The debate America needs

Every so often I come across an article that I simply repost in full as I agree with every single word. This, from Michael Boyle, is just such an article.

Does the United States deserve to exercise a degree of global leadership after the disaster of Iraq? If so, how should it wield this leadership?

These are not surprising questions to anyone who has watched the disaster of Iraq unfold before their eyes. But within the American foreign policy community, this is unsettling stuff.

Since the end of the cold war, the assumption of global leadership has been so deeply ingrained in the bipartisan foreign policy consensus that few critics, if any, believed it was possible that one catastrophic error could make things fall apart. There was widespread, almost celebratory, agreement across parties that the world required American leadership - which was never precisely defined - to solve problems concerning the global public good, like the environment or international trade. The bipartisan foreign policy consensus held that America was, in the words of the former secretary of state Madeleine Albright, the "indispensable power" without whom large-scale cooperative action is not possible.

This is not entirely nonsense. It is certainly true that due to its wealth and power - and its position as the world's largest polluter - that America's involvement in agreements like the Kyoto Accord is essential. It is also true that there are instances where the preponderance of military power enjoyed by the US can be harnessed for noble ends. Some crises, such as the Bosnian war, would have festered and caused thousands more deaths in the absence of decisive American involvement. Those who sneer that the world would be better off if America retreated into its own corner fail to recognize that the latent power of the United States can be placed in the service of a more humane world.

But - as Iraq has demonstrated - an expansive notion of leadership carries with it the seeds of its own disaster. First, a belief in America's right to global leadership tends to underestimate the ability of states to get along nicely without the United States. Over the last few years, the world has proven to be quite adept in managing global collective action without American support. The International Criminal Court (2002) and the Kyoto Protocol (2005) both came into force despite strident American opposition. Staying on the sidelines from international agreements has proven to be more costly in credibility and influence for the United States than it has for other states; yet many pundits still find comfort in the illusion that without America's leadership "they" can do little.

Second, an expansive notion of American leadership tends to commit American energies to so many crises that nothing is done particularly well. Believing that every ill the world faces is its business also produces an overstretched and exhausted America whose foreign policy behaviour is at best desultory and at worse erratic. As the famed diplomat George Kennan often counselled, the US would be better off, and safer, if it recognized the limits of its own ability to shape events, and accepted that there are some horrors in this world that lay beyond its capacity for action. Such modesty would also be more consistent with American domestic opinion, which remains deeply suspicious of over-involvement in foreign crises.

Third, this bipartisan belief in the power of American leadership does not correspond neatly with the realities of the current international system. In part due to the rush to war in Iraq, the geopolitical ground has shifted under the feet of the United States over the last few years. The rise of China and India as great powers, the erosion of the economic basis of Western dominance in the world system, the return of an embittered Russia to the world stage, and the emergence of a murderous terrorist network like al-Qaida all bode ill for America's position as the preponderant power in the international system. Anyone who looks at a newspaper realizes that so-called "rogue" states and even some traditional allies have become ever more cheerful about thumbing their nose at the Bush Administration. Indeed the enduring legacy of President Bush's foreign policy is that defying the will of the United States is increasing the norm in world politics, not the exception.

The debate in the presidential primaries over America's role in the world is the first in recent memory to take note of these changes and their corresponding impact on American power. All of the presidential candidates now face one basic question: how can a new American president exercise something resembling leadership when much of the world delights in telling the US to go to hell?

Finally, to speak of recovering American leadership through one presidential election is to badly misread international public opinion. After seven years of President Bush's foreign policy, much of the world shudders when Americans talk about exercising leadership. This is not just because the US mismanaged Iraq and Afghanistan so badly. The world recoiled in horror from Bush's foreign policy because the decision to invade Iraq came across as an arbitrary exercise of naked power, designed to intimidate others with America's might. To assume that wise American leadership can undo the scar that Iraq has left is politically appealing but mistaken. Only by acknowledging why many countries are deeply distrustful of America's power, and by offering to restrain itself to ensure that this will not happen again, can America hope to repair the enormous damage done to its reputation and credibility.

What is desperately needed in American foreign policy discourse is a sober discussion of the limits of American power, not a rehashing of the supposed need for renewed leadership abroad. Real leadership in American foreign policy involves a mature acceptance of the changes in the international system and a carefully calibrated effort to manage change in a way which avoids the extremes of war and suffering. What it does not require is a celebratory call for a return of American leadership of the rest of the world. Only by puncturing its cheerful faith in its own leadership can America come around to a more judicious and effective use of its power.

Click title for source.