CONTENTS
OF THIS SECTION
Last updated
20/11/07 |
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"..The Struggle for Tamil Eelam is a National Question -
and it is therefore an International Question.." note by
tamilnation.org
- Given the key role played by
India
and the United States in
the Struggle for Tamil
Eelam, it is not without importance for
the Tamil people to further their own understanding of the
foreign policy objectives of these two countries - this
is more so because the record shows that states do not have
permanent friends but have only permanent interests.
And, it is these interests that
they pursue, whether overtly or covertly. Furthermore, the interests of a state are a function of the interests of groups
which wield power within that state and 'foreign policy is the external manifestation
of domestic institutions, ideologies and other attributes of the polity'.
In the end, the success of any
liberation struggle is, not surprisingly, a function of
the capacity of its leadership to mobilise its own people
and its own resources at the broadest and deepest
level." |
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International Relations
in aN ASYMMETRIC Multi Lateral World
Condoleezza Rice Completes Washington's Geostrategic
Shift
Dr. Michael A. Weinstein
Power and Interest News Report
"..Rice's announcements culminate a major revision
of Washington's overall geostrategy that has been in the making
since 2004 when the failures of the Iraq intervention exposed the
limitations of U.S. military capabilities and threw into question
the unilateralist doctrine outlined in the administration's 2002
National Security Strategy... Rice's reforms are significant because
they are embraced by a multipolar perspective on world
politics that brings Washington into line with the other major power
centers. Her reforms put into place concrete measures that follow
from that perspective, even though they are -- as should be expected
-- just a beginning.... other power centers will welcome
Washington's acknowledgment of multipolarity at the same time that
they will be challenged by it..."
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In quick succession on January 18 and 19, U.S. Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice announced major changes in the operational
dimension of Washington's global diplomatic strategy.
Wrapped in the language of the Bush administration's campaign to
encourage democracy around the world and explained under the rubric
of "transformational diplomacy," Rice laid out plans to reposition
diplomatic resources from Europe and Washington to emerging power
centers in Asia, Africa, South America and the Middle East, and to
reorganize the administration of foreign aid by creating the post of
director of foreign assistance, whose occupant would coordinate aid
programs that are currently dispersed among several agencies and
bring them into line with Washington's broad foreign policy goals.
Rice's announcements culminate a major revision of Washington's
overall geostrategy that has been in the making since 2004 when the
failures of the Iraq intervention exposed the limitations of U.S.
military capabilities and threw into question the unilateralist
doctrine outlined in the administration's 2002 National Security
Strategy. Through the second half of 2004, Washington appeared to
function in a policy void, as the neoconservative faction in the
security establishment, which had already edged out the traditional
multilateralists, lost influence and no competing tendency was
strong enough to take its place. That picture changed in 2005 when
Rice became secretary of state and moved to fill the policy vacuum
by implementing her realist vision based on classical balance of
power.
In her January 18 speech at Georgetown University, where she
sketched out how U.S. diplomatic resources would be repositioned,
Rice left behind the scenario of the neoconservatives and their
allies in Vice President Dick Cheney's office that is premised on
the ability of the U.S. to achieve sufficient military superiority
to allow it to act alone to secure its global interests in the long
term. Rather than thinking in terms of a unipolar configuration of
world power dominated by the United States, Rice embraced
multipolarity and the acknowledgment of Washington's limitations
that follows from it.
Nearly echoing the analysis of Beijing's 2005 defense white paper,
Rice asserted that "states are increasingly competing and
cooperating in peace, not preparing for war." The complex web of
convergent and divergent interests occurs within the context of a
dispersion of power among regions -- the hallmark of multipolarity:
"In the 21st century, geographic regions are growing ever more
integrated economically, politically and culturally." Within
regions, dominant power centers are rising: "In the 21st century,
emerging nations like India and China and Brazil and Egypt and
Indonesia and South Africa are increasingly shaping the course of
history." The 21st century, in Rice's view, will not be a second
"American century"; it will be a global century defined by what PINR
has called "the new regionalism." [See: "The New Regionalism:
Drifting Toward Multipolarity"]
The shift in Washington's geostrategic thinking from what it was
from September 11, 2001 through the Iraq intervention in 2003 could
not be more pronounced. It proceeds from the time honored rule of
international relations that policy follows power. Rice's analysis
was preceded by a change in the Pentagon's perspective through 2005
in which military planners introduced the idea that Washington was
entering a "long war" to secure its interests against Islamic
revolutionaries and a long term attempt to contain rising regional
power centers that would require partnerships and stabilization
efforts around the world.
Rice's view is no longer one voice among several in the Bush
administration; her growing prominence and influence represent an
acceptance in Washington of the reality of multipolarity. This
realization brings the United States into line with the consensus
among other world powers and that is likely to persist in succeeding
administrations.
Now that Washington has begun to accept a world in which the U.S.
does not shape the course of history according to its own agenda,
but is a major player in an intricate and evolving pattern of
cooperative and competitive relations, it has positioned itself to
develop strategies for restoring some of the influence that it has
lost as a result of the Iraq intervention and, far more importantly,
as a consequence of the redistribution of global power that was
beyond its control. Such strategic innovation in response to
polycentricity is behind Rice's State Department reforms.
Diplomatic Repositioning
Rice's Georgetown speech is a curious mixture of the Bush
administration's current ideology -- advanced in the president's
2005 Inaugural Address -- that the U.S. would "seek and support the
growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and
culture," and a statement of concrete measures that would -- if they
can be implemented successfully -- represent steps toward a
realistic adaptation of U.S. diplomacy in a multipolar world.
Promotion of democracy abroad has been a recurrent theme of U.S.
presidents for nearly a century and has always run up against the
fact that Washington's perceived interests often require it to
cooperate with non-democratic regimes and movements, and to
undermine democratic tendencies. It is not to be expected that the
Bush administration will close the familiar gap between rhetoric and
practice; indeed, in her speech, Rice singled out for praise "good
partners like Pakistan and Jordan," neither of which are
democracies.
If the democracy language has any concrete import, it refers to the
belief in sectors of Washington's security establishment that U.S.
interests are best served by market-oriented governments that allow
enough popular participation and sufficient independence of civil
society groups to dissipate anti-U.S. left and right oppositions. As
is the case with every state, the U.S. above all wants regimes that
are favorable to its perceived interests. All other things being
equal, Washington would prefer that those regimes follow democratic
forms. When -- as in Georgia's Rose Revolution and Ukraine's Orange
Revolution -- people-power combines with market-oriented and
pro-Western leadership, Washington will back the democratic
movement. Awareness of that has caused governments around the world
to look on Washington with suspicion and to distance themselves from
it.
The high concept of Rice's version of the democratization ideology
is "transformational diplomacy," which she defines as "a diplomacy
that not only reports about the world as it is, but seeks to change
the world itself." Here, either Rice is only rephrasing what all
states have always done, or she is announcing a policy of soft
regime change to replace the hard version of military regime change
represented by the Iraq intervention. If it is regime change that
she has in mind, it is not clear that a public announcement of a
policy to destabilize in order to try to gain greater stability
serves Washington's interests.
The significance of Rice's new diplomatic strategy does not reside
in its ideological rhetoric, which can be pared away without loss,
but in its concrete measures to reposition Washington's diplomatic
resources that begin what is likely to be a long term trend in U.S.
foreign policy regardless of which political party controls the
presidency and what ideology it adopts.
Taking up the thinking of 2004 Democratic presidential candidate
John Kerry's foreign policy and security team, Rice noted in her
speech that in light of the probable peaceful future of relations
among great powers, "the fundamental character of regimes now
matters more than the international distribution of power." Among
the threats to U.S. security, she identified terrorism, pandemics,
arms proliferation and failed states, all of which can only be
countered by cooperation with regional powers and access to trouble
spots.
At the heart of Rice's plan to respond to the emerging threat
pattern is the redistribution of U.S. diplomats to the rising power
centers around the world, starting immediately with 100 and
reaching, according to analysts, as many as one-third of the 4,000
foreign service officers during the next decade.
The mission of U.S. diplomacy will also be redefined through a
series of measures ranged under the idea of "forward deployment," in
which diplomats will go into the field and administer programs in
addition to their traditional duties. Regional public diplomacy
centers will be created to counter anti-U.S. media, American
Presence Posts -- sometimes staffed by only one diplomat -- will be
set up outside capital cities, and there will be Virtual Presence
Posts -- local interactive websites -- to appeal primarily to youth.
Diplomats will work directly on projects to improve health care,
reform education, set up businesses, fight corruption and encourage
democratic practices.
Diplomats will also coordinate more closely with the U.S. military
through political advisors, and the State Department's Office of
Reconstruction and Stabilization will have access to up to US$100
million from the Department of Defense to manage post-conflict
situations -- recognition of the shortcomings in planning for the
aftermath of the Iraq intervention.
Although Rice claims that her revision of U.S. diplomatic strategy
is a "bold" initiative, it is actually only a first step toward
making Washington a more effective player in a multipolar world, and
it promises only limited success. Most importantly, in order to be
successful, the reforms will have to be backed by adequate funds,
which are unlikely to be made available under the conditions of
persisting budget deficits.
There are also questions about how security will be provided for the
American Presence Posts, and the effectiveness of public diplomacy
has yet to be proven in regions, such as the Middle East, where
anti-U.S. sentiment has become deeply entrenched and is bound up
with opposition to U.S. policies. Finally, it remains to be seen how
much access regimes that are suspicious of Washington's aims will
grant its diplomats.
Rice's reforms follow a pattern that has been established by the
Pentagon in its redeployment of troops from Europe and South Korea
to smaller bases within the "arc of instability" that stretches from
East Africa through Central Asia. That policy has been limited by
failures to gain access when Washington has provoked hostility from
local regimes, such as Eritrea's and Uzbekistan's. The same problem
is likely to come up when Rice's strategy is implemented.
When Rice's reforms are considered as a whole, their most
significant components are her forthright acknowledgment that
"partnership" is necessary in order to manage threats to U.S.
security and the simple shifting of diplomats to emerging regional
power centers. What those diplomats will do and how effective they
will be will depend more on Washington's positions in inter- and
intra-state conflicts than on the mechanics of forward deployment.
Centralization of Foreign Aid
Having laid out her revision of U.S. diplomatic strategy, Rice moved
on January 19 to announce her reorganization of foreign assistance
to the staff of the U.S. Agency for International Development
(U.S.A.I.D.). Here, the heart of Rice's reform was the
centralization of the administration of foreign aid, along the lines
of the Bush administration's 2004 restructuring of the intelligence
apparatus, aimed at coordinating assistance programs to serve the
goals defined in her statement of diplomatic strategy.
In order to bring the various aid programs controlled by the State
Department under unified guidance, a new post of Director of Foreign
Assistance (D.F.A.) has been created whose occupant will superintend
the Office of Global AIDS Coordinator, The Millennium Challenge
Corporation and U.S.A.I.D. The D.F.A. will also be the U.S.A.I.D.
Administrator, bringing that agency, which has previously been
independent, under greater State Department direction.
Accounting for US$14 billion of the yearly US$18 billion U.S.
foreign assistance budget, U.S.A.I.D. had been given its relative
independence in order to ensure that it would pursue its mission of
providing long-term development aid unfettered by temporary changes
in foreign policy. Although Rice assured U.S.A.I.D.'s staff that its
mission would be unimpaired by the reform, she also made it clear
that foreign assistance would be "aligned" with the objectives of
her transformational diplomacy.
There is little doubt that Rice does not intend the reorganization
to be merely cosmetic and that she wants to diminish the power of
U.S.A.I.D. to allocate funds -- the "dual-hatting" of D.F.A. and
U.S.A.I.D. Administrator will not serve to bring all foreign
assistance under the development agenda, but will gear development
programs to serve strategic aims.
Rice's reform plan met with predictable criticism from elements
inside and outside U.S.A.I.D. who believe that Washington's long
term interests are best advanced by insulating development programs
from political pressures. While that argument has merits, so does
Rice's view that Washington needs to mobilize its diplomatic and
financial resources to restore its global power -- a process that
will demand genuine sacrifices.
As is the case with her plan to reposition diplomats, Rice's
reorganization of foreign assistance has strict limitations.
Outgoing U.S.A.I.D. Administrator Andrew Natsios has identified
Congressional earmarking of aid as a greater problem than
deficiencies in coordination, and earmarking will not be touched by
Rice's reform. In addition, the State Department will not gain
control over assistance programs that are currently dispersed among
the Defense, Agriculture and Commerce departments. It is also likely
that there will be resistances within U.S.A.I.D. to integrating its
organizational culture into the State Department's. Again, Rice's
reorganization is more a first step than a bold transformation.
Conclusion
Reflecting Washington's diminished position in the global
configuration of power, Rice's revisions of U.S. diplomatic strategy
and her reorganization of foreign assistance will have limited
immediate effect and will be hindered from long-term success by
constraints resulting from the likelihood of budgetary austerity.
Nonetheless, Rice's reforms are significant because they are
embraced by a multipolar perspective on world politics that brings
Washington into line with the other major power centers. Her reforms
put into place concrete measures that follow from that perspective,
even though they are -- as should be expected -- just a beginning.
Rice has made it plain that the new diplomatic strategy is
predicated on a sustained effort that will take at least a
generation to bear fruit -- another long war as the one envisioned
by Pentagon planners. That effort -- even if it were successful --
will not restore the U.S. to the dominating position that it held
temporarily after the fall of the Soviet Union, but it might stem
Washington's loss of power and even strengthen its position if it
were deft at manipulating regional balances of power.
Within the context of the general consensus that world politics are
structured by a complex web of competition and cooperation that is
stressed by Islamic revolution, competition over natural resources,
the eruption of populism, state failure, environmental degradation
and the possibility of pandemics, other power centers will welcome
Washington's acknowledgment of multipolarity at the same time that
they will be challenged by it.
Report Drafted By:
Dr. Michael A. Weinstein
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