Amy Chua: Where Is U.S. Foreign Policy Headed?
[Amy Chua, a professor at Yale Law School, is the author of “World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability” and “Day of Empire: How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance — and Why They Fall.”]
Neoliberalism, which dominated the decade before 9/11, had an exuberantly simple vision. Communism and authoritarianism had failed; therefore markets and free elections were the answer. Free-market democracy, conveniently spread by globalization, would transform the world into a community of productive, peace-loving nations. Instead, the ensuing years saw repeated economic crises outside the West, genocide in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, intensifying fundamentalism, virulent anti-Americanism and finally the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Enter neoconservatism. At its core, the neoconservative program was premised on the aggressive, interventionist use of American military force, with or without international approval, to effect regime change and nation building. If 9/11 sent neoliberalism into a tailspin, the Iraq quagmire did the same for neoconservatism.
Then came the financial meltdown of 2008, which dealt the deathblow to both. Neoconservative power depended on immense disposable wealth to finance American military might abroad. Neoliberal economics assumed that American capitalism would produce that wealth. Today the dreams of both lie shattered, and policy makers are at sea.
A recent outpouring of foreign policy books and essays attempts to forecast and shape the next big movement. Among these, a handful remain bravely optimistic about America’s continuing global dominance. For example, the influential historian Niall Ferguson, the author of “The Ascent of Money,” argues convincingly that it is far too early to write off the United States. As he observed earlier this year in an essay for The American Interest, American business has repeatedly rebounded from disastrous financial crises through technological innovation — RCA, DuPont and I.B.M. after the Great Depression; Microsoft and Apple in the 1970s. Ferguson further notes that the American credit crunch, as bad as it seems at home, is “having much worse economic effects abroad.”
Even more bullish about America is George Friedman, the founder of the private intelligence agency Stratfor and the author of “The Next 100 Years.” Remarkably, Friedman asserts that “the United States — far from being on the verge of decline — has actually just begun its ascent.” Perhaps anachronistically, Friedman argues that naval power remains pivotal, even in the 21st century. Because America controls both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, it “is virtually assured of being the dominant global power.”
Far more observers of American foreign policy are pessimistic about America’s trajectory. Perhaps the most persuasive work in this vein is Andrew Bacevich’s searing manifesto, “The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism.” Excoriating American profligacy and delusions of military invincibility, Bacevich calls for a foreign policy rooted in humility and realism. One of Bacevich’s most interesting arguments is that the astronomical costs of the Iraq war — not just unregulated hedge funds and subprime mortgages — contributed directly to the 2008 financial collapse. By 2007, he writes, “the U.S. command in Baghdad was burning through $3 billion per week. That same year, the overall costs of the Iraq war topped the $500 billion mark.” Nor does Bacevich go easy on the Obama administration. He describes Barack Obama’s national security team as “establishment figures, utterly conventional in their outlook.” He sees Obama’s stimulus package and commitment of more troops to Afghanistan as ominous signs of continuing “self-destructive behavior.”...
Read entire article at NYT
Neoliberalism, which dominated the decade before 9/11, had an exuberantly simple vision. Communism and authoritarianism had failed; therefore markets and free elections were the answer. Free-market democracy, conveniently spread by globalization, would transform the world into a community of productive, peace-loving nations. Instead, the ensuing years saw repeated economic crises outside the West, genocide in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, intensifying fundamentalism, virulent anti-Americanism and finally the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Enter neoconservatism. At its core, the neoconservative program was premised on the aggressive, interventionist use of American military force, with or without international approval, to effect regime change and nation building. If 9/11 sent neoliberalism into a tailspin, the Iraq quagmire did the same for neoconservatism.
Then came the financial meltdown of 2008, which dealt the deathblow to both. Neoconservative power depended on immense disposable wealth to finance American military might abroad. Neoliberal economics assumed that American capitalism would produce that wealth. Today the dreams of both lie shattered, and policy makers are at sea.
A recent outpouring of foreign policy books and essays attempts to forecast and shape the next big movement. Among these, a handful remain bravely optimistic about America’s continuing global dominance. For example, the influential historian Niall Ferguson, the author of “The Ascent of Money,” argues convincingly that it is far too early to write off the United States. As he observed earlier this year in an essay for The American Interest, American business has repeatedly rebounded from disastrous financial crises through technological innovation — RCA, DuPont and I.B.M. after the Great Depression; Microsoft and Apple in the 1970s. Ferguson further notes that the American credit crunch, as bad as it seems at home, is “having much worse economic effects abroad.”
Even more bullish about America is George Friedman, the founder of the private intelligence agency Stratfor and the author of “The Next 100 Years.” Remarkably, Friedman asserts that “the United States — far from being on the verge of decline — has actually just begun its ascent.” Perhaps anachronistically, Friedman argues that naval power remains pivotal, even in the 21st century. Because America controls both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, it “is virtually assured of being the dominant global power.”
Far more observers of American foreign policy are pessimistic about America’s trajectory. Perhaps the most persuasive work in this vein is Andrew Bacevich’s searing manifesto, “The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism.” Excoriating American profligacy and delusions of military invincibility, Bacevich calls for a foreign policy rooted in humility and realism. One of Bacevich’s most interesting arguments is that the astronomical costs of the Iraq war — not just unregulated hedge funds and subprime mortgages — contributed directly to the 2008 financial collapse. By 2007, he writes, “the U.S. command in Baghdad was burning through $3 billion per week. That same year, the overall costs of the Iraq war topped the $500 billion mark.” Nor does Bacevich go easy on the Obama administration. He describes Barack Obama’s national security team as “establishment figures, utterly conventional in their outlook.” He sees Obama’s stimulus package and commitment of more troops to Afghanistan as ominous signs of continuing “self-destructive behavior.”...