Foreign Policy of the United States of America

CONTEMPORARY US FOREIGN AND SECURITY POLICY

Damian R. Sanges d’Abadie
Investigador Asociado del INCIPE

Research Associate, Centre for Defence Studies,

King’s College London

America’s contemporary world view cannot be divorced from the occurrences of 11th September 2001. President George W Bush’s leadership is now being shaped by the events of that day. The undisputed bicameral Republican victory in the November 2002 mid-term Congressional elections represents a clear victory for President Bush and an unequivocal vindicatión of his style of government.
 
For all the domestic disquiet and international criticism, that has accompanied President Bush’s policies from the environment to national security, the vast majority of his countrymen backs what “Dubya” has delivered and has unequivocally endorsed his political visión of America’s place in the world in the twenty-first century. The electoral success has reinforced the President in his beliefs and his determinatión to prioritise the fight against international terrorism above all other issues.
 
The prevailing scepticism of early 2002 about Bush’s ability to maintain popular support across the America (once the terrorist threat waned) arising from the declining state of the economy, corporate crime, health, retirement issues and immigration pressures, has proved wholly unfounded. September 11 has transformed George W. Bush from a tentative andinexperienced Presidential incumbent of a divided natión into a wartime leader with a steely will to win and has radically transformed the overall character of US policymaking in external and internal dimensions
 
As President Bush stated in his first major speech, delivered to a joint sessión of Congress in the weeks following the September outrages ón the East Coast of the USA, but aimed equally to a worldwide audience, “in our grief and anger we have found our missión and our moment… Freedom and fear are at war. The advance of human freedom, the great achievement of our Time and the great hope of every time, now depends ón us…We will not falter and we will not fail.” George W. Bush has sought to dispel his inexperience in foreign policy by adopting a proactive diplomacy that has generated anxieties and hostile reactions even from his closest allies.
 
The Bush-Cheney White House has marked a qualitative break from that of the previous incumbents; no longer is the goal of global peacemaking, as pursued by the Clinton-Gore Administration, uppermost in shaping US foreign and security policy in diplomatic dealings from the Middle East and Africa to Asia. Moreover, for the first time in several decades –not since the heights of the ideological confrontation of the Cold War– hardcore realism is fully back as the undisputed doctrine of the Oval Office and the driving force of the government’s agencies. For America, post-September 11 raw power determines international politics. The rationale underscoring this unavowed self-confidence and dismissiveness of foreign arguments is that even if other nations gang up against the US, they will be weaker than the US alone.
 
Compromise, therefore, is in short supply in this approach and the US-European trans-Atlantic camaraderie of the Clintón years has consequently suffered in the process. Only coalition-building is envisaged when it suits America’s interests.
 
This approach to foreign policy is not a case of a return to isolationism but, more fundamentally, of America first. Other nations across the globe have failed to perceive the impact of the events of late 2001 in the US in the same manner as the US, for beyond the immediate drama of the attacks and their economic impact lies the profound scar to America’s self-confidence.
 
In contemporary US perspectives the quiet optimism of the post-Cold War –despite the failures in the regions of the Balkans, Africa’s Great Lakes or Somalia -was brought to an end at 8.47 am ón 11 September 2001. The dramatic and unprecedented character of  the attacks  has highlighted the vulnerability of the US mainland. It is the US itself and no longer simply US interests in distant or hostile regions of the world that is the target.
 
Homeland security has become the underlying paradigm of US foreign and security policy to address and counter the prevailing nationwide anxiety that has taken hold of America. The shattering events have heralded a strange new world for the US where asymmetrical threats and low intensity warfare are predominant: this requires constant vigilance, a high degree of military preparedness and even actual engagement without waiting for events to shape up in a definite form.
 
Ironically, US foreign and security policy has adopted a paradigm from an unlikely field, regarded as secondary in its policymaking agenda –the arena of environmental policy. The Precautionary Principle first considered at the Rio Conference and strengthened at the Cartagena meeting as an integral principle of international environmental law is now sought as the guiding force for international relations and security affairs by the Administratión in Washington.
 
A new strategic doctrine for national security policy has emerged in Washingtón in September 2002 to make intellectual sense of the uncertain world order (left behind by the events of September 2001). This is the doctrine of  “unilateral pre-emptive retaliation” (the new buzz word in Washington), which has come to include the notión of regime change as part of its politico-military arsenal. In the new international climate, self-defence is increasingly perceived as a function of pre-emption. This is also the rationale that underlies the earlier “axis of evil” discourse, that was judged to be an extreme and dangerous throwback to the Cold War by US allies and regional partners across the globe. The roots of Washington’s new National Security Strategy reside in that waiting until definite proof of a threat is forthcoming might mean lagging behind events and it could then be too late to plan essential actión afterwards.
 
For the US this doctrine is merely perceived as the latest expressión of its longstanding Cold War axiom of strategic thought –deterrence- adapted to face the new global dangers. America will act not ón the evidence but ón the presumptión of hostile intentions to dissuade any potential enemy from carrying out actions against the US, for as one prominent member of the Administratión has pointed out  “the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence.” The current sustained pressure towards Iraq is only the most immediate manifestatión of this doctrine for the war against global terrorism –in its transnational and state-sponsored forms– as in George Bush’s words Saddam Hussein is a “murderous tyrant” who “ón any given day” might launch an attack on America. However, importantly America does not want to be the world’s policeman or natión builder. Already in the 1990s, America was with uncertainty seeking to escape the constraints of the bi-polar world. It was seeking to be not so much unilateralist as autonomous. It was beginning to demand a less exclusive relationship with its allies. It was seeking to redefine the terms of engagement forged with its allies since the early 1950s and, today, with the war ón terrorism this includes a greater reliance ón Russia.
 
In effect, from the outset of the Bush Presidency, the US has changed the tone of its diplomatic interactions with greater fluidity in the character of its external relations both with friendly states and with former enemies and potential economic challengers, including in its early months with Russia and China (over missile defence, Taiwan or economic competition), according to when the strategic interests of America are at stake. At present the US is opting for different associations and even different allies and in the trans-Atlantic dialogue, this search is to do with the different currencies of power in which Europe and America have traded since 1989.
 
America accounts now for 50% of all global military expenditure, Europe for less than 20%. Europe, by contrast, accounts for 40% of the foreign aid distributed through the United Nations and its respective agencies; the United States for less than 25%. The problem is that the two  partners in the Western alliance have difficulty agreeing ón the exchange value of their respective currencies.
 
The United States has been emphasising the military dimensión of its policy increasingly since the invasión of Panama in 1989. In this respect, President Bush has empowered himself to act decisively since he now presides over the largest US defence budget ever with $400 bn from 2003, which includes $35 bn earmarked for intelligence for the Informatión Community (CIA and the National Security Agency) to address the new warfare- one-and-half times the national product of a natión of 10 millión people like Tunisia or equivalent to that of natión with 30 million inhabitants like Morocco.
 
The war against terrorism –the central tenet of US security policy- merely highlighted the fact that at the moment economic influence and aid is seen by many in Washingtón as the “small change” of international politics.
 
However, in trying to forge a new world order today the US has found itself in conflict with its allies. The President and his closer advisers, notably Vice-President Cheney, Defence Secretary Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary of Defence Wolfowitz are inclined to believe in the well-armed natión state, a doctrine that led the two European wars.  Indeed the Bush administratión contains many who see the sort of multilateralism espoused by Europe not simply as a tiresome restraint but as a positive threat to US interests. US self-assurance highlights the fact that Europe has yet to formulate alternative coherent policies.
 
There is in Europe a real fear that Huntingdon’s prophecy of the clash of civilisatión could end up being self-fulfilling –at the very least, they fear unnecessarily destabilising the Middle East which will undermine America’s position not only in the región but the world. Nothing at the beginning of the twenty-first century makes American leadership less important than before, but the administration present policy is less likely to listen and discuss than to inform and notify in relatión to its external relations.