US teeters on power tightrope
The war in Iraq could end Washington's superpower ambitions - but advocates of cautious insularity should be careful what they wish for, writes Gerard Baker
March 04, 2006
PITY the United States. It just can't seem to please anybody.
In the 1990s, when the post-Cold War world was busy being born against a background of uncertainty, regional instability and, as we now know, emerging mortal threats, a fat and happy superpower seemed content to stay at home, play with its Silicon Valley-produced gizmos and fret about presidents who got sexual favours from interns.
When the US did get involved in the devilish world outside - in Africa or the Balkans - it did so reluctantly and with a damaging cautiousness. The disaster in Somalia in 1993 created the conditions for subsequent engagements - tentative, limited, and from a safe distance: not a recipe for success.
In the post-Cold War world, the problem with the US was that it seemed so uninterested, unengaged, unwilling to shoulder the burdens of global leadership. It no longer seemed to have the stomach for the sacrifices that had triumphed in the end over the vile ideologies of the 20th century. It wanted the world to go away.
Five years on, that is certainly not what worries the world about the US. Today, as it surveys the wreckage of Washington's 21st-century engagements - in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - it wishes the US had stayed home. The world is nostalgic for some of that late 20th-century insularity.
But the world should be careful what it wishes for. There are political forces at work that suggest Americans may be willing to comply. The US public's appetite for global engagement has been declining rapidly since things turned sour in Iraq. The failures of George W. Bush's foreign policy have set up a competition between those who would renew and improve Washington's engagement with the world, and those who would shun it.
The danger, to be sure, is not old-fashioned isolationism of the disastrous sort that helped lead to World War II. But a distinct post-Iraq mentality is rapidly replacing the post-9/11 outlook.
The post-9/11 spirit was interventionist and idealist. It was willing to get out and take on the enemy - in Afghanistan, obviously where the terrorist attacks were set up, but even in places where threats were only forming or potential, such as Iraq. It was willing to accept casualties as a tragic but necessary price to pay for the removal of these threats. And it rested on a sure faith in the US as a liberating force in the world.
The post-Iraq US world view is less optimistic, less idealistic and less willing to intervene. Americans have lost much of their confidence in the ability of their forces to make the world safe for democracy. They will still be ready to strike if attacked, and their faith in the liberating ideal of US democracy will be undiminished. But they will, to put it bluntly, be much less willing to have their children go out and die for it. If Iraq really does slide into full-scale civil war, the impact on the US public psyche will be epoch-making in its political consequences.
The loud political debates now raging in Washington hint at the pervasive power of this new mood to alter the country's direction. The overwhelming opposition to the Dubai takeover of P&O's US ports points up a broader insecurity about Washington's relations with the world. Making the case for the deal on principled free-trade grounds, as the US President has found, is difficult these days.
The increasingly bitter debate about immigration is another example. Although the US is growing rapidly, with an unemployment rate of 4.7per cent and labour scarce in much of the country, Americans are angry at the flow of illegal immigration that is helping to fill labour shortages.
The temptations of disengagement look likely to shape the terms of political debate as the US approaches the next presidential election. As it stands, it looks as though the election will be fought broadly along these battle lines - and what is intriguing about them is that they are not traditional partisan cleavages, but lines that cut through both main political parties. Ready to make the case for a continuing engaged US open to the world are, on the Republican side, John McCain, Rudolph Giuliani and perhaps even, some still insist, Condoleezza Rice - pro-immigration, pro-free markets, anti-protectionist, and still forcefully supporting US global engagement, by force if necessary.
They are likely to be joined by Democrats such as senators Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton - although the isolationist tendency among Democrats is strong enough to propel even Clinton into a disgracefully opportunistic attack on the Dubai takeover of US ports.
Within both parties, however, the changed and darker post-Iraq mood will surely present opportunities for a populist approach that plays on the seductiveness of economic and political disengagement.
Politicians whose experience and outlook is almost exclusively domestic will be especially likely to fall prey to these temptations. Republicans such as George Allen, the Virginia senator who enjoy strong support among conservatives, may opt to take this route.
On the Democratic side, John Edwards, the party's vice-presidential candidate in 2004, is already staking out a populist quasi-protectionist approach with a strong message of "Bring the troops home" from Iraq.
The outcome of this struggle is unclear. The inadequacies of Bush foreign policy have weakened but not completely undermined faith in US engagement in the world. But everything will depend on events in the next two years. If Iraq, even now, manages to look like a success, if the revolutions in the Middle East begin to yield real democratic and peaceful dividends, and if the US economy remains strong, the isolationist tendency will be contained.
But it is easy to see an alternative scenario - failure and civil war in Iraq, broader instability in the Middle East and a weakening US economy, with unemployment rising and wages stagnating - that will once again shift the terms of US relations with the rest of the world.
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