Alternative Strategies for the Superpower in Its Fifteen Minutes

Alternative Strategies for the Superpower in Its Fifteen Minutes

12/14/2013 12:51:00 pm
By Nguyen Thi Mai
Expert Author Nguyen Thi Mai
The American era as sole superpower is shaping up as just another Melian moment. This is neither necessary, nor necessarily in America's best interest. But, given the grim prospects following the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, what alternative is there?
The answer to that question calls for careful attention to the lessons of history and of socio-economic circumstances. Were that attention to be paid, it would rule out all unilateralist solutions to the problem of American national security. In Harold Koh's words,
For over the past two centuries, the United States has become party not just to a few treaties, but to a global network of closely interconnected treaties enmeshed in multiple frameworks of international institutions. Unilateral admini­stration decisions to break or bend one treaty commitment thus rarely end the matter, but more usually trigger vicious cycles of treaty violation. In an inter­dependent world, the United States simply cannot afford to ignore its treaty obligations while at the same time expecting its treaty partners to help it solve the myriad problems that extend far beyond any nation's control: the global AIDS and SARS crises, climate change, international debt, drug smuggling, trade imbalances, currency coordination, and trafficking in human beings, to name just a few.
To this list one may add as capstone, terrorism. The Security Council, at the instigation of the US, has imposed a global system of controls, reporting and supervision. Why should countries, far less threatened than America, cooperate in this regulatory scheme, even at some risk of themselves becoming targets of the terrorists, if not out of respect for their inextricable link to the system of mutually respected norms and institutions?
It would also rule out the "solution" of dependence on ad hoc coalitions. Some American so-called realists link the demise of the UN system to the invention of something more amenable to the exercise of appropriate American leadership. Professor Michael Glennon, of the Fletcher School, thinks "[a]d hoc coalitions of the willing will effectively succeed it." Really? Have we not already seen in the recent conflict what these ad hoc coalitions will look like: a sizeable contingent from Britain and Australia, a few policemen from Poland, Romania and Bulgaria, at least until those nations are integrated into "old" Europe, and good wishes from Israel? Have we not already witnessed the refusal of almost everyone else to send personnel or money until they can do so under UN auspices? Is it not all too apparent that the investment of 200,000 troops and almost two billion dollars a month has crippled America's capacity to play a leading role anywhere else, whether in the Balkans,
Afghanistan, Liberia or Korea?
Real realism, in place of the prevailing unilateralist fantasies, would force a sober reconsideration of the national advantages to be gleaned, even for the sole superpower, of a return to the norms and institutions of multilateral diplomacy. This requires leadership, not bullying. In the words of Harvard's Professor Joseph Nye, "If I can get you to want to do what I want, then I do not have to force you to do what you do not want to do." In its fifteen minutes of imperium, instead of pursuing a policy of boastful domination and heedlessness, the US ought to be nudging the world towards a more effective cooperative approach to the three predominant global problems of the century: terrorism, failed states and poverty. As noted above, the only viable tactic for promoting its solutions-aside from having solutions-would be for the US to use its influence behind the scenes to make the nations of the world feel that it is they who are designing the common approach to these three related problems.
There is ample room for creativity and ideas aplenty, many of them originating with global networks of experts and emanating from fifty years of field experience by international organizations. Most of the components of reform are, by now, self- evident and interdependent: that is, a way must be found to do all of the necessary parts of the essential whole and not just bits and pieces of it. The world needs a standing transnationally-recruited, volunteer rapid reaction force; its deployment must be by multilateral decision but not subject to one-state veto; it must be under a centralized international command; its components must include police, intelligence experts and personnel trained in reconstructing civil societies; it must be funded by a flat assessment against the gross national product of every state (or comparable measure); and it must be configured, administratively, and authorized to act in close cooperation with the complementary capabilities of the world's major powers as well as with the world's financial, monetary, and economic development institutions.
No small task, you say? Of course not. But what's the sole superpower's exalted status for, if not to tackle the world's really big tasks and to do so in a creative but subtle way; so that, when its fifteen minutes are up, we will all be living, appreciatively, in a better, safer, more civilized place?
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