Ian Boyne
FORMER SOCIALIST ideologue Arnold Bertram seems to have swung away from any notion of morality or idealism in international relations and is now riding the utilitarian pendulum, according to his column in last week's Sunday Gleaner.
Assessing our choices in the regional contest between the United States and Venezuela, the former Michael Manley Comrade says, "The decision calls for a sober assessment of our national interest." While that smacks of a Machiavellian approach to foreign policy, it is fairly commonplace in international relations that the foreign policy of states is dictated by their national interests. Despite their often moralistic rhetoric and posturing. But, the former Leftist does not just leave it at that.
He goes on to say that in making the decision, "we might as well understand that we live in an age when nobody dies for
principle except on the stage", a most crude and amoral philosophical principle. Deconverts from exclusivist ideologies usually make 180-degree turns and Bertram has moved so far from the principled and idealistic foreign policy thinking of his mentor Michael Manley that that former champion of the world's oppressed must be turning in his grave. It's a common and cynical approach to foreign approach, yes and one might even say it is commonsensical but people like Michael Manley and Julius Nyerere deplored it and were willing to suffer for principles.
To this day, to his everlasting credit, Fidel Castro stubbornly refuses to compromise any firmly held ideological position, even in the face of an economic embargo. Disagree with Castro's Communist ideology, as I do vehemently, but one has to admire his principled stand and his moral courage. Bertram, though, now the enlightened, de-ideologised pragmatist, urges Prime Minister Simpson Miller to think pragmatically about our national interests in negotiating the diplomatic high seas.
DEBATE
There has been a long debate in international relations between its idealist and realist schools. The idealists stress the importance of ideas, morality and principles in foreign policy, while the realists stress economics, balance of power and interests. Some of the neoconservatives of the Bush Administration, interestingly, stress both: making big polemical noises on issues such as liberty, justice and human rights, while stressing that the U.S. has to use its hyper-power status to maintain its primacy in international relations. What we have in neoconservative foreign policy thinking is a mixture of ideas and interests; the rhetoric of libertarian ideas and ideals mixed with the use of raw political and military power.
But, the U.S. is learning, and learning painfully, that its misuse of its soft power and its squandering of its goodwill and integrity carry a high price. The Supreme Court ruling on Thursday that decreed the Bush Administration's military tribunals in Guantanamo Bay contrary to not only international but U.S. law was a telling and severe punch to the moral face of the U.S. It confirmed what America's critics around the world have been saying for a long time, especially since September 2001: That the U.S. is behaving like a rogue state, flouting international law and norms of behaviour and taking a dangerously unilateralist approach in foreign policy.
MILITARY TRIAL
The Supreme Court's ruling that President Bush's attempt to resurrect a type of military trial used after World War II violates U.S. law and the Geneva Conventions show that even in a uni-polar world, principles and international morality still have force. The President and his Republicans have signalled, of course, that they will try to find a way to carry out their illegality and disregard for international norms of decent behaviour, but they still can't escape the censure from their highest court of their land. (Which goes to show, too, the power of independent institutions and the superiority of Western democracy over so-called "revolutionary democracy".)
If we were left to a world of the Machiavellian and pragmatists in which "nobody dies for principle except on the stage"-a world now apparently endorsed by Bertram-then power would always trump principle and interests would trump institutional independence.
PRINCIPAL ARCHITECT
The irony is that the very United States which finds international law and norms so obnoxious and inconvenient was a principal architect of the international system we have today. In a tightly reasoned essay in the scholarly journal International Studies Perspectives (volume 6, 2005) Professor Geoffrey Wiseman says, "As a Great Power in the Twentieth Century, the United States developed a reputation for general compliance with international law. Even during the Cold War the United States justified military interventions abroad in terms of international law concerning the right of self-defence ... Such justifications were no doubt required to reinforce the West's moral superiority over the Soviet Communist system".
Yet Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle, Pipes, Cheney and other neocons acted as though the international conventions and norms worked out by the international community were imposed on the U.S.
TROUBLING ISSUE
The US felt no need to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the Kyoto Protocol, the International Criminal Court or the Biological Weapons Convention. Says Wiseman in his essay: " The troubling thing in the Guantanamo case-reflected more broadly in the Bush Administration's questioning of such hallowed institutions of international law as the UN Charter and the Geneva Conventions was that the Administration appeared willing to bend, even violate, the laws of war without seeking wide international support in its 'war on terrorism'".
The same day that the Supreme Court struck a note for international human rights, it was announced that the Bush Administration approved 18 new F-16 fighter jets for the militant dictatorship in Pakistan. Approved by the world's shining example of democracy promotion and liberty!
As America celebrates its independence this week, its people should examine how well their administrations have lived up to the ideals of the Republic. Would Woodrow Wilson, a prime advocate of what is now known as liberal internationalism, not grieve over the crude promotion of power over principle and money over morality?
BUSH DEAD WRONG
President Bush is dead wrong: People don't hate "the idea of America". They hate the hypocrisy of American political administrations which preach one thing and practice another. People respect the values America stands for rhetorically: Freedom, egalitarianism, justice, human rights and the supremacy of the individual over the state. Many Muslims might not like those values, but millions around the globe do.
What turns them off from America is that it violates those very principles and puts in power and sustains in power Governments which are violently opposed to those values. American Governments have overthrown democratically elected Governments in Iran (1953) , Guatemala, Dominican Republic, Chile, among others. The Central Intelligence Agency has violated the sovereignty of states and has frequently intervened in the internal affairs of states, contrary to the Westphalian principle. People don't hate "the idea of America". They hate the fact that America does not live up to its own ideals and that it is so arrogant and obnoxious in its transgressions.
In our Latin American region, America has sponsored and supported murderous dictatorships once they were anti-communist. Its policy has been, "My enemy's enemy is my friend".
The latest authoritative Pew Global Attitudes Project survey of 17,000 persons globally is alarming, on the eve of American Independence celebration: "Outside of the US, only two countries-India and Russia-register majority support for the war on terror and among America's traditional allies support has fallen steeply since 2002.Confidence in Bush to do the right thing in world affairs has dropped in seven of the 11 countries where trend from 2005 is available".
FAVOURABLE RATING
The survey shows that Europe has a much higher favourable rating in the eyes of the world than America.
Why? Because Europe is respected for its ideals, its ideas and its principled stand, not on the strength of its military, its economy and its Great Power status.
America is losing the war for hearts and minds because it has been unwilling to show moral consistency. In their brilliantly argued book America Alone: The Neo-Conservatives and the Global Order, Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke, educated at Cambridge and Oxford and senior foreign policy analysts say: "America's founding premise was that it truly was a different political organism capable of resisting the path trod by imperial powers of yesterday ... The casualty in all of this, of course, is America's moral authority. This is why we are dismayed that the neoconservatives place so little value on this priceless asset and instead treat power-raw, military power-as the alpha and omega of America's interaction with the world."
American can regain its respect in the world if it decides to use its single-superpower status responsibly. If it is truly identified with liberty, democracy and human rights and uses it power to advance the interests of the international community, then it can win friends and influence people.
DISTINCTION
We must make a distinction between American regimes and the American people or the American ethos. For all its faults, the American system impeached one of its presidents and threw him out of office; turned the spotlight on the CIA and forced it into retreat; and the protests of the American people stopped a long war in Vietnam. America's system of Government, with all its failings, is still superior to the one which existed in the Soviet Union, and which exists today in the countries following Islamic rule.
The Bush Administration is more restrained and more cautious in its second term than it was in the first, as I predicted it would be. Its overtures to Iran, tempered rhetoric on North Korea, willingness to work with the United Nations and rapprochement with its European allies all indicate that the Bush Administration understands that in this globalised era, raw power and economic might are not enough to get your way. Apart from the new concept of "the power of the weak", there is the power of ideas and values. That power triumphed in the Supreme Court of the United States last week. A fitting tribute to July 4.
The ruling class is still dominant in the U.S., for sure, but there are windows of opportunity for the whiff of justice to pass through.
Ian Boyne is a veteran journalist. Email him at inaboyne1@yahoo.com
