-Caveat Lector-
> America says: never again!
>
> After Kosovo, the US is wary of a humanitarian foreign policy. A
> Kissinger-style realpolitik may be on its way back, writes John
> Lloyd
>
> <Picture>The most humanitarian war fought in modern times may be
> the last of the genre for some while. In the US the lessons being
> drawn about the war in Kosovo are not encouraging for those who
> think that foreign policies should be ethical and humanitarian.
> Where, before the war, some mocked the idea, now many mock the
> practice.
>
> This re-examination will change foreign policy, especially if
> George W Bush becomes president of the US (at present, he is the
> preferred candidate, Republican or Democrat). But it is also
> likely to be the case if Al Gore keeps the White House in
> Democrat hands. The Kosovo "adventure" is widely thought to have
> been a mistake.
>
> In the US recently, I interviewed Condoleeza Rice, the provost of
> Stanford University, in California, and a former national
> security aide to George W's father, in the Bush presidency. Rice
> is now chief foreign policy adviser to George W: in a second Bush
> presidency, she would likely be either secretary of state or
> national security adviser.
>
> Rice talked largely about Russia, on which she is an expert. She
> said that the efforts by the west to micro-manage Russia's
> transition to the market and democracy were ill conceived; and
> that we were too insouciant about a corruption so huge that it
> enveloped the very top. "I think that what's called for now is a
> major disengagement from Russia's domestic politics," she said.
> "What we've learnt is that if reform is not supported strongly at
> home, as it was in Poland, then there is not much we can do and
> it won't work." When I asked her to broaden this approach out
> into other areas, she was cautious: George W has not thought
> through his foreign policy posture yet and doesn't want anyone
> putting him into a box too soon. But she ventured: "US foreign
> policy, if it's going to be effective, needs US domestic support;
> a humanitarian intervention is difficult for most people to
> understand when it is prolonged. I can see the need to respond to
> terrible tragedies, but we have to be sure we're doing it for the
> right reasons in the right way."
>
> Rice is here appealing to a strand of thought which has gathered
> force over this past year. It might be called "Kissinger
> revisited". It views the world as made up of states and alliances
> of states that, in general, pursue their own interests as
> strongly as they can. Those interests are often centuries old,
> dictated by geography. While they can change very radically -
> Britain's interests changed in this century from being those of a
> world power to being those of a major European state - they do so
> over a period of time and are usually dictated by outside
> pressure, rather than by the sudden dawn of enlightenment. Though
> democracies are often more easily dealt with than non-democratic
> states, there is no presumption in favour of alliances with other
> democracies. One-party states may be more important to one's
> strategic interest - as is the case with China. US foreign policy
> must thus be a hard-headed calculation of short-term gain and
> long-term security - the calculation all other states are making,
> too.
>
> But - the critics say - foreign policy under Clinton has not been
> like that. "US foreign policy has been basically Fukuyamist,"
> says Charles William Maynes, head of the Eurasia Foundation, a
> non-governmental organisation in Washington that runs civil
> society programmes in the former Soviet Union. "It has assumed
> that the world was ready for democracy and the market and that
> there were no other large beasts in the jungle. But history, as
> we've found, has not ended."
>
> Dmitri Simes, who was an adviser to Richard Nixon and who now
> heads the Nixon Center for Peace and Freedom, in Washington,
> recalls in his book After the Collapse that the former president
> went to Russia in 1993 and warned its foreign policy
> establishment of the "myth . . . that American democracy can be
> exported to other nations" and that "all economic problems can be
> solved by adopting free market policies".
>
> The gathering consensus points to a US that defines its interests
> more narrowly, assumes that other states do not necessarily wish
> to be like Americans and takes a much more sceptical view of
> humanitarian missions. Three political scientists who were high
> officials in the Pentagon in Clinton's first term - William J
> Perry, the former defence secretary, with Ashton Carter and
> Graham Allison, who were assistant defence secretaries - have
> produced a matrix that they call the "ABC list". In this
> hierarchy of risks and interests, the "A" list includes threats
> to US survival - as the USSR was and Russia, because of its
> nuclear arsenal, still is. The "B" list includes threats to US
> interests but not to its survival - such as North Korea or Iraq.
> And the "C" list is composed of contingencies that "indirectly
> affect US security but do not directly threaten US interests . .
> . the Kosovos, Bosnias, Somalias, Rwandas and Haitis".
>
> In the nature of things, much more time should be given to the
> "A" than to the "C" list. But in fact the "C" list issues have
> dominated our attention and our leaders' time. The crisis in
> Kosovo, though it took place in south-east Europe, did not
> directly threaten the interests of the major European states much
> more than it did America's.
>
> Traditional "A" list issues have come to seem less threatening
> with the end of the cold war; but the "C" list issues are also
> more televisual. Joseph Nye, the dean of Harvard's Kennedy School
> of Government and himself a former assistant defence secretary,
> writes in the current issue of Foreign Affairs that "the dramatic
> visual portrayals of immediate human conflict and suffering are
> far easier to convey to the public than 'A' list abstractions
> like the possibility of a 'Weimar Russia', the rise of a
> hegemonic China and the importance of our alliance with Japan, or
> the potential collapse of the international system of trade and
> investment. Yet if these large, more abstract issues were to turn
> out badly, they would have a far greater impact on the lives of
> most Americans [and Europeans]."
>
> Humanitarian ventures in foreign affairs have two sides: the
> "nice" is dispensing aid to the needy, which makes the donors
> feel better. The "nasty" side is deterring those who create the
> needy and the victims - but who rarely do so in a simple black
> and white manner. The crisis in the former Yugoslavia has seen
> Serb as well as Bosnian victims; the decision to fight the forces
> of Slobodan Milosevic was replete with moral and other hazards;
> and the decision to wage war claimed innocent victims.
>
> The calculations now being made in and for the US will soon be
> made for Europe - or rather, since there is no effective common
> foreign policy, will be made in and for each of the European
> states. There will be a certain rowing back from the rhetoric we
> heard over Kosovo: though the result was a victory, the financial
> cost was huge and will get larger if the promises to bring in a
> "Marshall plan for the Balkans" ever become reality. We cannot do
> this regularly: if our larger strategic interest demanded that we
> pour resources into the former Soviet Union to stop its collapse,
> we would be forced to make real sacrifices.
>
> From these debates we begin to see some trends. The US will
> withdraw somewhat; it needs a European ally but it needs that
> ally to take more responsibility for its "backyard". Increasingly
> the US will focus upon China and the Far East.
>
> The "humanitarian" or "ethical" dimension will have to be
> redefined. Governments are pushed by public outcries generated by
> the media; yet the will to do something collapses the moment that
> there are casualties - as happened in the US when its soldiers
> were killed in Somalia. It is likely to happen in most of Europe,
> though Britain may genuinely be a bit different in this regard.
>
> The call made by Tony Blair in his speech in Chicago in April -
> to develop agreed principles of intervention - is being worked
> through. It will be hard to get agreement, especially with a
> Russia and a China rendered hostile by their experiences of the
> Kosovan war.
>
> The peace dividend has been taken. European military strength is
> both low and ineffective. The two main military forces - Britain
> and France - are naturally configured for national defence, not
> for European missions. The German and Italian forces are
> conscripted and relatively lightly equipped. If Europe is to take
> responsibility for its "backyard", it must have a credible
> military force that it can deploy as a single entity. That is a
> long way from being the case. Military budgets will increase.
>
> Finally, we should not welcome the triumph of Kissinger
> revisited. Under the rhetoric of globalisation and universal
> democracy, there is a flight from authoritarianism.
>
> The demonstration against ayatollahs in Iran and against
> Milosevic in Yugoslavia do not have the stars and stripes on
> their placards, and many in these demonstrations are hostile to
> the west; but they do want some of the freedoms that we have. We
> have to live not at the end of history but between various stages
> of it.
>From NewStatesman.Co.UK
A<>E<>R
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