What should the US do to preserve its influence?

Very interesting discussion...one that many powers have been faced with in the past. One point should be made, however, and that is that many of the options you present are mutually exclusive, so the temporizing post which suggests combinations of , say, #'s 1 and 2 would be virtually impossible.My thoughts:

I think that there are essentially 2 questions to be answered here...) What is the best pragmatic response to the current situation, and 2) What response is best in keeping with the avowed principles of the nation. I am aware that there are many in here who would dismiss the validity of the second question, or at the very least give it low priorization. I disagree...If you don't stand up for your principles, there is nothing to distinguish you from other civilizations except that most tenous of all barriers; a line on a map. To say "We will fight, kill, and die for America!" without a clear idea of what America means aside from some geographic area is folly...and when you start to compromise that which makes your nation what it is, in order to 'protect' it what's the point?

I have to run now, but look forward to further discussing this later...again, haven, excellent thread!

 

Well, I don't think the US needs to worry about preserving it's role as the sole superpower in the world. After all, if the US wanted to do that, it could have abandoned Europe and Japan after World War II and let them struggle. It could stop meddling in the Middle East and let that whole area become a heap of rubble. It could stop making free trade agreements with China and stifle its economy. It could remove its troops from South Korea and wherever else they are.

The US needs to stick to its principles and facilitate democracy and open markets in the rest of the world. If that means China becomes the strongest economy, or Japan can build a stronger military, then so what. If it means Europeans will smash McDonald's windows and protest genitically engineered fruit and more South Korean hatred, they will get over it. We will still be their allies if we share open markets and/or democratic values.

We may not always get along, but I don't think the US and Europe or Japan will be going to war with each other anytime soon, and they all share a high economic standard of living. I think that is great progress from previous eras. China is trickier, but that's for another thread.

 

Quickly, before I run, MC..the principle behind the Marshall Plan/involvment in Post WWII Europe and Japan was preserving it's role as superpower...against the threat of it's greatest rival, the Soviet Union. Marshall himself acknowledged this...the fear was that a devastated Europe would prove easy prey to Communism, and that would tip the power scale in the Soviet Union's favour...The US's principles are not to facilitate democracy, but to stand for freedom and self determination...and, as previously stated, you can't force someone else to do things your way and call it self determination.

 

What should the US do to preserve its influence?
Make W a one term president.

 

A little off topic but...

Maybe the correct question is how do the U.S.'s allies maintain their standing and preserve their influence with us.

Just because you are European does not mean you have a more enlightened view of the world. It's been clearly documented that both Germany and France and economic interests in Iraq and both countries would potentially lose those interests if Saddam were not in charge. Maybe those guys aren't interested in peace for peace's sake but are more interested in preserving their oil interests.

In Sunday's Chronicle there was an editorial (I forgot who wrote it but it was on the first page of the Editorial section) by a U.S. foreign diplomat. He says he met with Saddam after Iraq invaded Kuwait. Saddam basically said to forget Kuwait ever existed and that if the U.S. would cooperate Iraq would guarantee oil to the U.S. at a good price. (If this is true then there goes the 'war for oil' arguement as we could have guaranteed cheap oil from Iraq/Kuwait in exchange for NOT going to war.)

How do you know Saddam didn't make similar deals with Germany and France and that's the reason they are resisting this conflict? Maybe Saddam is counting on them to keep him in power so they continue to "get oil at a good price"?

Also, once again, people say Bush is "rushing" in but he's been talking about this war for over a year and hasn't really done anything yet - excep get the U.N. off it's duff and forcing it to do what it was supposed to be doing for the past 10 years.

As for U.S. influence on the rest of the world - as long as the rest of the world needs and trusts the U.S. military (as opposed to inviting the, say, Chinese military in) we will have power and influence. Most E.U. countries simply can't afford to have a strong military as their budgets are bursting with social spending.

 

I think this is a good question. Incidentally, it gets to the heart of much of my disagreement with most people on the board. There are two issues here: (1) what do I think the country should do as a corporate entity and (2) what do I, as an individual citizen, want the country to do for my own sake. Personally, I'm more interested in my country behaving ethically even to the point of its own demise (which is the motivation for most of the arguments I make on the board). However, the country -- like a living thing -- will do whatever it can to preserve itself. Your question specifically addresses the latter issue.

Of the choices you've outlined (and I think you did a good job of encompassing the options), my personal preference would be isolation. I can't trust the government to do things ethically, so I'd prefer they did nothing at all.

But, it would be a very different thing if I were responsible for the well-being of the nation. Ethics take a backseat to survival and even prosperity. In that mode of thinking, I would probably put my money on building a coalition.

Trying to continue our role as the only superpower will get us burned. Hegemons only stay on top for so long and all do eventually crumble (within a century or so, with a couple very notable exceptions). When you have a competitor with 5 times your population and a rapidly growing economy, you have to worry about taking him on one on one. But, a confrontation is inevitable if you establish yourself as a hegemon. Also, if you alienate other countries enough, they can ally against you. I'm not so sure that Bush is precisely following this route, though his policies do have some of the characteristics.

The UN approach softens the problem of a superpower confrontation. But, a system like that is too democratic for a country looking to exploit others. If we really want to have a leg-up on everyone, we can't subordinate our interests to an international body. It's better to have it around as a tool to suboridinate other countries' interests to the international body (which is how we try to use it).

Isolationism is the only one we really have not tried in the last half-century. This is no good for us. For one, other countries will be disappointed we won't help them. For another, this isn't only about short-term survival and ease. For long-term success, we need to leverage our power now to maintain it in the future. If we were to stop opppressing others, we would gradually lose the edge that makes us better than everyone. One day, we'd want to flex our muscles and find that we can't because we let everyone catch up with us.

So, I'm left with alliances. We can be the best player on the best team. As long as the team is all on the same page, we can enforce our own interests without too much resistance. Hegemony wars would still be an issue, but (if we pick our friends well) we won't get outnumbered or outflanked.

I don't think it's true that these are largely mutually exclusive. Since WWII, I think the US has pursued 3 of the 4 (the 4th being isolationism) in its foreign policy. They built a strong alliance in NATO, but still sought hegemony by being the far-and-away superstar of that team. They also built and supported the UN, though would never sacrifice any of NATO's or the US' rights to that body.

The focus during the Cold War was NATO. Now that that's over, some shift in the paradigm might be in order. I still think it is the best way to go, but it could be that the NATO countries are no longer the best countries to be our allies. This recent tiff might be a hegemonic move on the part of the US, it might be a re-settling of alliances seeking a new equilibrium, or it might just be a tiff. But, in a lot of ways, the interests of Europe and the US have grown apart.

 

Macbeth, I don't disagree with you. I was going to also add in my post that the US must first and foremost protect its own citizens and way of life (i.e. its own interests). I couldn't find a way to work it into my post. People think this is bad, but if the US can't protect its own freedoms and democracy then how can it possibly help anyone else?

 

I humbly request a link on this one.

Other than that, I really like your post. Although....I would ask that you qualify one statement you made later. You said that chase's post was irrelevant. It may be irrelevant to your intitial question, but it's certainly not irrelevant to the ongoing Iraq/War discussion that's been going on at the BBS.

You then went on to disect his post, and quite frankly, I don't think you lived up your typical well thought out posting style in the dissection.

Especially notable is your comment about oil being a commodity and a supply for one nation is beneficial to others in a free market society. That certainly well may be true, but IF Saddam is selling oil to France and Germany at a reduced price in exchange for their "looking the other way" at his atrocities, that's not exactly "free market." I guess it could be argued that "refusing to go to war" with a rogue nation is a form of compensation, but it's still a stretch to call this "free market."

Anyway, sorry to derail your thread even further.

 

has anyone here ever read the national security strategy? please read it if you haven't.

 

also....a few other things....

the US is by no means near close to losing its spot on top of the world. yes some parts of the world are catching up, like asia, but they had to catch up at some point in time due to the sheer number of people on that side of the world. the US dominates the world in every aspect...politically, socially, and economically. our gdp is still 4 times that of japan which is #2 in the world and 16 times that of china.

american culture is still the most dominant culture the world has ever seen. you could go to the congo or burma or some middle of nowhere place and i'll bet someone would know MJ or Coca Cola or rock and roll or rap or American movies or whatever....the list goes on and on. even the place that likes to consider itself full of culture, europe, can't stop the spread of american culture. hell in france they have laws dictating that at least 25% of the music on the radio must be french because american music dominates on the world markets.

politically, i think you become a bit too dramatic haven. our military isn't cannibalizing. geez you make it sound like we are the russian military or something like that. yeah the military needs more funding, but its not that bad. our military is not rotten with corruption like many of the armies in the world are. a cannibalizing army is the russian one...not the american army. additionally, our strategic alliances are not fragmenting. i really don't know what you base that on. yes there is opposition to our possible war against iraq, but that does not mean our strategic alliances are on the verge of collapse. in fact, they are getting stronger simply because of the war on terrorism in general. we are still the main player in the security of the asian pacific region. our security alliance with japan is strong. yes the people of south korea are pissed at us for the verdicts in the military trials, but they aren't about to kick out the US army when they have a mad man running north korea.

nato is not on the verge of a crisis like some proclaim. everyone in the media has been blowing things out of proportion ever since the war on iraq talk started. the administration has been very patient, but has kept pushing for what it wants which is the removal of saddam and iraq's disarmament. remember its only a few members of nato who are completely against the possibility of war.

i dunno...i am just basically rambling...but from how i see it...american interests are stronger than before 9/11 because they have to actually be more responsible about how they use their power so we don't just go around and try to piss everyone off.

 

France, Germany, Russia, and China would disagree with your assessment.

 

12 years sounds pretty patient to me. And try the year this administration has pushed Iraq to prove itself incapable of producing WMD. I think we are missing the point of the discontent of the aforementioned nations. Theres alot of that cheap black gold these countries are getting under the current Iraqi dictatorship. I think its also notable to point out these countries expressed the same discontent with Clinton's pre-emptive airstrike on Iraq.

 

How do you figure that? We are about to greatly increase our influence in the Middle East and central Asia. We are going to put a leash on militant Islam. We are going to (hopefully) get rid of the irrelevant and impotent NATO structure and replace it with something that works. The UN is going to be exposed for the impotent body that it has always been; its window dressing is about to be removed. Hopefully it will be replaced as well, because the Cold War is over, and its relevance went out the window with that conflict.

What will we be left with? No organization on the planet will be able to rival any US-led political, military, or economic structure that has a hand on the global lever of power: 70% of the world's oil supply. If France and Germany want to try to cobble together an anti-US alliance, let them try. They can't do it without Russia's inclusion, and Russia values its relationship with the US far more than it does with either of them - Iraq disagreements or not, Russia will either side with us or remain neutral.

I really don't see how you can think that our influence globally is going to wane. With France and Germany, perhaps. But so what? To trade our minimal influence with them for tremendous influence in the ME and central Asia is a good trade for us.

Your #1 scenario is pretty much what is happening, haven. The problem with your analysis is that we are already public enemy #1, and we haven't even begun to throw our weight around yet. If they want to hate us, fine, but we should not cowtow to them simply because we want them to like us. Whether or not they like us is totally irrelevant (and moot at this point anyway). We will influence their actions by being powerful, not by being friendly.

 

Sorry, Haven. I realized my post was off topic after I wrote it which is why I prefaced it with "off topic". Let's just drop it for another time and thread.

 

haven, what kind of attitude is that? You can't abide his opinion because no recognized authority has already argued it? I recognize the importance of authority in debate and in arguing a thesis, but you're taking it a bit far to absolutely demand it. With such an inflexible position, how is it possible to innovate?

 

haven:

If you really want it on record...

I think that it is entirely possible that we enter a phase of decline over the next 50 years. China is a rising power, and who knows where Europe is headed? Russia is an X-factor over such a span.

I also think that it is entirely possible that we will remain ascendant for well past such a span, especially if we take the iniative in space operations. Rome lasted for over a thousand years with lesser technologies (note: my definition of 'technologies' applies to political, economic, and social constructs as much as mechanological ones).

It can go either way over such a span. Fifty years is a long time.

Over the next decade or so, however, we are set. Because we are set in the initial time period, and considering the pace of change and progress in modern societies, and considering the fact that we are far ahead on the learning curve in many technologies, I think our chances of staying on top for the forseeable future are good.

For the record.

I am, BTW, trained in futures studies, haven. In an academic setting. I know how incoherent academia is capable of being, and trust academic theory accordingly. Particularly with the inbred leftism that runs rampant throughout nearly all academic thought.