Sometimes, it seems hard to remember that 1997 was only ten years ago. It feels as if such a lot has happened since then! Indeed, sometimes it feels that all of world history is going through a big time-warp these days, a great celestial laundry machine that’s tumbling us all over each other with increasing rapidity.
It was in 1997 that Bill Kristol and a bunch of his uber-militaristic and neocon allies in US politics established their ‘Project for a New American Century‘. Check out the names of those who signed its founding declaration, at the bottom of this web-page. There they all are: Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, a smarter member of the Bush clan than George W., Elliott Abrams, Scooter Libby, Zal Khalilzad, Paul Wolfowitz, Steve Rosen, etc etc…
Within less than four years of signing that, those men– okay, not including Jeb Bush, but instead, his more pliable brother– were catapulted onto the very apex of the US power machine. As of 2001 they had an unprecedented opportunity to bring into being their goal of a “New American Century.”
They over-reached, didn’t they.
That “exemplary” (shock! awe!) invasion of Iraq was their fatal over-reach.
Without that over-reach, but with smart stewarding of the US’s many assets in global politics, US domination of the world system could most likely have continued with little effective challenge for a further few decades– though almost certainly not for a full ten of them.
I’ve been reading the fascinating representation that Michael Pillsbury published in this 2000 book, of the views that Chinese strategic thinkers expressed in the late 1990s on relations among the world’s leading powers. Pillsbury wrote that one respected senior Chinese analyst, Yang Dazhou, wrote in 1997 that he foresaw the US as maintaining its superpower status “for at least three decades”– though this view was challenged by other senior analysts, who saw US decline as more inevitable and more rapid than portrayed by Yang.
(Can anyone refer me to good writing in English on the more recent assessments of global power balances produced by Chinese analysts?)
… Actually, I wish I could find out more about that term for a “superpower” in Chinese, as attributed to Yang there. For my part, I don’t foresee the US becoming “just one more ordinary power” in the world any time soon… But I do believe that the status of being the world’s unique “Uberpower“, that Josef Joffe rightly attributed to the US in the post-Cold War era, is the one that is right now– thanks in great part to the PNACers’ bloody and destructive over-reach in Iraq– coming to an end.
What will replace it? Well, we are evidently at a very important historic juncture. The invasion of Iraq has been a horrendous, cataclysmic tragedy for nearly all the people of that country (and for a relatively small number of American families.) But the course of events there also has the capacity to teach everyone in the world– and most particularly the US citizenry– a few important lessons:
- 1. Military power, however technically hyper-advanced, can never be relied on as sufficient, on its own, to assure the achievement of strategic goals. Other elements of power including diplomatic/political smarts and international legitimacy, are equally or even more important.
2. Thank goodness that, in the re-ordering of inter-national power balances that will certainly follow the US debacle in Iraq, we already do have two rules-based and generally well-trusted mechanisms of international coordination to help the people of the world navigate their way through these changes. These are (a) the UN, and its norms and institutions, and (b) the world economic system, ditto. If we didn’t have these two broad and already tested systems of international coordination in place, then imagine how damaging and violent the jostling among the world’s big powers could be during the transition into which the world’s peoples are now entering!
3. The limitations on the utility of military force, as revealed most sharply in Iraq, are a helpfully instructive footnote to the more general situation that has existed since 1945 (or at least, since 1949), namely that in the era of nuclear weapons war among the great powers has become unthinkable. (This relates to #2 above, too.) True, Iraq was not at any point a “great” power. But what we have seen there is that war by a great power against even an already long-weakened medium power has proven counter-productive for the great (“Uber!”) power in question. Therefore, possession of great military power is revealed as not such an important component of “national” power as it has generally until now been thought to be…
And thus, while the US political class has been spending just about all its time, and vast amounts of our national budget, futzing around trying to figure out what to do about the actually unwinnable (and only barely salvageable) US situation in Iraq, the “soft power” that our country was once able to project around with great confidence around the world has eroded almost completely, and the Japanese, Chinese, Brits have become major props of our national debt…
As of June 30, 2007 Japan held $612.3 billion of our national debt, China $405.1 billion, and the UK $190.1 billion. The total amount of the US debt held by the public– that is, not by other US government trust funds, like the Social Security trust Fund– at that point was $4,943 billion. So China, for example, was holding 8.2% of that…
This past couple of weeks I’ve been doing some intriguing reading of Realist writers– Joffe, Brzezinski, Kishore Mahbubani– and some hard thinking on these issues, too. I have maintained for a few years now that there is no real contradiction between well-informed and principled Realist thinking on international affairs, and being a Quaker pacifist. I’d be happy to explain this more sometime, but don’t have time to now. My main point here, though, is to note that the whole wrenchingly ghastly experience of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq really does underline the fact that, in the globally interconnected and still informed-by-Hiroshima world of the 21st century, raw military power as such has far, far less utility than might have been thought earlier.
Yes, we still have to explain some of these things a lot more effectively to members of our political elite here, in both the big political parties– as well as to members of the MSM commentatoriat.
But at the very least, surely everyone can see that the destructive, arrogantly unilateralist uber-militarism that was the hallmark of the PNACers who captured our government in 2001 has failed?
Hallelujah.
Thousand Year Reich, Empire on which the Sun Never Sets, New American Century.
The great beauty of being European is that we have seen them come and we have seen them go, and even write poetry about it.
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter’d visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp’d on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock’d them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
I do rather wish they wouldn’t mislay nuclear weapons as they decline.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6980204.stm
I’m looking forward to more on how “principled realist thinking” fits w/ a pacifist stance…. (I’m reminded of so many internal contradictions in classic pre-neorealist writings, particularly in the realms of “international legitimacy” — where “prestige” of a nation is a form of power, at least to Morgenthau.)
By the way, if “everyone” can see how ruinous the PNAC has become, then how come there seems to be so precious little concern about the building mad rush for starting a war w/ Iran?
See former Ray McGovern’s expanded warnings here:
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/09/02/3564/
(Note the quotes of Pat Lang too)
Re. your request for English language sources on China’s strategic thinking, you might find John W. Garver’s 2006 excellent book, China & Iran: Ancient Partners in a Post-Imperial World to be of help. (Garver draws from dozens of Chinese language sources in his fascinating assessment)
A 2005 book, edited by Yon Deng & Fei-ling Wang, that may be of help: China Rising: Power & Motivation &in Chinese Foreign Policy (Rowman & Littlefield)
I’ll also forward you text of an article in J. of Contemporary China (2002 # 31) – by Cheng & Wankun on Patterns… of China’s Int’l Strategic Behavior.” Perhaps just scratching the surface of your question….
i read your postings almost daily. do appreciate them. However, on today’s post I found some lack of data: While the national debt [as government responsibility] was a very useful item, I wish you would have included the commercial paper /debt/bonds balance of the USA economy. This indebtedness alos has political/economic signioficance, not the least being that the interst due on them is in USA $, thus contributing to the unsustainable annual balance of payment deficit of the USA, which has bearing on soft power [the hard power of military is also funded off-shore, thereby possibly limiting USA abailities in the near future].
Good point, Salamon. Can you point to me some good sources on that? All I have to hand is an Aug 2 IHT piece stating that China’s overall foreign reserves are $1.3 trillion– not all of it US-based, of course, but I wonder what proportion of it is denominated in US$?
The IHT piece (Keith Bradsher) also indicates that the People’s Bank of China may have taken a bit of a bath on holdings in US mortgage-backed securities, though it abruptly stopped buying them in May…
Helena, China holds approximately 405bn in US treasuries, second only to Japan. The US Treasury web page updates these stats monthly.
Scott, do you happen to know when Ray McGovern gave up his career as a “CIA analyst” for one with The Church of the Saviour? are these daily predictions of imminent nuclear war part of his churchly duties or are they more of a hobby? Why not a sandwich board announcing “the end is nigh?”
The 8/27 IAEA statement McGovern has excerpted in his recent flurry of scaremongering editorials outlines “modalities of resolution of outstanding issues”. If no outstanding issues existed, we would need no modalities to resolve them. Guess what? The IAEA’s “outstanding issues” are the very same issues that have figured in earlier IAEA reports: p1-p2 centrifuges, unaccountable HEU contamination, studies of uranium metallurgy & polonium-210 etc. etc. McGovern’s claim that the IAEA has given Iran’s nuclear program a clean bill of health is an egregious falsehood.
Yes, “the agency has been able to verify the non-diversion of the declared nuclear materials” but undeclared materials, practices, studies and equipment were always the issue. Only someone ignorant of earlier IAEA reports would think otherwise, or that its recent letter exonerated Iran of NPT violations. Maybe that’s McGovern’s target audience?
http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Documents/Infcircs/2007/infcirc711.pdf
I wouldn’t be so quick to write off the global prospects of post-Bush America with our entrepreneurial and diversity culture…Russia will not always benefit from an energy price windfall…China’s Day of Reckoning with their anachronistic political system is still ahead…Demographic/assimilation/work ethic trends in Europe are not encouraging…nor demographic trends in Japan.
I guess that still leaves Venezuela and Iran.
Truesdell you might want to consider the viability of the current political system in the USA. The point is surely close, if it has not already come, at which the constitutional republic evolves into a Bonapartist plebiscitary dictatorship. The changes in the nayure of the system have been cumulative but since the Supreme Court stopped Florida’s recount the descent has been rapid.
Vadim seems to be suggesting that it is now the Iranian government’s turn to prove a series of negatives regarding its nuclear power programme.
Helena: I think that you will discover that your native land holds something in the order of $200 million in US Treasury bills. It’s probably a thank you for lend lease.
The point is surely close, if it has not already come, at which the constitutional republic evolves into a Bonapartist plebiscitary dictatorship.
One thing you can take to the bank…
We Americans are going to take back our country next year.
Vadim, I had already written about the Chinese holding $405 bn of T-bills and given the hyperlink to that source. However, the Chinese hold many other forms of US debt, as well. It was that, that I was asking about.
Bevin, the link I gave does indeed give that same information. If you go there, you will note that, (1) China’s holdings saw a peak in March 2007 at $419.8 billion and have been declining slowly since, and (2) that the UK holdings showed a steep increase over the past year– from $61.6 bn last October to $190.1 bn in June. There are doubtless a lot of reasons, strictly economic and partly political, for this. But one is almost certainly just the huge amount of spare cash that’s been washing around London ever since the US Congress enacted Sarbanes-Oxley and the big-shot financial houses all decamped for Thames-land…
Vadim seems to be suggesting that it is now the Iranian government’s turn to prove a series of negatives regarding its nuclear power programme
bevin you seem to have misunderstood me. The IAEA isn’t asking Iran to ‘prove a negative’ but explain a series of known actions whose purpose or explanation is undeclared. At least some of these actions point to research into nuclear weapons design, forbidden under the terms of the NPT.
Please note the section here marked “outstanding issues:”
http://cryptome.org/iaea083007.htm
re “US debt” — keep in mind Helena that China in all likelihood has much of its dollar denominated reserves in eurodollars (ie dollar denominated accounts with non-US banks) and in dollar denominated debt issued by non-US governments and companies. China wouldn’t be able to threaten US fx or interest rates without dislocating these markets as well. As you may know the Eurodollar market is well into the trillions. And China is itself a borrower in the yankee bond market, eg:
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200305/17/eng20030517_116764.shtml