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
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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