Statecraft. Margaret Thatcher

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СКАЧАТЬ explained, negatively, by the outcome of the Cold War. It is also to be understood, positively, as the result of the dynamism inherent in the American system.

      The Caesars, the Habsburgs and the British were in their day heartily disliked by those envious of their power: such is generally the fate of those who bestride the globe. America, by contrast, has until quite recently escaped such odium. This is because, at least outside its own hemisphere, it has refused the temptations of territorial expansion. Indeed, the potential of America has until the present day always exceeded its actual power.

      The United States, as befits the world’s greatest democracy, is a reluctant warrior. In the two great wars of the twentieth century it was a late entrant. Even during the Cold War America was, it is sometimes overlooked, for much of the time far from aggressively anti-Soviet. The very doctrine of containment, which exercised greater influence than any other upon American foreign policy during those years, was at heart a defensive doctrine, aimed not at rolling back communism but rather at preventing its rolling remorselessly forward. For all these reasons, America has been a rather well-liked power.

      But Americans have recently had to take more seriously the hostility which the United States faces from powerful forces outside its borders. The opponents of the American superpower do not, at present at least, have much in common except their shared hatreds. The more moderate or most discreet of them – in Continental Europe (especially France), Russia and China – express their opposition to America’s superpower status in terms of an alternative doctrine of ‘multi-polarity’. Thus President Jacques Chirac of France has evoked a new ‘collective sovereignty’ to check American power, and his Prime Minister, Lionel Jospin, has complained that ‘the United States often behaves in a unilateral way and has difficulties in taking on the role to which it aspires, that of organiser of the international community’.* Beijing is particularly fond of such language. In April 1997 then-President Boris Yeltsin and President Jiang Zemin embraced a Sino–Russian ‘strategic partnership’ aimed at those who would ‘push the world toward a unipolar order’. The following month the ever-obliging French President agreed with his Chinese host that there was need of an international order with ‘power centres besides the United States’.† Most recently, the Swedish Prime Minister, host to the chaotic EU–US Summit at Gothenberg, extolled the EU as ‘one of the few institutions we can develop as a balance to US world domination’.‡

      Very different in tone – and intent – from such grumblings from peevish statesmen have been the threats levelled against America and Americans from the proponents of Islamic revolution. Well before 11 September 2001 the Islamic terrorist supremo Osama bin Laden had left us in no doubt about his (and many others’) objectives:

      We predict a black day for America and the end of the United States as the United States, and it will become separate states and will retreat from our land and collect the bodies of its sons back to America, God willing.§

      Bin Laden and his associates were even then well advanced in their plans to fulfil those threats.

      In the face of such hostility, any great power faces two temptations. The first, which has been much talked about, is isolationism. In fact, to judge from much of the rhetoric used about America one would easily think that the drawbridge had already risen. President Clinton, for example, described the Senate’s (entirely correct) decision in October 1999 to oppose the nuclear test ban treaty as ‘a new isolationism’. This was part of a broader campaign to portray the Republican Party as a whole as insufficiently committed to America’s world role. It is in this context worth recalling perhaps that the great majority of Democrats in Congress voted against the Gulf War of 1991. It is equally relevant that it was President Clinton’s own party in Congress which denied him fast-track negotiating authority on trade agreements. By contrast, President George W. Bush in his election campaign proposed an approach to American foreign and security policy which he termed ‘a distinctly American internationalism’ that involved ‘realism in the service of American ideals’. He affirmed that ‘America, by decision and destiny, promotes political freedom – and gains the most when democracy advances’. It was difficult to detect isolationism in any of that. Nor has there been any isolationism in the actions of the new administration, which has reaffirmed its commitment to the defence of Europe, proposed expansion of NATO to include the Baltic states, sought a new realistic relationship with Russia and advanced the idea of a vast free trade area covering North and South America. And in pursuit of the war against terrorism, President Bush has invested huge efforts and demonstrated great skill in assembling an international coalition to achieve America’s objectives.

      What most of the conservative critics of America’s overseas engagements in the Clinton years were concerned about was the need to place national interest alongside, or ahead of, wider objectives. I disagreed with some of these critics on specific matters; but they were right to be concerned, and nine out of ten of them could not fairly be labelled ‘isolationist’.

      I too was anxious about the second temptation that faced – and must always face – American foreign policy-makers, namely that of ubiquitous intervention in pursuit of ill-defined goals. My concern was not, of course, that America would become too powerful, but rather that it might dissipate its power, and eventually lose the essential popular mandate for the use of power.

      How, where and on what criteria should the American superpower and its allies intervene? We should resist pressure to set out inflexible rules in these matters: one of the marks of sensible statecraft is to recognise that each crisis is qualitatively different from another and requires its own response. But acknowledging that fact makes clarity of strategic thinking even more important: it is in unknown territory that you most need a compass. This is amply borne out by experience of the interventions which America and her allies have undertaken since the end of the Cold War.

      The Gulf War against Iraq, in whose preparation I was involved, seemed to many at the time to represent the shape of things to come. Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in the early morning of 2 August 1990 would probably never have occurred at the height of the Cold War. Moscow would have prevented such reckless adventurism by any of its dependants. But it is equally certain that there would never during the Cold War years have been a unanimous decision of the UN Security Council to back the use of force against Saddam, particularly when ‘force’ involved a US-led operation in the Middle East.*

      These were the circumstances in which President George Bush Sr delivered an address to a joint session of the US Congress on 11 September, which introduced a new expression to the lexicon of international policy analysts. The purpose of the President’s speech was to rally support for the operation in the Gulf and its objectives, which he spelt out as follows:

      Iraq must withdraw from Kuwait completely, immediately and without condition. Kuwait’s legitimate government must be restored. The security and stability of the Persian Gulf must be assured. And American citizens must be protected.

      So far so good – indeed, excellent.

      But the President went on:

      A new partnership of nations has begun and we stand today at a unique and extraordinary moment. The crisis in the Persian Gulf, as grave as it is, also offers a rare opportunity to move toward an historic period of cooperation. Out of these troubled times … a new world order can emerge. A new era – freer from the threat of terror, stronger in the pursuit of justice and more secure in the quest for peace. An era in which the nations of the world, East and West, North and South, can prosper and live in harmony. [Emphasis added]

      So the ‘New World Order’ was born.

      As СКАЧАТЬ