The National Interest
Summer 2001

The Lesser Evil

by Richard K. Betts

 

. . . During the Cold War, the United States was often accused of neo-imperialism. At the time, this was a bad rap. U.S. interventions often found the client's tail wagging the patron's dog, as Washington became mired in support of problematic Third World governments, while not having any direct or real governing authority over them. Today, however, we are engaged in real neo-imperialism, although a quite peculiar multilateral and humanitarian form of it. Under the aegis of international organizations, the United States is collaborating with other governments in the direct control of Bosnia and Kosovo, a return of the Western powers to the tutelary administration of backward nations-rather like a League of Nations mandate. There is certainly no economic benefit to the imperial metropoles. Rather, the Western presence represents a new mission civilisatrice for a new imperium. In effect, beneficent recolonization is the regional security strategy that the "international community" offers up at the turn of the twenty-first century. But is this a solution that we should embrace, or a wrong turn from which we should escape?

For its part, and despite rhetorical backing and filling, the Clinton administration embraced the idea. Indeed, it was the implicit rationale for maintaining American primacy that animated the belief shared by Holbrooke, Berger and Albright in the United States as "the indispensable nation." The new Bush administration rejects the enthusiasm for intervention in principle, yet it endorses the importance of American primacy just as forcefully as its predecessor. This makes it awkward to shed current responsibilities. (And although intervention in Bosnia was a Clinton project, the U.S. commitment to protect Kosovo goes back to the administration of Bush the Elder.) Beneficent recolonization can serve primacy if the United States and its rich allies are willing to invest heavily and sacrifice significantly to make it work; otherwise, half-hearted recolonization exposes a hollowness at the core of primacy. The dirty little secret of American foreign policy is that exercising primacy is popular across the domestic political spectrum, but only as long as it is cheap. When national assertion-whether for altruistic or narcissistic purposes-hits a costly snag, people notice that it is not all that much fun, and begin to see more merit in less meddling. . .