|
December 19, 2006
Over at public opinion it was argued that the "grave and deteriorating" situation in Iraq----the words of the Report of James A. Baker's Iraq Study Group---has not yet deteriorated enough to convince establishment (realist) American policymakers to follow the lead of the public and abandon the neo-con's ambitions of the US being the dominant power in the Middle East. The US is to remain an empire even though it has limited power to shape events in Iraq.
In an interesting op-ed in The Australian, which can be accessed at the Lowy Institute as 'After Iraq', Owen Harries asks:
As we near the end game in Iraq, the question arises: what will be the future of the Bush doctrine? Does failure on its first outing spell an early grave for it? Does it mean that it will have been but a passing episode in the history of US foreign policy? As 9/11 recedes into history, and as George W. Bush's period in office draws to an end, are we witnessing the end of what the Bush doctrine stood for? Not necessarily. For the doctrine represents two enduring and fundamental features of the situation - one structural, the other cultural - that will not disappear when the Iraq venture ends: the global hegemony of the US and American exceptionalism.
Harries' answer confirms the opening paragraph of the post: empire stays despite the quagmire in Iraq. How then does Harries understand the global hegemony of the US and its significance for the Middle East? How will empire change to the new circumstances in the Middle East?
Harries says:
The US went into Iraq a confident hegemon, the "indispensable nation" without which nothing important could be done, as Madeleine Albright used to lecture the world. It will come out of it a damaged hegemon, but still a hegemon, still far and away the strongest state on earth. It will remain such for at least a couple of decades.When the weak fail, they have no option but to accept the fact and usually there are no second chances. When the very strong fail, they tend to find excuses, regroup and try again, changing their methods and their timetable but maintaining their goals. As hegemon, the US will still want to impose its will on the world, and that will still represents American values as well as American interests.
That doesn't infirm us about the strategy of the US as a global hegemon in the Middle East.I gies s that harries answers is in terms of American exceptionalism, namely:
the profound belief widely held by Americans since their beginning as a nation that it is their historical - indeed their divinely ordained - destiny to be, in the words of Reinhold Niebuhr, "tutors of mankind in its pilgrimage to perfection", or in the words of president Woodrow Wilson, that Americans are divinely "chosen to show the nations of the world how they shall walk in the paths of liberty". However condescending and presumptuous others may find this conviction, it is deeply held and as natural to Americans as apple pie.
Harries implies that nothing much will change. So what is likely to happen to US foreign policy post-Iraq?There will be nothing like a 180-degree or even a 90-degree change ; but there will be significant adjustments and alterations as certain lessons of recent experience and the validity of the realist critique of that experience are acknowledged.
Harries does not take this any further than the US learning the lesons about bringing hubris under control and trust ing other states through doing a bit of trim and tuck. So Harries accepts the US as empire and its goal of domination in the Middle East.
|
