It goes almost without saying that the international community of wolves is circling the American wagon as it sits in the global desert with the mules dead or dying and the wheels threatening to crack off. Of course this is to be expected.
If there is anything every ruling elite--friend and foe alike--enjoys, it is the prospect of kicking the corpse of Uncle Sam. Joy at American weakness and distress is and has been for beaucoup years a feature of international politics. This time the long knives are sharper and the grins of anticipation more vulpine than usual as a direct result of the ill-advised arrogance of George W. Bush's focus on unilateralism.
George W. had the hubris. Now governments and leaders from countries great and small see themselves as a species of nemesis.
It has been a mort of years since the US appeared both so powerless and so challenged on the world stage. The last time the wolfpack formed was during the years of the Ford and Carter administrations.
The US, shaken by the debacle of the War in Vietnam and the fallout of the Great Watergate Caper, was also rocked by a combination of inflation and flat economic growth. The lackluster administrations of two less than dynamic presidents stood by watching with evident helplessness as countries and conditions hostile to our national and strategic interests prevailed, expanded and developed around the world from Latin America to Africa, to Asia, and to the Mideast and the Persian Gulf.
To paraphrase the lyrics of one form of the "Bug Out Boogie" from the Korean War, "Hear the patter of tiny feet/That's the USA in full retreat."
Tongue-tied, knee-knocking and naval-gazing, We the People and our government watched the wolves dine at our expense and worried not about the ultimate costs. There were even those among us--academics, pundits and others of the High Minded caste--who argued that the world was better off without our active participation. We were just too dirty for our filth not to rub off on the pure innocence of the ayatollahs, commissars and tin-plated dictators who were running rampant.
Within the elites of our allies in Western Europe there was much nodding of agreeing heads. The smiles of joy in our suffering were discretely concealed behind lofty talk of multi-polar politics and the end of the American "hegemony." The Japanese went further than that. They went out not only to buy as much of the US as possible, at least one major figure went so far as to allege that we deserved our diplomatic and economic ruination because the Americans were a mixed race, mongrel people.
Now the scene is replaying with some difference in detail.
The major features are unchanged. The US is undergoing severe economic problems. (The Geek is a historian so he will pass on the key question of whether the assorted expenditure programs undertaken and proposed will ameliorate or exacerbate the underlying problem.) As a result of this, every foreign policy test must be viewed through the distorting lens of domestic worry over the economy as well as the magnifying glass created by the enormous debt which the US must foist off on foreign investors.
The unnecessarily prolonged war in Afghanistan and its apparent failure to date has served to severely undercut the potential deterrent effect of US military capacities. The undercutting has in no way been alleviated by the mixed (to put it kindly) results today in Iraq.
Regardless of what the High Minded and Lofty Thinking might wish to be the case, a credible capacity to coerce is a foundation of effective diplomacy. As the knowledgeable realpolitiker Joe Stalin knew when he famously inquired when advised that the Catholic Church opposed Soviet ambitions in Eastern Europe, "How many divisions does the Pope have?"
It will take more, much more than a new strategy for Afghanistan,no matter how correctly focused, or tough talk on Face the Nation to convince states hostile to our interests that they should take our diplomatic demarches seriously. From the perspective of hostile capitals such as Tehran, Pyongyang, Beijing or even Moscow, the hoary characterisation once offered by Chairman Mao regarding the US is accurate today. (That characterisation should you not remember it was "paper tiger.")
The utter absence of any perceived will and capacity on the part of the US to effectively coerce is seen quite blatantly with the North Koreans. While supported in its diplomacy by Japan and South Korea (and in a semi-hemi-demi way by China and Russia), the US effort to abate the North Korean nuclear program including its proliferation component and long-range missile ancillary has been a notable failure.
The Hermit Kingdom of the North has been successfully rattling Uncle Sam's cage off and on for over a decade. The rattling has become increasingly intense of late. The up-coming "satellite" launch is one facet of this. Another is the seizure of two Asian descent American women journalists near the vague border on the Tuman River separating China and North Korea.
The best that the US can offer now as the countdown clock ticks and interrogators of the NKPA intelligence operation question the two women is silence on the second matter and the position advanced by SecDef Gates that more economic sanctions rather than shooting down the "illegal" missile should it get off the ground is the preferred option. Admittedly the Hermit Kingdom has proven itself remarkably impervious to outside pressures or inducements, but that is still no justification for ruling out the shoot-down option.
However, the route of going to the UN Security Council for a specific authorisation to abate the missile as an action compatible with previous UNSC actions is not much better than a mud road. The probability of gaining (or cozening) support from the other Permanent Members is nil. For this the US can thank the misuse of Security Council procedures by the Bush administration with respect to Iraq.
The success of North Korea in cocking a snoot at the US is an encouragement for Tehran. As if the mullahocracy needed any. The sanction regime has proven painful to people in Iran but bootless as regards the Iranian nuclear effort.
US posturing over the Iranian support of Hamas and Hezbollah has been even less effective. Our close ally, the UK, has gone right ahead and started diplomatic conversations with Hezbollah in Lebanon arguing with the usual British bland face that there is a meaningful distinction between the military (terrorist according to the US, EU and UN) and political portions of Hezbollah.
This do-it-my-way approach simply reflects the position taken by assorted European governments regarding the sanctions against Iran. Economic considerations trump the sanction regime. Anyway, what can the US do about it?
Americans historically have evinced an irrational desire to be loved throughout the world. We have fretted and engaged in mental masturbation when our desire for affection is unrequited, or, worse, rejected. For some reason even intelligent, well-educated Americans seem to believe that nation-states should be like individual people equipped with the same emotional suite and capacity for empathy of an individual. We speak of "friends" in the international context in a way identical to that with which we talk of our friends next door or at work.
Get a grip! Nation-states do not have emotions of the human sort even though they are comprised of and run by people. Although when warped international politics can become all too personal, by and large the slogan "the personal is the political" is as wrong in foreign affairs as a cat barking.
States have interests. Diplomacy works in one of two ways. It finds coinciding interests which can be developed, widened or exchanged. Or, it uses coercion. At root all diplomatic coercion depends for its success on the existence of a credible will and capacity to employ military force as the ultimate argument.
Appeals to past relations, to loyalty, even to shared domestic values are not useful tools in diplomacy. For the US to succeed in safe guarding its national and strategic interests, it is essential that we abandon any notion of personal feelings, love or hatred.
Instead, even in the present economic crisis (or perhaps it is more accurate to say, because of the current global economic mess) the US needs to do several things. We must do them fast. Before the wolves and sharks of the globe strike.
Define and achieve a consensus among the politically articulate as to the nature and extent of US national and strategic interests. Pursue those interests coherently employing all the instruments of national power. Remember that coercion is a legitimate part of a coherent strategy. Remember that coercion of all sorts rests upon the existence of a believable will to employ a demonstrably competent military force.
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