Brazil to launch satellites. And in an unprecedented move, China recently agreed to host Russian forces for joint Russo-Chinese military exercises.

    The US is being sidelined even in the area that Mr Bush identified in last week's address as America's mission: the promotion of democracy and human rights. The EU has devoted far more resources to consolidating democracy in post-communist Europe than has the US. By contrast, under Mr Bush, the US hypocritically uses the promotion of democracy as the rationale for campaigns against states it opposes for strategic reasons. Washington denounces tyranny in Iran but tolerates it in Pakistan. In Iraq, the goal of democratisation was invoked only after the invasion, which was justified earlier by claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and was collaborating with al-Qaeda.

    Nor is American democracy a shining example to mankind. The present one-party rule in the US has been produced in part by the artificial redrawing of political districts to favour Republicans, reinforcing the domination of money in American politics. America's judges -- many of whom will be appointed by Mr Bush -- increasingly behave as partisan political activists in black robes. America's antiquated winner-take-all electoral system has been abandoned by most other democracies for more inclusive versions of proportional representation.

    In other areas of global moral and institutional reform, the US today is a follower rather than a leader. Human rights? Europe has banned the death penalty and torture, while the US is a leading practitioner of execution. Under Mr Bush, the US has constructed an international military gulag in which the torture of suspects has frequently occurred. The international rule of law? For generations, promoting international law in collaboration with other nations was a US goal. But the neoconservatives who dominate Washington today mock the very idea of international law. The next US attorney general will be the White House counsel who scorned the Geneva Conventions as obsolete.

    A decade ago, American triumphalists mocked those who argued that the world was becoming multipolar, rather than unipolar. Where was the evidence of balancing against the US, they asked. Today the evidence of foreign co-operation to reduce American primacy is everywhere -- from the increasing importance of regional trade blocs that exclude the US to international space projects and military exercises in which the US is conspicuous by its absence.

    It is true that the US remains the only country capable of projecting military power throughout the world. But unipolarity in the military sphere, narrowly defined, is not preventing the rapid development of multipolarity in the geopolitical and economic arenas -- far from it. And the other great powers are content to let the US waste blood and treasure on its doomed attempt to recreate the post-first world war British imperium in the Middle East.

    That the rest of the world is building institutions and alliances that shut out the US should come as no surprise. The view that American leaders can be trusted to use a monopoly of military and economic power for the good of humanity has never been widely shared outside of the US. The trend toward multipolarity has probably been accelerated by the truculent unilateralism of the Bush administration, whose motto seems to be that of the Hollywood mogul: "Include me out."

    In recent memory, nothing could be done without the US. Today, however, practically all new international institution-building of any long-term importance in global diplomacy and trade occurs without American participation.

    In 1998 Madeleine Albright, then US secretary of state, said of the U.S.: "We are the indispensable nation." By backfiring, the unilateralism of Mr Bush has proven her wrong. The US, it turns out, is a dispensable nation.

    Europe, China, Russia, Latin America and other regions and nations are quietly taking measures whose effect if not sole purpose will be to cut America down to size.

    Ironically, the US, having won the cold war, is adopting the strategy that led the Soviet Union to lose it: hoping that raw military power will be sufficient to intimidate other great powers alienated by its belligerence. To compound the irony, these other great powers are drafting the blueprints for new international institutions and alliances. That is what the US did during and after the second world war.

    But that was a different America, led by wise and constructive statesmen like Dean Acheson, the secretary of state who wrote of being "present at the creation." The bullying approach of the Bush administration has ensured that the US will not be invited to take part in designing the international architecture of Europe and Asia in the 21st century. This time, the US is absent at the creation.

    The writer is senior fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington, DC

    http://news.ft.com/comment/personalview
     
    #1 gifford1967, Jan 27, 2005
  2. Cohen

    Cohen Member

    Joined:
    Oct 1, 1999
    Messages:
    10,751
    Likes Received:
    6
    It will be many years, if ever, that the EU's military can develop both the political leadership and military might to even handle a Bosnia.

    He overstates the trade issue. The growth of Trade blocks includes NAFTA, one in which we participate. We may have bungled the FTAA so far, but soon or later it will happen. It's inevitable. As was free trade among Europe and parts of Asia. Free trade between the Americas and the EU will come some day, EU and Asia, Americas and Asia... and so on.

    An 8-year gap in effective Foreign Policy will not change the US from dispensible to indispensible in broad terms, but I understand his context.

    I think he overstates to prob peoples' attention, and his basic premise is that the world will move on even if we isolate ourselves and don't partake in some of the changes...maybe move on their own quicker and w/o consideration for American interests if all we are concerned about is our own interests. That makes sense.
     
    #2 Cohen, Jan 27, 2005
  3. glynch

    glynch Member

    Joined:
    Dec 1, 2000
    Messages:
    18,075
    Likes Received:
    3,605
    An 8-year gap in effective Foreign Policy

    Cohen, of course has supported US policy in the Middle East the most glaring example of ineffective foreign policy.
     
    #3 glynch, Jan 27, 2005
  4. Grizzled

    Grizzled Member

    Joined:
    May 31, 2000
    Messages:
    2,756
    Likes Received:
    40
    This is a brilliant article, and bang on! This is what I was saying in the other thread about the new non-American century that’s developing. Most important, IMO, is the mentality that’s developing in the rest of the world. We don’t believe a word this administration says, not a word. We have 0 trust in its motives, and to a significant extent the rest of the world is simply giving up on the US. (Canada can’t afford to do this, no matter how frustrated we are, because like it or not we’re joined at the hip, economically as well as geographically. We are each other’s biggest trading partner and for Canada fully 80% of our exports go to the US. WAKE UP AMERICA! You’re taking us down with you!)

    This may be true, but given that the US is devolving and now, because of intelligence and strategic incompetence, (it can’t even handle Iraq), I doubt that the US could handle Bosnia now either. The US still has the biggest stick by far, but it’s stupid and blind, so it can’t use that stick effectively. This administration is getting its ass handed to it by Osama bin Laden. It can’t handle Iraq, and Afghanistan may well get away from it as well, and all of this is about leadership, not technical ability.

    This administration is even bungling NAFTA. It’s stance on BSE, which I suspect is the result of them giving in to lobbyists from the American ranching industry, is leading to the construction of more packing plants in Canada (since we can’t ship much of our live cattle over the boarder) and is having a significant impact on the US packing industry. They don’t seem to be able to see the big picture. As bizarre as it sounds, this administration doesn’t seem to be able to understand the concept of free trade. As far as the rest of the world goes, as we discussed in the other thread, their reliance on the US as a market is diminishing. It’s still a significant market, but it’s getting less important, and other markets are growing faster.

    And the US is already struggling with this expanding global market as it is, right? Isn’t there a wave of protectionism rising around the issue of the exporting of American jobs? That’s the result of the emerging global economy, international trade. Rather than wanting to train your people to compete, it seems that some would like to resort to protectionism, which of will further isolate the US and hurt it economically.

    I agree that we’re not talking about black and white states. This isn’t an on/off switch. It’s a trend. But a lot can happen in 8 years, especially this 8 years that seems more and more to be turning out to be a major, global paradigm shift. And then there is the crisis in your democracy, which produces dumb and dumber as presidential candidates and half of your electorate is so disenfranchised that it doesn’t even bother to vote anymore. Yes, I think things could turn around with new leadership, but not Kerry. Yours is a democracy in crisis and it’s not at all clear that your system will allow the type of leadership you need to rise to the top. In fact it looks quite convincingly like it won’t.

    I agree, but I think there is less of an overstatement here then you may think. I don’t think there is much of an overstatement here at all.

    Since Lind makes this point so well, let me move on. I don’t think this issue is really about the US. It’s not really about nationality. It’s about a worldview. It’s easy for people to stereotype the “Americans” but anybody with internet access from Calgary to Calcutta can jump on a discussion board like this and see that there are many many Americans who are every bit as knowledgeable and articulate and concerned as any of the rest of us, if not more so. Furthermore, we have buffoons like Bush in all of our counties too, just not in positions of much power. So the real conflict here is one of worldviews. We have a clash of likeminded people, irrespective of nationality. It’s a generational split to some extent, but I think that’s only a weak association. I would say that it relates more to developmental worldviews as discussed by Habermas (who draws heavily on Kohlberg), Torbert and even Wilber, and the Bible (I’m referring to social gospel type thinking here), but this all needs much more elaboration, perhaps in another thread.
     
    #4 Grizzled, Jan 27, 2005
  5. Cohen

    Cohen Member

    Joined:
    Oct 1, 1999
    Messages:
    10,751
    Likes Received:
    6

    I feel compassion for you glynch.
     
    #5 Cohen, Jan 27, 2005
  6. thegary

    thegary Member

    Joined:
    Jul 22, 2002
    Messages:
    11,008
    Likes Received:
    3,140

    This land is your land,
    This land is my land,
    From California
    To the New York Island,
    From the redwood forest,
    To the Gulf stream waters,
    This land was made for you and me.

    As I was walking,
    That ribbon of highway,
    I saw above me
    That endless skyway,
    I saw below me
    That golden valley.
    This land was made for you and me.



    I've roamed and rambled
    And I've followed my footsteps
    To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts
    And all around me a voice was sounding
    This land was made for you and me

    The sun comes shining
    As I was strolling
    The wheat fields waving
    And the dust clouds rolling
    The fog was lifting a voice come chanting
    This land was made for you and me

    As I was walkin'
    I saw a sign there
    And that sign said no trespassin'
    But on the other side
    It didn't say nothin!
    Now that side was made for you and me!

    In the squares of the city
    In the shadow of the steeple
    Near the relief office
    I see my people
    And some are grumblin'
    And some are wonderin'
    If this land's still made for you and me.

    Nobody living can ever stop me
    As I go walking
    That freedom highway
    Nobody living can make me turn back
    This land was made for you and me

    OTHER VERSES

    (CANADIAN CHORUS)
    This land is your land,
    This land is my land,
    From Bonavista
    To Vancouver Island,
    From the Artic Circle,
    To the Great Lake waters,
    This land was made for you and me.

    roamed and I rambled
    And I followed my footsteps
    To the fir-clad forests
    Of our mighty mountains
    And all around me
    A voice was calling,
    This land was made for you and me.

    I followed your low hills
    And I followed your cliff rims,
    Your marble canyons
    And sunny bright waters.
    As the fog was lifting,
    A voice was saying
    This land was made for you and me.

    When the sun comes shining
    And I am strolling,
    And the wheat fields waving
    And dust clouds rolling,
    As the fog was lifting
    A voice was calling,
    This land was made for you and me.
     
    #6 thegary, Jan 27, 2005
(You must log in or sign up to post here.)

Share This Page