Editorial
Stabroek News
September 30, 2001

American foreign policy has come in for considerable criticism in our letter columns since September 11; when it comes to the infliction of violence, some correspondents have written, the US too is not without blame. No one, of course, has suggested that whatever America's past sins, anything could justify what happened, and nor could there be any such justification. Nevertheless, the world's only super-power has been taken to task for everything ranging from Hiroshima to the Gulf War and the subsequent bombing of Iraq to the overthrow of Allende in Chile to her unqualified support of Israel.

Some of the accusations are clearly misplaced, like the bombing of Hiroshima which occurred during the Second World War and which for all its horror, may paradoxically have prevented even greater loss of life. Leaving specific accusations aside, what some critics perhaps want is for the US to apply the principles in her external relations which she purports to espouse at a domestic level.

Unfortunately, foreign policy cannot be totally grounded in morality, which doesn't mean to say that nations will not sometimes do the right thing, particularly where it is possible and/or where it is prudent and/or where it serendipitously coincides with their own self-interest. Big nations have always had a capacity for what historian Wheeler-Bennett in a different context called "illogical virtue." But if the truth be known so have small states. It is just that the policy pirouettes of individual small states are invariably of little practical significance in the world arena.

In the bad old days of the nineteenth century European foreign policy was based on the pragmatic assumption that all states always operated in their own self interest, and that the building of meaningful relations depended in the first instance on understanding what the other party's 'self interest' was. In addition, security was grounded in a 'balance of power' principle, which meant states entered alliances to prevent any one of them from becoming too strong (as France became under Napoleon) thereby threatening the peace of the continent.

It was an American President - Woodrow Wilson - who denounced the balance of power theory, which he considered had played its part in bringing about the First World War, and he promoted the notion of 'collective security' instead. In simple terms, this was premised on an assumption of the innate good intentions of states, who, it was argued, when divested of the shackles of the old 'balance of power' order, would combine against an aggressor when the security of any one of them was threatened.

There was, of course, no definition of which security threat to any one should trigger a response from them all, let alone a framework for sanctioning an aggressor when peace in any part of the world was compromised. And as it was, collective security and the institution associated with it - the League of Nations - had their own contribution to make to the events leading up to the Second World War.

It was the United States again, in concert with the major allies, which played a significant role in laying the foundation for the evolution of a more structured approach to international problems at the end of that war. Despite a very slow pace, and despite the long hiatus of the Cold War, the world is inching uncertainly towards an international legal framework which some time in the future will come to circumscribe the actions of individual states. The process is at an immature stage, but that is still the general trend. And the United States was bucking the trend when it refused to sign the Kyoto agreement, and unilaterally declared its intention of effectively abrogating the missile treaty originally signed with the USSR.

And then there is the matter of the International Criminal Court, which America is not proposing to sign on to either. It might be remarked in passing, however, that should, either by design or fluke, bin Laden fall into US hands, she most likely would find it necessary to bring him before some kind of international court.

What the current crisis has done is to force the US to abandon an isolationist approach, and seek to forge a broad alliance in the new 'war' against terrorism. Forty years ago, she would not have had to do that; she could have exercised a penchant for 'illogical virtue' and gone into Afghanistan all on her own and brought down an oppressive regime. It is not that the Taleban rulers might not deserve it; they have stopped fifty per cent of their population from earning a living, from going to school and from getting equal access to health care; and had that fifty per cent included men as well as women, there would no doubt have been a much greater international outcry than we have heard so far.

What has inhibited America so far it seems from acting without the approval of a wide range of other states is, the dangerous ramifications of so doing, the complexity of the situation (political, humanitarian, etc) and the elusive nature of the enemy. The war against terrorism will require the sustained co-operation of many nations over an extended period if it is to succeed; one super-power for once cannot do it alone.

Will the United States now become more sensitive to world opinion? And will we see the beginning of a new direction in American foreign policy, and by extension international relations?

President Bush's next move will be critical to everyone's future.