More
Matrix Masters
Blogs
World Events
US News
Science & Health
Earth News
Free Speech
News from Africa
News from Palestine
Bill of Rights Under Attack

Matrix Masters'
SUPPORTERS

Lorenzo's
Random Musings
. . . about Chaos,
Reason, and Hope

 

Transatlantic Battle Over the New World Order
(Peter Howard, Foreign Policy In Focus, March 5, 2003)
The dispute in NATO and the UN was never really about Iraq. It's about the United States. More specifically, it's about the Bush administration's post-September 11 doctrine to use U.S. military power to achieve national security objectives. . . . The United States is now committed to use its superior military force to shape the world in America's interests. What scares France and Germany is that Bush means it. Iraq is merely a symptom of this new disposition, a war the U.S. chooses to wage on its own terms. . . . The degree of U.S. preeminence in 1945 remains unmatched. Today, the U.S. is still the world's largest economy. It has the only military with global reach and an unprecedented lead in military technology, from smart bombs to stealth fighters. But the European Union forms a nearly equal counterweight in economic affairs, and many nations have a nuclear deterrent sufficient to protect against a U.S. invasion. . . . Today, the Bush administration has shown its contempt for these elements of international order. It has rejected treaties and international law that it views as constraining U.S. freedom of action, abandoning the Kyoto protocol on greenhouse gasses and the International Criminal Court. It has withdrawn from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and shown a disdain for arms control in general. Most significantly, though, Bush advocates the use American power to capitalize on American military preeminence outside any international body. . . . [The French and Germans] fear that the Bush administration is emaciating the international order that has ensured global peace for 58 years. . . . The U.S. allies most opposed to the war in Iraq are opposed to the unilateral and unconstrained application of U.S. power. They fear that the U.S. will go into Iraq without them. . . . They see the Bush administration straying from the values that allowed the Western alliance to survive the cold war and the Kosovo war. Multilateralism on Iraq is dead. Unilateralism and bandwagoning rule the day. . . . The alternative is the worst case scenario – a unilateral invasion of Iraq by the U.S. and its coalition of the willing. This would cut out many U.S. allies from the decision making process, and at the same time overburden the U.S. with the cost of post-war occupation and reconstruction. It would delegitimize the U.S. use of force in the eyes of much of the world, and in the long run make it very difficult for the U.S. to engage in any international endeavor that requires substantial multilateral cooperation. Such an action would probably signal the beginning of the end for both the UN and NATO, long the keepers of international peace and security. . . . the Bush administration must beware of the growing international apprehension at the vast power of the United States. It is this type of resentment that could produce a significant international trend toward anti-U.S. balancing, through alliances and nuclear weapons proliferation. Iraq remains a red herring. The real drama is the shape of Bush's new world order – one with the U.S. squarely on top.

posted by LoZo 1:48 PM