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Military版 - Delusionary Thinking in Washington
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http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176003/
Delusionary Thinking in Washington
The Desperate Plight of a Declining Superpower
By Michael T. Klare
Take a look around the world and it’s hard not to conclude that the United
States is a superpower in decline. Whether in Europe, Asia, or the Middle
East, aspiring powers are flexing their muscles, ignoring Washington’s
dictates, or actively combating them. Russia refuses to curtail its support
for armed separatists in Ukraine; China refuses to abandon its base-building
endeavors in the South China Sea; Saudi Arabia refuses to endorse the U.S.-
brokered nuclear deal with Iran; the Islamic State movement (ISIS) refuses
to capitulate in the face of U.S. airpower. What is a declining superpower
supposed to do in the face of such defiance?
This is no small matter. For decades, being a superpower has been the
defining characteristic of American identity. The embrace of global
supremacy began after World War II when the United States assumed
responsibility for resisting Soviet expansionism around the world; it
persisted through the Cold War era and only grew after the implosion of the
Soviet Union, when the U.S. assumed sole responsibility for combating a
whole new array of international threats. As General Colin Powell famously
exclaimed in the final days of the Soviet era, “We have to put a shingle
outside our door saying, ‘Superpower Lives Here,’ no matter what the
Soviets do, even if they evacuate from Eastern Europe.”
Imperial Overstretch Hits Washington
Strategically, in the Cold War years, Washington’s power brokers assumed
that there would always be two superpowers perpetually battling for world
dominance. In the wake of the utterly unexpected Soviet collapse, American
strategists began to envision a world of just one, of a “sole superpower”
(aka Rome on the Potomac). In line with this new outlook, the administration
of George H.W. Bush soon adopted a long-range plan intended to preserve
that status indefinitely. Known as the Defense Planning Guidance for Fiscal
Years 1994-99, it declared: “Our first objective is to prevent the re-
emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union
or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by
the Soviet Union.”
H.W.’s son, then the governor of Texas, articulated a similar vision of a
globally encompassing Pax Americana when campaigning for president in 1999.
If elected, he told military cadets at the Citadel in Charleston, his top
goal would be “to take advantage of a tremendous opportunity -- given few
nations in history -- to extend the current peace into the far realm of the
future. A chance to project America’s peaceful influence not just across
the world, but across the years.”
For Bush, of course, “extending the peace” would turn out to mean invading
Iraq and igniting a devastating regional conflagration that only continues
to grow and spread to this day. Even after it began, he did not doubt -- nor
(despite the reputed wisdom offered by hindsight) does he today -- that
this was the price that had to be paid for the U.S. to retain its vaunted
status as the world’s sole superpower.
The problem, as many mainstream observers now acknowledge, is that such a
strategy aimed at perpetuating U.S. global supremacy at all costs was always
destined to result in what Yale historian Paul Kennedy, in his classic book
The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, unforgettably termed “imperial
overstretch.” As he presciently wrote in that 1987 study, it would arise
from a situation in which “the sum total of the United States’ global
interests and obligations is… far larger than the country’s power to
defend all of them simultaneously.”
Indeed, Washington finds itself in exactly that dilemma today. What’s
curious, however, is just how quickly such overstretch engulfed a country
that, barely a decade ago, was being hailed as the planet’s first “
hyperpower,” a status even more exalted than superpower. But that was
before George W.’s miscalculation in Iraq and other missteps left the U.S.
to face a war-ravaged Middle East with an exhausted military and a depleted
treasury. At the same time, major and regional powers like China, India,
Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey have been building up their economic
and military capabilities and, recognizing the weakness that accompanies
imperial overstretch, are beginning to challenge U.S. dominance in many
areas of the globe. The Obama administration has been trying, in one fashion
or another, to respond in all of those areas -- among them Ukraine, Syria,
Iraq, Yemen, and the South China Sea -- but without, it turns out, the
capacity to prevail in any of them.
Nonetheless, despite a range of setbacks, no one in Washington’s power
elite -- Senators Rand Paul and Bernie Sanders being the exceptions that
prove the rule -- seems to have the slightest urge to abandon the role of
sole superpower or even to back off it in any significant way. President
Obama, who is clearly all too aware of the country’s strategic limitations,
has been typical in his unwillingness to retreat from such a supremacist
vision. “The United States is and remains the one indispensable nation,”
he told graduating cadets at West Point in May 2014. “That has been true
for the century past and it will be true for the century to come.”
How, then, to reconcile the reality of superpower overreach and decline with
an unbending commitment to global supremacy?
The first of two approaches to this conundrum in Washington might be thought
of as a high-wire circus act. It involves the constant juggling of America
’s capabilities and commitments, with its limited resources (largely of a
military nature) being rushed relatively fruitlessly from one place to
another in response to unfolding crises, even as attempts are made to avoid
yet more and deeper entanglements. This, in practice, has been the strategy
pursued by the current administration. Call it the Obama Doctrine.
After concluding, for instance, that China had taken advantage of U.S.
entanglement in Iraq and Afghanistan to advance its own strategic interests
in Southeast Asia, Obama and his top advisers decided to downgrade the U.S.
presence in the Middle East and free up resources for a more robust one in
the western Pacific. Announcing this shift in 2011 -- it would first be
called a “pivot to Asia” and then a “rebalancing” there -- the president
made no secret of the juggling act involved.
“After a decade in which we fought two wars that cost us dearly, in blood
and treasure, the United States is turning our attention to the vast
potential of the Asia Pacific region,” he told members of the Australian
Parliament that November. “As we end today’s wars, I have directed my
national security team to make our presence and mission in the Asia Pacific
a top priority. As a result, reductions in U.S. defense spending will not -
- I repeat, will not -- come at the expense of the Asia Pacific.”
Then, of course, the new Islamic State launched its offensive in Iraq in
June 2014 and the American-trained army there collapsed with the loss of
four northern cities. Videoed beheadings of American hostages followed,
along with a looming threat to the U.S.-backed regime in Baghdad. Once again
, President Obama found himself pivoting -- this time sending thousands of U
.S. military advisers back to that country, putting American air power into
its skies, and laying the groundwork for another major conflict there.
Meanwhile, Republican critics of the president, who claim he’s doing too
little in a losing effort in Iraq (and Syria), have also taken him to task
for not doing enough to implement the pivot to Asia. In reality, as his
juggling act that satisfies no one continues in Iraq and the Pacific, he’s
had a hard time finding the wherewithal to effectively confront Vladimir
Putin in Ukraine, Bashar al-Assad in Syria, the Houthi rebels in Yemen, the
various militias fighting for power in fragmenting Libya, and so on.
The Party of Utter Denialism
Clearly, in the face of multiplying threats, juggling has not proven to be a
viable strategy. Sooner or later, the “balls” will simply go flying and
the whole system will threaten to fall apart. But however risky juggling may
prove, it is not nearly as dangerous as the other strategic response to
superpower decline in Washington: utter denial.
For those who adhere to this outlook, it’s not America’s global stature
that’s eroding, but its will -- that is, its willingness to talk and act
tough. If Washington were simply to speak more loudly, so this argument goes
, and brandish bigger sticks, all these challenges would simply melt away.
Of course, such an approach can only work if you’re prepared to back up
your threats with actual force, or “hard power,” as some like to call it.
Among the most vocal of those touting this line is Senator John McCain, the
chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee and a persistent critic of
President Obama. “For five years, Americans have been told that ‘the tide
of war is receding,’ that we can pull back from the world at little cost to
our interests and values,” he typically wrote in March 2014 in a New York
Times op-ed. “This has fed a perception that the United States is weak, and
to people like Mr. Putin, weakness is provocative.” The only way to
prevent aggressive behavior by Russia and other adversaries, he stated, is
“to restore the credibility of the United States as a world leader.” This
means, among other things, arming the Ukrainians and anti-Assad Syrians,
bolstering the NATO presence in Eastern Europe, combating “the larger
strategic challenge that Iran poses,” and playing a “more robust” role (
think: more “boots” on more ground) in the war against ISIS.
Above all, of course, it means a willingness to employ military force. “
When aggressive rulers or violent fanatics threaten our ideals, our
interests, our allies, and us,” he declared last November, “what
ultimately makes the difference… is the capability, credibility, and global
reach of American hard power.”
A similar approach -- in some cases even more bellicose -- is being
articulated by the bevy of Republican candidates now in the race for
president, Rand Paul again excepted. At a recent “Freedom Summit” in the
early primary state of South Carolina, the various contenders sought to out-
hard-power each other. Florida Senator Marco Rubio was loudly cheered for
promising to make the U.S. “the strongest military power in the world.”
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker received a standing ovation for pledging to
further escalate the war on international terrorists: “I want a leader who
is willing to take the fight to them before they take the fight to us.”
In this overheated environment, the 2016 presidential campaign is certain to
be dominated by calls for increased military spending, a tougher stance
toward Moscow and Beijing, and an expanded military presence in the Middle
East. Whatever her personal views, Hillary Clinton, the presumed Democratic
candidate, will be forced to demonstrate her backbone by embracing similar
positions. In other words, whoever enters the Oval Office in January 2017
will be expected to wield a far bigger stick on a significantly less stable
planet. As a result, despite the last decade and a half of interventionary
disasters, we’re likely to see an even more interventionist foreign policy
with an even greater impulse to use military force.
However initially gratifying such a stance is likely to prove for John
McCain and the growing body of war hawks in Congress, it will undoubtedly
prove disastrous in practice. Anyone who believes that the clock can now be
turned back to 2002, when U.S. strength was at its zenith and the Iraq
invasion had not yet depleted American wealth and vigor, is undoubtedly
suffering from delusional thinking. China is far more powerful than it was
13 years ago, Russia has largely recovered from its post-Cold War slump,
Iran has replaced the U.S. as the dominant foreign actor in Iraq, and other
powers have acquired significantly greater freedom of action in an unsettled
world. Under these circumstances, aggressive muscle-flexing in Washington
is likely to result only in calamity or humiliation.
Time to Stop Pretending
Back, then, to our original question: What is a declining superpower
supposed to do in the face of this predicament?
Anywhere but in Washington, the obvious answer would for it to stop
pretending to be what it’s not. The first step in any 12-step imperial-
overstretch recovery program would involve accepting the fact that American
power is limited and global rule an impossible fantasy. Accepted as well
would have to be this obvious reality: like it or not, the U.S. shares the
planet with a coterie of other major powers -- none as strong as we are, but
none so weak as to be intimidated by the threat of U.S. military
intervention. Having absorbed a more realistic assessment of American power,
Washington would then have to focus on how exactly to cohabit with such
powers -- Russia, China, and Iran among them -- and manage its differences
with them without igniting yet more disastrous regional firestorms.
If strategic juggling and massive denial were not so embedded in the
political life of this country’s “war capital,” this would not be an
impossibly difficult strategy to pursue, as others have suggested. In 2010,
for example, Christopher Layne of the George H.W. Bush School at Texas A&M
argued in the American Conservative that the U.S. could no longer sustain
its global superpower status and, “rather than having this adjustment
forced upon it suddenly by a major crisis… should get ahead of the curve by
shifting its position in a gradual, orderly fashion.” Layne and others
have spelled out what this might entail: fewer military entanglements abroad
, a diminishing urge to garrison the planet, reduced military spending,
greater reliance on allies, more funds to use at home in rebuilding the
crumbling infrastructure of a divided society, and a diminished military
footprint in the Middle East.
But for any of this to happen, American policymakers would first have to
abandon the pretense that the United States remains the sole global
superpower -- and that may be too bitter a pill for the present American
psyche (and for the political aspirations of certain Republican candidates)
to swallow. From such denialism, it’s already clear, will only come further
ill-conceived military adventures abroad and, sooner or later, under far
grimmer circumstances, an American reckoning with reality.
Michael T. Klare, a TomDispatch regular, is a professor of peace and world
security studies at Hampshire College and the author, most recently, of The
Race for What’s Left. A documentary movie version of his book Blood and Oil
is available from the Media Education Foundation. Follow him on Twitter at
@mklare1.
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest
Dispatch Book, Nick Turse’s Tomorrow’s Battlefield: U.S. Proxy Wars and
Secret Ops in Africa, and Tom Engelhardt's latest book, Shadow Government:
Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-
Superpower World.
Copyright 2015 Michael T. Klare
b********n
发帖数: 38600
2
After concluding, for instance, that China had taken advantage of U.S.
entanglement in Iraq and Afghanistan to advance its own strategic interests
in Southeast Asia, Obama and his top advisers decided to downgrade the U.S.
presence in the Middle East and free up resources for a more robust one in
the western Pacific. Announcing this shift in 2011 -- it would first be
called a “pivot to Asia” and then a “rebalancing” there -- the president
made no secret of the juggling act involved.
“After a decade in which we fought two wars that cost us dearly, in blood
and treasure, the United States is turning our attention to the vast
potential of the Asia Pacific region,” he told members of the Australian
Parliament that November. “As we end today’s wars, I have directed my
national security team to make our presence and mission in the Asia Pacific
a top priority. As a result, reductions in U.S. defense spending will not -
- I repeat, will not -- come at the expense of the Asia Pacific.”
b********n
发帖数: 38600
3
I suppose we can dismantle the empire peacefully, or risk someone else doing
so violently.
b********n
发帖数: 38600
4
The point is, divisiveness is weakness and America is suffering: even her
foreign policy is controlled by another nation, Israel; her money by
Zionists.
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话题: washington话题: american话题: superpower话题: asia话题: iraq