America’s relationship with the world is in disrepair...
"Anger, resentment, and fear have replaced the respect the United States once enjoyed. What single policy or gesture can the next president of the United States make?"
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Here's my 3 choices out of the 12 published.
Foreign Policy asked 12 of the world’s leading thinkers to answer a question: What one policy or gesture can the next president of the United States make to improve America’s standing in the world?
Quote:
Step on the Gas By Kenneth Rogoff
...insist that the U.S. Congress pass a huge increase in gas taxes. To be more precise, the United States should implement steep carbon taxes that hit coal, heating oil, and natural gas. The tax should be enough to raise the price of gasoline by at least $2 a gallon.
Unrepentant Power By Jorge I. Domínguez
Re-read the opening lines of the U.S. Declaration of Independence. There, the Founders pledged the nation to bear “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind.” They vowed to resist the temptation to insist that American views should always prevail. They affirmed that the very idea of liberty intrinsically presumes that we will not all follow the same path.
Steady as She Goes By Fouad Ajami
...the pretense of intellectuals and pundits who shelter under American power while bemoaning the sins of the country that provides their protection. When and if a postAmerican world arrives, it will not be pretty or merciful. If we be Rome, darkness will follow the American imperium.
Nothing dramatically new needs to be done by the next American...
Point taken, Steve, but ...
Quote:
Originally Posted by
SteveMetz
Steady as She Goes By Fouad Ajami
...the pretense of intellectuals and pundits who shelter under American power while bemoaning the sins of the country that provides their protection. When and if a postAmerican world arrives, it will not be pretty or merciful. If we be Rome, darkness will follow the American imperium.
Nothing dramatically new needs to be done by the next American...
"We shall be mobbed when we go there by people who are eager for deliverance from the tyranny and the great big prison of Saddam Hussein."
Fouad Ajami, Senate testimony, September 2002
This may not be the place for it, but I think a large part of the mess in Iraq lays squarely at the feet of Rumsfeld. If he had listened to Shinseki and sent in more troops, if we had developed a solid plan for the occupation period, if we hadn't engaged in wholesale, zero-tolerence de-Baathification .. We might be looking back on Ajami's words as prophetic.
I know that "woulda, shoulda, coulda" isn't useful as excuse or explanation, and that therre were other parties involved. Nonetheless, the sheer arrogant incompetance of Rumsfeld, by itself, was the necesssaqry and sufficient condition for the situation thaat ensued.
To comment on-thread, I'm unsure that 12 of the world's
"leading thinkers" comprise the right group to provide much decent 'advice' simply because they, as Steve aptly illustrates, will bear no responsibility for what the next President does or does nor do. America's standing in the world is unlikely to be changed too much by the actions of that individual (though he or she will certainly have an effect on short term perceptions). I say that because the "thinkers" will bring their agendas into the answer, as illustrated, and that their views will almost certainly be rather unrealistic and generally of little substance -- as Stan's three choices show.
To comment on the off-thread commentary above:
Ajami obviously did what I suggest and pushed his agenda. That anyone believed or acted on that is a lick on them.
Rumsfeld did err in pushing for too small a force; Bush deserves an Attaboy for overruling him and giving Frank's most of what he asked for. Rumsfeld, when all is said and done was a civilian and a businessman. He did not possess -- and almost no SecDef has possessed or will possess -- the military experience to make decisions of force movement, application and effects; that's the job of the Armed Forces and it is not a stab in the back to say that they did not do that aspect of the job at all well. That needs to be acknowledge and rectified so that it does not happen again.
The CentCom and Joint Staffs and the Army deserve a knock for not developing a solid plan for post attack period. In fairness to all of them, they were victims of a doctrine and training gap created by their predecessors. The BCTP, for example, is a great program -- except for the fact that in prior years when the 'victory' was won, they then turned off the computers and lights and left the room. No real effort was expended on Phase IV actions. People who are not trained to perform and action generally will "ad-hoc" it and are likely to err. I understand that has been fixed. What we should not lose sight of is the fact that the misguided attempt to eschew nation building and COIN as a real doctrinal tenet did the nation, this particular administration, DoD and the Army -- and, more importantly, the Troops themselves -- and even the Iraqis a distinct disservice.
The post Viet Nam leadership of the Army built a great force, almost certainly the best we've ever had and they deserve great praise for doing that -- while that does mitigate it does not excuse their attempt to lead foreign policy with flawed 'doctrines' and wishful thinking. Failure to provide a full spectrum force was an error, pure and simple. Many studies in the early 80s warned of the problem but DoD and the Armed Forces desperately tried to ignore them. there are many reasons for this -- the validity of those reasons is suspect.
Our penchant for listening to the Perles, Kristols -- and yes, Talbots and Albrights -- when they try to dictate policy based on their agendas and ideology is one of our national weaknesses. Appointing these 'thinkers' to policy positions has never worked well. The Bundys, the Feiths and the Wolfotwits should never be put in a position to actually affect anything.
We never had a chance to achieve a "Paris style welcome" in Iraq and, in fairness to the Intel Community, that was said. Also in fairness, they did not say it strongly enough and thus got ignored. I place the blame on that failure to be assertive on the innate desire of the IC to never be wrong -- as well as on the degree of uncertainty caused by the Humint failures engendered by a number of Congresses and idealistic efforts that inadvertently emasculated the IC over the years from 1962 forward. To again be fair, the politicization by the IC themselves helped create that problem (and the continuing trend will not help them much). If the next Prez wants to really do some good, the IC will be put in a big bag and thoroughly shaken up...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve Metz:
The third explanation is the "stab in the back" theory—success was attainable had not some organization deliberately prevented it. Those who promote this insidious position—and they are likely to be die-hard supporters of the Bush legacy from either within the administration or the conservative idealist community—will blame the U.S. military or the intelligence community, or the media and Democrats for turning the public against the counterinsurgency campaign.
While I do not disagree with what you say and do agree it has potential for long term damage, I also suggest that in effect occurred post Viet Nam and that the Armed Forces tried to ascribe the problem to Politicians and the Media and claimed they just did what they were told to do. True -- but we have never really acknowledged that the most significant problem in Viet Nam was the that a Euro-centric Army tried to fight a land war in Europe in the paddies of southeast Asia for seven long years before it got smart.
In Iraq, we did the same thing and the institution needs to acknowledge that error. The institution deserves an Attaboy for realizing that error in only 18 month, a quantum improvement over Viet Nam -- it also should ask itself why it took that long; why it took another 18 months to start remediating that error; and why it took 18 more months to implement that remediation and it needs to avoid a repetition by developing full spectrum forces that know what to do in ANY situation where they Army be deployed. This is being done and it needs to continue and forthright honesty in addressing and admitting the errors would be a distinct asset
Quote:
Originally posted by Steve Metz
Just as AQ did not attack the United States because it "hates freedom."
The problem is that because the American public and Congress have an influence on our strategy, we have to cast it as a moral crusade. When reality shatters that portrayal (as it often does), we become ineffective.
Which gets me back on-thread.
If the next President wants to return the respect the US nominally enjoyed in some mythical time (1945-47 ??? :D) with a single action (dream scenario...) S/he can reform our totally ignorant and incompetent media so that they educate (since our education K-12 system does not do this well) and inform the public and the Congress (since they seem incapable of absorbing the information available to them) of the real world in which we live instead of the entertainment and celebrity world they inculcate (deliberately). Our media is a world laughing stock and bears great responsibility for our lack of perceived respect...
I won't even go into the difference between 'like' and 'respect' as it appears many confuse the two words... ;)
I think our relationship with the world...
has been up and down for decades. Add to that, no one loves Rome when it demands a price, they only love Rome when it is giving them something.
And that is neither a belief in American Imperialism nor a rejection of it (at least in soft power terms, if not militarily).
If I may interject, here, I believe our fall from grace begins Somalia and Bosnia and ends, not in Iraq, but in Afghanistan. Largely because:
1) NATO without Russia to confront was nothing more than an empty shell. With terrorism as its main enemy, being largely unaffected by the might of any military, no one, and I do mean no one, was prepared to fight it militarily at its roots.
2) The demand or need (whichever one couches the defense requested post 9/11) for NATO compliance to agreements when NATO no longer saw a great enemy was a giant "come to Jesus" moment that most of these states did largely unwillingly because...
3) They no longer saw the requirement for post WWII/cold war defense or offense and saw themselves as "peace keepers" who did a damn poor job of it, our forces included.
The real issue here is that every post cold war event such as Somolia, Bosnia, Rwanda and places in between have severely screwed with the dream that our NATO allies had of the post cold war future world. I think that, in large part, they imagined that their presence somewhere under the UN banner was enough to influence the outcome and change the world. It never did. At the least those forces simply became voyeurs of the wholesale slaughter around them and in worst cases they became the facilitators.
NATO, from this perspective, has never come to grips with the idea that their moral authority had little power in the face of genocide and that, yes, there will be war that might require them to lend forces that actually fight. They blame the United States for the destruction of their dream. It is why our foreign policies allegedly created 9/11 and every other action gains sneers. Not to mention that, for all their declarations of anti-imperialism, most of the nations are bent on their own soft imperialism. Our actions have an impact on their own aspirations and no one should forget that in all of the hand wringing about our relationships. One wonders, with some degree of cynical amusement, if the mirror has ever cracked when they look into it.
I'm not rejecting the idea of our foreign policy as an issue fully, but we're not talking about 1 year of foreign policy here, we're talking about decades where Rome has guaranteed its allies protection, safe commerce and an umbrella under which to gird their ideological loins while opening and protecting markets across the world for trade. The fact that we demanded levies at all against signed treaties makes us persona non gratas. Beyond that, destruction of the "world without war" dream sealed it.
In the mean time, reflecting on someone's comments above, for all the time we've spent giving, what we get back is "we're bailing you bastards out". Well, thanks, maybe we should remember that the next time someone needs "bailed out" across the ocean? I don't suspect we will since we still believe that strong allied democracies are a bulwark against villains of all stripes.
I'll repeat my cynical take on the subject:
Everyone loves Rome when it defends them against invasion or lines their pockets and larders, but no one loves Rome when it demands its price in return.
What would the next president have to do? Withdraw our troops from Iraq, reduce our demands on NATO in Afghanistan and pretend that the military is strictly for defense. Against whom, considering the prevailing ideas on counter-terrorism and world vision of detente, is the question. I believe, with a very jaundiced eye, any move we make that will include expanding our forces and creating new and highly destructive weapons, will not endear us to the "world" but will simply be a re-enforcement that we are full of hubris and the cause of instability. Regardless of how many forces we withdraw from whatever theater or how much advice we take from our allies.
Secondly, yes, I believe that we would have to prostrate ourselves to the great demands of the masses that believe "Rome" is taking an unfair share of energy resources and food among other commerce and staples.
In short, the cynic in me believes that the post cold war world of the 90's has mitigated any "esteem" or "love" these nations might have perceived for their great ally in the west. And, that has turned into a belief that, that love was coerced by us for nothing. There was no great battle for the gap, thus, we were really never needed. A revision of history, if you will, that makes it easier to swallow their abandonment of such allegiances and decry any demands or requests.
Mend our relationships? When uncle Sam takes off his body armor and mothballs his fleets. Even then, I think that time has past and we should accept that there is a new paradigm in international relationships that now renders us a feared adversary of all, or, at least, a nation that requires a wary eye, who will concentrate mightily on restraining our powers and economy until such a time as they think they might need us again or until a new polarity exists where we are never needed again.
They will love us when we line their larders and pockets again without making too many demands besides "be prosperous". Even then, as long as we sit atop the heap without another competitor, we will be viewed with a jaundiced eye.
Yankee go home!
that's not the first time we've heard it, nor will it be the last I should say.
