After Iraq:
Saving the
good in American
foreign policy
By
Jonathan
Power
TFF Associate
since 1991
Comments directly
to JonatPower@aol.com
October 25, 2006
LONDON - It was the rebelling colonial subjects of
Britain in America who, in their Declaration of Independence in 1776,
first synthesized the best ideas of the Enlightenment philosophers of
Europe. And they did that in the most inspiring prose that makes the subsequent
French document of thirteen years later, the Declaration of the Rights
of Man, look like a shopping list.
The Americans invented the modern liberal republic. It was the Americans
who took a brilliant idea, two and half thousand years old, which had
briefly flourished but then faded away, and reintroduced it to the modern
world - democracy. It was America that inspired the French Revolution,
although as has often happened since, as Napoleon rampaged all over Europe,
it came to regret what it had provoked.
As one who spent a portion of his youth working on Martin Luther King’s
staff during his campaign against the slums of Chicago whilst the war
in Vietnam was being waged, I have never confused the periodic failures
of America abroad with the idealism, instinct for human rights and the
belief in the ultimate power of the ballot box that is at the heart of
American life. Some, like President George W. Bush, may come to power
and pervert these ideals as well as waging an unnecessary war, claiming
the lives of tens of thousands of innocents, but I have no doubt that
in all good time America will revert to its fundamental benign beliefs.
At the same time, as Iraq underlines for a new generation the danger of
shallow thinking as Vietnam did for ours, we need to be fully aware that
on the other side of America’s revolutionary democracy coin there
is an almost innate desire for a revolutionary foreign policy, and one
too often puffed up with the notion of “manifest destiny”.
Contrary to what many Americans realize, the U.S. has been from almost
the beginning expansionist. As Fareed Zakaria has written, “Ever
since the 13 colonies relentlessly marched west to acquire and occupy
the continent, expansionism and imperialism have been part of the American
ideal”.
These ambitions were not exhausted with the conquest of the Indians and
later of California. In the 1850s, in the aftermath of the Mexican war,
“depriving us of over half our national territory”, in the
words of Octavio Paz, American leaders waxed lyrical on the need for further
expansion. American diplomats tried to negotiate the purchase of parts
of Cuba and Hawaii. Even Canada was a target. John Quincy Adams thought
that in the end the U.S. would annex all of North America.
Nevertheless, throughout the long history of U.S.-prompted “regime
change” - in Hawaii, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Mexico, Iran,
Chile, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Central America, Panama, Greece
and, most recently, South Vietnam and Iraq, Americans have always been
confronted by the question whether their practices conformed with their
stated principles. As Robert Kagan writes in his profound new book “Dangerous
Nation”, “When Americans’ pursuit of material and spiritual
happiness thrust them into involvement with other peoples, the principal
of universal rights they proclaimed often became part that interaction.
The principle served as a kind of superego looming in judgement over Americans’
egoistic pursuits”.
William Fulbright, the chairman of the U.S. Senate’s Foreign Relations
Committee published a book in the middle of the Vietnam War, entitled
“The Arrogance of Power”. One wonders what term of endearment
he would use for his country today? Fulbright was Bill Clinton’s
mentor but Clinton himself seemed unable to say more than that the U.S
couldn’t be “simply another great power”; he appeared
unable to put flesh on the thought. Bush with his “axis of evil”
campaign did give America a role, but with the most counterproductive
consequences. By making military might a substitute for negotiation and
diplomacy he made the common mistake of those who fly too close to the
sun.
In the months ahead as the inevitable American withdrawal from Iraq gets
under way, the rest of the world must resist the temptation either to
gloat or to diplomatically shun America. America’s basic principles
are still needed in our volatile world. Americans for their part should
recall at this moment of historic failure Montesquieu who, commenting
on the fall of Rome and the empires of Spain and France, explained it
was because “they had attained a greater Power than had wisdom sufficient
to direct; for the sake of gratifying the passion of the Day, they lost
sight of their lasting Interest.” Americans have to ask themselves
once again, why have they given in to their baser, expansionist desires?
Copyright © 2006 By
JONATHAN POWER
I can be reached by
phone +44 7785 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
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