Robert Heinlein expressed the problem in a science fiction story in
1941, `Solution Unsatisfactory'. I will get to that in a moment.
First, the `Jacksonian' tradition in the US.
On 13 Mar 2003, Gautam Mukunda <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I think part of the problem is that there is one party in the
whole dispute who is as black as you can get. Outside of the
lunatics (ANSWER) everyone agrees that that party is as black as
it is possible to be. _By contrast_ everyone else tends to look
white.
This makes sense if you follow the US `Wilsonian' political theme.
There are other political themes in the US, such as the `Jacksonian'
tradition, which looks to others as ruthless and dangerous to them.
I think that some outside of the US fear that the US will follow a
`Jacksonian' policy at some point or another.
For example, the US has supported dictatorships in Chile, Argentina,
and Brazil, in Spain and Greece, and elsewhere, including Iraq, under
President Reagan. You have to be ruthless and uncaring of non-US
people to follow such a policy, not a `Wilsonian' but a `Jacksonian'.
Several years ago, Walter Russell Mead wrote an essay on `The
Jacksonian Tradition'
http://www.nationalinterest.org/issues/58/Mead.html
His first two sentences were:
In the last five months of World War II, American bombing raids
claimed the lives of more than 900,000 Japanese civilians--not
counting the casualties from the atomic strikes against Hiroshima
and Nagasaki. This is more than twice the total number of combat
deaths that the United States has suffered in all its foreign wars
combined. ....
His thesis was:
.... An observer who thinks of American foreign policy only in
terms of the commercial realism of the Hamiltonians, the crusading
moralism of Wilsonian transcendentalists, and the supple pacifism
of the principled but slippery Jeffersonians would be at a loss to
account for American ruthlessness at war.
Those who prefer to believe that the present global hegemony of
the United States emerged through a process of immaculate
conception avert their eyes from many distressing moments in the
American ascension. .... The United States over its history has
consistently summoned the will and the means to compel its enemies
to yield to its demands.
Perhaps the Bush administration is predominantly Wilsonian, or perhaps
not. In any event, there will be other administrations and maybe one
or other of them will be as `Jacksonian' as the Reagan or Nixon
administrations.
That being the case, a non-US government could argue that the current
Iraqi government is indeed very bad: it has used chemical warfare
against its own people as well as against foreigners, it has developed
and weaponized plagues, and it has spent fortunes to develop nuclear
weapons. Moreover, although pressed to disarm, unlike South Africa,
it has not cooperated with the disarmament inspectors.
However, the non-US government could go on to say, the most that Iraq
can do with chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons is gain political
leverage over its neighbors, and through its control of oil, temporary
political leverage over France, Germany, and other West European
countries that depend more heavily on Middle Eastern oil than the US
-- but since oil is fungible, that leverage could not last very long
since the West European countries would simply purchase more oil from
Venezula, Russia, and Nigeria.
Of course, an overall world shortage of oil would mean a recession in
places like Western Europe, Japan, and the US, but a spokesperson for
a Western European government could say that his or her nation could
deal with a recession because they are more likely to favor government
spending than a traditional US Republican administration.
In particular, to maintain their own independence over the long term,
the West European countries would simply have to increase their
conservation efforts, and increase their (in large part government)
spending on alternative sources of energy: wind, wave, solar, and
nuclear (mostly hydrogen fusion).
The reason for such a policy would be the expectation that some
administrations in the US would follow `Jacksonian' rather than or in
addition to `Wilsonian' policies -- that, as a practical matter, some
US leaders would be no more altruistic than their European
counterparts.
And, since the US has more power than Iraq, economically, militarily,
and culturally, from the point of view of a non-US government, the US
presents a more pressing danger, even if, at the moment, it is much
nicer than Iraq. Hence, it makes sense to oppose the US, even in a
morally justified endeaver, such as overthrowing the government of
Iraq.
The US could counter-argue that technological advances over the past
century have not only enabled countries such as the US to increase
their lethal power, but have enabled the weak to increase their lethal
power -- and that therefore we are in the situation described by
Heinlein in his famous 1942 science fiction story, `Solution
Unsatisfactory'.
In `Solution Unsatisfactory', Heinlein describes the dangers of
`radiological' or `dirty' bombs. He concludes that the only way to
ensure people's security is through world-wide policing and the
creation of a world-wide government. Heinlein is not happy with this
conclusion, since it means giving up US liberties; hence the title.
But following Heinlein's lead, a US government could further argue
that the only way for non-US governments to avoid the dangers to them
of a US government acting as a self-appointed sheriff in a
`Jacksonian' manner is for the non-US governments to join with the US
in decision making.
This has two implications:
First, that the concerned governments must either adapt an existing
international organization or create a new one to `employ the
sheriff'.
Second, that the concerned governments decide that the losses to
them attendant on taking part in this international government are
smaller than the gains. Otherwise, one or other of the concerned
governments will not take part. This means that governments must
possess some sort of institutionalized "states' rights" or veto
power.
Since a more powerful national government has less to lose from
the failure of an international government than a weaker national
government, it will have more power to define the framework of
discussion and define its and others' national rights (`veto
powers').
I have been told that the French government in the late 1940s and
early 1950s decided to `embrace' Germany to create what is now the
European Union because it figured that France was only momentarily
more powerful than Germany. The French government figured that
Germany would eventually regain its power, and that rather than being
again defeated by Germany, it would be better for France to become a
part of a new government that included Germany.
Interestingly, current French actions at the UN appear to go against
this. Rather than follow a Wilsonian `League of Nations' or a Monet
`Union of Europeans' policy, the French are following the equivalent
of a US `Jacksonian' policy.
The question here is whether this French policy is even worse than the
`Solution Unsatisfactory' that Heinlein envisioned?
--
Robert J. Chassell Rattlesnake Enterprises
http://www.rattlesnake.com GnuPG Key ID: 004B4AC8
http://www.teak.cc [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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