Thoughts after Reading Mark Steyn in the Post
This week the National Post has been running excerpts from Mark Steyn's new book, America Alone. The book is one of the few out there that remains supportive of the mission of the Bush Administration and the United States that actually receives some media coverage. The writing is insightful and interesting, if not strictly academic, which can be very refreshing if you're someone who is remaining supportive of the Bush Administration and the United States and have written a 100+ page thesis doing exactly that. As usual, I've got some comments to make after reading Steyn, something which I'm hoping to do at greater length in the short future (yes, I'm giving out hints for Xmas presents).
The nature of the international system--unipolarity--means that regardless of America's benign intentions and status as the greatest force for good in the history of the world, it will face considerable opposition from other states. In this type of system, states seek to balance against power instead of bandwagon with it; it is a tenet of political realism dating back to Machiavelli that a state should not seek an alliance with a greater power, and instead should pursue alliances with relatively equal states to balance against the larger power.
One reason for this is the pursuit of stability. Defying the norm of a superpower, the United States after 9/11 became a revolutionary power in the very system it legitimized, seeking to alter the political systems of an entire region--the Middle East. Realizing that the status quo produced not stability but rather violent hostility and a powder keg of Islamist extremism, the Bush Administration sought to remove the sources of the region's worst pathologies by initiating regime change in Iraq and supplanting it with a democratic system. Part of the underlying rationale for opposing the Iraq war on the parts of France, Germany, et al. was that any American intervention would help enhance American power because the newly-established democracies would turn to Washington for future security and guidance, thus further expanding America's sphere of influence and keeping "Old Europe" out of the equation. Destabilizing the Middle East runs counter to realist interests, yet the pursuit of freedom must ultimately trump those calculations if we are to assist in creating a better future for the people of that region where they may live without the oppression of their current dictators.
2 comments:
A few thoughts:
"The nature of the international system--unipolarity--means that regardless of America's benign intentions and status as the greatest force for good in the history of the world,"
IS it unipolar? And IS the U.S. the greatest force of good in the world?
I'd say no and no. The international economic system is quite different today from 30 years ago. America cannot move against China in any great shape or form, for example, because China subsidizes the American debt, provides its consumer goods with cheap manufacturing overheads, and holds a massive amount of T-bonds and American dollars.
And the U.S., for its part, is self-interested, as all states are. It has decided to promote democracy in the Middle East not because it stands for universal "freedom", but because an undemocratic Middle East was troublesome to U.S. interests.
You don't see Myanmar being invaded, after all.
" it will face considerable opposition from other states. In this type of system, states seek to balance against power instead of bandwagon with it; it is a tenet of political realism dating back to Machiavelli that a state should not seek an alliance with a greater power, and instead should pursue alliances with relatively equal states to balance against the larger power."
But under neorealism, a certain amount of bandwagoning does occur.
One of the problems with the whole balancing argument is that it does not explain why states today seem to bandwagon or balance on different issues -- with the same states. My first guess is that traditional realist theory is woefully concentrated on security issues and does little to incorporate the power of economic cooperation/competition.
"Bush Administration sought to remove the sources of the region's worst pathologies by initiating regime change in Iraq and supplanting it with a democratic system."
Indeed. But will it work? And what proof does the U.S. have that...
A. Iraq will accept and America-imposed democracy?
B. An Iraqi democracy will be less troublesome to U.S. interests than was a relatively toothless Saddam?
You little realist, you.
The international system is one that is presently fairly difficult to quantify. I've seen unipolar, uni-multipolar, multipolar, and some folks getting ahead of themselves by calling it a bipolar system between the US and China already. While that may come to be the case in a few years, it isn't yet. When you look at certain features of the international system (you looked at IPE as an example of non-unipolarity) one can make the case for uni-multipolarity, in which the US is the strongest power but there's a lot of other strong powers that can combine to check it. Overall, when you combine all the elements (military, political, social, cultural, economic, hard, soft, sharp, sticky, etc.) I still lean towards it being a unipolar system led by the United States. It may not be as predominantly unipolar as it was a couple years ago, but it's still ahead of the rest of the pack.
Of course the United States has interests, as does any other state. But it combines interests with values. The critical test for whether or not a state is worthy of being in an axis of evil is a combination of values antithetical to what America believes in and posing some sort of threat, existential or mere annoyance. Because of that criteria, naturally Myanmar doesn't get to host the next Great American Occupation. In pursuing the democracy promotion agenda, American must, and has, rationed its interventions to those places where a credible threat coincides with a hostile regime promoting un-American values...to "where it counts," as a democratic realist might say.
You are correct on the economic features of neorealism; for the purpose of my discussion I was focusing primarily on traditional hard security matters.
The final main question you raise is one that is still too early to render a final verdict, IMO. There was a lot of hope in the region in 2003 immediately after Saddam's collapse. Qaddafi came clean on WMDs, it seemed like reform was going to start breaking out everywhere, and there was an initial euphoria in Iraq. But now, three years later, that momentum seemingly has come to a standstill as America has grappled with a determined insurgency that often appears (insert appearance vs. reality debate here) to be humbling Washington. At this point we should harken back to the words of Osama bin Laden: when people have a choice between a strong horse and a weak horse, they will inevitably choose the strong horse. Unless the U.S. demonstrably proves that it is the strong horse in the battle against Al Qaeda in Ira, the uphill battle will continue for sometime.
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