The Arrogant Empire

But should the guiding philosophy of the world's leading democracy really be the tough talk of a Chicago mobster? In terms of effectiveness, this strategy has been a disaster. It has alienated friends and delighted enemies. Having traveled around the world and met with senior government officials in dozens of countries over the past year, I can report that with the exception of Britain and Israel, every country the administration has dealt with feels humiliated by it. "Most officials in Latin American countries today are not anti-American types," says Jorge Castaneda, the reformist foreign minister of Mexico, who resigned two months ago. "We have studied in the United States or worked there. We like and understand America. But we find it extremely irritating to be treated with utter contempt." Last fall, a senior ambassador to the United Nations, in a speech supporting America's position on Iraq, added an innocuous phrase that could have been seen as deviating from that support. The Bush administration called up his foreign minister and demanded that he be formally reprimanded within an hour. The ambassador now seethes when he talks about U.S. arrogance. Does this really help America's cause in the world? There are dozens of stories like this from every part of the world.

In diplomacy, style is often substance. Consider this fact: the Clinton administration used force on three important occasions--Bosnia, Haiti and Kosovo. In none of them did it take the matter to the United Nations Security Council, and there was little discussion that it needed to do so. Indeed, Kofi Annan later made statements that seemed to justify the action in Kosovo, explaining that state sovereignty should not be used as a cover for humanitarian abuses. Today Annan has (wrongly) announced that American action in Iraq outside the United Nations will be "illegal." While the Clinton administration--or the first Bush administration--was assertive in many ways, people did not seek assurances about its intentions. The Bush administration does not bear all the blame for this dramatic change in attitudes. Because of 9-11, it has had to act forcefully on the world stage and assert American power. But that should have been all the more reason to adopt a posture of consultation and cooperation while doing what needed to be done. The point is to scare our enemies, not terrify the rest of the world.

The Way to Buck History
In 1992, Paul Wolfowitz, then a senior official in the first Bush administration, authored a Pentagon document that argued that in an era of overwhelming American dominance, U.S. foreign policy should be geared toward maintaining our advantage and discouraging the rise of other great powers. The premise behind this strategy is perfectly sensible. The United States should attempt to lengthen its era of supremacy for as long as it can. Any country would try to do the same (though a wise one would not be foolish enough to announce it). For that reason, the elder Bush ordered the Pentagon to water down the document so that it was not quite so arrogant.

In principle, American power is not simply good for America; it is good for the world. Most of the problems the world faces today--from terrorism to AIDS to nuclear proliferation--will be solved not with less U.S. engagement but with more. The lesson of the 1990s--of Bosnia, Kosovo, East Timor, Rwanda--is surely that American action, with all its flaws, is better than inaction. Other countries are simply not ready or able, at this point, to take on the challenges and burdens of leadership. Around the world, people understand this. In a global survey taken last year, the most intriguing--and unreported--finding was that large majorities of people in most countries thought that the world would be a more dangerous place if there were a rival to the American superpower. Sixty-four percent of the French, 70 percent of Mexicans, 63 percent of Jordanians felt this way. (Ironically, old Europe was more pro-American on this issue than new Europe. Only 27 percent of Bulgarians agreed.)

The real question is how America should wield its power. For the past half century it has done so through alliances and global institutions and in a consensual manner. Now it faces new challenges--and not simply because of what the Bush administration has done. The old order is changing. The alliances forged during the cold war are weakening. Institutions built to reflect the realities of 1945--such as the U.N. Security Council--risk becoming anachronistic. But if the administration wishes to further weak--en and indeed destroy these institutions and traditions--by dismissing or neglecting them--it must ask itself: What will take their place? By what means will America maintain its hegemony?

For some in the administration, the answer is obvious: America will act as it chooses, using what allies it can find in any given situation. As a statement of fact this is sometimes the only approach Washington will be able to employ. But it is not a durable long-term strategy. It would require America to build new alliances and arrangements every time it faced a crisis. More important, operating in a conspicuously unconstrained way, in service of a strategy to maintain primacy, will paradoxically produce the very competition it hopes to avoid. The last two years are surely instructive. The Bush administration's swagger has generated international opposition and active measures to thwart its will. Though countries like France and Russia cannot become great-power competitors simply because they want to--they need economic and military strength--they can use what influence they have to disrupt American policy, as they are doing over Iraq. In fact, the less responsibility we give them, the more freedom smaller powers have to make American goals difficult to achieve.