Martin Jacques
Thursday 9:28 AM
By placing John Bolton at the United Nations and Paul Wolfowitz at
the World Bank, the neocons are extending their influence into the
architecture of the international order. Martin Jacques challenges
Europeans on their reluctance to stand up for an international order
based on the rule of law and collective security and to so readily
accept the strategic moves of the neoconservatives in Washington.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1448651,00.html
Guardian Unlimited | Guardian daily comment |
Comment
The neocon revolution
US unilateralism was a means of breaking the old order. Now it is
building new alliances
Martin Jacques
Thursday March 31, 2005
The Guardian
With any new political phenomenon, there is always a tendency to
underestimate its novelty and treat it as some kind of short-term
aberration. I vividly recall how long it took commentators and
analysts, on the right and left, to recognise that Thatcherism was
something quite new and here to stay. Similar doubts greeted the Bush
administration and the neocon revolution: its novelty would be
short-lived, it would not last and it was just not viable. It is
always hard to imagine a new kind of world, easier to think of the
future as an extension of the past, and difficult to comprehend a
paradigm shift and grasp a new kind of logic.
There was speculation last autumn that the second Bush term would be
different, that the breach with Europe would be healed as a matter of
necessity, that the US could not afford another Iraq, that somehow
the new position was unsustainable. Already, however, from last
November's presidential election it was clear that the neocon
revolution had wide popular support and serious electoral roots, that
it was establishing a new kind of domestic political hegemony. In
fact, the right has been setting the political agenda in the US for
at least 30 years and that is now true with a vengeance. All the
indications suggest that the revolution is continuing apace.
The appointment of John Bolton as the US ambassador to the United
Nations and the nomination of Paul Wolfowitz as president of the
World Bank reveal a determination to place the cadres of the neocon
revolution in key positions of power and influence and thereby create
the conditions for its continuation and expansion. This was heralded
almost immediately after the presidential election with the decision
to replace Colin Powell, a man of very different political hue, with
Condoleezza Rice as secretary of state.
During the first Bush administration, and especially in its conduct
of the Iraq war, the neocon revolution was often characterised as
unilateralist, but this was always somewhat simplistic. No nation can
simply go it alone, certainly not one that seeks to dominate the
world. However strong it may be, it is still required to pursue its
power and ambitions through a system of alliances. The end of the
cold war led to the realisation that the US was now the world's sole
superpower. The period following 9/11 persuaded the Americans that
they now had an opportunity to remake the world in their own image,
that the alliances that had been necessary in pursuit of the cold
war, notably that with Europe, were no longer appropriate, certainly
not on the old terms.
The US has similarly renounced, or chosen to ignore, many of the
international treaties that it had previously been party to - Kyoto,
the international criminal court, even the Geneva conventions -
either because it no longer believed in them or because it regarded
them as a threat to the exercise of a new kind of American power. But
it would be more accurate to see this unilateralism as a phase rather
than a permanent new condition, as a means of breaking the old order
rather than a long-term strategy for the new.
The Bush administration has displayed a differential calculus. The
heart of its strategy has been concerned with the Middle East where
it has deployed a unilateralist policy of pre-emptive strikes and
regime change as part of a wider attempt to remake the region. The
Europeans were disregarded and relegated to the role of bystanders.
In East Asia, the Americans have behaved quite differently. North
Korea, like Iraq and Iran, was part of the axis of evil, but there
has been no attempt at regime change. North Korea's nuclear weapons,
the geographical proximity of Seoul, the opposition of South Korea
towards precipitous action, and the role and interest of China, have
obliged the Americans to move with caution. Far from unilateralism,
they have vested their efforts in the six-party talks, and the hope
that China might act as a restraining force on Pyongyang.
In the longer run, China remains the greatest global challenge to the
US. But here again the Americans have moved with care and restraint.
They sought to enlist China in the war against terror following 9/11,
and since then relations between the two have been relatively calm.
Meanwhile, the Americans will continue to give tacit support to
Taiwan and quietly encourage Japan's growing nationalism as a bulwark
against China and a means of protecting their own role in the region.
It is clear, in this context, that there are three main elements to
American unilateralism: Iraq and the Middle East; the Atlantic
alliance; and the US's attitude towards international treaties and
law. Although the Americans flagrantly ignored the Europeans over
Iraq, and have loosened the bonds that previously existed in a way
that undermines the notion of the west as shaped in the crucible of
the cold war, they will seek to build a new relationship with Europe,
albeit one far less intimate and far more unequal than before. As for
Europe, there would appear to be clear limits as to how far it is
prepared to go to resist the Americans.
There are two small defining moments in this process. The Europeans
may feel decidedly uneasy about Wolfowitz becoming president of the
World Bank - with the exception, of course, of Bush's European
lapdog, our prime minister - but they are evidently going to
acquiesce. American and European dominance of the institutions of the
international economy ensures that the two will continue to
cooperate, even if the relationship is likely to be more tense and
fractious. The other example is the European Union's attitude towards
the arms embargo with China. Under American pressure, the likely
decision to lift it will now be postponed: the ties are still
sufficiently strong for Europe not to wish to anger the Americans
beyond a certain point. The prospects of a drift towards any form of
triangulation in the relationship between the US, Europe and China,
even at the edges, are still very distant.
The withdrawal of the US from international treaties does not condemn
international law to the dustbin of history. It is evident, however,
that the Americans are determined either to render these treaties
redundant simply by ignoring them, force them to be renegotiated or
perhaps both. In effect, what the Americans are intent on doing is
reordering the world system to take account of their newly defined
power and interests. Every part of the world is likely to feel the
consequences of this geo-political earthquake, but some much more
than others.
The restless determination of the Bush administration to reorder
global affairs is well-illustrated by a classified document prepared
by the US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld as a prelude to a massive
review of Pentagon spending. It requires the military to build a far
more proactive force focused on changing the world rather than
responding to specific conflicts such as the Korean peninsula. It
sees the development of very differently trained troops who would be
able to intervene on a much more widespread basis. "The idea is that
you would have lots of teams operating in lots of places throughout
the world," a senior defence official was reported as saying. At the
same time, there is an absolute belief that the US must maintain such
a large lead in crucial technologies that growing powers - in other
words, China - will decide that it is simply too expensive to try to
compete. Welcome to the new world order as seen from Washington.
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