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Saturday, Jul 11, 2009
International reaction to new policy of preemptive strikes casts a suspicious eye on "imperialist" designs.
Sep 24, 2002 | Last week, the Bush administration published a 33-page document outlining an official shift in U.S. foreign policy and military strategy. In the post-Cold War era, the United States would act as a global policeman, willing to take preemptive action against hostile states and terrorist groups that the United States deems a threat to global stability or American interests.
This new policy of "distinctly American internationalism" is the culmination of changes in American foreign policy since the end of the Cold War, accelerated by the Sept. 11 attacks against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. And, the document makes clear, the Bush administration will tolerate no rivals to the U.S.'s position as the world's only superpower. "The president has no intention of allowing any foreign power to catch up with the huge lead the United States has opened since the fall of the Soviet Union more than a decade ago," the document states.
The global reaction to this new "Bush Doctrine" has been, to say the least, mixed. Some leaders charge that the Bush administration's doctrine of preemptive strikes amounts to a new level of American arrogance. Others dismiss it as a rhetorical device to wage what Bush has called America's "war on terrorism."
Salon has culled reactions from a handful of international editorial writers to the Bush Doctrine, as the administration continues to use its new policy as a justification for a possible future war with Iraq.
Le Monde Diplomatique, France
"We must face facts: A new imperial doctrine is taking shape under George Bush. Now is reminiscent of the late 19th century, when the U.S. began its colonial expansion into the Caribbean, Asia and the Pacific, the first steps to world power. Then the US was seized by great imperialist fervor. Journalists, businessmen, bankers and politicians vied to promote policies of world conquest ...
"U.S. historians have generally considered the late 19th century imperialist urge as an aberration in an otherwise smooth democratic trajectory. The U.S. had emerged from a war of independence to cast off British colonial domination, and had played its part in the Enlightenment project against absolutist continental European monarchies. Surely this experience inoculated it once and for all against the virus of imperialism?
"Yet a century later, as the U.S. empire engages in a new period of global expansion, Rome is once more a distant but essential mirror for American elites. In 1991 the U.S. found itself the only remaining great power. Now, with military mobilization on an exceptional scale after September 2001, the U.S. is openly affirming and parading its imperial power. For the first time since the 1890s, the naked display of force is backed by explicitly imperialist discourse ...
"Bush does not seem to be trying too hard to resist. He is reluctant to invest in nation building or commit the U.S. to humanitarian interventions. But he is quick to deploy U.S. armed forces all over the world to crush the enemies of civilization and forces of evil. His vocabulary, with its constant references to civilization, barbarians and pacification, betrays classical imperial thinking.
"There is no knowing quite what Bush learned at Yale and Harvard, but since 11 September he has become the unlikely Caesar of the new imperial camp in the U.S."
-- Philip S. Golub
Irish Times, Republic of Ireland
"The Cold War threat came from states that pursued a strategy of deterrence. Now, however, the enemy is one who wishes to resort to weapons of mass destruction as a primary tool of attack. Should any such enemy ever succeed, the appalling carnage of September 11th last year could pale into insignificance.
"It is this perspective which is underpinning President Bush's policy of preemptive action. He refers to the 'unique responsibilities' of the United States. They are unique indeed: at the start of the 21st century, the U.S. is the only global superpower, a position that is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future. And that responsibility includes acting in concert with the rest of the civilized world.
"The U.S. says the case against Iraq is clear. The Americans, however, have yet to provide the evidence. There is near universal agreement that Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and evil ruler. Let the president state his case, with evidence, to the United Nations."
-- unsigned editorial
The Observer, United Kingdom
"This Pax Americana that is being proposed -- including its commitment to throw itself into the 'battle for the future of the Muslim world' -- is a curiously old-fashioned one. It is one that has been shared by empires from that of Rome to Britain and the Soviet Union, that says by virtue of its unique inherent values it can educate and save while dominating.
"It is not a new strand in American thinking. From Roosevelt to Kennedy and the New World Order, statesmen have struggled to locate America's sense of its pre-eminent power to effect global change for the good.
"The difficulty, as ever, is that it inevitably encompasses a very partial and contradictory world view. The Bush Doctrine will inevitably be coloured by the prejudices of those who have contributed to Republican foreign policy thinking.
"In this world view, the security interests of Israel and the U.S. are indivisible. Turkey is among the good guys. So is Britain, among a sea of vacillating Europeans. The bad guys are a roll call of troubled states: China, North Korea, Syria, Iran, Iraq.
