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CONTENTS
OF THIS SECTION
27/07/09
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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 THE AGE OF EMPIRE
Washington's 2006 National
Security Strategy Confirms a Policy Void
Dr. Michael A. Weinstein
Power and Interest News Report
22 March 2006
"..Rather than resolving
the differences between the unipolarists and
the multipolarists, the new N.S.S. incorporates
both perspectives without synthesizing them, so
that the report confirms a continuing policy
void at the highest levels of Washington's
power structure. The lack of a coherent vision
appears starkly on page 37 of the report, where
the contending positions are jammed together:
"...we must be prepared to act alone if
necessary, while recognizing that there is
little of lasting consequence that we can
accomplish in the world without the sustained
cooperation of our allies and
partners...""
note by tamilnation.org
It may well be that there is
in fact no policy void and that though the
State Department and Defence Department appear
to speak in different voices, their goal is the
same. Actually, President George W. Bush's
letter of presentation may well reflect the
reality : "Effective multinational efforts are
essential to solve...problems. Yet history has
shown that only when we do our part will others
do theirs. America must continue to lead." AS
for 'multi polarity' George Orwell and the
Animal Farm come to mind: "All are equal, but
some are more equal than others".
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With the release on
March 16, 2006 of its National Security Strategy
(N.S.S.), Washington completed its overview of
diplomatic, defense and security policy that
included Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's
reorganization of the State Department and U.S. aid
programs, and the Defense Department's Quadrennial
Defense Review (Q.D.R.).
The N.S.S. is required by law to be issued to
Congress by the president on a yearly basis, but
the new report is the first one to be delivered
since 2002. The delay was due to the Iraq
intervention, which embroiled the administration in
responding to immediate situations and rendered the
direction of future policy uncertain -- pending the
outcome of the intervention -- and, more
importantly, reflected unreconciled fundamental
divisions within the administration over the
position of the United States in the global power
configuration.
The split among the forces in the U.S. security
apparatus was evidenced by the differences between
Rice's explanation of the State Department
reorganization and the analysis in the Q.D.R. Rice
forthrightly embraced the view that world politics
is moving toward a multipolar power configuration
and outlined plans to reallocate State Department
resources to emerging power centers, including
China, India, Indonesia and Egypt. She stressed the
importance of "partnering" with regional powers and
avoided making claims to U.S. global supremacy. In
contrast, the Q.D.R. maintained a qualified
unipolar perspective based on achieving absolute
U.S. military supremacy and offered a maximalist
program geared to building the "capability" to
respond to every possible threat. [See: "Condoleezza Rice Completes Washington's
Geostrategic Shift" and "U.S. Quadrennial Defense Review
Reveals a Strategy Void"]
Whereas Rice's reorganization marked an
acknowledgment of the constraints on U.S. power
that have become evident in the Iraq intervention
and, more deeply, in the sheer growth of the
emerging power centers, the Q.D.R. registered a
failure to prioritize threats and an inability or
unwillingness to abandon the unipolar vision,
although it conceded that there was a need to
partner with other states.
Rather than resolving the differences between the
unipolarists and the multipolarists, the new N.S.S.
incorporates both perspectives without synthesizing
them, so that the report confirms a continuing
policy void at the highest levels of Washington's
power structure. The lack of a coherent vision
appears starkly on page 37 of the report, where the
contending positions are jammed together: "...we
must be prepared to act alone if necessary, while
recognizing that there is little of lasting
consequence that we can accomplish in the world
without the sustained cooperation of our allies and
partners."
The N.S.S. as a Compromise Formation
Government white papers on security policy vary in
their utility for providing guides for the future
behavior of the states that issue them. When they
represent a coherent policy, they serve the
purposes of informing other international actors of
the state's intentions so that miscalculations can
be avoided and of assessing strengths and
weaknesses realistically. When such documents
reflect inconclusiveness at the top levels of
decision making, they are unreliable guides to
intention and provide, instead, readings of the
conflicts of interests within security
establishments. The latter is clearly the case for
the 2006 N.S.S.
As a compromise formation papering over
unreconciled interests, the N.S.S. achieves a
specious coherence rhetorically through a utopian
ideology centered on U.S. "leadership" in creating
a world of market democracies.
The high concept of "democracy" appears throughout
the document as the constant justification for
particular policies and is defined in such a way
that it constitutes a self-contained ideology. The
rationale for promoting the vision of a world of
market democracies incorporates the two disputable
theories that democratic political systems do not
engage in violent conflicts with one another ("the
democratic peace theory") and that political
democracies are not sustainable unless they permit
the operation of capitalist market economies
("market democracy").
The utopian character of the N.S.S.'s democracy
rhetoric is evidenced by the fact that the report
does not contain concrete policies for effecting
the vision beyond a commitment to nurture
democratic oppositions in non-democratic states, a
policy that -- if pursued consistently, as it is
unlikely to be -- would impair U.S. relations with
strategic partners such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia,
not to mention the many states around the world
that have the formal trappings of democracy and de
facto authoritarian rule, and China, with which the
U.S. is involved in a complex relationship of
interdependency and competition.
The N.S.S. acknowledges the disconnect between the
democratic vision and concrete policy in its
conclusion: "The times require an ambitious
national security strategy, yet one recognizing the
limits to what even a nation as powerful as the
United States can achieve. Our national security
strategy is idealistic about goals and realistic
about means."
In the N.S.S., realism about means translates into
a repetition of current U.S. positions on specific
concerns such as the victory of Hamas in recent
Palestinian elections, Iran's program of uranium
enrichment, China's bid for energy resources and
its currency policy, Russia's drift toward
authoritarianism, Venezuela's moves to encourage
Latin American autonomy, and the interventions in
Iraq and Afghanistan. The familiar talking points
on each of those issues are not related into a
coherent set of regional strategies, but are
referred directly to the democracy theme, leaving a
gap between the universal goal and momentary
positions.
The absence of mediating principles between general
aspirations and particular adjustments is what
deprives the N.S.S. of utility as a guide to
Washington's future behavior, putting its allies
and adversaries on notice that the U.S. government
has yet to formulate a genuine strategy and is
consequently hampered from responding effectively
to well-calculated challenges to its interests.
Another feature of the N.S.S. that impairs its
credibility and utility is its failure to execute a
balanced analysis of the strengths and weaknesses
of recent U.S. policies and actions.
The organization of each of the chapters composing
the report begins with a section on "successes" and
moves on to a review of "challenges," passing by
any discussion of failures, which are inevitable
for any political practice in the present world,
which is characterized by a complex web of
cross-cutting competitive and cooperative power
relations.
The omission of any acknowledgment of mistakes
renders the N.S.S. more like an advertisement for
U.S. policy than a normal white paper directed to a
knowledgeable and sophisticated political class.
The absence of self-criticism also means that any
policy shifts made in response to perceived
mistakes have to appear under the guise of
established policies, making their import
problematic and their presentation
non-transparent.
Nowhere is the lack of self-criticism in the N.S.S.
more striking than in the scant attention that the
report pays to the operations in Iraq and
Afghanistan, which are the test cases of the
administration's security policies and will in
great part determine the U.S. power position in the
Middle East and Central Asia.
Set off in a separate box in the chapter on
terrorism, the discussions of Iraq and Afghanistan
are superficial and based on best-case
scenarios.
Afghanistan merits only a short paragraph, in which
the country's "two successful elections" are noted
and it is lauded for being "a staunch ally in the
war on terror." As for challenges, the N.S.S.
confines itself to admitting that "much work
remains" and calling for the "support of the United
States and the entire international community."
Left unmentioned are the dependence of
Afghanistan's economy on the heroin trade, the
recent resurgence of the Taliban, the lack of
effective control of the central government over
regional warlords, the border tensions between
Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the slow pace of
post-war reconstruction.
The N.S.S. makes it appear that Afghanistan is a
done deal, which is far from the case. Indeed, the
Bush administration's neglect of Afghanistan in
favor of concentration on Iraq has left the country
close to a failed state and has provided the
conditions for it to become a narco-state and the
potential for becoming a destabilizing influence in
Central Asia. [See: "Insurgents, Warlords and Opium
Roil Afghanistan"]
Turning to Iraq, the N.S.S. uses the prism of the
war on terrorism and adopts a tone of unrelieved
optimism. Here, however, "success" is removed to
the future: "When the Iraqi Government supported by
the United States defeats the terrorists, terrorism
will be dealt a critical blow. ... And the success
of democracy in Iraq will be a launching pad for
freedom's success throughout a region that for
decades has been a source of instability and
stagnation."
The strategies for making those predictions come
true are the familiar administration talking
points: the formation of "stable, pluralistic, and
effective national institutions," building the
Iraqi security forces, and restoring "Iraq's
neglected infrastructure" and reforming the
country's economy according to "market principles."
Absent is any consideration of the domestic
insurgency; the conflict between Sunni, Shi'a and
Kurdish interests; the power of sectarian militia;
and the decline in basic services and the high
unemployment and poverty rates that are tied to the
collapse of services.
The N.S.S. carries forward without any caveats the
best-case scenario for Iraq that was projected
before the intervention by the neo-conservative
elements within the U.S. security establishment who
argued that the intervention would transform Iraq
into a market democracy and a positive influence
for change in the Middle East.
As the United States searches for an exit strategy
from Iraq and is caught in the middle of the
conflicting demands of the country's political
forces, nearly every analyst from every persuasion
believes that the probability that Iraq will be
transformed into a model market democracy is
negligible. The best that Washington can hope for
is that a break-up of the country, whether or not
preceded by a civil war, will be averted by the
formation of a confederal state in which regions
dominated by Shi'a, Sunni and Kurdish
religious-ethnic groups have sufficient autonomy to
thwart the effectiveness of a central government.
Washington is currently adjusting to that scenario
on the ground, yet the N.S.S. gives no indication
of the shift, which has been going on for more than
two years. [See: "Red Lines Crisscross Iraq's
Political Landscape"]
The persistence of utopian pretensions and the
denial of failure are present in every section of
the N.S.S., with the discussions of Afghanistan and
Iraq the most telling examples. The gulf between
the ideal and the real that structures the report
bespeaks Washington's inability to formulate a
genuine strategy, which continues to leave it prey
to reacting to external events and initiatives with
ad hoc adjustments.
Now that the post-Iraq review of security policy is
complete, it is clear that the policy void is not
likely to be filled until the election of a new
administration in 2008.
Conclusion
At the heart of the compromise formation that
constitutes the N.S.S. is the unresolved conflict
between the unipolar "idealists," centered in the
vice president's office and factions in the Defense
Department, and the multipolar "realists" in the
State Department. The document carries forward the
unipolarists' dictum that the U.S. must maintain a
military force "without peer" and reaffirms
Washington's option to wage preemptive war against
perceived threats, and also adds commitments to
Rice's program of "transformational diplomacy,"
which acknowledges the emerging multipolar global
power configuration.
Throughout the report, the contending positions
appear together in an uneasy mix, nowhere more than
in President George W. Bush's letter of
presentation: "Effective multinational efforts are
essential to solve...problems. Yet history has
shown that only when we do our part will others do
theirs. America must continue to lead."
The question remains what precisely leadership
means in the absence of a coherent strategy.
Beneath the gap between universal principles and
momentary policy adjustments, and the omission of
acknowledgment of failures, is the lack of
recognition of any need to compromise with allies
and competitors in order to achieve "effective
multinational efforts." The 2006 N.S.S. continues
in the line of the 2002 N.S.S. in its assertion of
U.S. global supremacy, while making some
concessions to the need for diplomacy along with
military power.
Although the U.S. remains the world's strongest
military power and its largest economy, it is no
longer plausible to call the U.S. an undisputed
global "leader" -- it has neither the international
trust necessary to lead by persuasion nor the
overwhelming might required to impose its policies
globally -- and its economic leverage has been
weakened by massive indebtedness.
If Washington develops a coherent and credible
security strategy over the next five years, it will
have the possibility of becoming primus inter pares
in a multipolar world. In order to take that
position, it would have to develop trust as an
honest broker, make judicious compromises and
contrive delicate acts of regional balance-of-power
politics.
None of the virtues required for those practices is
promoted in the N.S.S., in which halting steps into
the emerging regional world are taken with a head
turned backwards toward an illusory past.
Report Drafted By:
Dr. Michael A. Weinstein
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