The World Left the US Behind

By Tim Watkin, Guardian Unlimited
September 7, 2007 9:00 PM

As George Bush strolls into the leaders’ meeting at Apec, I half expect to see him rubbing his eyes in a somewhat sleepy, surprised manner, like a bear coming out of hibernation.

I’ve just been out of the US for a fortnight, and returning to the States this past week I can’t help but notice how cut-off and caught up in its own concerns this country is at the moment.

I keep thinking of Rip Van Winkle or the film While You Were Sleeping, where a character goes into a coma or long sleep and awakes to find the world a very different place. Except in this instance Bush is Van Winkle and the film title would be While You Were Iraqing.

This is Bush’s seventh Apec meeting, so you’d expect him to be a comfortable and dominant player. Yet there’s a sense everyone else has moved on, while he and his country are still stuck in the same place they’ve been for years.

The US is still very much a country at war, with so much of its focus is on its troops in the Middle East. As a measure of his priorities, Bush is actually leaving Apec early, returning to Washington to prepare for the Petraeus report.

There seems to be little oxygen left in the White House, and even in the mainstream national debate, for the issues on the agenda of the other Apec countries - climate change, free trade, and tariffs. Sure, they get mentioned here, but they’re not nearly as dominant on the political or news agenda.

Part of the problem is that the US media remains guilt-stricken about its mistakes before the invasion of Iraq - its failure to question the spurious WMD evidence, Rumsfeld’s strategies and the overall rationale for war.

As some kind of penance they now seem to cover little else. The odd natural disaster aside, the only other issue getting any widespread play is the 2008 presidential election. The Sunday TV morning talk shows have given up debating current policy and just debate the campaign ad nauseum.

ABC World News on Tuesday evening was a classic example of this blinkered view - it led with reflective stories on Iraq and how the presidential candidates are expected to deal with the crammed primaries early next year. Neither story had any news element - it was as if they were just the only stories anyone could think to cover.

In the past four years, America has taken its eye off the Pacific and China’s growing influence to the extent that Bush this week has had to publicly deny that Apec has become a China summit.

While Bush spent US political capital in Iraq, China, India and Russia all regained status as leading nations in their own right, and others such as Brazil are staking their claim for a seat at the big table for the first time.

While Bush hesitated, most western countries accepted that humans had a role in causing climate change and must play a part in addressing it. And now as Bush enters his lame duck days, Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy are launching new programmes in Europe.

In the major world events of the moment - say North Korean negotiations or the Middle East peace process - America is either just one player among many or its influence is failing. The changing tone was there for all to see at Friday’s US-South Korea leaders’ press conference. Close ally President Roh Moo-hyun was willing to press, even embarrass, Bush in public. In previous years, with previous Presidents, he wouldn’t have dared. These days, though, the US doesn’t carry the same clout or demand the same respect.

The polite analysis is that Iraq has put the US in a reflective mood, reappraising its own assumptions about itself. Less politely, you could say it’s getting horribly out of touch and behind the times.

The world is moving on without America. There’s a sense that the smaller countries in Apec feel more able to disagree openly with the US and treat its president as an equal in a way they wouldn’t have in 2000.

The Financial Times’ Martin Wolf wrote in Foreign Policy magazine earlier this year (subscription required): “Delusions of an invincible superpower have perished in the sands of Mesopotamia … The United States will long remain the world’s greatest economic, military, technological, and cultural power. But its position will be one of leadership, rather than unchallenged domination.”

Wolf is undoubtedly correct that any hope of domination - in the manner of the neocons and their American century - has been nipped in the bud by America’s hubris and foreign policy failures. He’s right that its power in economics, technology and the rest remains ahead of any other country.

But I wonder whether you could go further now and say its position of leadership is slipping. If you look at the issues being debated at Apec, America is not at the forefront of world debate on any of them, except terror and security.

There’s a fear you hear expressed these days by analysts and political commentators around the world that America under the next president will turn isolationist, focusing inward on domestic issues, protecting its own markets and workforce, and shirking from a more Roosevelt- or Marshall-like role of enlightened world leadership.

My impression arriving back in the US is that it already is isolated. That may be a good thing. When the characters in those stories were in a coma, the world carried on without them and even benefited from their absence in some ways.

But back to its best America still has a vital role to play in the world, beyond its obsession with Iraq and terrorism. The question is whether it can earn back its place and the respect of others.

http://commentisfree.guardian......ehind.html

To take matters further, I would suggest that the choice proposed previously of “1930s-style isolationism” or “continued engagement” apparently through the current melange of alliances and security obligations, is a false choice. As long as the USA is a populous, prosperous, and powerful nation, it must always have the means and will to make its weight felt in the service of its true interests. I submit that these interests are not well served by never allowing ourselves to leave a part of the world once the rationale for us having become engaged there is finished. NATO was very necessary in that the temporarily prostrate European powers were in no condition to stand up to the USSR of Joseph Stalin. Today, if those European powers have the will, they certainly can create the means to more than balance out Vladimir Putin’s resurgent Russia (such as it is) or any other threat on the horizon. Similarly, in east Asia there is no power prostrate and unable to effectively resist a theoretically predatory neighbor as was the case two generations ago. Therefore, the security alliances of two generations ago have been successful and have outlived their purposes. We should adjust our commitments accordingly. Being willing and able to make such adjustments on our own accord will leave us willing and able to make new commitments to counter new threats if and as they materialize. In most conceivable international security questions, we are naturally in a position to balance the conflicting ambitions of others, if only we remove ourselves from various outdated extended positions whereby diverse, naturally conflicting others (as Russians and Iranians) imagine that it is in their interests to coalesce against us. Is it possible that arguments of a couple of rocks in the Straits of Tsushima will disappear if Koreans and Japanese must become fully grown-up and self-responsible in the assessment of their interests?

We can never safely become disengaged from this world and retreat into a shell. Yet wise, sustainable engagement surely requires repeatedly recognizing and adapting to a profoundly changing world when and as the change occurs.

America’s continued engagement in the world will be a necessary thing and we cannot go back to a 30’s style isolationism. Not because its got choices mind you, but because America is too big, too vast and too important to be disengaged. Our size and economic value depends too much on stable energy supplies, whether it be the ethanol rich sugar cane fields of Brazil or oil fields of Saudi Arabia, and open economic markets.

The cheap labor of China has probably helped the U.S. keep inflation under control and has given the Fed wiggle room to keep interests rates under control. The free flow of goods from Asia has benefited the U.S. consumer tremendously. Minerals from Africa are essential in telecommunications, aerospace, defense and computer industrial applications. So on and so on. Thus, the world is a much smaller, complex and in a sense, more dangerous world then it was 50 or even 20 years ago. But, the U.S. has never depended on the rest of the world so much as before. As America was expanding and developing new states and finding new resources in the 19th century, it could afford to be isolationist. How much would the world be different if America stayed engaged after World War I and Wilson would have been able to moderate the concessions that the Allies imposed on Germany? It was the severity of those concessions that caused World War II.

America is a reluctant superpower, which is a good thing. It’s never a good idea to give power to those who crave it. However, being the most powerful country in the world, the biggest kid on the block, it’s got a responsibilty and a burden to the rest of the world. As Spidy’s uncle said, “With great power comes great responsibility.”

Besides, it’s in our best interest to stay involved. American’s withdraw from world affairs in 1919 essentially set the stage for WWII. America learned its lesson and stayed involved after WWII and sparred with the Soviets in the Cold War. The child of America’s victory in the Cold War is a world that’s never been smaller and closer at the same time. However, it has it’s own dangers and the work isn’t done yet. When the U.S. ignores problems in the rest of the world, the chickens often have the nasty habit of coming home to roost.

Ties with India has never been closer and becoming increasingly so. S.E. Asia are on the same path as India in general toward the U.S. I doubt we’re going anywhere yet.

counter Russia.

USFK and USFJ?

counter China. China. The very reason why Korean War and Vietnam War resulted in mucho causualties. Meddling in neighbors to make them poor as shit.

Marmot’s thesis seems emotional to me. Is he saying the military track has little play in foreign relations in general nowadays, i.e. the military isn’t important to wield FP influence? IF we abandon our military alliances in Asia, does he expect the US to still retain influence in Asian security matters? After the debacle in Iraq, if we abanadon our allies in East Asia, what credibility we will have???

Firstly, it’s not emotional at all. It’s simply a rational call based on geopolitical realities. Our military alliances in East Asia were built for the Cold War, and unlike NATO, they’ve yet to find any real reason to outlive it. Now, at best, they’re a drain on US resources. At worst, they breed resentment and complacency in our so-called “allies” and hinder their development into allies that might actually be worth having.

I might also ask, why would we want to retain influence in Asian security matters? And even if we did, would it be worth the cost? And would said influence even be sustainable?

(1) If you complain about East Asian nations not listening to US gov’t dictates now, just wait ’til we pull troops out of Korea, et. al. (I assumed you include Japan and the Philippines, and other US forces splashed about all over East Asia).

And having influence through various foreign policy tracks political, economic, cultural, and yes, military) pushes the US’s interests forward.

(2) Asia is the future. The center of influence in the global both politically and econmically is fast shifting from the Atlantic nations toward the Pacific nations. Trade growth, incomes levels, political and diplomatic clout are all rising in East Asia. The 21st century is a Asia-Pacific century. If the US wants a future as a global power, it must now wield its diminishing power prudently .

Marmot’s thesis seems emotional to me. Is he saying the military track has little play in foreign relations in general nowadays, i.e. the military isn’t important to wield FP influence? IF we abandon our military alliances in Asia, does he expect the US to still retain influence in Asian security matters? After the debacle in Iraq, if we abanadon our allies in East Asia, what credibility we will have???

He compains that Korea and Japan dont listen to us, but his suggestions seem to proffer simply throwing his hands in the air and giving up.

(Qualifer: I do agree that SK duplicity on many issues, trade and alliance issues included, frustrate me as well.)

Having said that, however, I submit that the only responsible and cool-headed thing to do is to re-double US efforts to improve its standing in East Asia in the most efficacious way possible.