The tyranny of false vision: America's unipolar fantasy

Survival

Volumn 50, Issue 5, 2008, Pages 61-78

  Calleo, David P ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 53449094764     PISSN: 00396338     EISSN: 14682699     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/00396330802456460     Document Type: Article

References (65)

1. Surveys of international opinion by the Pew Global Attitudes Project show a precipitous decline in favourable opinion of the United States during the early years of the George W. Bush presidency. Early 2008 saw some improvements in various countries, but of four West European countries surveyed (France, Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom), only Britain had a majority (53%) with a favourable opinion of the United States. Favourable opinion remained very low in most Muslim countries, deteriorated sharply in Japan and Mexico, but improved significantly in Poland (to 68%), Russia (to 46%), South Korea (to 70%), India (to 66%), and China (to 41%). Large majorities in Western Europe 'among people who have been following the election' believed US foreign policy would improve with a new president (France 68%, Spain 67%, and Germany 64%). Among those following the election, Democratic candidate Barack Obama ranked higher in every country surveyed except Jordan and Pakistan, 'where few people have confidence in either candidate', and in the United States itself. See Pew Global Attitudes Project, 'America's Image in the World: Findings from the Pew Global Attitudes Project', March 2007
2. and 'Global Economic Gloom - China and India Notable Exceptions', June 2008, both available at http://www.pewglobal.org.
3. Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion (New York: Macmillan, 1965), p. 10.
4. Great powers of the nineteenth century, however, were generally careful to limit their ambitions. See Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994)
5. and A.J.P. Taylor, The Struggle for Mastery in Europe, 1848-1914 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1954).
6. For a discussion of America's long-standing 'liberal' aggressiveness, see Robert Kagan, 'Cowboy Nation: Against the Myth of American Innocence', New Republic, 23 October 2006, available at http://www.gmfus.org/publications/article.cfm?id=229.
7. For a discussion of the Hamiltonian school see John Lamberton Harper, American Machiavelli: Alexander Hamilton and the Origins of U.S. Foreign Policy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004)
8. and Walter Russell Mead, Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and how it Changed the World (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001), pp. 99-131.
9. For a discussion of Theodore Roosevelt and his imperialist circle, see Warren Zimmerman, First Great Triumph: How Five Americans Made Their Country a World Power (New York: Farrer, Strauss and Giroux, 2002)
10. and David P. Calleo and Benjamin M. Rowland, America and the World Political Economy (Bloomington, IN and London: Indiana University Press, 1973), chapter 3.
11. For a discussion of Woodrow Wilson's liberal imperialism, see Arthur S. Link, Wilson the Diplomatist (New York: New Viewpoints, 1974), chapter 5.
12. For a discussion of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's personal melding of the energetic foreign policy of his cousin Theodore and the liberal internationalism of Woodrow Wilson during the ideological battles of 1914-19, and the consequences this had for the Second World War and beyond, see John Lamberton Harper, American Visions of Europe: Franklin D. Roosevelt, George F. Kennan, and Dean G. Acheson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), chapters 1-3.
13. Wendell L. Willkie, One World (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1943).
14. Henry Luce founded Time Magazine in 1923. By 1940, one in five Americans, mostly from the East Coast middle class, was exposed to a Luce publication each week. 'The American Century' appeared in Time on 7 February 1941. America, Luce urged, should 'accept wholeheartedly [its] duty and [its] opportunity as the most powerful and vital nation in the world and in consequence to exert upon the world the full impact of [its] influence, for such purposes as [Americans] see fit and by such means as [they] see fit'.
15. Charles de Gaulle, The Complete War Memoirs of Charles de Gaulle, Vol II: Salvation, trans. Jonathan Griffen and Richard Howard (New York: Carroll and Graf Publishers, 1998), pp. 573-4.
16. For early indications of Anglo-American disagreement, see Francis L. Loewenheim, Harold D. Langley and Manfred Jonas, Roosevelt and Churchill: Their Secret Wartime Correspondence (New York: The Saturday Review Press, 1975).
17. For a discussion of the United Kingdom's difficulties negotiating post-war economic aid from the United States, and the role of lend-lease in weakening the UK economy, see Robert J.A. Skidelsky, John Maynard Keynes, Vol. 3, Fighting for Britain, 1937-1946 (London: Macmillan, 2000), pp. 180-81 and chapters 11-12.
18. See also Richard N. Gardner, Sterling-Dollar Diplomacy in Current Perspective: The Origins and the Prospects of our International Economic Order (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980)
19. and Randall Bennett Woods, A Changing of the Guard: Anglo-Saxon Relations, 1941-1946 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1990).
20. For a rancorous recollection of old Anglo-American conflicts in light of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, see Francis Beckett, 'What Has America Ever Done For Us?', New Statesman, 3 March 2003, vol. 132, no. 4627, p. 18, http://www.newstatesman.com/200303030013.
21. For early US reactions to post-war European plans, see Federico Romero, Alan Steele Milward and George Brennan, The European Rescue of the Nation-State (London: Routledge, 2000)
22. and John Lamberton Harper, Postwar US Foreign Policy: Patterns and Prospects, Johns Hopkins University, Bologna Center, Occasional Paper no. 40 (Bologna: The Johns Hopkins University Bologna Center, 1982).
23. For a general discussion, see Benjamin M. Rowland (ed.), Balance of Power or Hegemony (New York: New York University Press, 1976), particularly Rowland's own chapter 5, 'Preparing the American Ascendancy: The Transfer of Economic Power from Britain to the United States, 1933-1944'.
24. The disappointment of American unipolar expectations began in the waning days of Roosevelt's presidency, as he appears already to have decided that Stalin could not be counted on to fulfil the promises made at Yalta regarding the post-war treatment of Eastern Europe. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr, explains that while senior statesmen in the United States hoped to find a long-term modus vivendi, the Soviet Union was, for historical and ideological reasons, resistant to such an idea. The conflict between American and Soviet expectations for the post-war order festered until the 1947 Soviet withdrawal from the Marshall Plan proceedings, and subsequent communist advances in Eastern Europe led to a frozen confrontation. See Lloyd Gardner, Arthur Schlesigner, Jr, and Hans Morgenthau, The Origins of the Cold War (Lexington, VT and Toronto, ON: Xerox College Publishing, 1970), pp. 41-77.
25. For a discussion of Cold War debates over nuclear strategy and the evolution of nuclear warfighting, and of American fears of Eurocommunism and Finlandisation, see Dana Allin, Cold War Illusions: America, Europe and Soviet Power, 1969-1989 (New York: St Martin's Press, 1994.), pp. 110-11.
26. For the strategic debates, see also Fred M. Kaplan, The Wizards of Armageddon (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1991).
27. For a discussion of declinism in general and Reagan's financial vulnerabilities in particular, see David P. Calleo, Beyond American Hegemony (New York: Basic Books, 1987), chapter 7
28. David P. Calleo, The Bankrupting of America: How the Federal Budget is Impoverishing the Nation (New York: William Morrow & Co, 1992), chapters 6 and 8-10
29. and Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (New York: Random House, 1987).
30. On the idea of a 'declinist' school, see Peter Schmeisser, 'Taking Stock: Is America in Decline?', New York Times, 17 April 1988.
31. President Clinton first used this phrase on the occasion of his second Inaugural Address. It was later picked up by Madeleine Albright, who expanded it into a justification for the use of force in the Balkans. On 19 February 1998 she said, 'If we have to use force, it is because we are America. We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall. We see further into the future.' For Clinton's address, see http://www.yale.edu/ lawweb/avalon/presiden/inaug/clinton2.htm. Albright's comments were made during the 19 February 1998 broadcast of NBC's 'The Today Show'.
32. Francis Fukuyama, 'The End of History?', The National Interest, vol. 16, Summer 1989, p. 3.
33. The expanded book version - The End of History and the Last Man (New York: The Free Press, 1992) - provided sophisticated encouragement for American triumphalism.
34. US military expenditures were 4.7% of gross domestic product in 1981 and 5.9% in 1988, having peaked in 1986 at 6.3%. For the consequences of America's internationally outsized military spending, see David P. Calleo, The Bankrupting of America, chapter 4.
35. See also data from the Congressional Budget Office's NATO Burdensharing After Enlargement (Washington DC: The Congressional Budget Office, 2001), p. 30.
36. Robert J.A. Skidelsky, The Road from Serfdom: The Economic and Political Consequences of the End of Communism (New York: Viking, 1996).
37. Thomas Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1999)
38. Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Choice (New York: Basic Books, 2004)
39. and Michael Mandelbaum, The Case for Goliath: How America Acts as the World's Government in the Twenty-First Century (New York: Public Affairs, 2005).
40. The 1992 Defense Planning Guidance document predicted indefinite US military dominance. In controversial early drafts, later amended, it counselled Washington to prevent the rise of rivals. Patrick E. Tyler, 'U.S. Strategy Plan Calls for Insuring No Rivals Develop,' New York Times, 8 March 1992. p. A1
41. Barton Gellman, 'Keeping the U.S. First, Pentagon Would Preclude a Rival Superpower', Washington Post, 11 March 1992, p. A1, available at http://www.yale.edu/strattech/92dpg.html.
42. For a discussion of a non-polar future, see Richard Haas, 'The Age of Nonpolarity', Foreign Affairs, vol. 87, no. 3, May-June 2008, http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20080501faessay87304/richard-n-haass/ the-ageof-nonpolarity.html.
43. For a discussion of the strategic context of the near-war between China and Russia, and its aftermath, see Dittmer Lowell, Sino-Soviet Normalization and its International Implications, 1945-1990 (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 1992), chapters 11-12.
44. The Japanese economy grew at an annual rate of 9.1 % between 1953 and 1960, while the US growth rate was 3.2 %. Japan's per capita gross domestic product finally exceeded that of the United States in 1987, although subsequent economic stagnation reduced Japan to 13th in the world by 2003 (the United States was in second place). All along, however, Japan continued to run a large current-account surplus with the United States. For early post-war growth figures, see Yearbook of National Accounts Statistics 1965 (New York: UN Department of Economics and Social Affairs, 1966), p. 46
45. for 1980s data, see National Accounts Statistics: Analysis of Main Aggregates 1988-9 (New York: UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 1991), pp. 6-7.
46. Per capita gross domestic product rankings are taken from CIA World Factbook 2004 (Washington DC: Central Intelligence Agency, 2004).
47. For a discussion of early post-war Japanese growth and its broader implications, see Herman Kahn, The Emerging Japanese Superstate (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1970)
48. and David P. Calleo and Benjamin M. Rowland, America and the World Political Economy (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1973), ch. 8.
49. For what now seem like paranoid American reactions to growing Japanese power, see Leon Hollerman (ed.), Japan and the United States: Economic and Political Adversaries (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1980)
50. and Pat Choate, Agents of Influence: How Japan's Lobbyists Manipulate America's Political and Economic System (New York: Knopf Books, 1990 ).
51. For a review of the conditions underpinning the rise of the Asian economies, and a discussion of their current state, see Indermit Singh Gill, Yukon Huang and Homi J. Kharal (eds), East Asian Visions: Perspectives on Economic Development (Washington DC: The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, The World Bank and The Institute of Policy Studies, 2007).
52. See John J. Mearsheimer, 'Back to the Future: Instability in Europe after the Cold War', International Security, vol. 15, no. 1, Summer 1990, pp. 5-56
53. and John Lewis Gaddis, The United States and the End of the Cold War: Reconsiderations, Implications, Provocations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992).
54. For my own analyses, see David P. Calleo, Rethinking Europe's Future chapters 10-12 and 16, and 'Afterword'.
55. Powell's doctrine, first proclaimed during the Persian Gulf War of 1990-91, argued that American forces should not be sent into combat without a precise and limited objective tied to clear American national-security objectives, with comprehensive support at home and abroad, and the ability to deploy overwhelming force to assure an American victory. The doctrine was designed explicitly to avoid repeating the sort of commitments the United States had made in Vietnam in the 1960s or Lebanon in the early 1980s. See Colin L. Powell, 'U.S. Forces: Challenges Ahead', Foreign Affairs, Winter 1992-93, pp. 32-45.
56. See David P. Calleo, Rethinking Europe's Future, pp. 309-14, and notes 26-35.
57. For more information on Clinton's bombing of Iraq (referred to as Operation Desert Fox)
58. see Romesh Ratnesar et al., 'What Good Did It Do?', Time, vol. 152, no. 6, December 1998-January 1999, p. 68, available at http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN= 1378913&site=ehost-li.
59. For information on Clinton's 1999 proposal to increase defence spending see 'Clinton to Seek $100 Billion, 6-Year Defense Spending Boost', Washington Post, 3 January 1999, p. A12.
60. 'Presidential Debate', Online NewsHour, 12 October 2000, http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/july-dec00/ for-policy_10-12.html.
61. For my own selective survey of the vast literature on the Soviet collapse, see David P. Calleo, Rethinking Europe's Future, pp. 131-4.
62. See also Anders Aslund, Building Capitalism: The Transformation of the Former Soviet Bloc (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
63. Much of the world prefers the terminology 'fight against terror' to the Bush administration's 'war on terror'. The former suggests a complex, many-sided struggle requiring several types of professional expertise but within a more or less normal, peacetime society. The latter implies the total mobilisation of a nation for war and can easily be counterproductive for the detection and prosecution of terrorism at home, and damaging of civil liberties more generally. See, for example, reflections by the former British Director of Public Prosecutions, Sir Ken MacDonald, in Clare Dyer, 'There is no War on Terror', Guardian 24 January 2007.
64. For debate on the US predilection to 'make war' on a host of evils, including poverty, cancer, drugs and illiteracy, see Guy Raz, 'Defining the War on Terror', All Things Considered, National Public Radio, Washington DC, 1 November 2006, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/ story.php?storyId=6416780.
65. For a more general discussion of why the 'war' analogy does not fit the security problems posed by terrorism, and how the analogy's use may damage US public diplomacy, see Max Rodenbeck, 'How Terrible is It?', New York Review of Books, vol. 52, no. 19, 30 November 2006, available at http://www.nybooks.com/articles/articlepreview? article_id=19657.