So, Americans accuse Europeans of coddling criminals or, worse, appeasing evil behavior. Europeans accuse Americans of being ruthless and uncivilized in sanctioning state executions. Behind all of the heat is the very real difference in the perspective that the two superpowers have about the kind of world they live in and the future they embrace.
Europe’s zeal to abolish the death penalty is inextricably linked to its dream of universal human rights. If the older Enlightenment dream was about establishing civilized norms of behavior, the new cosmopolitan dream is about establishing empathetic codes of conduct. Were Europeans to accept the notion that the state has a legitimate right to take the life of any human being, it would undermine the very idea of universal human rights that supersede states’ prerogatives.
The problem facing Europe, however, is that it has to live in two worlds simultaneously: the everyday world of realpolitik and the dream of a better world to come. Keeping its commitment to the future without losing sight of the very real dangers posed by the present is the demanding task. Nowhere is that challenge more taxing for the EU than when it comes to framing a foreign-policy agenda. How do Europeans square their position on not taking the life of a criminal with waging war against an enemy?
Going It Alone
The Bush Administration’s response to Europe’s “perceived pacifism” is “Get real.” In a country where a majority of the people believe in “an eye for an eye,” it’s not surprising that American foreign policy is based on different criteria for dealing with adversaries. The American approach combines old-fashioned paternalism with tough justice. Reward our friends and punish our enemies.
To really understand the roots of American foreign policy, Europeans need to appreciate America’s near obsession with autonomy. For our country, long bounded by two great oceans, freedom has meant autonomy in a hostile and unpredictable world. Not to be dependent and beholden to others but, rather, to be self-reliant has been the leitmotif of American foreign and security policy from the very early days of the young republic.
American foreign policy before the two world wars was always expansionist in the Americas and isolationist in the world. The U.S. didn’t even enter World War I until 1917, three years after the fighting commenced and just a year before cessation of conflict. Similarly, the U.S. joined with the Allies in World War II two years after the commencement of war, and then only after the Japanese surprise attack on our naval and air fleets at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.
Before World War II, most countries subscribed to the Hobbesian doctrine that human behavior was, by its very nature, aggressive and acquisitive, and, therefore, if left unchecked would lead to a “war of all against all.” Only by establishing a sovereign authority that could impose a single, unified will on the people would violence be abated and material progress be secured. The same behavior exists among states. Therefore, the only way to keep the peace was either for one country to gain hegemony and impose its will on the rest, in the form of an empire or federation, or, barring that possibility, for countries of relatively equal strength to join together in an alliance to maintain a balance of power that would prevent any one country from dominating the rest. The history of the past three centuries is riddled with attempts by one power to gain hegemony over others—the Spanish Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Bourbon and Napoleonic empires, the German Third Reich, and the Soviet Union all come to mind. Each of these attempts invariably led to countermoves in the form of alliances by other states to challenge the hegemony. The Peace of Westphalia settlement of 1648, which we discussed briefly in chapter 7, curtailed the power of the Hapsburg Empire, and later, the Congress of Vienna imposed a similar balance of power after Napoleon’s defeat.
The classic liberal theory of foreign relations offers an alternative, of sorts, to the Hobbesian vision. It begins with the Enlightenment idea that material self-interest is best promoted by open markets and the liberalization of trade, both at home and abroad. Liberal theorists were at odds with the Hobbesian idea that war was the natural human condition. They preferred to think that rational self-interest is the prime mover and economic efficiency the driving force of human behavior. They bound their ideas to Locke’s theory of property rights, Adam Smith’s notion of the invisible hand, and the bourgeoisie faith in representative democracy. Liberals viewed the free market as the natural order of things and believed that if it was left unencumbered and allowed to flourish, it would prevent nations from plunging into a nightmarish Hobbesian world. The British were the first to employ liberal theories to foreign policy. In the name of “free trade,” the British became a hegemonic world power in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, only to raise the ire of others, especially Germany, which was determined not to be marginalized on the world stage.
After World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union emerged as great world powers. Neither was able to enforce its will on the other and become hegemonic. Both, however, realized that their fortunes lay in mobilizing as much of the world as they could under their banner. While each sought alliances in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, the primary struggle for influence was fought in Europe. The Soviet Union imposed its will in Central and Eastern Europe by force of arms. The Americans, by contrast, relied on the liberal doctrine of advancing open markets and free trade and began to implement a series of initiatives to resurrect the economies of Western Europe with an eye toward building a vibrant Atlantic partnership that could hold the Soviets back and foster the economic interests of America. (We discussed the various institutional initiatives, including the Marshall Plan and the creation of the United Nations, the IMF, the World Bank, NATO, etc., in chapter 11.)
With the collapse of the Soviet Empire in the late 1980s, the U.S. government deepened its commitment to a liberal foreign policy. Both President George Bush and President Bill Clinton pushed for further liberalization of trade, hoping to create, at long last, a global capitalist marketplace, dominated by America’s economic prowess.
America’s commitment to a multilateral foreign policy, based on alliances, took an abrupt turn with the election of President George W. Bush in 2000. Conservative politicians and ultra-right-wing ideologues had been preparing the groundwork for years. Many former operatives of the Reagan Administration set about the task of crafting a shadow foreign policy in the 1990s. They established think tanks, published books and articles, set up task forces, and issued white papers, all critical of what they regarded as failed foreign and security policies. The conservatives believed that America’s interests were ill served—and even undermined—by the government’s entering into multilateral global treaties, alliances, and commitments that bound us to the will of others whose interests were not always commensurate with our own. The conservatives favored a return to the older American foreign policy based on autonomy, backed up by military might. They argued that it had served us well in protecting our vital interests in the American hemisphere in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and could do so again in the global theater because of our unmatched economic and military superiority.
Some critics warned out loud that if the “neoconservatives” were to regain power, America would cast its lot with a “radical” foreign policy, at odds with America’s historical role. The critics got it wrong. For most of American history, the conservative view of how America ought to conduct foreign policy was the standard. Only in the brief fifty-year span from the end of World War II to the end of the Cold War did America depart from its historical legacy and enter into multilateral relationships with the rest of the world.
When European intellectuals accuse current American leaders of conducting a “cowboy diplomacy,” they are right. The American tradition in foreign policy follows close on the heels of the American Dream. Our vision of the noble American is a man or woman alone in a hostile and unpredictable world but able, by sheer perseverance and will, to tame the wild, keep evil forces in check, create an island of order, and make the world a safe place to be. Every American Western novel and movie glorifies this story. This is who we think we are: an uncomplicated, good-hearted people who stand up against evil and champion the right of every person to be free—which we define as autonomous and independent. Why would we pursue a foreign policy at odds with our own basic sense of who we are?
Even before the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon, the George W. Bush Administration was beginning to steer American foreign policy back to its earlier vision of “going it alone.” The United States began to unbundle itself from previous global commitments, while rejecting new global initiatives.
In a series of stunning reversals, the U.S. government refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol to curb greenhouse gases, it said no to the Land Mine Treaty and to the comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and it withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, even though virtually every other nation gave its support to these covenants. And, in a final rebuff of world public opinion, the U.S. refused to support the International Criminal Court, which bound the nations of the world to an enforceable standard for securing universal human rights.
The “great reversal” was a long time in the making. In 1992, when now vice president Dick Cheney was the secretary of defense, the Pentagon prepared a draft document outlining what would become the cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy a decade later. The Pentagon white paper bluntly stated that the U.S. government must “discourage the advanced industrial nations from challenging our leadership or even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.”
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The Pentagon report said that it was critical that the United States “retain the preeminent responsibility for addressing . . . those wrongs which threaten not only our interests, but those of our allies or friends, or which could seriously unsettle international relations.”
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The attacks on the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon gave the Cheney forces the opportunity to operationalize the vision of American foreign policy they had laid out a decade earlier. The new national security strategy, put out by the White House, said that the U.S. government would maintain whatever military capabilities were needed to ensure that no other state could impose its will on America or its allies and would discourage and even prevent any potential adversary from attempting to build their military capability to challenge our own.
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In a commencement address at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in June 2002, President Bush made clear that “America has, and intends to keep, military strengths beyond challenge—thereby, making the destabilizing arms races of other eras pointless, and limiting rivalries to trade and other pursuits of peace.”
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The president’s remarks were calculated to let the world know that, henceforth, America would use its vast military machine to be the unchallenged hegemonic power and that it would not allow itself to be weighed down by multilateral commitments and treaties or be burdened by alliances that required shared deliberation and consensus prior to taking action.
Much of the rationale for the new unipolar policy was driven by the new circumstances in which the U.S. found itself in the post-9/11 period. The Bush Administration argued that in an era punctuated by global terrorism, “a military . . . must be ready to strike at a moment’s notice in any dark corner of the world.”
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Because it’s impossible to know when terrorists will strike, or where, the U.S. must be able to exercise the option of preventive action as a form of self-defense. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld put the new situation facing America and the world this way: “We don’t know what we don’t know.”
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That being the case, America might have to attack before being attacked. The White House’s new post- 9/11 security strategy is unequivocal on this point. In its now famous September 2002 directive on national security, the Bush Administration stated that “to forestall or prevent . . . hostile acts by our adversaries, the United States will, if necessary, act preemptively.”
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Worried that terrorists might be able to secure weapons of mass destruction and strike at will, the U.S. government said that it had no choice but to determine, on its own, if necessary, when the sovereign rights of the U.S. are in jeopardy and to act accordingly without having to consult or receive prior permission by other governments. By the new policy, the U.S. assumes virtually carte blanche authority to invade any country it suspects of harboring or financing terrorists or developing weapons of mass destruction that might find their way into terrorists’ hands. The new foreign policy, then, is what can be euphemistically referred to as “anticipatory self-defense.” Critics argue that the policy is an oxymoron and threatens to undermine the entire post-World War II set of agreements, embodied in Article 2 and Article 51 of the UN Charter, which makes it illegal for one country to attack another unless first attacked, and then only in self-defense.
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The U.S. counters that if it were forced to wait until it had sufficient evidence of wrongdoing, or until it could muster up a consensus in the UN Security Council, it might be too late to defend itself. The problem, as G. John Ikenberry points out in an article in
Foreign Affairs,
is that if “the United States feels it can take such a course, nothing will stop other countries from doing the same.”
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Ikenberry asks rhetorically whether the United States would want “this doctrine in the hands of Pakistan, or even China or Russia.”
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When political observers wonder whether the U.S. and its closest ally, the European Union, are beginning to diverge and grow apart in some kind of fundamental way, the answer is an unqualified yes. American foreign policy seeks to resurrect the realpolitik of an earlier era and rests its claims on its sovereign right and duty to protect and defend its territory and citizenry as it sees fit. Nor does it feel obligated to demure to international arrangements that might impede what it perceives to be its vital interests. Stalwarts in the Bush Administration have even gone so far as to claim, according to Harvard’s Stanley Hoffman, that “the United States Constitution allows no bowing to a superior law, such as international law, and no transfer, pooling or delegation of sovereignty to any international organization.”
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