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News :: Miscellaneous |
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Should America Police The World? |
Current rating: 0 |
by Mark Weisbrot
(No verified email address) |
12 Apr 2001
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The standoff with China has been resolved,
but it has raised some serious and long-overdue
questions about our foreign policy in the post-Cold-
War era. |
This first one is: does the United States
really need to police the whole world? Because if
we are going to remain committed to this job, we
can expect more involvement in incidents of this
kind, not to mention wars and other violent
conflicts.
Most Americans do not find this role any
more appealing than the idea of going around to all
the bars in Chicago on a Saturday night and
breaking up fights. \"We have enough problems here
at home,\" is normally the prevailing sentiment
among the citizenry when the question of overseas
intervention is raised.
But our foreign policy establishment -- the
politicians, think tanks, and many intellectuals and
journalists -- remains attached to the idea of
America ruling the world.
\"The United States is the only power that
can handle a showdown in the [Persian] Gulf,
mount the kind of force that is needed to protect
Saudi Arabia, and deter a crisis in the Taiwan
Strait,\" says President Bush\'s National Security
Adviser Condoleeza Rice.
Do we really want that job?
For half a century Americans were told that
policing the world was a strategic and moral
imperative: we were \"saving the world from
communism,\" and defending our own national
security. On this pretext Washington overthrew
democratically elected governments, installed and
financed some of the most bloodthirsty regimes in
world history, went to war in Vietnam, and even
supported genocide -- from Indonesia to Guatemala
-- when our leaders found it politically convenient
to do so.
Looking at the world in 2001, it\'s hard to
believe that we were really fighting communism all
those years. Today China is the only remaining
communist country with any power, and it is not
only a major (if lopsided) trading partner but also
the largest recipient of US foreign investment in the
developing world.
Ironically, that may be what saves us from a
new Cold War with China. There are just too many
lucrative business deals that could go sour. China
may not be a rich country, but it has one of the
world\'s fastest growing economies and a fifth of the
Earth\'s population.
The Clinton administration worked hard to
get China into the World Trade Organization -- it\'s
not quite there yet -- so that US
telecommunications, financial services, and other
big corporations could break into these potentially
huge markets. Manufacturers such as Nike and
Timberland are happy with their Chinese production
facilities, where workers put in 70-hour weeks for
wages of 22 cents an hour, and are not likely to
strike or try to form an independent union.
This was the Bush Administration\'s
dilemma: some of their biggest corporate supporters
would find it difficult to forgive them if they blew
all these prizes over this one incident. On the other
hand, there are still influential people who would
appreciate a new Cold War, for all the purposes that
the old one served.
Besides providing an excuse for the crimes
of empire, the Cold War was also a rationale for our
enormous military expenditures. This was
America\'s unique form of industrial policy, a way to
subsidize our leading industries such as aircraft and
computers.
A number of political commentators have
suggested that Mr. Bush\'s recent unfriendly gestures
toward Russia, North Korea, and China (before the
current crisis) might be related to his efforts to fund
his own high-tech subsidy: $60 billion dollars for a
missile defense system.
But right now -- at least as regards China --
the balance is still in favor of more immediate
business interests. Hence the Administration\'s
delivery of a \"non-apology apology\" to resolve the
standoff, despite the embarrassment.
The best way to prevent future incidents
would be to stop looking for trouble all over the
world. We would never allow a foreign plane with
sophisticated surveillance equipment to fly 70 miles
from coast of Florida, gathering intelligence on our
military. Yet Washington insists that it has the right
to make 200 of these kinds of flights each year to
spy on China.
You can\'t have it both ways -- unless you
want to claim the status of Emperor, and pay the
price to enforce it. We are already paying more than
$1000 each year -- for every man, woman, child,
and infant -- to the Pentagon, while we forgo urgent
needs such as prescription drug coverage for our
senior citizens.
While the American people bear the costs
and risks of maintaining an empire, the benefits do
not trickle down. It\'s time we began to downsize the
grand ambitions of our leaders.
Mark Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for
Economic and Policy Research (www.cepr.net) in
Washington, DC.
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See also:
www.cepr.net
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