When former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright described the United States as the "indispensable nation," some thought she was presumptuous. But the deterioration of the international system under the power-hungry, arrogant and incompetent Bush administration has proved Albright was right.
The international order is breaking apart before our eyes, largely because the world's leading nation has been badly led.
The deterioration of the geopolitical system has become even more visible with the new outbreak in the long-simmering Arab-Israeli conflict.
Meanwhile, the international community is quickly getting nowhere with persuading Iran to abandon its apparent quest to develop nuclear weapons. The efforts of the big powers to bring North Korea into line have been equally futile. And with that regime even more defiant and belligerent than usual, Japan -almost pacifist since World War II-- has lately threatened a preventive strike against North Korean missile sites. In Iraq, the bloodbath continues, the supposed American liberation of that country having produced instead a low-level civil war. And the souring of relations between the United States and Russia has led to talk of "a new Cold War."
The world is now far more dangerous -more chaotic, more rife with conflict-than it was five and a half years ago when the Bush administration began to remake the American role in the world. This increasing disorder is directly traceable to the choices the Bushites have made in wielding American power.
The Wages of Sin
The Bush administration came to power determined to extend American dominance and to reject all limitations on their freedom of action on the world stage. Even before 9/11, it had acted provocatively with China, it had thrown off the restraints of various multilateral agreements and treaties, and it had demonstrated a tendency to dictate to, rather than consult with, our traditional allies.
The worldwide wave of sympathy in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 was quickly squandered as the Bushites moved -with abrasive arrogance-toward a war of choice in Iraq. America was seen less as a trusted world leader and more as a global bully, an imperialist power, a threat to world peace.
The world saw America acting like a 500-pound gorilla that does whatever it wants. It saw the Bush regime's contemptuous indifference to international law and its indecent disrespect for the opinion of mankind. And it saw the administration's deceptions about Iraqi WMDs-deceptions that appeared to be a cover for a hidden imperialist agenda.
Other great powers -like China and Russia-began to align against the United States. (The Russians and the Chinese have formed, for example, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a regional security grouping which excludes the U.S.) Even the Europeans ceased to look to the United States for leadership, and have even looked for ways to counter American power.
Opinion polls even among the populations of America's traditional allies showed a sharp increase in distrust of and hostility toward the United States. And with American troops occupying Iraq, the Islamic world became more intensely anti-American, and the rift between Islam and the West deepened still further.
Bush's haughtiness toward adversaries has compounded his difficulties. The Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal lost no time in provoking North Korea by indicating its lack of interest in talking with a regime they hoped would soon disappear. This fundamental miscalculation made a bad situation much worse.
Similarly in the Middle East, the Bushites spurned overtures from Iran, imagining that they would be able to force regime change on that country. There, too, their arrogant overconfidence has undermined the American position, contributing to the fecklessness of American efforts to block the emergence of a nuclear-armed Iran. And now, with the Middle East aflame, the United States finds itself ill-positioned to talk with some of the major actors whose help might be needed to defuse this dangerous situation.
To all this damage, add the high cost to American power of the Bush administration's bungling of its venture in Iraq. A whole sequence of major blunders and miscalculations by this regime in Iraq since the invasion -as described by Larry Diamond, of the conservative Hoover Institution, in his book, Squandered Victory-created a mess that's been a tremendous drain on American military resources and treasure, further weakening the American capacity to deal with other threats and crises.
Most of those blunders in Iraq grew out of the Bush administration's unwarranted certainty that it already knew all it needed to know. With their arrogant sense of their mastery of the world they were operating in, the Bushites turned a deaf ear to the good counsel from many -in and out of the American government-who understood better than they what it would take to win the peace in Iraq.
The resulting disaster has greatly undermined the American position in the "war on terror." The Bush administration declared that the greatest danger was that some rogue regime with weapons of mass destruction would hand over such weapons to terrorists. And in conjunction with that fear Bush identified an "Axis of Evil": Iraq, Iran, and North Korea.
Andrew Bard Schmookler's website www.nonesoblind.org is devoted to understanding the roots of America's present moral crisis and the means by which the urgent challenge of this dangerous moment can be met. Dr. Schmookler is also the author of such books as The Parable of the Tribes: The Problem of Power in Social Evolution (SUNY Press) and Debating the Good Society: A Quest to Bridge America's Moral Divide (M.I.T. Press). He also conducts regular talk-radio conversations in both red and blue states.
Mr. Schmookler hit the truth right on the head about today's world situation. I wish every Democrat running for office this fall could see this article and use it in their campaigns. I am E-mailing it to the Democratic challenger in my congressional district.
by
Dan Merica (21 articles, 72 quicklinks, 5 diaries, 47 comments)
on Monday, July 17, 2006 at 3:21:57 PM
While your comments are correct, it seems to me that vacuums cannot exist. Where the U.S. and other Western powers fail to insert their influence, the radicals of the countries closest to the vacuum will insert their own. This can only lead to further conflict with the West.
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Kip Kohlman (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 1 comments)
on Tuesday, July 18, 2006 at 1:07:29 PM
The "nature abhors a vacuum" idea seems one way of restating a part of the overall picture I sought to delineate.
Yes, to the extent that the damage inflicted by the Bush regime constitutes a shrinkage of American power and influence, that does create a vacuum that will be filled by other actors. And history does show that the decline of a once-great power can be enormously distablizing to the world system.
But there's more here than just a vacuum. The increased distrust of the United States, the intensification of animosities toward this country, also inflame the dynamic of conflict in the world.
by
Andrew Bard Schmookler (314 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 146 comments)
on Tuesday, July 18, 2006 at 1:33:26 PM
Does the Public Pay a Price for Their Own Stupidity?
"And we Americans must ask ourselves that old question: Who are we going to believe-the Bushites' phony image or our own eyes?"
While it's a popular past-time to lay the blame for all our current ills on the Bush administration, the truth of the matter, is neither popular nor well understood. Though the Bush administration agenda is certain to eventually ruin the nation, it's the appalling ineptitude and stupidity of the current generation of Americans that's really to blame for our current predicament. The above quote says it all. When a nation becomes so stupid it no longer believes it's own eyes, it is in a world of trouble! Such a nation is easy prey for the world class deception and lies of modern propaganda and brainwashing. Can a nation become so dumb that millions of citizens can be led around like robots; told what to think, what not to think, and actually go along with policies that are destructive to their own best interests?
Mainstream America has been extremely dumb for many years, completely unable or unwilling to use common sense to look out for its own interests. It has been led down the yellow brick road by a criminal element in government, the media, and the military. The Bush administration is just the latest in a long line of corrupt administrations which mainstream America has not only helped bring to power, but foolishly allowed to plunge us down the path to national ruin. Don't expect much from the American public, it's too brainwashed to believe their own eyes over the doublespeak and lies of the Bush gang. Even more importantly they're too stupid to even have a clue of what's to be done to correct the situation. In the final analysis, it's not necessarily Bush who's weakened America, but the millions of mainstream Americans who seem to think there's no price to be paid for behaving like good party cadres, and robots, instead of looking out for their own best interests.
by
Rasoul Acheh (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 122 comments)
on Wednesday, July 19, 2006 at 5:59:49 AM
A response to Acheh, who writes: "Though the Bush administration agenda is certain to eventually ruin the nation, it's the appalling ineptitude and stupidity of the current generation of Americans that's really to blame for our current predicament."
Acheh is certainly correct in calling attention to the role of the blindness and folly of a large segment of the American public in bringing this country to its current dangerous condition.
Indeed, I have written several times to present ways of understanding this dimension of the problem. A piece of mine that ran in the Baltimore Sun before the 2004 election, entitled "What Makes Americans Susceptible to Manipulation," can be seen at www.nonesoblind.org/blog/?page_id=21 . And another article called "Who Knows What Evil Lurks" appeared here on opednews last November at www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_andrew_b_051109_who_knows_what_evil_.htm
In assigning responsibility for something as complex as this takeover of America by these dark forces, there is no need to choose some one part of the picture as the one that's "really" to blame. Both the seducer and the seduced have responsibility for the seduction.
But besides that point, there's one more dimension to the situation that deserves to be mentioned. This takeover of America by these dark forces has culminated in this Bush regime, but it is not confined to it. These dark forces were at work before GW Bush was elected, and they will continue to try to hold power even after their current public faces leave office.
The relevance of this to the present issue is that the blindness and the folly of millions of our countrymen did not just happen. They were deliberately cultivated over a period of years.
Here's a relevant passage from that previously mentioned piece ("What Makes Americans Susceptible...") that appeared in the Baltimore Sun:
"Many Americans have more recently been still further trained away from habits of critical thinking by the powerful subculture of intellectually irresponsible right wing media. For more than a decade, "the Godzilla of talk radio" -Rush Limbaugh-has taken millions of Americans on a daily excursion that panders to their prejudices, never challenging them to reconsider their ideas, always encouraging them to blame all their problems on identifiable others.
The voice leading them on these excursions radiates the aura of certainty, despite the vast ignorance it covers over, and shows no scruples about distorting facts to reach a desired conclusion. These daily forrays into comforting falsehoods have forged in the minds of millions of Americans a path down which fine-sounding messages unmoored from reality could more readily travel."
Some terrible habits of thought and feeling have been ingrained in many of our countrymen, and here, too the responsibility lies in both the seducers and the seduced.
by
Andrew Bard Schmookler (314 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 146 comments)
on Wednesday, July 19, 2006 at 5:28:03 PM
6 comments
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