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CIAO DATE: 03/02
Volume XVIII, No 3, Fall 2001
The epithet "unilateralism" has been much in vogue during the first year of the Bush administration. During the president's June trip to Europe, transatlantic commentators discerned an American penchant for "going it alone" on issues from global warming to missile defense. Liberal internationalists have bemoaned this alleged tendency and warned of an inevitable backlash. Conservatives have welcomed it as a declaration of diplomatic independence. The administration, for its part, disavows the label, advancing the more comforting "leadership" and underlining its commitment to "consultations" with foreign partners. As President Bush told the press at the nato summit, "Unilateralists don't come around the table to listen to others.... Unilateralists don't ask opinions of world leaders."
Yet skepticism about multilateral cooperation runs deep within this administration. A common Republican attack during the 2000 presidential campaign was that the Clinton administration (and by extension Al Gore) had made a fetish of multilateralism. Condoleezza Rice, now national security adviser, chided Democrats for subordinating U.S. national interests to "the interests of an illusory international community" and for clinging to "the belief that the support of many states-or even better, of institutions like the United Nations-is essential to the legitimate exercise of power." Republicans, in contrast, understood that "multilateral agreements and institutions should not be ends in themselves."
During its first year in office, the new Bush administration has moved to implement this foreign policy philosophy, walking away from a number of international treaties and commitments. Whereas its predecessor had made a blanket commitment to multilateralism, explained State Department director of policy planning Richard Haass, the Bush administration's approach would be "à la carte." Participation would depend on hard-headed, case-by-case assessments of the implications for U.S. national interests.
Ironically, an emphasis on multilateral cooperation was an intrinsic element of the "new world order" rhetoric enunciated by Bush père following the Cold and Gulf Wars, a mere ten years ago. The Clinton administration expanded on this Wilsonian theme, advocating what U.N. envoy Madeleine Albright termed "assertive multilateralism." By increasing its reliance on international institutions, rules, and partnerships, she implied, the United States might better manage transnational problems, spread the burdens of world leadership, win legitimacy for its goals and actions, and consolidate the expanding community of free market democracies.
Assertive multilateralism proved more complicated in practice than principle. Particularly in matters of peace and security, collective decision making could limit U.S. options and block decisive action. Following peacekeeping fiascoes in Somalia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Clinton administration retreated to a more pragmatic internationalism, encapsulated in the mantra, "multilateral when we can, unilateral when we must."
By the mid-1990s, the term "multilateralism" had fallen into disrepute, seeming to imply unacceptable constraints on U.S. freedom of action abroad and infringements on sovereign rights at home. As Sen. Robert Dole complained, "International organizations-whether the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, or any others...[t]oo often...reflect a consensus that opposes American interests or does not reflect American principles and ideals." It was high time, wrote conservative analyst Robert Kagan, to "reject the global buddy system."
Stewart Patrick is a research associate at the Center on International Cooperation at New York University, and a 2001-02 international affairs fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is co-editor, with Shepard Forman, of Multilateralism and U.S. Foreign Policy: Ambivalent Engagement, Lynne Rienner Publishers, forthcoming.
The administration of President George W. Bush is moving full speed ahead with a variety of national missile defense (NMD) approaches, and has said that in months-not years-missile defense testing will wreck the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty.
While this position may reflect a profound desire on the part of administration officials to be rid of the treaty, it does not change the fact that NMD technology lags fervent policy wishes. While testing and deployment options can be designed to violate the ABM accord, doing so is not necessary to advance the development of missile defense-related technologies. For the moment, development of missile defense hardware and software does not require-and may actually be harmed by-the kind of emergency crash program now being touted by the Pentagon's Ballistic Missile Defense Organization.
National missile defense is in its infant stages, and it will take a decade or more for the technology to mature. The only thing pushing such deployment plans, which are aimed at the erection of interceptors before the end of Bush's term in 2004, is U.S. domestic politics.
The Bush team is arguing that the ABM Treaty is no longer needed to manage the U.S.-Russian nuclear relationship, as Russia is no longer an enemy. Instead, Bush administration officials argue, both Russia and the United States must be prepared to counter the potential use of ballistic missiles with nuclear, chemical or biological warheads by rogue countries or terrorist regimes.
Any unilateral move to undermine or abrogate the ABM Treaty at this time is not wise. Signed in 1972 by the Cold War's two superpower antagonists, the treaty-which stopped the arms race in defensive systems-has served as a foundation document for the international rules of the road that over the past three decades have worked to make nuclear war less likely.
Philip E. Coyle is senior advisor at the Center for Defense Information, Washington, D.C., and former director of Operational Test and Evaluation at the Department of Defense. John B. Rhinelander is senior counsel at Shaw Pittman, Washington, D.C., and former legal advisor to the U.S. SALT I delegation that negotiated the ABM Treaty.
For four decades, avoiding nuclear war was, together with avoiding the expansion of Soviet communism, the central objective of American defense policy. Since the Soviet Union was the potential nuclear adversary, the two purposes were inextricably intertwined, bound together by the concept of "deterrence." For most of those 40 years, nuclear deterrence was dissected and debated, inside and out, logically and theologically, by policymakers and "defense intellectuals."
The collapse of the Soviet empire beginning in 1989 made the issues of nuclear deterrence seem less compelling, and the subject was largely set aside. Nuclear weapons and nuclear policy were not, however. The weapons remain as potentially destructive as they ever were, and attempts to reduce the threat have continued-bilaterally between the United States and Russia, and multilaterally through anti-proliferation efforts. With the new stress put on "national missile defense" (NMD) by President George W. Bush's administration, however, deterrence is again highly relevant.
The NMD debate repeats, to a substantial degree, the arguments of the late 1960s and 1970s over the anti-ballistic missile (ABM), but thus far it has done so with no explicit reference to the old lines of argument. How relevant are the old discussions, and to what?
They remain quite relevant with regard to conflicts with rational opponents like the governments of Russia and China and probably with most of what are called "rogue states." They are much less relevant to "irrational" opponents, who were set aside in the old debates but seem far more important now in the persona of terrorist groups, perhaps some of the rogue states, and possibly potential controllers of the warheads now controlled by Moscow. The implications of irrationality for the current ABM debate are uncertain: defenses against rogue missiles, as emphasized by the Clinton administration, seem desirable, but rogues may not need missiles. As I see it, the value of an ABM system is not worth the costs, but the balance between benefits and costs must be evaluated by elected decision makers.
Robert A. Levine is a senior economic consultant at RAND. He was deputy director of the Congressional Budget Office from 1975 to 1979, and is the author of The Arms Debate (1963) and Still the Arms Debate (1990).
Yokohama, Japan.- Junichiro Koizumi, in office only since April, is by far Japan's most popular prime minister in more than one hundred years of parliamentary history. Polls show support for Koizumi in excess of 80 percent. But such figures do not tell half the story. He is the first prime minister to rise to power solely through popular will, defying the traditional strength of organized voting blocs. And, by the will of the people, he has declared war on his own political party, the long-ruling Liberal-Democrats, and on the state bureaucracy, which is in effect the nonelected government. His call for reform, if successful, will fundamentally alter the Japanese order.
The decade-old recession has finally convinced enough Japanese to admit that Japan has a structural problem. What Koizumi proposes is to make a heavily regulated, almost command economy more competitive and to devise a new structure that will more efficiently allocate resources and talent. If he has his way, the traditional security and equality of result promised and carefully crafted by Japan's authoritarian order since the end of the Second World War will disappear. The old and rigid order-symbolized by seniority, lifetime employment, and omnipresent bureaucratic control-is to be replaced by a more liberal, open, fluid, thus harsher, order. A Japan that abandons long-cherished notions of harmony and predictability is in the making.
Due largely to the disasters of the Second World War, risk aversion has been a Japanese hallmark. For the first time in decades, therefore, the Japanese have taken a great gamble in backing Koizumi. Still, it is far from clear how a people so used to egalitarian harmony will go in enduring what Koizumi calls the pain of reform-higher levels of unemployment and bankruptcies, and much greater unevenness in the distribution of wealth and opportunity. Entrenched interests are still capable of fierce resistance. The battle lines are clear.
Less clear is where Koizumi stands on nationalism. His willingness to pay respect to Japan's war dead at the Yasukuni shrine raises questions and has sparked needless controversy with China and South Korea. It should be noted, however, that his popularity has nothing to do with the Yasukuni issue. Flag waving is not an effective tactic in Japan; more often than not, it leaves the public cold. By raising the Yasukuni issue, Koizumi may detract from his popularity and provide ammunition to his opponents. Still, this is a question about which Koizumi clearly feels deeply, and this matters because his reform strategy is so dependent on his person. Is Koizumi a right-wing nationalist, as some Japan watchers are prone to judge? More to the point, will successful reform by Koizumi signify a revival of Japanese nationalism?
Masaru Tamamoto is a senior fellow of the World Policy Institute.
"Peacekeeping" is known in American political jargon as a third-rail issue, to be touched only with great caution. In fact, though little has been said about the issue recently, we see some light in the sky. The long-standing deadlock on America's unpaid assessments to the United Nations-and specifically for peacekeeping-has ended in compromise, a new secretary of state is well disposed toward the world organization, a top-flight French diplomat, Jean-Marie Guehenno, has taken control of U.N. peacekeeping operations, and the General Assembly has before it the first truly comprehensive review of all U.N. peace operations. For the moment, there is the prospect of fundamental reform; it is a moment worth seizing.
Our purpose is to discuss specific and practical steps, based on CARE's experience, that can increase the effectiveness of both peacekeeping operations and the longer-term enterprise of peace building. We do not intend to broach the perennial problem of developing standby forces-the "heavy strategic reserve" mentioned in the August 2000 report of the Panel on United Nations Peace Operations, chaired by Algerian ambassador Lakhdar Brahimi. Nor will we deal with suggestions for a global peacekeeping strategy, much less the heated debate over humanitarian intervention. Our purpose is more modest: to discuss ways to reform peacekeeping in the field.
The peacekeeping system malfunctioned terribly in the 1990s for a host of reasons. In Bosnia, the United Nations was asked to do too much with too little; in Rwanda, world powers failed to act in time; and in Somalia, the United Nations was blamed for an ill-planned operation under direct United States control. A chronic condition underpinning all of these disasters was the failure of member states to back their rhetoric with resources-with the United States itself setting a shameful example in its decade-long dues-paying delinquency. Another systemic problem that receives far less attention is the way the U.N. system fails from start to finish to engage local civil society in the peace process in conflict areas. The reform package pending before U.N. General Assembly makes many worthy recommendations-for example, to overhaul the management of the U.N. Department of Peacekeeping Operations and to authorize peacekeeping missions only when resources are available to carry out their mandates-but ignores the endemic weakness of the United Nations in eliciting civil society involvement.
Peacekeepers now often enter environments where the conditions for peace are fragile or barely exist. In places like East Timor, the Balkans, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, the United Nations must extend a measure of security to civilian populations and catalyze efforts to lay the foundations for peace-rebuilding civil institutions, providing economic opportunities for ex-combatants, and creating mechanisms to promote dialogue and reconciliation. The United Nations cannot do this alone. Local leaders, regional and subregional groups, civic groups, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are crucial to the promotion of a durable peace in societies emerging from conflict. Nascent U.N. efforts to incorporate conflict prevention and peace-building activities more effectively into peacekeeping mandates and operations will fall short unless local civil actors become part of the equation.
Our field-based experience in relief and development leads us to make four recommendations.
First, U.N. members should take positive steps, and commit resources, to avert conflicts before they start, recognizing that an ounce of conflict prevention is worth a pound of peacekeeping cure. They should give peace building a legitimate place in both the budgets and mandates of peacekeeping operations. Reduction of poverty must be integral to both enterprises.
Second, U.N. staff on the ground should encourage the greatest possible involvement of local leaders and organizations in the spectrum of conflict prevention, peacekeeping, and peace-building operations; this is all the more important when peacekeeping forces are drawn into a conflict and U.N. personnel are no longer perceived as disinterested outsiders.
Third, policymakers should reexamine the role currently played by the military in humanitarian and civil affairs during peacekeeping operations. The military can be crucial in facilitating humanitarian assistance, as they were, despite the eventual debacle, in protecting the relief convoys in Somalia. At the same time, the military must assign high priority to civilian protection and make certain that military activities do not undermine civilian leadership, humanitarian aid, or the emergence (or reemergence) of local civil institutions.
Fourth, a review of the roles and responsibilities of agencies that respond to humanitarian emergencies is long overdue. The United Nations must work with other emergency-response actors to differentiate military and civilian functions and to devise a strategy to guide all of these organizations. The United Nations can contribute more by coordinating the on-the-ground activities of international agencies than it can by itself trying to build new foundations for societies emerging from conflict.
Peter D. Bell is president and chief executive officer of CARE USA, an international relief and development organization that operates in more than 60 countries. Guy Tousignant is secretary general of CARE International. He formerly served as the commander of U.N. peacekeeping forces and as assistant secretary general to the United Nations in Rwanda during UNAMIR II.
Counterpoint
Reportage
In some countries-usually those with the most tragic history-the past really is prologue. Burundi is such a country. Overpopulated, unfavored by nature except in the lushness of its soil, and haunted by the sense that the massacres that have already taken place mean not reconciliation but only more slaughter, Burundi is a place that makes even those well-versed in postcolonial Africa's myriad tragedies throw up their hands in despair. An International Crisis Group report issued last May speaks of a country where the context is one of "a deterioration of security, humanitarian catastrophe and political fragmentation." And this is a relatively optimistic report in the sense that it offers recommendations for putting the current Burundian peace process back on track.
For the humanitarian nongovernmental organizations like Doctors Without Borders and the International Rescue Committee, Burundi is one of those places, all too common in sub-Saharan Africa, where the needs are likely to always outstrip the resources. "You can talk about the dilemmas of aid all you want here," one relief worker told me, "but if we were to leave, people would die. Sure, by staying we prop up the government, and our presence is an important economic asset for them as well. But what would follow our departure would be malaria and hunger, not a better regime." He was speaking off the record, but such views are the norm among the aid workers based in Bujumbura, the Burundian capital.
The fate of Bujumbura itself has borne out this consensus. For a city whose core a decade ago included many neighborhoods where the politically dominant but minority Tutsis mixed easily with the disenfranchised Hutu majority has undergone round after round of ethnic cleansing. Today, the central districts of Bujumbura, which, to add paradox to injury, are clean, orderly, and remarkably pleasant for a place so immiserated, are almost exclusively Tutsi. In the coolness of the morning and again at dusk, cohorts of young Tutsi men jog in military formation along the wide avenues. The message of intimidation is clear, above all since these runs are timed to coincide with the arrival of the Hutu workers who come in to the city. Sometimes they sing martial songs as they move by.
As for the Hutus, they mostly arrive on foot (cabs cost more than a dollar; an inconceivable sum to a Hutu peasant or servant, and buses are almost nonexistent), progressing down the steep hills-the collines as Burundians say-from beyond Bujumbura proper in Bujumbura Rurale. They come past the military and police checkpoints that ring the city and are meant to provide some kind of bulwark against the Hutu guerrillas of the National Liberation Forces (FNL in its French acronym) and the Forces for the Defense of Democracy (FDD) Rwanda, who are ubiquitous in the communes of the Bujumbura Rurale. It is an ineffective shield at best. Gunfire can be heard routinely, and soldiers and paramilitary policemen are killed on a regular basis, after which, with disgusting regularity, their colleagues revenge themselves on any Hutu peasant they can get their hands on.
DavidRieff is a senior fellow of the World Policy Institute and the author of Slaughterhouse: Bosnia and the Failure of the West and the co-editor of Crimes of War: What the Public Should Know.
Reflections
My favorite word in Turkish is istiklal. The dictionary says it means "independence," and it has special resonance in Turkey because Turkey is struggling to become independent of so much. It wants to break away from its autocratic heritage, from its position outside the world's political mainstream, and from the stereotype of the terrifying Turk and the ostracism which that stereotype encourages. Most of all, it is trying to free itself from its fears-fear of freedom, fear of the outside world, fear of itself.
But the real reason I love to hear the word istiklal is because it is the name of Turkey's most fascinating boulevard. Jammed with people all day and late into the night, lined with cafés, bookstores, cinemas and shops of every description, it is the pulsating heart not only of Istanbul but of the Turkish nation. I go there whenever I feel myself being overwhelmed by doubts about Turkey. Losing myself in Istiklal's parade of faces for a few minutes, overhearing snippets of conversation and absorbing the energy that crackles along its mile and a half, is always enough to renew my confidence in Turkey's future. Because Istanbul has attracted millions of migrants from other parts of the country-several hundred new ones still arrive every day-this street is the ultimate melting pot. Istiklal is perfectly named because its human panorama reflects Turkey's drive to break away from claustrophobic provincialism and allow its people to express their magnificent diversity.
That drive has been only partly successful. Something about the concept of diversity frightens Turkey's ruling elite. It triggers the deep insecurity that has gripped Turkish rulers ever since the Republic was founded in 1923, an insecurity that today prevents Turkey from taking its proper place in the modern world.
Stephen Kinzer was Istanbul bureau chief for the New York Times and is now that paper's national cultural correspondent. He is the author of Blood of Brothers and co-author of Bitter Fruit: The Untold Story of the American Coup in Guatemala.
Conversation
I first visited Genazzano in 1961, when it was one of Italy's communist strongholds. There I met the former local Communist Party secretary, Athos Ricci, and after months of digging into the history and life of the village, together we wrote a book about Genazzano (The Searchers: Conflict and Communism in an Italian Town), which I came to see as a microcosm of Italy in transition. Periodically, I have returned to see what was happening. This past spring I went back to renew my friendship with Athos, now 70, who has become a kind of village legend. Two days before my arrival, Silvio Berlusconi won a landslide victory in the May 13 national elections. His presumed right-wing government, feared by many people in Europe and America, sparked a surprising reaction in this leftist village.
Athos and I spent an intense week together, talking with villagers late into the night and catching up with each other as we discussed how Genazzano had changed over the last four decades. In our conversations, we kept returning to three general themes: 1) the changing nature of communism in the village; 2) the breakup of the ancient rural culture as villagers opted for material comforts and searched for a viable compromise between the traditional and modern worlds; and 3) the town's reaction to Berlusconi's victory.
I first learned about Genazzano while serving with the United Nations in Rome, after years of development work in southern Italy. The editor of an Italian political journal told me about this town, which had one of the highest percentages of communist voters in the country. It was referred to as "Little Moscow" and was well known to the Kremlin. This editor told me about Athos, then in his early thirties, who had joined the party late in the 1940s, had gone through its training schools, and had become one of its most effective local officials in the region. Later, he became disillusioned over the party's inner workings, which denied the very values that had initially attracted him. Athos is probably the most informed local citizen. He's a kind of guru in the town because of his own history and his deep understanding of changing village culture in Italy and the world. He has been asked to run for mayor, once the incumbent mayor finishes her term, but he no longer looks on politics as his primary work. Although he has only eight years of formal schooling, he reads the classics, is well-traveled, and is equally at home with a farmer in the field or a celebrity visiting the town. Members of his family make up a thread that ties together much of the village's history over the past century.
Genazzano is located in the hills southeast of Rome. Known for its politics and history, today it draws many visitors. From 1053 onward, its castle was the stronghold of the Colonna family. One of the Colonnas became Pope Martin V, who created a little Vatican here. High above the town is San Pio, an Augustinian monastery, now in disrepair, that once served Roman emperors as a summer resort. Most of the town's 5,000 inhabitants are snuggled inside the ancient stone walls; navigating its narrow, cobbled streets is a hazardous adventure for today's heavy automobile and motor scooter traffic. On the town's periphery, once lush vineyards and cropland are becoming subdivisions for people seeking to "have it all" by living in this picturesque, traditional village while working in Rome or elsewhere.
What follows is a dialogue between Athos and me, with some comments from other villagers. ...
Belden Paulson is professor emeritus of public policy at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Athos Ricci is a writer and lifetime resident of Genazzano. They co-authored The Searchers: Conflict and Communism in an Italian Town, published in 1966.
Books
E. H. Carr: A Critical Appraisal Michael Cox, ed. Basingstoke, Hampshire, U.K.: Palgrave, 1999
Hans J. Morgenthau: An Intellectual Biography Christoph Frei Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2001
Does America Need a Foreign Policy? Henry Kissinger New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001.
Call it what you will-balance-of-power, Realpolitik or hardball -the worldview commonly known as realism is ascendant in George W. Bush's Washington. Regarding treaties, the position is crisply put by the president's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, "The President of the United States was not elected to sign treaties that are not in America's interest." That presently applies to accords perceived as limiting America's freedom to fix emission standards, test antiballistic missiles, open for scrutiny our chemical arsenals, market handguns, or exempt U.S. military personnel from facing war crimes charges before a still-unborn international tribunal. Certainly the Bush team can be credited with candor. In Rice's words, "We are going to be honest with our allies about which treaties are in our interest and are dealing with the problems with which they purport to deal. And those that are not, we are not prepared to be a party to."
And why not? America's global authority is unrivaled, and it is the prerogative of the powerful to dispense with cant. This has always been the mode of discourse for masters of realism, from Machiavelli and Hobbes to the Iron Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck. Its essence was classically expressed by Thucydides. During the Peloponnesian War, he relates, an Athenian envoy spared the fence-sitting islanders of Melos windy orations on right and wrong because "you know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must." It is likewise arguable that more blood has been spilled in futile wars waged by impassioned crusaders, invoking the sanction of God, flag, and ethnicity, than by their conservative opposites. One recalls what Bismarck said of the Balkans, that they were not worth the bones of a single Pomeranian grenadier.
Still, given the school's resurgence, it seems but fair to apply realism's rigorous sandpaper to its own modern apostles. Three books about or by the titans of realism-Carr, Morgenthau, and Kissinger-have appeared within the last year. A careful reading suggests that blindness about the sweep of events, wishful credulity about the powerful and prevarication to cover up lapses are not solely the weaknesses of gullible internationalists: realists too stumble into the common quicksand.
Karl E. Meyer is editor of World Policy Journal.
Correspondence
Coda