Philip Stephens The more complete America's global dominance, the more complex its interests are for George Bush to defend. Published: January 4 2001 19:50GMT | Last Updated: January 4 2001 19:57GMT The trouble with empires is that they have too many frontiers. Face down the Visigoths and Vandals and along come the Hunnic hordes. Contain the Celts and confront the Angles and the Saxons. The barbarians are forever at the gates. The American empire is different. In the 21st century, it is no longer necessary to occupy land to project power. Yet the economic and military hegemony of the US is no less real for the absence of extended geographical boundaries. And, just as the US is now uniquely powerful, so, like many of its predecessors, it feels uniquely vulnerable. As the single superpower and the engine of the economic process we call globalisation, America's interests are blind to old-fashioned frontiers. Everywhere it cares to look, the US has a stake. It might be straightforwardly geopolitical, as in Europe, the Middle East or the China seas. Sometimes what matters is the success of US businesses or, in times of financial turmoil, the solvency of Wall Street's banks. Always, however, there is an interest. We can see too another characteristic of more traditional empires. The greater its sway, the more the US frets about its security. Scarcely more than a decade ago, it lived with a finger on the nuclear button. In the shadow of the Soviet threat, extreme risk was an unavoidable fact of life. Effortless superiority has engendered a different psychology. America's unchallenged might must insulate it from the smallest dangers. The sharper its military edge, the more certain it must be that its citizens are safe and its armed forces exempt from the grim reality of warfare. It must bomb from 15,000ft, fire from miles behind the battlefield. Here is the conundrum facing George W. Bush's incoming administration. The more complete America's global dominance, the more complex, entangled and extensive its national interests. The more, in short, it has to lose. Take the tenor of a recent report from the Central Intelligence Agency on prospects for the next decade and beyond. It starts on an upbeat note: "US global economic, technological, military and diplomatic influence will be unparalleled among nations as well as regional and international organisations in 2015." Then come the buts. Adversaries, real and potential, will not acquiesce. Nor, when their interests conflict, will allies. Opponents will not confront the US head on. Instead "they will try to circumvent or minimise US strengths and exploit perceived weaknesses". Rogue states, international terrorists and criminal conspiracies will all threaten the US "homeland". The advanced technologies that have given the US its pre-eminence will soon arm its enemies. The CIA calls these "asymmetric" risks but warns that the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction makes them no less deadly for that. Its judgment (this one perhaps tailored to self-interest) is that the US will be more vulnerable to missile attack in the next 15 years than it was during the cold war. The response thus far of Mr Bush and his close advisers has been to promise clarity in foreign policy. The new administration will give sharper definition to "the national interest". It will focus on the big geostrategic relationships - particularly with Russia and China. It will avoid imperial overstretch by disavowing humanitarian interventions. It will expect Europe to deliver more of its own security. It will build a National Missile Defence and advance US military superiority in space. And it will halt the tide towards global governance by applying a strict national interest test to multilateral entanglements. As Condoleeza Rice, who will serve as Mr Bush's national security adviser, has put it: "American foreign policy in a Republican administration should refocus the US on the national interest and the pursuit of key priorities." This chimes with the doctrine of Colin Powell, the secretary of state-designate, that the US should deploy its military only when victory is more than certain and the risk of casualties minimal. General Powell personally opposed the decision to go to war against Iraq in 1991 and, more vehemently still, US intervention in the Balkans a few years later. He has promised a review of all deployments overseas. There is a seductive simplicity here. Those who worry now about an isolationist White House have often been among the critics of US imperialism. If America draws its frontiers more tightly, who are its allies to complain? Here, though, lies the snag for Mr Bush. In opposition, it is always easy to draw straight lines. In power, they soon become blurred and tangled by realities. Of course, one can produce a shortlist of the trends - Russia's response to decline, a more assertive China, deadly stalemate in the Middle East - most likely to impact directly on US security. But developments elsewhere cannot be neatly divided between those that impinge on America's national interest and those to be safely ignored. Take the Balkans. Nothing would be easier than to withdraw the 10,000 US troops in Bosnia and Kosovo. Nor, for that matter, to begin bringing the GIs home from their bases in western Europe. Let the Europeans police their own continent. But how would Washington feel if Moscow stepped back into a Balkan chaos? How far would US security be enhanced if its allies responded, sanely, to a US retreat from its bases in Europe by deciding it was prudent to be friends again with Iran, Libya, even Iraq? How, as it focuses on a few big issues, will a Bush administration persuade its enemies (and friends) to halt the proliferation of lethal technologies? How safe will America be behind its star wars shield if Russia sells its missile blueprints to the highest bidder? There are scores of issues - from Afghanistan's opium crop to the health of Argentina's banks - where narrow national interests cannot be separated from those of a wider international community. The global financial stability promoted by institutions such as the International Monetary Fund is not driven by misguided notions of international philanthropy or world government. It serves US prosperity. These interdependencies are set to become even more complex. As the CIA says: "States will continue to be the dominant players . . . but governments will have less and less control over the flows of information, technology, diseases, migrants, arms and financial transactions across their borders." In other words, we will need more, not less, international governance. Bill Clinton's conduct of foreign affairs was imperfect. But after a time he understood two important things. For those who rule an empire, domestic and foreign policy are indivisible. And the American empire has a thousand frontiers. _______________________________________________ Crashlist website: http://website.lineone.net/~resource_base
