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Globalization The Pew Global Attitudes Project has released results of its annual
global public-opinion polls for 2006, and results show increasingly SARS
Health
Labor negative views toward the US. For its most recent release, the project
conducted 16,710 interviews in 15 countries. The most significant
Politics reason for the slip in US popularity, in most cases, is the conflict in
Science & Iraq. Many respondents ranked this conflict – along with the current Chinese (Simplified)
Technology governments of Iran and North Korea and the Palestinian-Israeli French
Security & conflict – as a “great danger” to world peace. The US and its allies do Spanish
Terrorism agree about opposing Iran’s development of nuclear weapon, while Urdu
Society & Culture citizens of Muslim nations reported mixed opinions. The survey reveals Vietnamese
Trade intense awareness about avian flu, while concern about global warming
is mixed – ranging from 19 and 20 percent reporting great concern in
the US and China, respectively, to 66 percent in Japan and 65 percent
in India. The US war on terror draws majority support from two
Forums
Global countries – Russia and India. Finally, the survey reveals a global
malaise regarding citizen satisfaction with conditions in their respective Newsletter
Africa
nations. Only in China did the survey show a majority of citizens
Americas reporting increased satisfaction, 81 percent, up from 72 percent in
Asia-Pacific 2005. – YaleGlobal
Central Asia Globalization: When Cure Is Worse Than
Europe Malady
Richard Hornik
Middle East 27 June 2006
South Asia
China’s Portuguese Connection
Loro Horta,Ian Storey
America's Image Slips, But Allies Share US Concerns Over Iran, Hamas 22 June 2006
What is
Globalization? No global warming alarm in the US, China Why Dollar Hegemony Is Unhealthy
History of Thomas I. Palley
Globalization 20 June 2006
Academic Papers Pew Research Center , 15 June 2006
Book Reviews Outsourcing of Indian Education
Book Excerpts Pratap Bhanu Mehta
Related Web Sites 15 June 2006
America's global image has
again slipped and support for the war on terrorism has declined even
How Good Is American Intelligence on
among close U.S. allies like Japan. The war in Iraq is a continuing drag
Iran’s Bomb?
on opinions of the United States, not only in predominantly Muslim
Mission Statement Graham Allison
countries but in Europe and Asia as well. And despite growing concern
Contributing 13 June 2006
over Iran's nuclear ambitions, the U.S. presence in Iraq is cited at least
Publications as often as Iran - and in many countries much more often - as a
Privacy Policy danger to world peace. more articles...
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A year ago, anti-Americanism had shown some signs of abating, in part
because of the positive feelings generated by U.S. aid for tsunami
victims in Indonesia and elsewhere. But favorable opinions of the Flash Presentations
United States have fallen in most of the 15 countries surveyed. Only Video Clips
about a quarter of the Spanish public (23%) expresses positive views of Slide Show Presentations
the U.S., down from 41% last year; America's image also has declined
significantly in India (from 71% to 56%) and Indonesia (from 38% to
30%).
Yet the survey shows that Americans and the publics of major U.S.
allies share common concerns, not only over the possible nuclear threat
posed by Iran but also over the recent victory by the Hamas Party in
Palestinian elections. In contrast, the predominantly Muslim populations
surveyed generally are less worried about both of these developments.
But in most other countries, support for the war on terror is either flat
or has declined. In Japan, barely a quarter of respondents (26%) now
favor the U.S.-led war on terror, down from 61% in the summer of
2002. Only about four-in-ten Indonesians (39%) back the war on
terror, compared with 50% a year ago. And in Spain, the site of a
devastating terrorist attack two years ago, four times as many people
oppose the war on terror as support it (76% vs. 19%).
The survey shows that the Iraq war continues to exact a toll on
America's overall image and on support for the struggle against
terrorism. Majorities in 10 of 14 foreign countries surveyed say that the
war in Iraq has made the world a more dangerous place. In Great
Britain, America's most important ally in Iraq, 60% say the war has
made the world more dangerous, while just half that number (30%)
feel it has made the world safer.
Reports about U.S. prison abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo have
attracted broad attention in Western Europe and Japan - more
attention, in fact, than in the United States. Roughly three-quarters of
Americans (76%) say they have heard of the prison abuses, compared
with about 90% or more in the four Western European countries and
Japan.
While there is extensive interest in bird flu, public alarm over the
spread of the disease has been mostly limited to Asia. Nearly two-thirds
of Indonesians (65%) say they are very worried that they themselves
or a family member will be exposed to the bird flu; bird flu worries also
are extensive in India (57% very worried), Nigeria (57%), and Russia
(56%). But the disease has generated far less concern in Western
Europe and the United States. Only about one-in-ten Americans (13%)
say they are very worried about the bird flu; similar levels of concern
are evident in France (13%), Germany (10%), and Great Britain (9%).
The survey finds the most publics surveyed are dissatisfied with
national conditions. But China is a notable exception - 81% of Chinese
say they are satisfied with the way things are going in their country, up
from 72% in 2005. Majorities in only two other countries - Egypt (55%)
and Jordan (53%) - express satisfaction with national conditions.
Only about three-in-ten Americans (29%) say they are satisfied with
the way things are going in the U.S., down from 39% last year and
50% in 2003. Levels of national satisfaction in France have followed a
similar downward trajectory - from 44% in 2003 to just 20% today.
Public discontent is even higher in Nigeria, which has been wracked by
internal strife. Just 7% of Nigerians have a positive view of the state of
the nation, compared with 93% who express a negative opinion.
There has been a marked change in views of the Middle East conflict in
both Germany and France. In both countries, increasing numbers
sympathize with Israel; Germans now side with Israel over the
Palestinians by about two-to-one (37%-18%).
Positive views of the American people - along with the U.S. - have
declined in Spain. Just 37% of the Spanish feel favorably toward
Americans, down from 55% last year.
Turks are increasingly turning away from the war on terror. More than
three-quarters of Turks (77%) oppose the U.S.-led war on terror, up
from 56% in 2004.
Negative views of France have increased over the past year, especially
in Muslim countries. In Turkey, 61% feel unfavorably toward France, up
from 51% last year.
Since its inception in 2001, the project has released 13 major reports,
as well as numerous commentaries and other releases, on topics
including attitudes towards the U.S. and American foreign policy,
globalization, democratization, and terrorism.
Source:
Pew Research Center
Rights:
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No further details of the meeting were Will talks help end Iran crisis?
Arabic released.
Persian IN DEPTH
Mr Larijani said his country was serious Mr Solana put the proposal to Inside Iran - special report
Pashto
about continuing negotiations. Iran in June
Turkish
French Formal talks had been due this week but Iran postponed the meeting, citing RELATED INTERNET
More security concerns. LINKS
IAEA
They will now be held on Tuesday in the presence of diplomats from the UK, Iranian presidency
US, France, Germany, Russia and China, the six countries which agreed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation
package of measures aimed at persuading Teheran to suspend nuclear
Treaty
enrichment.
The BBC is not responsible for
'Playing for time' the content of external internet
sites
In Washington, a State Department spokesman told reporters on Thursday: "It's
high time that [Iran] provide an answer." TOP MIDDLE EAST
STORIES
Sean McCormack said foreign ministers of the six powers would meet next
Hezbollah leader vows 'open
Wednesday to discuss negative steps against Iran if it had not given a clear
answer, Reuters reported.
war'
Palestinians breach Gaza
Correspondents say Iran's announcement that it wanted to postpone the EU border
talks appeared to be linked to a visit to the European parliament by the leader Attack on Iraqi troops kills 12
of a controversial exiled Iranian opposition group. | News feeds
The BBC's Pam O'Toole says the postponement has stoked suspicions in some
Western countries that Iran, under threat of UN Security Council action if it
rejects the package, is playing for time. MOST POPULAR
STORIES NOW
Thursday's dinner was the first face to face meeting between Mr Larijani and
Mr Solana since early June, when Mr Solana presented Iran with the package MOST E-MAILED
of proposals.
MOST READ
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Many within the parties of the 'left' (Labour, Liberal Democrats and the UNIT 1
Greens) see the UN as the most appropriate lever to regulate industry, protect People and Politics
the environment and promote human rights.
UNIT 2
For example, the Kyoto Treaty on climate change was negotiated under the Governing the UK
auspices of the UN.
UNIT 3
Nato The Changing UK System
UNIT 4
The UK was a founder member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation
(Nato), which was created at the start of the Cold War. UK Political Issues
UNIT 5
Nato is important in shaping UK defence policy as Article 5 states that an
5b) Other Ideological
attack on one member is an attack on all.
Traditions
However, to get a complete picture of the UK's foreign and defence policy, it is 5c) Governing the USA
also crucial to examine the commitments it has entered into as part of the 5d) Issues in International
European Union's (EU) Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). Politics
It is the future of the CFSP that causes most controversy in the UK, especially UNIT 6
as it is tied up with the debate about the future role of Nato. 6b) Ideological Development
in the UK
It is argued that Nato is now redundant since the collapse of its principal raison
6c) Comparative UK and US
d'être, the Soviet Union, and that, for example, a European force may be more
appropriate. Politics
6d) International Politics and
The UK however is keen for the defence link with the USA to remain and the UK
therefore only supports the development of an EU defence capability that does
not damage Nato.
The WTO
The WTO situation is complicated by the fact that on many trade issues the EU
has sole competence to negotiate for the fifteen member states.
Finally, it is also a member of the World Bank and the International Monetary
Fund (IMF), both of which are specialized agencies of the United Nations
Organization.
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have a civilian nuclear power industry to help take the pressure off the global OPINIONS
Urdu demand for energy." Have your say on Bush tour
Hindi What students think of Bush
He also: visit
Bengali
Pashto said trade between the two countries was growing BACKGROUND
Nepali Pakistan press ponders Bush
promised to share information on terrorism and co-operate militarily
Tamil visit
Sinhala encouraged India and Pakistan to resolve the Kashmir dispute Tour diary - 'sleeping uneasily'
More Transcript: US-India
joined India in criticising the human rights situation in Burma agreement
Mr Bush pledged that his visit to Pakistan later in the week would go ahead, Islamabad - weddings off
despite a bomb blast that killed a US diplomat and at least three others near the Guide to mysterious India
US consulate in Karachi on Thursday. Nuclear deal gets mixed press
IN PICTURES
And he said "the US is looking forward NUCLEAR POWER IN
to eating Indian mangoes", under an President tries cricket
INDIA
agreement to expand trade in farm Bush in Islamabad
India has 14 reactors in
products. Bush in Delhi
commercial operation and nine
Anti-Bush rallies
Mr Singh said India had finalised a under construction
plan to separate its military and civilian Nuclear power supplies about BBC WORLD SERVICE
nuclear facilities, a move contingent on 3% of India's electricity BBC Hindi.com
the deal going through. By 2050, nuclear power is BBC Urdu.com
expected to provide 25% of the
"We have made history today," he
said, praising Mr Bush's personal country's electricity RELATED INTERNET
efforts to secure the accord. India has limited coal and LINKS:
uranium reserves Indian government
Under the agreement, India will Its huge thorium reserves - US state department
classify 14 of its 22 nuclear facilities as about 25% of the world's total The BBC is not responsible for
being for civilian use, and thus open to the content of external internet
- are expected to fuel its
inspection.
nuclear power programme sites
China was swift to stress that nuclear long-term
co-operation between India and the US Source: Uranium Information TOP SOUTH ASIA STORIES
"must conform with provisions of the Center Afghan suicide blasts kill eight
international non-proliferation regime".
Global nuclear powers
The director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Mohamed Indians arrive home from
ElBaradei, welcomed the deal, calling India "an important partner in the non- Lebanon
proliferation regime". 'Top Kashmir militant' arrested
France, which signed a similar deal of its own with India last month, said the | News feeds
accord would help fight climate change and non-proliferation efforts.
Many supporters of the NPT believe the deal ignores India's nuclear weapons
programme. In India, too, critics have alleged that the country's tradition of
non-alignment is being eroded as it forges closer ties with the US.
Grand welcome
During his trip, President Bush will also visit the southern city of Hyderabad,
one of India's high-technology hubs, where there have also been protests.
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Some think that the new US initiative will have been influenced by the letter, TOP MIDDLE EAST
in that Washington might think there are grounds worth exploring. Others STORIES
however conclude that the initiative grows out of an American feeling that
Hezbollah leader vows 'open
another diplomatic effort must be made before any consideration of military
action.
war'
Palestinians breach Gaza
Would sanctions be imposed if Iran refused to talk? border
Attack on Iraqi troops kills 12
The US and the EU would like to threaten sanctions through the Security
Council if Iran does not respond, but Russia and China are reluctant to go
down that path. If nothing can be agreed by all, then sanctions might be MOST POPULAR
threatened by the US and its allies. The US already imposes its own sanctions.
STORIES NOW
The Security Council earlier demanded that Iran suspend enrichment.
How did Iran respond? MOST E-MAILED
MOST READ
It refused to accept it. Nor has it followed the other demands - that it
reconsider plans for a heavy water reactor, implement and ratify a previous
Princes' 'sadness' at
agreement to allow extra inspections and generally cooperate more. Diana photo
Hezbollah leader vows
What has it done instead? 'open war'
It announced on 11 April that it had enriched uranium and is refusing to back
Nikki given boot by
Big Brother
down.
Teenager detained for
cat cruelty
That was the first time that Iran had announced that it had enriched uranium,
Sex offender flees
which is a key step in making both nuclear power and a nuclear bomb. before hearing
Therefore it is significant technically.
Iran says the enrichment is to 3.5% which is sufficient for nuclear power fuel Most popular now, in detail
and not high enough for a nuclear bomb, which requires enrichment to 80 or
90%.
Under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), a country has the right to
enrich its own fuel for civil nuclear power, under IAEA inspection.
Iran says it is simply doing what it allowed to do. It argues that it needs
nuclear power and wants to control the whole process itself. It says it will not
use the technology to make a nuclear bomb.
Western powers fear that Iran secretly wants to develop either a nuclear bomb
or the ability to make one, even if it has not decided to build one right now. So
they want Iran to stop any enrichment. The same technology used for
producing fuel for nuclear power can be used for producing fuel for a nuclear
explosion.
The West says that Iran cannot be trusted because it hid an enrichment
programme for 18 years.
Estimates from the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London vary
from between about three to five years up to about 15 years, depending on
Iran's abilities and intentions. But first it would have to take the decision to go
down that path. That would mean enriching uranium much more highly than it
says it has done so far.
The US says it wants a peaceful solution. An attack would not only risk
Iranian retaliation, it would be hard to justify legally. The US is said to have
plans but it has plans for many contingencies and it has not taken a decision.
The IAEA reported in 2003 that Iran had hidden a uranium enrichment
programme for 18 years, and the current dispute dates back to then.
Iran says its policy is "Yes" to enrichment but "No" to nuclear weapons. A
fatwa against nuclear weapons has been issued by the Supreme leader
Ayatollah Khamenei. The sceptics argue that Iran has no need to make its own
nuclear fuel as this can be provided by others, so they conclude that Iran must
be intending one day to make a bomb.
One other possibility is that Iran wants to develop the capability but has left a
decision on whether actually to build a nuclear weapon for the future.
Yes. Article X gives a member state the right to declare that "extraordinary
events" have "jeopardised the supreme interests of the State." It can then give
three months notice to quit. That would leave it free to do what it wanted.
There are fears of a broader, possibly military, crisis. The US has said publicly
that it will not permit Iran to develop nuclear weapons. President Bush has said
that he wants diplomacy to solve this, but that nothing is ruled out.
There have been press reports that Israel, which bombed an Iraqi reactor in
1981, has begun the planning for a possible raid. But like the US, Israel says
that diplomacy is the priority.
Like Iran, Brazil has a right under the NPT to enrich uranium for nuclear
power fuel. It is doing so under IAEA inspection as is required. However, the
political background is quite different because Brazil is not seen as a threat and
its peaceful intentions are believed. Nevertheless, there will be those who do
Do not existing nuclear powers have obligations to get rid of their weapons
under the NPT?
Critics also argue that the US and UK have broken the treaty by transferring
nuclear technology from one to another. The US and UK say that this is not
affected by the NPT.
Yes. Israel however is not a party to the NPT, so is not obliged to report to it.
Neither are India or Pakistan, both of which have developed nuclear weapons.
North Korea has left the treaty and has announced that it has acquired a
nuclear weapon capacity.
DON'T MISS
Diplomatic maze 10 things The worst scandal
How do G8 leaders In 1920s people Fixing shame takes
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Critics of the deal say it could boost India's nuclear arsenal and sends the
wrong message to countries like Iran, whose nuclear ambitions Washington
opposes.
Reports said Mr Singh would also raise India's concerns about rising terrorism
in South Asia in his meetings with world leaders in light of last week's train
blasts in the western city of Mumbai.
Mr Singh has said he would also raise the issue of "zero tolerance" on
terrorism.
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Menezes grief In pictures The Editors' blog
Tube death family UK protesters voice Do you blog about
return to Stockwell their opposition to BBC News? Do you
for one-year Israeli action realise we're
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For more than three years now, America ’s reputation in the world has been in free-fall. The Bush
administration’s war on terror, coupled with the war in Iraq , has angered allies and hardened the hatred of old
foes. Now, though, it seems President Bush has begun to face publicly the issues most responsible for this
collapse.
The signs were subtle at first. Then came Bush’s televised news conference with Britain’s Prime Minister Tony
Blair late last month.
“Saying ‘Bring it on—kind of tough talk, you know—that sent the wrong signal to people,” Bush said contritely
that day. “I learned some lessons about expressing my self maybe in a little more sophisticated manner—you
know, ‘wanted dead or alive,’ that kind of talk. I think in certain parts of the world it was misinterpreted, and so
I learned from that. And I think the biggest mistake that’s happened so far, at least from our country’s
involvement in Iraq, is Abu Ghraib. We’ve been paying for that for a long period of time.”
Bush’s shift in tone was also evident on Thursday, when he reacted to the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the
al Qaeda leader in Iraq, with caution rather than flippant optimism. “We can expect the terrorists and insurgents
to carry on without him,” the president said.
This is a startling turn of events. For years, the administration has treated negative impressions of U.S.foreign
policy as a public relations issue. Now, in the past month, the administration appears to have comprehended the
depth of the problem. In the words of Karen Hughes, a longtime Bush adviser who is now, in effect, assistant
secretary of state for making-nice-to-the-world, “policy must match public diplomacy.”
Russia’s Wrong Direction: What the United States Can and Should Do
Independent Task Force report on Russia says “partnership” between the two
countries is not a realistic short-term goal.
To learn more about Independent Task Forces at the Council, click here.
Council Special Report on U.S.-India nuclear deal argues that Congress should
formally endorse the deal’s basic framework, while delaying final approval until critical nonproliferation needs
are met.
Council Special Report on Homeland Security warns “the federal government is not
doing enough to harness the capabilities, assets, and goodwill of the private sector” to protect the homeland.
May/June 2006
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only weaken the United States in the great-power competition that will inevitably resume. Similarly,
Charles Kupchan, who teaches international relations at Georgetown University and who served on
Clinton's National Security Council, argues in his new book, The End of the American Era, that America
is squandering this rare "unipolar moment" by rattling its saber and appearing to go it alone in pursuit of
its international objectives. What it should be doing, says Kupchan, is just the opposite: shoring up
alliances, working through international organizations, building a global regime of agreements and laws
governing everything from trade to environmental policies. That alone will guarantee the persistence of
an orderly, open world when other powers, namely a unified Europe, come to rival American power.
Empire, schmempire. Others scoff at even the notion of imperial ambition, pointing to the role of the
American public that must support and foot the bill for any grand foreign-policy schemes. Boston College
sociologist Alan Wolfe, for example, argues that Americans ultimately will resist an American empire, "not
because we are humanitarians and internationalists but because we are stingy with our government and
lack genuine interest in the rest of the world."
So many views, so little consensus. But in fact it's always been this way in American politics. Whenever
forced to deal with the larger world, Americans unfailingly consult their most cherished political ideals for
guiding principles. Yet their readings of those ideals yield varying and sometimes conflicting conclusions.
As University of Pennsylvania historian Walter McDougall writes in his book Promised Land, Crusader
State, "confusion and discord have been the norm in American foreign relations not because we lack
principles to guide us, but because we have canonized so many diplomatic principles since 1776 that we
are pulled every which way at once."
Whether or not this is an "imperial moment," it is certainly a moment of reckoning. And at the heart of
the discussion is the Bush Doctrine. Laid out last September and elaborated in subsequent speeches
and directives, the doctrine raises fundamental foreign-policy questions: Does this strategy represent a
fundamental break with the basic principles of the American diplomatic tradition? Or is it instead a
creative application of those principles to the challenge of being the sole superpower in the world?
Answers are murky because the world today is largely compatible with America's values, but it also
contains—as the demolition of the World Trade Center showed—shadowy insurgencies and rogue states
violently opposed to Pax Americana. And in either case, are the wordsempireand imperialism accurate in
describing what America is up to?
McDougall describes two overarching visions of American foreign policy that vie for dominance today.
The first, which dominated in the 19th century, is the vision of America as Promised Land. Modest and
restrained, it embraces four broad principles: In addition to an aversion to entangling alliances, the
Monroe Doctrine, and the notion of Manifest Destiny, this vision emphasized American exceptionalism in
the world at large.
However, at the turn of the last century, there emerged an alternative—and, in McDougall's mind, less
prudent—vision: America as Crusader State. It found expression in the ideas of progressive imperialism,
liberal internationalism, containment, and assorted programs of foreign aid and development.
Foreign policy ideas rise and fall in popularity, come back to life, and commingle with others over time.
But the recurring debates over American grand strategy—including the Bush Doctrine—can all be
connected to the eight strands that McDougall identifies:
Exceptionalism. Americans have never been more unanimous than the founders were in their belief that
America had a special place in the world. Even such rivals as Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson
—who disagreed about almost everything else—could concur that America was the "City on the Hill" and
that its people were blessed with civil and religious liberty. They also shared the conviction that their
nation might one day grow into what Jefferson called an "empire for liberty." But it would not do so by
force. Even such a visionary as Thomas Paine believed America would spread its values only by
example. Perhaps the fullest elaboration of the policy implications of this conviction came in John Quincy
Adams's Fourth of July speech in 1821: "America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy.
She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion only of her own."
Unilateralism. The Founding Fathers were equally committed to unilateralism, a principled wariness
about any obligations to other nations. The phrase "no entangling alliances" came from Jefferson's
inaugural address, but the idea was first articulated in George Washington's farewell message: "It is our
true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world . . . ," Washington
declared, adding that the nation could prudently enter "temporary alliances for extraordinary
emergencies." But extraordinary really had to be extraordinary. Indeed, when James Madison took the
nation to war against Britain in 1812, he resisted the temptation to ally with France, which was then also
fighting England.
The American system. Americans were understandably wary of European encroachments in the
Americas. This concern for U.S. interests in the New Hemisphere gave rise to the principle of the
American system, originating in James Monroe's address to Congress in 1823. The Monroe Doctrine, as
it later came to be called, issued a clear and simple warning: no new colonies in the Americas.
European powers, contending with independence movements in many of their Latin American colonies,
generally heeded Monroe's warning. That was fortunate, because there is little proof that Americans
would have put up much of a fight if Europeans had encroached. John Quincy Adams applauded the
independence movement in South America but made it clear that "it is our true policy and duty to take
no part in the contest." Monroe's was, in short, a modest and flexible doctrine, though it came to be
seen as a warrant for the more aggressive notion of Manifest Destiny.
Expansionism. The 19th-century journalist John O'Sullivan coined the phrase "manifest destiny" in an
1839 article. It conveyed the belief in the divinely conferred right of the republic to expand westward and
bring more of the continent into "the great experiment of Liberty and federated self-government." But
Americans had been acting upon that conviction much earlier, starting with their insistence that Britain
cede all lands east of the Mississippi at the end of the Revolutionary War. The Northwest Ordinance of
1787 and Jefferson's 1803 Louisiana Purchase confirmed that expansionist ambition. President James
Polk saw Manifest Destiny as clear justification of the war he provoked with Mexico (1846-48). That
struggle secured favorable borders for the new state of Texas and wrested California and much of the
southwest from a defeated Mexico, but it also elicited an unprecedented wave of criticism from Ralph
Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and other writers of the day. The spread of slavery into the new
territories was certainly a great concern, but another was the conviction that imperial acquisitions
violated the spirit of the nation's republican ideals.
Progressive imperialism. Had those luminaries lived until 1898, they would have seen their worst fears
confirmed. In seizing foreign lands, McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, and other progressive imperialists
proved to be unique in American history. But in their blend of self-interested pragmatism and idealism,
these men, Zimmermann says, "set the course for American foreign policy for a century." The little-
remembered naval officer and writer Alfred Mahan gave strategic shape to the progressives' vision. He
firmly believed that island outposts in the Caribbean and the Pacific and a canal through Central
America were essential to linking the two coasts of the continental nation and to establishing and
protecting sea lanes for the emerging world power. With them, America could project its muscle abroad
and become an even more confident player in the markets of the world. But just as important to this
religious moralist, command of the seas would allow Western—and particularly Christian—civilization to
extend its influence to "ancient and different civilizations." Roosevelt expressed the soaring idealism of
his cohort with characteristically muscular prose: "Our chief usefulness to humanity rests on our
combining power with high purpose."
Liberal internationalism. President Woodrow Wilson carried idealism a step further by breaking with
George Washington's prime dictum against entangling alliances. He announced in a 1916 address that
the "United States is willing to become a partner in any feasible association of nations formed in order to
realize these objects [peace, national self-determination] and make them safe against violation . . . ." The
story of his failure to bring the United States into the League of Nations is well known: Unyielding self-
righteousness and arrogance prevented him from compromising with key Republican politicians, including
Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge, who did not want to limit U.S. sovereignty. Insisting that only Congress could
send the U.S. military into war, Lodge and others proposed modifications to the charter. Wilson's
disastrous refusal to bend would later serve as a cautionary lesson to Franklin Roosevelt. Working with
politicians from both parties, FDR saw to it that the United Nations charter included a mechanism for
limiting the will of the majority: the Security Council, any of whose permanent members could veto a war
resolution. Roosevelt succeeded where Wilson had failed by tempering idealism with realism,
unilateralism with multilateralism.
Containment. The post-World War II reality soon compelled American statesmen and politicians to think
beyond the vision of benign multilateral cooperation. Joseph Stalin made it clear in a 1946 speech that
there could be no real cooperation between capitalist and communist nations. In the same year, Winston
Churchill warned about an "iron curtain" descending across Europe, while diplomat George F. Kennan
sent in his famous "long telegram," which warned of the Kremlin's "neurotic view of world affairs" and its
determination to destroy "our traditional way of life" to secure Soviet supremacy. Kennan's later article
for Foreign Affairs, signed "X," called for "firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive
tendencies." Other warnings and Soviet actions led to the Truman Doctrine of 1947. Thanks to his
masterful salesmanship, Harry Truman managed, as Kupchan writes, "to galvanize the support of the
public behind economic aid, re-armament, and the formation of the alliance network needed to contain
communism." In 1950, Kennan's successor as head of the State Department's policy planning staff, Paul
Nitze, called for a massive buildup of U.S. military might. With the Korean War underway, Congress
responded by quadrupling the defense budget. Containment would undergo many modifications until the
collapse of the Soviet empire, as it continues to do today in American policies against rogue states and
terrorists.
Global meliorism. McDougall's ungainly phrase encompasses a range of policies, all connected with
doing good works abroad and generally making the world a better place to live. Such policies had been
occasionally implemented even before the middle of the 20th century. For instance, the Herbert Hoover-
directed War Food and American Relief administrations brought necessities to Belgium and other
European nations during and after World War I. But foreign aid and development efforts took off as
World War II ended, with Roosevelt championing the creation of the World Bank and the International
Monetary Fund to help pay for postwar reconstruction. After the war, Truman's $13 billion Marshall Plan
spurred Europe's miraculous economic recovery and created the momentum for its growing integration.
Just as important, the plan served as a model of what aid and democracy building might achieve. Critics,
including Henry Kissinger, voiced their skepticism that big government-to-government aid would lead
other nations to democracy, but assistance became an arm of the struggle against communism. The
huge but ultimately failed experiment in "nation-building" in Vietnam dealt a stinging, though not fatal,
blow to the confidence of the meliorists. In varying degrees, Washington supported improvement efforts
up to and through the end of the Cold War. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, there was a growing faith
that the spread of free markets and democracy would occur almost inevitably. The odd rogue state would
have to be restrained, as the first President Bush made clear in the Gulf War; and military muscle might
be needed to back humanitarian interventions when ethnic conflict flared, as President Clinton showed in
Bosnia and Kosovo. Otherwise, it was believed, the road to a new world order needed little
maintenance. "We clearly have it within our means . . . to lift billions and billions of people around the
world into the global middle class," Clinton declared in 1998.
But that "end of history" confidence came close to collapsing with the twin towers on September 11. The
"what did we do wrong?" crowd pointed to America's excessive and inflammatory influence in the world
—or to its failure to use it in the right way, as in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Others
charged that we had become the world's single superpower without any vision of what to do with our
might.
A handful of foreign-policy experts have no qualms about using the "E" word in the current debate.
Gaddis, for example, says: "We are now even more so an empire, definitely an empire, but we now also
have a role." That role did not become immediately clear, in his view, until after 9/11. There was some
undiplomatic stumbling when some in the administration behaved, he says, "like sullen teenagers" and
used language imprecisely, as in the "axis of evil." But things changed last September, Gaddis contends,
with Bush's U.N. speech on Iraq and the presentation of his National Security Strategy—the core
document of the Bush Doctrine— to Congress.
One thing remarkable about that security statement, as many have noted, was that its authors—the
president himself, Rice, and other contributors from inside and outside government—took it very
seriously. "It's important as a reflection of where we are," says Richard Haass, head of the policy
planning staff at the State Department. "The president read the document line by line," says University
of Virginia historian Philip Zelikow, who contributed ideas to the doctrine. "He took personal ownership of
it." That has not been the case with most such documents ever since they were mandated by Congress
in 1986. According to some insiders, many of them were bottom-up documents that bore little
resemblance to the thinking of key administration officials, let alone that of the president. They were
usually perfunctory laundry lists that were produced late and were sometimes obsolete by the time they
arrived. What concentrated the minds of the Bush team, Rice contends, "was the long-standing call for
the United States to develop a comprehensive strategy that finally spoke to the challenges of the post-
Cold War era." And precisely because Bush's security strategy was developed in response to a specific
threat, claims one of its champions, Joshua Muravchik, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise
Institute, it "could be said to bear some resemblance to America's last grand strategy, 'containment,'
which likewise developed more in practice than in abstraction."
Perhaps inevitably, the element of the doctrine that was seized upon by the media and other
commentators was the one that dealt most specifically with the threat represented by the events of 9/11:
pre-emption. Administration critics fixed on it as proof of arrogant, high-handed, even lawless
unilateralism. The nuanced development of the principle in the security strategy suggests that it is none
of those. Its contention is that international law has long recognized that "nations need not suffer an
attack before they can lawfully take action to defend themselves against forces that present an imminent
danger of attack." What must be done, says the doctrine, is to "adapt the concept of imminent threat" to
the capabilities of today's most likely adversaries: not other great powers but rogue states and terrorists,
who conceal their weapons, deliver them covertly, and target civilian noncombatants. But the doctrine
also clarifies that the United States will not always use force, that it will improve intelligence gathering to
establish proof, and that it will consult with allies. "The reason for our actions will be clear, the force
measured, and the cause just," the doctrine asserts.
More ambitious than pre-emption is the sometimes overlooked assertion that the United States will
remain powerful enough to keep potential adversaries from a military buildup that would surpass or equal
the power of the United States. Reflecting the thinking of Wolfowitz, who proposed elevating the same
principle to doctrine after the Gulf War in the first Bush administration, the idea goes beyond pre-
emption to something like prevention. Critics charge that this effectively cancels the doctrines of
containment and deterrence, though the Bush Doctrine says that it does not. And in the current flare-up
of tensions with North Korea, Secretary of State Colin Powell has indicated that the United States will
rely on containment. The notion of prevention does, however, tie in with the doctrine's assertion that the
age of great-power rivalries is over: It is a warning against any unfriendly would-be rival to America's
unipolar supremacy.
Some critics argue that the Bush Doctrine is naive in suggesting that the age of great power rivalries is
over, but on this point Rice is unyielding: "I think it is hard to make an argument that the future we face
includes the kind of great power rivalries that we saw from the 17th century to the 20th century, which
led to war and efforts to redraw the map. It's a wonderful academic debate, but I would have to say that
if you look where the threats are—the spread of weapons of mass destruction, irresponsible states, the
threat of extremism—the great powers have a great deal of common interest in confronting those
trends."
But does the assertion of American pre-eminence represent the abandonment of multilateralism? Again,
the doctrine would suggest not. It is replete with affirmations of the importance of the United Nations, the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and other alliances. But this multilateralism is definitely of the FDR
variety and not of the Woodrow Wilson strain: It embraces cooperation without the loss of sovereignty. It
will not sign on to all international agreements or wait for international bodies to take action on urgent
matters, such as the threat of Iraq. Indeed, says a senior administration official, "Iraq is now an example
of what happens when the United States puts something on the agenda and then brings the rest of the
world to that position by, in this case, reinvigorating the most important multilateral institution, which is
the [U.N.] Security Council."
In addition to identifying the key threats of our time, the strategic means of responding to them, and the
importance of great-power cooperation, the Bush Doctrine contains another central element that until
recently received little attention: a commitment to extending peace by "encouraging free and open
societies on every continent." The Bush team knew that this salient point would be overshadowed by
debates over preemption and charges of naked unilateralism. Some members even resisted bringing up
the preemption principle for that reason. But in recent weeks, with Haass speaking in public forums on
democracy promotion in the Islamic world and Powell talking about development projects in the Middle
East, this aspect of the doctrine is beginning to receive more attention. And, of course, more criticism as
well. Some say that it smacks of the "goo-goo idealism" of Wilson; others, that it chauvinistically asserts
the universality of liberal values. Indeed, in an age given over to value relativism, the latter may be the
most radical aspect of the doctrine. As Haass affirmed in his recent address to the Council on Foreign
Relations, the administration does not view the unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness as "just lifestyles America thinks it ought to export." Nor is this simply posturing. Haass
concedes that the United States had for too long turned a blind eye on Middle Eastern regimes that have
suppressed those rights. While that might have been justifiable as geopolitical jockeying during the Cold
War, he says, it no longer is.
Finally, though, is imperialist the right word for describing the objectives set out in the Bush Doctrine? Is
empire the right word for America? Even though a historian like Gaddis finds it apt, others are deeply
troubled by the usage, including Bush himself. "We have no territorial ambitions," he said in a speech
last Veterans Day. "We don't seek an empire."
Many scholars object to the word for sound historical reasons. "In an empire, you control other nations,
you write their laws, and so on," says Zelikow. "Even in the case of an informal empire, such as Britain
over Afghanistan, you have something completely different from what the United States is doing."
Zelikow explains that a special vocabulary of empire be- gan to develop around the time of the Boer War
at the turn of the last century. It was adapted by the defeated nations of World War I to describe the
victors. Marxists of the Russian and Chinese persuasion perfected the word's vagueness in order to
paint all capitalist powers as imperialists. "Over the last generation," Zelikow says, "people have come to
describe any nation with influence over another as an em-pire. It doesn't tell you anything, but it brings a
lot of bag- gage with it."
A country that produces nearly a third of the world's gross domestic product and whose military spending
tops that of the next 20 countries combined is capable, obviously, of exerting wide influence through
both soft power (including everything from MTV to McDonald's) and hard military muscle. But so far, the
United States has seldom—with the exception of 1898—demonstrated that it wants to directly dominate
the internal affairs of other nations. This does not mean that America has not engaged in some heavy-
handed meddling with other nations' governments: Throughout the Cold War, for instance, Washington
helped bring about "regime change" in Iran, South Vietnam, Chile, and other nations as part of its larger
strategy to contain and roll back the communist tide. In the years between the fall of the Soviet empire
and September 11, a period that columnist Krauthammer first dubbed the "unipolar moment," Americans
demonstrated that they had little idea of what to do with their massive power, apart from marveling at it
while the "new economy" soared skyward. At most, under Clinton and Bush before him, the United
States acted like the benign but barely attentive custodian of globalism. Now, however, it knows that
peace, prosperity, and the spread of human rights are not automatically guaranteed. Their survival will
require the expenditure of American will and might. But Americans will have to decide in the long run
whether they want to extend the unipolar moment into what Krauthammer recently proposed as the
"unipolar era."
Overly ambitious? Rice throws the question right back: "Was it overly ambitious of the United States to
believe that democracy could be fostered in Japan and that peace could finally be brought between
Germany and France? It succeeded because it proceeded from values that Americans understood.
Truman and his team understood that America could not afford to leave a vacuum in the world." The
question, of course, is can it now?
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War Bedevils American Image
Anti-American
sentiment at a rally in
Syria. (Photo: AP)
It has been one year since Karen Hughes was named to run the U.S. public diplomacy apparatus and only nine
months that she has actually been on the job. So, it's not fair to hold up the latest Pew Global Attitudes survey as
any sort of report card. Still, the poll's findings of a continuing decline in views about the United States must be
discouraging after the high-profile steps Hughes and other officials have taken to explain and promote U.S.
policies.
Hughes recently told a CFR meeting that the Bush administration is increasingly adapting policy to serve public
diplomacy considerations. She told RFE/RL journalists this month the role of U.S. public diplomacy is to go
beyond asserting U.S. positions to engaging in a "conversation with the world." CFR's Michael Moran notes
President Bush's recent shift in tone has been an acknowledgment of the need to adjust the administration's
posture (Star-Ledger). But U.S. efforts continue to be bedeviled by bad luck, missteps, and the Iraq war. The
administration enjoyed a rare double dose of good news from Iraq last week with the killing of an insurgent
leader and the completion of Iraq's government. But soon after came reports of three suicides at the Guantanamo
Bay detention facility. A senior U.S. public diplomacy official called it a "PR move" (BBC), prompting a quick
correction from a State Department spokesman that "we would not say it was a PR stunt" (MSNBC).
U.S. public diplomacy efforts, now budgeted at more than $1 billion (PDF), are part of the U.S. Secretary of
State's "transformational diplomacy" initiative aimed at shifting the unwieldy foreign policy system to confront
present-day challenges. That includes moving diplomats out of cushy Western posts closer to important
developing world stations in Asia and Africa. It also involves trying to organize U.S. foreign aid more
effectively (PDF).
But public diplomacy is about communication and that is where most of the U.S. spending is directed. There
continues to be discussion about whether the country's main broadcasting effort in Iran should be the music-
based approach of Radio Farda, profiled recently by the Washington Post. Hughes says the station fosters
important dialogue with Iranians. Meanwhile, cultural critic Martha Bayles expresses concern about the export of
low-brow popular culture from the United States and the impact it's having on the country's image (Wilson
Quarterly). But CFR Senior Fellow Julia Sweig, whose new book assesses the rise of anti-American sentiment,
tells CFR.org's Bernard Gwertzman, it is improved policies, more than communication, that will improve
America's image, such as closing down the Guantanamo Bay prison facility.
Another challenge is the current backlash in some states against U.S. democracy promotion policy, which is at
the heart of the country's public diplomacy efforts. Thomas Carothers, an expert on democracy building at the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee this month that
resistance to U.S. democracy-promotion activities in developing and post-communist countries is at an all-time
high.
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