Modern US Foreign Policy: New World Disorder?

    In his book "After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint and the Rebuilding after Major Wars" G. John Ikenberry considers the New World Order (NWO) to be: "The type of order that emerges after great wars [and which] hinges on the ability of states to restrain power institutionally and bind themselves to long term commitments".
    Thus, according to this model, there are two components for establishing order on an international level. Since the beginning of the 20th century politicians have considered the concept of a New World Order on at least three occasions: Woodrow Wilson's fourteen points and the idea of Open Diplomacy in 1919, Truman's world Republic and Marshall Plan 1945 - 1949, and George Bush's Thanksgiving speech in 1989 advocating a world in harmony based on democratic principals and healed from the old wounds of the Cold War.
    Over the past ten years the US has become involved in regional conflicts in which it claims its own interests are at risk. Thus, US involvement in conflicts beyond its borders and are justified as largely defensives measures carried out to protect its interests rather than for reasons of imperialist expansionism. US foreign policy actions over the past ten years might be explained from the "realist" point of view, a theory of international relations which argues that the only aim of every state is that its perceived interests are expressed in terms of power. The United States, while claiming to be a liberal democracy also pursues the realist goal of world domination.
    To legitimize the existence of NATO, for example, the US has created the notion of peace building and humanitarian intervention although, logically, there must have been at least partial dissolution of the structure after dissolution of the Warsaw Pact. Yet the United States government has "reinvented" NATO to justify its existence in the post-Soviet world. Thus, NATO troops are no longer explained as necessary to thwart Soviet expansionism but in order to foster and sustain democratic institutions in both East and West Europe.
    The old Soviet charge that NATO was nothing more that a US-dominated military alliance intended to spread US imperialism in Europe was largely dismissed when it was made some fifty years ago. Rather, argued NATO's defenders, the US and the "free" world had the duty to organize a defensive military force to counter perceived Soviet expansion. Yet the Soviet Union has collapsed and NATO continues, which suggests that there was at least some merit in the original Soviet charge that NATO was intended to foster US imperialism with or without the threat of Soviet expansionism. NATO has been used most noticeably in Serbia and Kosovo, and it is doubtful that the purpose of NATO's intervention was anything other than siding with the pro-US Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), regardless of that organization's own tainted past. As present, many countries from the former communist block, such as the Czech Republic and Hungary, are now NATO members, and there are plans to bring all of the former communist nations into NATO, including the Baltic States and Ukraine. While the goal of defending Europe against communism has been dropped from NATO's agenda, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that NATO is one effort of the US and it's allies to expand their control and influence into areas once out of their control. In short, the US is engaging in imperialist expansion.
    The politics of imposing democratic values through economic sanctions or military threat has grown to dominate the foreign policy of the United States. Structuring the entire world into two camps of terrorists (or "axis of evil") and the anti-terrorist coalition creates the danger of "labelisation" of sovereign states which become "persona non-grata" in the system of international relations. The outcomes of such politics are seen in the events of 9/11, terrorists attacks in Israel, Phillippines, Somalia, Spain, and the forthcoming war in Iraq. All this has created an instability in the previously secure system of states and breaches the UN Security Council Charter.
    And by creating two camps, one "terrorist", or "axis of evil", the other "free", and "democratic", the US government has created a world in which the forces of "good" can intervene anywhere at any time against the forces of "evil". Such terms are not clearly defined; indeed, there is no concrete definition of the "good" nations versus the "evil" nations other than the "good" nations are those that side with the US while the "evil" nations refuse to align with the US. Thus, such diametrically opposed groups such as Saddam Hussein's secular Iraqi regime and the Taliban's fundamentalist regime can be attacked by using the logic of "good" versus "evil", despite the fact that one is a religious fundamentalist regime and the other is a secular socialist regime. This is also true in the Balkans conflict, where a secular regime under the Serbian Milosivic was attacked by NATO in favor of a strongly Islamic movement of the Kosovar Liberation Army. Stripped of any ideological content at all, the New World Order increasingly appears to be a world in which, according to US president Bush, "you're either with us, or against us".
    Despite its lack of an ideological base with which to legitimate its right to rule, the New World Order has been given its ideological justification by western scholars, most principally Francis Fukuyami in his thesis concerning "the end of history". In a series of articles Fukuyami has displayed a broad knowledge of the philosophical underpinnings of what he calls "liberal democracy" as well as a favorble, some might call self-serving, explanation as to why everyone from Islamic fundamentalists to Korean communists and Columbian guerrillas wants to challenge US hegemony in the world today.
    Fukuyami sees in all of these oppositional movements a holdover of older ideologies which, in the long run, will fall to the superior system and philosophy of liberal democracy. Thus, following Fukuyami's logic, however much liberal democracy (read most especially the United States) is challenged by opponents on the left or the right, it will end up victorious, because history has already judged who will be the "last man standing", and it is Hegel's "spirit" rather than Marx's "proletariat". Despite economic crisis and any number of ongoing conflicts in the world today, Fukuyami has declared that liberal democracy will inevitably and inexorably be the winner! This startling determinism would put even the crudest Marxist-reductionist to shame, yet Fukuyami's book has been hailed by defenders of "liberal democracy" as a masterful analysis of the post-Soviet era. More importantly, it is the works of Fukuyami, among others, that have so informed US policy makers. But the fundamental flaws of Fukuyami's arguments have gone unnoted by such policy makers, and so poor scholarship will in fact most probably is horrific foreign policy.
    Because what Fukuyami failed to recognize in all of his works is that rather that being in opposition to liberal democracy, Islamic fundamentalism and communism were and will continue to be outgrowths of the contradictions of Fukuyami's utopia of liberal democracy. And one not need rely on Marx for this, since Hegel also duly noted the contradictory nature of historical movements. Thus, rather than recognizing that 9 - 11 was an outgrowth of the contradictions of the liberal democratic model, Fukuyami apparently believes that 9 - 11 was the result of resentments built up over the very success of liberal democracy!
    On a more concrete level, scholarly works by people such as Fukuyami have prepared the world for the declarations of George Bush Jr., who in January, 2003 proclaimed that it is the duty of the US to bring "democracy" to all the nations of the world. Armed with Fukuyami's historical inevitability and the military arsenal of the United States, it appears that the US and its allies are headed toward a series of military confrontations which could result in a New World Order mired in police actions and any number of wars throughout the world.
    The one possible way out is to re-direct US foreign policy to follow UN Resolutions and change the NATO mission from peace-enforcing and peace-keeping to a role as observer and advisor. Finally, the US, being an economically and politically powerful country, must review its interests and shift from the politics of imposing ideas to the politics of suggesting alternative variants that do not affect the sovereignty and national identity of the states.
    This might prove difficult, however, since one aspect of empire is its insatiable need to expand. In his seminal work Imperialism, J.A. Thompson argued that the British Empire was in fact a drain on the British nation and its people. Why, asked Thompson, did Britain insist on maintaining its far-flung colonial holdings? Thompson's conclusion was telling, and it influenced greatly the later works of V.I. Lenin, especially his Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. For what Thompson concluded is that while empire might not benefit all of Britain, it did indeed benefit some Britons - most notably those that had investments in India or South Africa or New Zealand. So too is this one consideration that has largely been overlooked in the events since 9 - 11: the extent to which US and other large businesses and corporations benefit from a war in Afghanistan or Iraq.
    Thus, despite all of the talk of "good", versus "evil", the reasons for US expansionist policies might be the same as the British and the Romans-money, or access to the materials, cheap labor, and markets that will generate money. Given the clear economic gains that George Bush and his advisors stand to gain by US dominance in Afghanistan and Iraq (Condaleeza Rice's former employer Unocal is now on track to run a pipeline through Afghanistan; Dick Cheney's former employer Haliburton is said to be in line for all drilling rights if the US conquers Iraq) we cannot dismiss the economic motives of the US government's fight against "evil".