Creating US indispensability? - by confusedponderer

"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"

~Madeleine Albright

The predicament of US leadership today

Ever since Bush 43 the US are in a credibility crisis. And the hope and change Obama supposedly was to bring didn't manifest, in fact, Obama has been a remarkable example in foreign policy consistency, not so much in means, but certainly in goals, which basically remained unchanged from the Bush 43 administration, the Asia pivot being the great exception. They tried everything.

Direct leadership didn't work:

The US going it alone with their coalition of the willing, coerced and bribed in the Iraq war of 2003 war basically succeeded only in getting Saddam and a lot of bystanders killed and the US became hated more than ever. It notably did not achieve the intended goal in Iraq, to the contrary, it contributed greatly to the disintegration of the nation-state formerly known as Iraq into what it is today. Last I looked blossoms didn't bloom from Baghdad to Beirut, and whatever people threw at US troops, it wasn't rose petals.

Leadership from behind didn't work that well either:

Just like having US armed forces kicking in the door themselves, having proxies do it also left a trail of dead and rubble in its wake, and it has proven to be even more chaotic.

US and western neo-con, neo-liberal and/or R2P (the lines blur) politicos won't like it but their insistence that Syria must be regime-changed (off with his head!) probably helped greatly to prevent any settlement of the underlying conflict. That helped to bring the Syrian civil war where it is now and was instrumental in getting a large number of people killed in the process who could still be alive, while tearing the country apart and empowering people like ISIS in the vacuum left as Assad's forces withdrew to core territories to fight for their and their community’s survival.

Success is different, and the absence of US success over the last decade has left the US in a situation where it has become less relevant.

That naturally has consequences for the alliances the US is engaged in. What does that mean for Europe and NATO? Are the US, as Ms. Albright has famously said and Obama has restated, indeed still the one indispensable nation?

NATO, Kosovo, international law, liberal wars and R2P

In face of a considerable absence of credible threats to NATO members, NATO has, under US leadership, decided to seek dragons to destroy in 'out of area operations'. The alliance has found them first in the Balkans, then in Afghanistan and now in Ukraine.

In all of this, the Kosovo war stands out: The Balkan interventions in the aftermath of Yugoslavian disintegration are a special case as these were IMO the first of what I will call 'postmodern wars', wars that liberals could like, that were waged in pursuit, at least nominally, of human rights.

In Germany, the US exerted massive pressure to support the Kosovo war on the incoming SPD-Greens coalition before they even entered office. They were given by their American interlocutors, so it is reported, 15 minutes, to decide, and they decided in support of the Kosovo war. For credibility, liberal support for the Kosovo war was critical. The ZEIT retrospective is IMO correct when it says that nobody could seriously accuse either the SPD or the Greens to hold any tendency for militarized conflict resolution, to the contrary. Indeed, this gave their support the aura of political-moral seriousness.

The war was waged without a UN mandate, but with a NATO one, which must have necessitated some legal contortions in face of the wording of Article 1 NATO Charter:

"The Parties undertake, as set forth in the Charter of the United Nations, to settle any international dispute in which they may be involved by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security and justice are not endangered, and to refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force in any manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations."

Apparently, the feeling was that that left the barn door open to use force in conflicts in which the members choose to involve themselves and that do not concern the parties. This reading requires to ignore that part about inconsistency 'with the purposes of the United Nations', since the latter's charter rather unmistakably stresses in Article 2 UN Charter:

"The Organization and its Members, in pursuit of the Purposes stated in Article 1, shall act in accordance with the following Principles.

1. The Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members."

That fact that about every nation on earth is a member of the UN speaks for itself.

The Kosovo war constituted an attempt to create an early coalition of the willing and was a first step by the US to ignore the UN order if expedient. To intervene in the internal affairs of another country, inevitably violates the national sovereignty of the targeted state. To do so one needs alternative sources of legitimacy.

R2P, or on being post-modern on sovereignty      

Traditionally, as a result of national sovereignty, domestic conflicts are not subject to the UN's 'jurisdiction', and as such off the table. Just like for this reason Kosovo nominally wasn’t subject to UN jurisdiction, Ferguson, Missouri – as an American internal issue – is not an issue for the UN Security Council to address, and that would even be so if the police had mass executed demonstrators there, or called in air strikes with impunity.

For many liberals such conduct, and the legal impossibility to do something about it, now, is  unpalatable. If one really wants to intervene to prevent such a situation from becoming worse, one still has to address the issue of national sovereignty. One would need to be delusional to deny that.

R2P is the name for one attempt to find a solution to the dilemma of atrocities being committed within nation states by nation states on domestic populations, and where the killing doesn’t spill over into territory of other nation states. The idea was that a country 'should not be able to hide behind its sovereignty when they commit mass atrocities' or genocide. Such states under R2P practically forfeit it.

This is legally a stance with quite sweeping consequences, and the inherent radicalism can only rightly be understood in light of mass murder like in Rwanda, Cambodia or Bosnia. In practice, the prevention of genocide is clearly not what the doctrine was invoked for.

And yet a fundamental dilemma remains: The only entity able to violate another nation’s sovereignty is another nation state.

To put it a bit pointedly: The nation-state is precisely what liberals and neo-liberals see as the problem.

This emphasis helps explain the focus of many European liberals to rely on post-national actors like the ICC or ‘the international community’, be it the UN or the EU or NATO – not only does that give strength in numbers and legitimacy, and the veeneer to not act for petty and selfish national motives - it is also seen as a check on individual nation states.

The US R2Pers are in this regard odd birds, since they have chosen the US - after all a nation state - as the vessel to punish the wicked.

Liberal and European ideals and the sense of vindication

In a sense, the liberal principles enshrined in the EU are a point of convergence for liberals and neo-liberals alike. In many respects, the EU is a crowning achievement of European liberalism. Europe, with its legal transformation and legal and economic integration transcends the state.

If one looks at the European free market and the European basic freedoms the liberal element cannot possibly be overlooked. These freedoms are being zealously guarded and at times expanded by the European Court against infringement by individual nation states.

Europe's considerable expansion likewise was seen as a revolutionary new step into the direction of a new stable, peaceful and prosperous future for Europe, built in shared values, permanent dialogue, cooperation and interdependence. The EU and EU expansion are all about integration and interdependence, and the resulting effect that countries that cooperate so closely are unlikely to go to war with each other. The more the merrier! Expansion is good! That is the European creed in a nutshell.

The idea of interdependence and shared access to resources eliminating any incentives for conflict was what drove the EU from the onset - it was largely conceived as a vessel to resolve French and German differences - two of the three the treaties were on strategic commodities - coal and steel (after all there was a lot of struggle between the two over who controls Alsace-Lorraine) and nuclear materials (then the next big thing) - and then there was the initial European Economic Community.

It is a sign of the profound success in many ways of the project that Franco-German relations - former arch enemies after all - are now friendly and stable. That the EEC finally became the dominant organisation and that Europe prospered is a welcome side effect.

Just as successful is the parallel development that concerns human rights in Europe. During the cold war the question of human rights was basically newspeak for criticizing the governments and practices of communist countries in a supposedly post-ideological way, which culminated in the Helsinki declaration.

Just like the collapse of the regimes of the Warsaw Pact created a narrative that the US won the cold war, for European liberals it was just clear that their liberal principles had won the war of ideas in the cold war. Neo-liberals saw the startling economic collapse in the East as their vindication.

With the end of the cold war, and the collapse of leftist ideology, the European Left was facing a crisis. Out of this crisis emerged the New Left – for example Schröder in Germany or Blair in Britain – which had discovered for them neo-liberalism as the market doctrine, since that was seen as the only game in town.

Probably the only reason why welfare states  had been acceptable to the US before – who would have never allowed these programs at home – was that it kept quiet substantial left movements that were at home in Europe. The fall of Communism as a result also discredited the European welfare states. Since Communism no longer was a credible ideological rival, the US and the IWF would no longer tolerate such indulgences. Austerity was the order of the day.

The perception that the nation state and state power is the problem applied to economics as much as to politics:

In the economic sphere the dogma of efficient markets serves as the argument why abolishing oversight and regulations is desirable, but at its root IMO lays the idea that it is national law, and meddling lawmakers if pushed by their electorates, which imposes restrictions on businesses. To abolish such meddling, and to compel through international treaties other states to not conduct market oversight that the US has decided to abolish, neo-liberals expect to have everybody prosper. With the state out of the way, a bright economic future will bloom, finally! And with prosperity will come peace.

In the political realm the focus largely is about the historical examples of states terrorizing their or neighboring populations, and indeed this was the case with the repressive regimes of the late Warsaw Pact, Nazi Germany and for example Imperial Japan. Their historic rampages were so bad and were so murderous because the state’s capacity for organized violence is unsurpassed, as a result of its substantial resources and bureaucratic organizational capability.

In that light, the conclusion that suggests itself is that the weaker the state is, the safer the individual is from it. This view that the state is itself a threat is in a sense a point of convergence for neo-liberals and liberals alike.

EU expansion at an impasse?

For the EU countries the last decades that saw EU expansion and integration of the new members and generally good economic development, despite crises, are a remarkable success story. It is not hard to see how for Europeans, integration and further expansion may seem totally normal and sensible. Does it not work?

Well, mostly: There has been a general sense that Romania and Bulgaria already had been brought in far too really. It may sound patronizing, but it will probably take billions (getting stolen) and decades of governance (nation) building to right these basket cases.

And yet there are people who talk about allowing Ukraine into the EU as if they really mean it, just as if Ukraine was not worse in every respect than either Romania or Bulgaria: Ukraine’s cleptocratic oligarchs were worse and greedier still than even the Russian ones, corruption is endemic and the economy is in dire straits, and now add to this already unappealing picture the damage and disruption caused by the civil war.

In light of such realities, it makes little sense to expand the EU any further. Of course, a formal renunciation to expand the EU further runs counter to European instincts that see assimilation and integration as the right way to achieve mutual security and prosperity.

Since the EU's economic or gravitational pull is quite substantial, the EU has in the past been able to successfully use the prospect of EU ascension as political leverage to shape policies in countries that wanted to enter the EU. A formal renunciation  would deprive the EU of that tool and they probably would be loath to give it up. But then, the Turks have long given up believing the EU on this anyway. And the Turks could rightly ask: Why Ukraine but not Turkey, which economically probably is in far better shape?

EU and the economy or security- what matters?

It is interesting to have at this point a brief look at the realities facing a small country of the former Soviet bloc, like Latvia:

Latvia is EU member. Their economy does export to Russia (18%), Lithuania (15%), Estonia (12%), Germany (7,2)%, Poland (5,6%), Sweden (4,8%) - the US isn't even on the list, and neither is it for imports.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Latvia

More, Latvia has been making considerable progress on integrating into the EU: Latvians are using EU law every day, indeed, EU law has become Latvian law. They can trade, settle, work and travel freely in Europe. If I travel to Latvia, under Schengen rules, I merely need to show ID at the airport. I don't need a passport or a visa. It is the same for Latvians when they travel to Germany.

The question is who has more influence in these countries: The folks the Baltic countries talk, deal and trade with on a daily basis or the guys who are training the officers of their minuscule armies and are selling them used US arms under foreign military sales?

In my judgment it is that in peace it is the EU that must matter to them most. It is only in light of Russia emerging, deus ex machina, as a threat, that the US, as a protector, reasserts their practical relevance to them politically.

The role of NATO, the absence of treats, and the timeliness of the Ukraine crisis

There is the famous adage that NATO was all about to keeping the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.

I increasingly think that this is precisely what we are seeing right now, and what is also underlying the Ukraine crisis.

Nothing revives an old alliance as much as a(n) (in)credible external threat. The re-emergence, through US policy, or Russia as an antagonist, provides just such a threat, at a time when the US is in dire need of it, and America’s vaunted indispensability has come under increasing doubt. It restores US relevance to Europe through NATO.

The US simultaneously does the same in Asia with ASEAN as they take their aim at China.

I think this reassertion of US leadership is the primary motivation on part of the neo-cons and Brezinskiites in their drive against Russia. In that sense, global leadership is the end,  and the crises are the means to achieve it.

To the extent that the Obamaites do not just blunder along blindly but pursue a plan, I think that this is it.

They apparently try to make the US more relevant again by deliberately antagonizing Russia, have Europe pay for it (and weaken it as an economic competitor), offer Europe protection through NATO while taking control of the strategic energy transit routes that supply Europe, since these energy transit routes are arteries of our economies, just in case the EU does become a peer competitor after all.

That'd then be every bit as reckless as the neo-conservative plan to reshape the Middle East in the US image.

~ confusedponderer

Comments

[Walrus]

Thank you Confused Ponderer.

The conundrum of the nation state was posed at least as early as 1999 by Sir Michael Howard.

You suggested: "And yet a fundamental dilemma remains: The only entity able to violate another nation’s sovereignty is another nation state.

To put it a bit pointedly: The nation-state is precisely what liberals and neo-liberals see as the problem."

Sir Michael pointed out that the Nation State, however, is the only entity that can enter international treaties and enforce their terms on their own populations. Hence the idea of weakening the nation state by trying to create supposed allegiance to a higher form of organisation or ideal creates problems since it by definition loosens the fetters on the ethnic or religious factions suppressed and contained within each nation.

There are thus consequences of weakening the concept of the Westphalian nation state. Yes we held Hitler accountable to a higher ideal - responsibility to protect against humanitarian crimes. The same allegiance to a higher ideal destroyed Iraq, Syria and perhaps other nation states like Libya. The possibility of acension to the higher ideal of EU and NATO membership was all that was required to ignite ethnic war in the Ukraine. Scotland is now pondering independence, arguably weakening Britain in the process. Mexico, the Middle East and other countries find themselves dealing with transnational gangs involved in purveying drugs or a perverted form of religion like ISIS. Transnational companies with revenues exceeding many nations GDP now dictate policy in many nations.

All these in my opinion are unavoidable consequences of weakening the concept of the nation state in favour of higher ideals - "responsibility to protect", "crimes against humanity", "self determination", call it what you will.

Perhaps the downside of this alleged morality play will only become apparent when it hits closer to home; perhaps Texas decides to secede in an act of self determination? The South rises again anyone?

[robt willmann]

Back between when the war on Iraq started in 1990 and the invasion of Iraq in 2003, there were those years of some more bombing and missiles fired, no-fly zones, and the sanctions; this is why the war on Iraq by the U.S. has been continuous, even through today, as we now see. But remember the sanctions? Things got so bad that there was the United Nations Humanitarian Program and oil for food program. Denis Halliday was running it for the UN and resigned after a while because it was ineffective and what was being done to Iraq was, in his words, genocide. I think Hans Von Sponeck ran the program after Halliday and he resigned, too, because the program was not really helping.

http://gandhifoundation.org/2003/01/30/2003-peace-award-denis-halliday-2/

Texas independent oilman Oscar Wyatt, a long-time enemy of the Bush family, and who had done oil and gas business in Iraq (and Libya, for that matter) for a long time, was charged with a crime in federal court in New York City for busting the sanctions and paying kickbacks to Saddam Hussein in order to continue to do oil and gas business with Iraq. In the middle of his trial, he pled guilty in 2007 when the government's case was not going well but he had a lot of potential exposure to prison time, and had a one-year jail sentence. Oscar was born into real poverty in Texas, and scratched around and pulled himself up. He volunteered in World War II and was a pilot, and was wounded at least once. It was Oscar -- and not his nemeses George H.W. Bush and Bush jr. -- who was instrumental in getting the U.S. persons out of Iraq before the war started.

I mentioned recently that the U.S. has had a gangster foreign policy for a long time. The mentality of the foreign policy "establishment" slipped out in an interview of former secretary of state Madeline Albright on the CBS television program "60 Minutes".

The interviewer, Leslie Stahl, asked: "We have heard that a half a million [Iraqi] children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. You know, is the price worth it?"

Madeline Albright: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price, we think, the price is
worth it".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbIX1CP9qr4

There you have it, folks.

[JohnH]

Mark Twain once said, "Patriotism is usually the refuge of the scoundrel. He is the man who talks the loudest."
- Education and Citizenship speech, 5/14/1908

'Credibility' and 'indispensability' are also the refuge of some scoundrel who is about to pile on the BS about some hair brained scheme that can't be justified on its merits.

'Credibility' and 'indispensability' also evoke mob rule, criminal underworld style. Protection services having no inherent value, the bosses have only their own credibility and indispensability, obtained by threat of violence and maintained by constant implication of bad things to happen, if things don't go according to their whims.

It always helps to have a credible bogeyman. Al Qaeda and Iran really didn't measure up. Russia does.

[kao_hsien_chih]

Nobody expected a (secularist) American Inquisition, nor another 30 Years' War, but so we have them now.

[Aka]

Confused Ponderer,

"f 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"

I'm sure some from the Akkadians to the Persians to the Greeks, Romans to the late British empire though the same thing or something along that line.

your reasoning about the US strategy may very well be correct. However whether this strategy would lead to a unintentional WW III or not, US has lot of internal problems. Weaknesses in the economy, loss of freedom and rights for the people (IMO this has a much more negative effect on the US because this may scare potential immigrants), problems regarding US government are some. Whatever Machiavellian games that the US plays with the world, its domestic problems does not seems to be getting proper solutions. And I do not think a country can be truly powerful without its economy. What I see is US will remain a powerful country but it would not be the "indispensable nation" as it would like to be (whether this "indispensable nation" nation ever existed is another matter).

[Ursa Maior]

Very valid points.

[Dubhaltach]

In reply to kao_hsien_chih 31 August 2014 at 10:54 PM

Unfortunately I agree with you.

Dubhaltach

[turcopolier]

All

The quotation from Albright is so filled with hubris that I wretch at the thought. pl

[oofda]

Colonel,
Concur with you..."we see further into the future?". Yes, and "they will greet us with cheering crowds" in Iraq. See how well that turned out.

And remember her infamous retort to General Powell--"What's the point of having this superb military that you're always talking about if we can't use it?"

[VietnamVet]

CP

I agree 100% but I would emphasize “follow the money”. NAFTA, EU and all the subsequent supranational organizations were pushed and approved so multi-national corporations and the wealthy could make more money and devolve the powers of the nation states over them.

The Ukraine Civil War is the ultimate outcome. America can no longer mount a people’s army to fight its wars. After the 24 year and counting conflict with Iraq it can only fight wars with a surrogate armies; Svoboda/Pravy Sektor in Ukraine and Moderate Jihadists in Syria. It cannot tell the truth. Corporate media is now 24/7 propaganda. Western Supranational Corporations want and need access to Ukraine’s resources. Russia is also supporting a proxy army in Ukraine but it is doing so because it is in its national interests. Russia will not last long as a sovereign nation if a western corporatist NATO member controls its western borders.

[cville reader]

VV--I think the emphasis on multinational corporations may be somewhat misplaced. Better to look at who controls the corporations' access to capital and dictates to them expected returns.

[The beaver]

@ VietnamVet
"Western Supranational Corporations want and need access to Ukraine’s resources".

This is one example:
http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Has-Ukraine-Shot-Itself-in-the-Foot-With-Gas-Pipeline-Deal.html

"First, the non-transparent deal -- sponsored by high-ranking government officials -- is a textbook case of restrictive practices that violate World Trade Organization rules. Secondly, the pipeline itself is anything but an attractive offer"

This is another edifying article considering what is happening in the Iran-Iraq-Syria club.
http://uprootedpalestinians.blogspot.ca/2014/06/the-us-is-attempting-to-organize.html

[toto]

CP: At least in France, "liberals" (which I roughly interpret as the democratic left) emphatically do *not* see the nation-state as a problem. They see it as a solution. It is a protection both against the forces of international capital (in the "state" part) and the dangers of tribalism (in the "nation" part).

Admittedly, things may be different in countries that have embraced "multiculturalism", such as Britain. But note that the UK is also particularly vigilant on its own national independence, and defiant towards international integration and the EU project.

[Jack]

Sir

In a similar vein to what Karl Rove told Suskind. "We are an empire....". The hubris is layered on thick. These intellectual midgets in my opinion have squandered whatever goodwill we had in the world.

Sir, you have been in the halls of power. When do you believe we crossed the rubicon to inhabit fantasyland? What in your experience were the factors that led us there?

[Aka]

beaver,
western multinationals may be hoping it would be open season for Ukrainian resources but what they are forgetting is that ukraine itself has it own class of businessmen (criminal, corrupt businessmen. western media now call them "Ukrainian billionaires/ businessmen" but it does not change the fact that these are simply oligarchs).

These guys don't want Ukrainian industries to go in to the western hands. They want it for them.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-08-19/ukraine%E2%80%99s-next-crisis-economic-disaster

And I think they were the decisive factor behind maiden victory. Without their help maiden would not have succeeded (at least not that easily). Ordinary pro-westerners thought they did it. But really they didn't. Same as Egypt's pro-democracy protesters thought that they were the decisive factor (when actually it was the Egyptian military).

[kao_hsien_chih]

Toto,

I think there are two distinct notions about sovereign states.

Do people accept sovereign status of other states within their borders, even if they are "heretical" or "barbarous"? (I am using the terminology deliberately to evoke 30 years' war/age of imperialism when respect for others' sovereignty ran short.) It strikes me that very few westerners today are willing to recognize others' sovereignty as anything other than scraps of paper founded on legal technicality, if that much, compared to their own sense of righteousness. This seems to be the core problem.

With regards one's own sovereignty, it is likely that many countries' poliyical leaders aren't willing to let int'l bodies come in to deal with the issues within their own borders. But this, compounded with the former, exacerbates the problem further. Other countries are perfectly happy to violate their sovereignty using int'l bodies, or, in case of the US (and prob, Russia and China, at least as far as their neighbors are concerned), using their own nation state's resources. (And with others happily intervening, perhaps they woukd be fools not intervening where their own vital interests are at stake.)

The key is respecting others nation states as inviolate within limits, not one's own. Once they are respected by all, some modus vivendi might be arranged where everyone sticks to their own business. If such respect is not universal, it can degenerate to ugly and hypocritical pissing match that seems to be ongoing everywhere of late.

[Dubhaltach]

In reply to toto 01 September 2014 at 03:31 PM

Other than as dog whistle politics how exactly is "multiculturalism" even remotely germane to this topic?

I grant you that at least in one respect American exceptionalism is justified - the supine way in which the American government lets itself be manipulated by the Zionists in Tel Aviv and their fellow travelers to act against the interests of the USA militarily, politically, and economically, baffles people like myself and rightly enrages many of the people who write here who as Americans love their country.

Apart from the special and limited case of the USA name me one, just one, country in which "multiculturalism" as you put it has any deleterious effect upon that country's military, political, and economic well-being. Verifiable examples please unsupported opinion doesn't count.

Thanks in advance.

Dubhaltach

[William R. Cumminh]

Thanks CP for a brilliant post!

Several questions? Other than strategic missiles are the Russians a threat outside Eastern Ukraine?

Will FP be a big factor in this fall's elections?

Is there any source identifying the legal resident alien population in the US? Including separately Russia and the Ukraine as separate ethnic sources for USA immigration, legal and illegal?

Why exactly has the USA and the other major powers in the past, including at the Paris peace Conference in 1919, creation of an independent Ukrainian state [or nation-state?]

In its 150 years under Russian and Polish and Austrian rule did the Ukraine ever have its own culture?