>From NewsMax.com Advertise Your Banner Here Jealous Nations Plot Against U.S. Success UPI Tuesday, July 4, 2000 WASHINGTON � While Americans rejoice in their prosperity and global pre- eminence on Independence Day, a new strategic study issued by one of Washington's most respected foreign-policy analysts warned that "the rest of the world is not joining in the celebration." Since the collapse of communism a decade ago, "most of the world's other major powers have made it a central theme of their foreign policy to build counterweights to American power. This is, in fact, one of the main trends in international politics today," wrote Peter Rodman, director of national security studies at the Nixon Center, in his new strategic study, "Uneasy Giant: The Challenges to American Global Predominance." The 58-page report was released last week. Even America's major European allies "see it as one of the main purposes of the growing European Union to be a counterweight to the United States and to reduce Europe's dependence on us," Rodman wrote. Rodman, director of policy planning at the State Department in the Reagan administration, warned that America's global pre-eminence and the stability of the international system based on U.S. leadership could still "last for a long time." But he warned that both of them "are more vulnerable than we seem to realize." "In the military dimension, there are potential adversaries pursuing 'asymmetric strategies,' attempting to zero in on our weaknesses," he wrote. Such nations as Iran, Iraq, Libya and North Korea, he continued, are seeking to acquire "either advanced conventional weapons or weapons of mass destruction to raise the risk of American casualties and thereby to deter us from intervening against regional challenges." America's overwhelming "physical preponderance ... could be badly undermined by a policy fiasco (such as a failed military intervention)," Rodman wrote. America's "dominance of the air, our dependence on the sea lanes and on forward bases, our increasing reliance on space and cyberspace � all are subject to challenge by adversaries fielding advanced but all too widely accessible new technologies," he wrote. Long-term historical trends militate against the United States' maintaining its "unipolar moment" of global leadership, Rodman wrote. "History has not been kind to dominant powers," he wrote. "In the last 500 years, a number of powerful nations that enjoyed or aspired to imperium have exhausted themselves by overextension, or provoked a coalition of other powers against them, or otherwise lost their position of advantage." China and the 15-nation European Union are emerging as the United States' main "potential peer competitors," Rodman wrote. He noted that "Chinese strategists, as it happens, have shown an eager, if not morbid, fascination with the subject of American decline. It has become a sub- genre of Chinese strategic analysis. "The sheer size of China � harnessed to its economic dynamism and nationalistic energy � suggests this is not so fanciful," Rodman wrote. "Not since early in the last century have we Americans even had to conceive of another country with an economy the same size as ours." However, "even the Chinese do not seriously see U.S. decline as imminent. Especially in the light of our recent economic performance, they give us a good 50-year run or so, before history catches up with us," he continued. Rodman observed that "the European Union is already an $8 trillion economy, on a par with the United States with new aspiration to develop a common foreign and security policy and the institutions to go with it." Even more than China, "Europe should probably be viewed as the candidate with the greatest potential to be a global peer competitor (China having a more regional impact)," Rodman argued. But "it is very far from this at the moment," he concluded. Even small regional powers over the past decade have successfully defied the United States, Rodman noted. "In recent years, both Iraq and North Korea have outmaneuvered us � Iraq by shutting down the effective and vitally important U.N. inspection system and North Korea by blackmailing us into an agreement that gives us no direct restraint on its clandestine nuclear weapons program (or its missile program). These are bad omens," he wrote. Russia, too, is opposed to U.S. global unipolar dominance, Rodman argued. "The direction of (Russian) foreign policy seems already clear: It is a classic Russian nationalism, stressing a recovery of Russian pre-eminence in its immediate sphere and a 'multipolar' international environment that reduces American dominance. That is how Russia now defines its national interest," he wrote. "In a multitude of areas � selling arms to China and Iran; cultivating former clients in Iraq; attempting to constrain U.S. missile defenses; objecting to NATO's enlargement and to NATO policies in the Balkans � Russia perceives its national interest in terms that conflict, often sharply, with U.S. policies." Rodman advised American leaders to ease global resentments over their nation's pre-eminence by following the advice of President Theodore Roosevelt "that we 'speak softly' while wielding our power." "Arrogance does not suit the kind of leadership that we Americans have thought of ourselves as providing," he wrote. "A big part of the problem is not avoidable," Rodman admitted, but the natural response of other nations to America's "disproportionate strength." Rodman advocated that U.S. leaders follow the example of Otto von Bismarck, the first chancellor of a united Germany from 1871 to 1890, who maintain his nation's European continental pre-eminence without further conflict over that period. "Bismarck's response was to engage all the other powers in a complex network of political-military alliances � often mutually contradictory but serving the purpose of keeping European alignments continuously confused and avoiding what he called the 'nightmare of coalitions,' " Rodman wrote. Rodman, citing the German analyst Josef Joffe, said this strategy was necessary because "The United States is more like Germany than like Britain, doomed to permanent engagement with all the other powers and therefore obliged to have a strategy for managing those relations." "Bismarck's entangling alliances are the order of the day. And we are the pivot of most of them," he continued. "There are no easy formulas for a superpower that yearns to be loved as well as respected," Rodman wrote in conclusion. But, he warned, "If others are conscious of our immense power, we are obliged to be conscious of our vulnerabilities." (C) 2000 UPI. All Rights Reserved. Return A<>E<>R Integrity has no need of rules. -Albert Camus (1913-1960) + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The libertarian therefore considers one of his prime educational tasks is to spread the demystification and desanctification of the State among its hapless subjects. 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