| -Caveat Lector-
Probably it is Micronesia that is responsible for driving the United States into a state of isolation from the rest of the world -- that's the ticket. The Micronesian lobby is reputed to be quite influential in the Bush administration and the Congress, although voicing such thoughts is usually met with morally outraged complaints about anti-Micronesianism.
washingtonpost.com
Another American Casualty: Credibility By Zbigniew Brzezinski Forty years ago, an important emissary was sent to France by a beleaguered
president of the United States . It was during the Cuban missile crisis
and the emissary was a tough-minded former secretary of state, Dean Acheson. His
mission was to brief French President Charles de Gaulle and solicit his support
in what could become a nuclear war involving not just the United States and the
Soviet Union but the entire NATO alliance and the Warsaw Pact. At the end of the briefing, Acheson said to de Gaulle, "I would now like to
show you the evidence, the photographs that we have of Soviet missiles armed
with nuclear weapons." The French president responded, "I do not wish to see the
photographs. The word of the president of the United States is good enough for
me. Please tell him that France stands with America." Would any foreign leader today react the same way to an American emissary
sent abroad to say that country X is armed with weapons of mass destruction that
threaten the United States? It is unlikely. The recent conduct of U.S. foreign
policy, by distorting the threats facing America, has isolated the United States
and undermined its credibility. It has damaged our ability to deal with issues
in North Korea, Iran, Russia and the West Bank. If a case ever needs to be made
for action against a truly imminent threat, will any nation take us seriously?
Fifty-three years ago, after the Soviet-sponsored assault by North Korea on
South Korea, the Soviet Union boycotted a resolution in the U.N. Security
Council for a collective response to North Korea's act. That left the Soviet
Union alone in opposition, stamping it as a global pariah. Today it is the United States that finds itself alone. In the last three
weeks, there were two votes on the Middle East in the U.N. General Assembly. In
one, the vote was 133 to 4, and in the other, it was 144 to 4 -- the United
States, Israel, the Marshall Islands and Micronesia. Japan and all of our NATO
allies, including Great Britain and the so-called "new" Europe, voted with the
majority. The loss of U.S. international credibility and the growing U.S. isolation are
aspects of a troubling paradox: American power worldwide is at its historic
zenith, but American global political standing is at its nadir. Maybe we are
resented because we are rich, and we are, or because we are powerful, and we
certainly are. But I think anyone who thinks that this is the full explanation
is taking the easy way out and engaging in a self-serving justification. Since the tragedy of 9/11, our government has embraced a paranoiac view of
the world summarized in a phrase President Bush used on Sept. 20, 2001: "Either
you are with us or you are with the terrorists." I suspect that officials who
have adopted the "with us or against us" formulation don't know its historical
origins. It was used by Lenin to attack the social democrats as anti-Bolshevik
and to justify handling them accordingly. This phrase is part of our
policymakers' defining focus, summed up by the words "war on terrorism." War on
terrorism reflects, in my view, a rather narrow and extremist vision of foreign
policy for a superpower and for a great democracy with genuinely idealistic
traditions. Our country suffers from another troubling condition, a fear that
periodically verges on blind panic. As a result, we lack a clear perception of
critical security issues such as the availability to our enemies of weapons of
mass destruction. In recent months, we have experienced perhaps the most
significant intelligence failure in American history. That failure was fueled by
a demagogy that emphasizes worst-case scenarios, stimulates fear and induces a
dichotomous view of world reality. It is important to ask ourselves, as citizens, whether a world power can
provide global leadership on the basis of fear and anxiety. Can we really
mobilize support, even of friends, when we tell them that if you are not with us
you are against us? That calls for serious debate about America's role in the world, which is not
served by an abstract, quasi-theological definition of the war on terrorism.
That definition oversimplifies a complex set of challenges that needs to be
addressed. It talks about a phenomenon, terrorism, as the enemy while
overlooking the fact that terrorism is a technique for killing people. It
doesn't tell us who the enemy is. It's as if we said that World War II was not
fought against the Nazis but against blitzkrieg. We need to ask who is the enemy. They are not, to quote the president again,
people who "hate things," whereas "we love things." Or people who simply hate
freedom. I think they do hate, but I don't think they sit there abstractly
hating freedom. They hate some of us. They hate some countries. They hate some
particular targets. But it's a lot more concrete than these vague
quasi-theological formulations. In the debate over the current direction of U.S. foreign policy, Democrats
should not be naysayers only. But they certainly should not be cheerleaders as
some were roughly a year ago. Democrats should insist that a pluralistic
democracy such as ours rely on bipartisanship in formulating a foreign policy
based on moderation and the nuances of the human condition. Bipartisanship in the making of foreign policy has been the tradition from
the days of President Harry Truman and Sen. Arthur Vandenberg until recent
times. And it has led us not only to a triumph in the Cold War but to our
emergence as the only global superpower with special responsibilities. We should cooperate not only with each other at home, but with our allies
abroad. While America is paramount, it isn't omnipotent. We need Europe, which
shares our values and interests, even if it disagrees with us on specific
policies. But we cannot have a relationship if we only dictate to or threaten
those who disagree. Sometimes we may be right. Sometimes they may be right. But
there is something transcendental about shared values that shouldn't be
subordinated to tactical requirements. We should strive to expand the zone of peace and prosperity to build a stable
international system in which our leadership can be fruitfully exercised. That
means supporting a larger European Union. It means drawing Russia closer while
remaining unambiguous about the behavior that disqualifies Russia -- pursuing a
policy of genocide against the Chechens, killing journalists and repressing the
mass media -- from genuine membership in the community of democratic,
law-abiding states. We must also transform the world's zone of conflict into a zone of peace.
That means, above all else, the Middle East. We must more clearly identify the
United States with the pursuit of peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
Palestinian terrorism has to be rejected and condemned, yes. But it should not
be translated into support for Israel's increasingly brutal repression, colonial
settlements and a new wall. Instead, America should help the majority of
Israelis and Palestinians, who are ready to accept a viable peace. In Iraq we must succeed. Failure is not an option. But we have to ask
ourselves what is the definition of success. More killing, more repression, more
effective counterinsurgency? The introduction of new technologies to crush the
resistance? Or is success an effort to promote, by using force, a political
solution? If there's going to be a political solution in Iraq, two prerequisites have
to be fulfilled as rapidly as feasible: the internationalization of the foreign
presence in Iraq and the transfer of power as soon as possible to a sovereign
Iraqi authority. Regarding the first, too much time has been lost already. As
for the second, there's nothing to be lost by prematurely declaring an Iraqi
authority as sovereign if that lends it political legitimacy in a country which
is searching to define itself, which has been humiliated, and which remains
ambivalent toward us. What is the future for the doctrine of preemption against nations or groups
with the potential to acquire weapons of mass destruction? It is important not
to plunge headlong into the tempting notion that we will preempt unilaterally on
suspicion, which is what the doctrine now amounts to. We simply do not know
enough to be able to preempt with confidence. For four years I was the principal channel of intelligence to the president
of the United States. We had a good idea of the security challenge we faced.
Today the problem is more elusive. We're not dealing with nuclear silos and
military structures geared for an assault on American security. We could
decipher and seek to paralyze those in the event of war. We were well-informed
to a degree that cannot be matched in dealing with the new threats to our
security. These new challenges can only be addressed if we have what we do not have --
a really effective intelligence service. I find it appalling that when we went
into Iraq we did not know if it had weapons of mass destruction. We thought it
had such weapons based largely on extrapolation. That means that our commanders in the field went into battle without
knowledge of the Iraqi WMD order of battle. They did not know what units,
brigades or divisions in the Iraqi armed forces were equipped with what kind of
weapons of mass destruction. Were there chemical weapons on the battalion level,
on the brigade level or with special units? Who had bacteriological weapons? At
what stage of development was the allegedly reconstituted nuclear program? All of this points to a fundamental shortcoming in our national security
policy. If we want to lead, we have to have other countries trust us. When we
speak, they have to think it is the truth. This is why de Gaulle said what he
did. This is why others believed us prior to the war in Iraq. They no longer do. To correct that, we need an intelligence service that
speaks with authority. If preemption becomes necessary, it should be able to
truly tell us that, as a last resort, preemption is necessary. Right now there's
no way of knowing. Ultimately at issue is the relationship between the new requirements of
security and the traditions of American idealism. For decades, we have played a
unique role in the world because we were viewed as a society that was generally
committed to certain ideals, prepared to practice them at home and ready to
defend them abroad. Today, for the first time, our commitment to idealism
worldwide is challenged by a sense of vulnerability. We have to be careful not
to become self-centered and subordinate everything else in the world to an
exaggerated sense of insecurity. We are going to live in an insecure world. It cannot be avoided. We have to
learn to live in it with dignity, with idealism, with steadfastness. Zbigniew Brzezinski was President Jimmy Carter's national security
adviser. He is author of the forthcoming book, "The Choice" (Basic Books). This
article is adapted from an Oct. 28 speech.
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