American Grand Strategy
The Imperial Logic of Bush's Liberal Agenda
by Edward Rhodes
with responses by
Owen Harries,
Allan Gyngell,
Peter Jennings,
Coral Bell, and
David Flint

A call to inaction
Peter Jennings

There is much to agree with in Edward Rhodes' essay-war is bad; the reality of international relations is more complicated than we read in policy statements; the pathways of world history are littered with error and inconsistency. These things are all true, and the aspiration to achieve global 'amity and peaceful relations between peoples' is laudable if naive. Ultimately, though, Rhodes' argument is a call to inaction. If there is no acceptable way that liberal values can be defended or actively extended beyond the existing democracies, then dictators will sleep secure behind national borders while the rest of us look the other way.

George W. Bush's July 2002 West Point speech and his National Security Strategy statement of the same year are indeed clear expressions of America's intent to defeat enemies abroad and to promote liberal values globally. The focus on terrorism has, of course, been made an overwhelming priority because of the attacks of September 11, 2001, but the liberalising imperative that so worries Edward Rhodes is hardly new. One thinks not only of Woodrow Wilson but of US support for decolonisation after 1945, of America's reaction to the Suez Crisis in 1956, and Ronald Reagan's condemnation of the Soviet Union as an 'evil empire' in March 1983. America has long sought to export the liberal values of open economies and democratic political systems. On this issue George W. Bush's foreign policy differs little from past US administrations.

Rhodes is right to argue that liberal values cannot be imposed, as Mao might say, through the barrel of a gun. But he is wrong to suggest that such values can only grow slowly from within. Much of the postcolonial and indeed postcommunist experience of the last century involved outside powers accelerating the pace at which countries adopted liberal democracy. There was, for example, the British in Malaya and Singapore, and much of Africa, the French and Americans in South Vietnam, the Americans in the Philippines, the Australians in Papua New Guinea. In these and in many other countries, liberal democratic systems were hurriedly grafted onto societies where, to use Rhodes' phrase, there was precious little 'organic developments . . . that render liberalism's assumptions plausible'. There were some failures but in some cases the grafts took. As we saw in Germany and Japan, and are seeing now in Iraq, with no little amount of effort and difficulty, the extension of liberal norms can and should be hastened along by external pressure.

Edward Rhodes' strongest and least defensible assertion is that 'stripped to its essentials, what the Bush administration envisions is an informal global American empire' where subject states are ' . . . free to choose but only to choose liberalism'. But is 'empire' the right word to describe, say, American plans for Iraq? Is the United States stealing Iraqi oil and stripping other assets for its own economic enrichment? No. Is it banning local languages, customs and religions? No, on the contrary those practices are re-emerging after Saddam's ouster. Is America annexing the most strategically valuable areas of land or imprisoning non-violent political opponents or forcibly relocating populations while colonising areas with its own people? No. All these things the Russians did in their empire, the subject states of Eastern Europe and the USSR.

By contrast the attraction of America's liberalising policies is that they bring aid, greater stability and political choice to peoples that previously had only repression. None of this is to suggest that the task of democratising Iraq will be easy. Clearly that is not the case. But the biggest danger Iraq faces now is not that the Americans will refuse to leave but rather that they may choose to go too quickly. This is hardly the behaviour of a power bent on building an empire.

What are the implications for Australia of America's 'liberal agenda'? We largely share the same value system and this has underpinned Australia's strategic decisions to be involved with the US and like-minded allies in conflicts going back to World War I. We may worry from time to time about the manner or timing of American strategic policy, but there continues to be a close identification of our respective national interests based on shared values and similar strategic perceptions. Indeed, in our own neighbourhood Australia seeks to promote the values of liberal democracy as a way to improve the quality of government and boost regional living standards. In Bougainville, East Timor and the Solomon Islands, Australia too has used its military forces in the last few years to achieve what Edward Rhodes says cannot be done-promoting more open, more competent and better quality governments based on liberal democratic principles. Our region is the better for these Australian efforts.

The Author
Peter Jennings is Director of Programs at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

Fighting words
Coral Bell

Every bureaucrat in DFAT and Defence in Canberra ought to read Professor Rhodes on the current strategic doctrine of the Bush administration in its first term. If long-term realities lived up to the ambitions it implies, Australian diplomatic and defence problems would loom rather formidably. But I am not at all sure that the current doctrine will remain that of a second Bush term, if there is one. And I am fairly certain that if any of the present Democrat contenders makes it to the White House, substantial changes will be in order.

Moreover, the current doctrine is far distant from that with which Bush came into office in 2001. Then he was fiercely derisive of the sort of 'nation-building' in which he is now perforce expensively engaged in Iraq and Afghanistan, and of the tepidly Wilsonian policies of his predecessor, Bill Clinton. His current policies could reasonably be described as Wilsonianism with missiles, but it is a product not of Bush's own instincts but of the trauma of 9/11 and the rise of the neo-conservatives.

My only real dissent from Professor Rhodes' analysis of the fighting words in the West Point speech and the National Security Strategy is that he seems to take them too seriously as statements of intent. He writes, for instance, that the Bush administration's 'liberal crusade . . . promises to lead to failure and tragedy'. Yes, if policies always matched words. But the two texts should be regarded rather as the 'declaratory signals' of a particular moment in the evolution of US foreign policy-a moment at the peak point of what can only be called nationalist messianism. But a moment which has now passed, Washington having suffered a sharp reality check in Iraq and in the UN Security Council.

I am entirely with Professor Rhodes in his consternation not only at the implied objectives of US policy ('nothing less than a transformation of world politics, domestic as well as international') but at the further implication that such a transformation could be based on 'a global American military hegemony'.

That may once have been a Pentagon vision, but even there not everyone shared it. The conflict between 'the suits' and 'the uniforms' was widely reported. Most importantly, the concept raised no enthusiasm in the electorate, and in an election year that point did no escape the President. Perhaps this is why Condoleeza Rice, not Donald Rumsfeld, is now in charge of policy in Iraq. The West Point speech was obviously written to inspire a group of just-graduating young officers who might be going into their first battles. It would have been received in stony silence at the Security Council, where most of Bush's preoccupations have been lately. Rumsfeld's calculations about the brevity of the conventional war were sound, but he seems to have underestimated the subsequent guerrilla phase, in which advanced US weapons are much less decisive, and the financial burdens of occupation are great.

Only since July 2003 has the cost of the initial agenda begun to be reckoned up in Washington and the electorate. The outcome is of course as yet uncertain and that creates uncertainties for the two allies who went into combat alongside the US in Iraq, Britain and Australia. For Britain those uncertainties are mostly political, but for Australia mostly a matter of the allocation of scarce defence resources. John Howard's backbenchers, unlike Tony Blair's, could not raise a single murmur of dissent between then, and the Opposition fell flat on its collective face.
If there is an audible murmur (of disquiet rather than dissent) it comes chiefly from the armed forces and the academic strategists. From just 1.9% of national income, current policies expect three kinds of strategic capacity to be produced. Special forces and some navy specialism, like mine-clearing and ship searches, are required for operations with US forces in Iraq and maybe Korea. Regular troops are needed for operations such as East Timor and the Solomons, and maybe Papua New Guinea. Advanced weaponry like fighter aircraft and missile defence is required for safeguarding the 'sea-air' gap to our north. It often seems like trying to get a quart out of a pint-pot. Arguments about which role should be given priority are inevitable, and the answers necessarily entail assessments of the future of US policy, and of what is most vital to the Australian national interest.

If you believe that operations like Iraq and Afghanistan will prove a large part of Australia's future military commitments, there is a case, some Army chiefs believe, for a new tank, maybe even the fabulously heavy and expensive Abrams tank. But if you believe that operations like the Solomons are more likely, the case for expansion of Army numbers, like military police and civil affairs officers, should have priority. The core defence-of-Australia function is a bit overshadowed by the other two in current circumstances, but will resume its central place in time.

No-one in Washington wants extra military burdens in an election year. The change of tone since the real burdens of Iraq and Afghanistan began to be understood (about July 2003) is unmistakable.

A talented though untutored general in the American Civil War was once heard instructing his artillery officers, 'Elevate them sights a bit lower please gentlemen!'. Both the President and the electorate seem to me to be sending the same signal to some Washington policymakers at present. Which may with luck ease some strains on Australian forces.

The Author
Coral Bell is a Visiting Fellow at The Australian National University. Her forthcoming book, A World Out of Balance, is a study of the current unipolar world.

Three cheers for the Anglosphere
David Flint

Not since the Reagan administration has the grand strategy of the United States been so clear and coherent. While this has given comfort to her friends and fear to her enemies, it has also sowed doubt, even outrage, in Western intellectual circles. This reached its apogee with the intervention in Iraq. But this is hardly an indication that a swathe of other interventions is about to follow.

Iraq was in long and serious breach of the conditions for the truce at the end of the first Gulf war, and of the resulting Security Council resolutions. Indeed, in its last resolution before the intervention, the Council unanimously recognised this. And had the intervention not taken place, it is most unlikely that Saddam Hussein would have changed his ways. It would have been only a matter of time before the Council would have authorised the use of force. Or, as is more likely, there would have gradually been an acceptance, probably tacit, that Saddam was free to do whatever he wanted to in developing weapons of mass destruction.

In the face of that, the Americans and British could have concluded that continuing to protect the autonomous Kurdish region was not worth the cost. In that event Saddam's defeat in the first Gulf War would have only been a setback to his long-term strategy. But as the head of a leading French think tank, Tzvetan Todorov wrote in Le Nouveau Desordre Mondial '. . . for the first time since 1945, Europe seemed no longer willing to align itself on the foreign policy of the US' (p.12). Toderev's response is to propose a federal Europe whose very existence would be a restraint on unilateralism on the part of the United States. This approach suggests that the US is little different from other aggressive and expansionist powers. But that is surely the point-the US is different. As Robert Kagan puts it in Paradise and Power, '. . . The United States is a liberal progressive society through and through, and to the extent that Americans believe in power they believe it must be a means of advancing the principles of a liberal civilization and a liberal world order' (p.41).

Surely this is so. Just about every country liberated by the US in the World War II-and indeed by the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand-was not only offered massive American financial assistance, they also received that gift of inestimable value, their freedom. And the National Security Strategy (NSS) is clearly based on Kagan's proposition.

Notwithstanding the clear caveats in the policy itself, which he recognises, Professor Rhodes seems to fear that the aim is to create an informal global empire-'Wilsonianism with a vengeance'. He is concerned that the NSS is based exclusively on US military hegemony, and that there is every intention to maintain this pre-eminence. But what is so surprising about this? What would be surprising would be for the United States to abandon its pre-eminence, or to believe the formation of a coalition is always to be a precondition for action. While this would be a sensible policy for a declining power, it is hardly appropriate for one at its peak.

Rhodes is also concerned by what he sees as the reliance on pre-emptive self-defence. But international law does not require that a nation wait until the bombs are falling. To hold otherwise is to embrace what Conrad Black described in the Winter 2001/02 issue of The National Interest as 'spurious moral relativism'-demanding proof equal to that a refined domestic criminal justice system would require before taking any military action.

An egregious example was President Clinton's acceptance of advice not to intercept Osama bin Laden's plane when he left Khartoum, although he was implicated in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and the bombing of US facilities in Saudi Arabia. Clinton is believed to regard this as the greatest error of his administration And even Toderev would allow his proposed European army to intervene on humanitarian grounds to stop a genocidal bloodbath.

Rhodes is on firmer ground when he argues that liberal order cannot be imposed from outside. Liberalism-in the best sense of the word-is a philosophy and a set of beliefs and more than just elections with universal suffrage. Fareed Zakaria is right when he argues in The Future of Freedom that it is more important that the seeds of a liberal society be sown before a formal democracy is established. The many unsuccessful attempts to translate US-style constitutionalism to less fertile ground in Latin America are testimony to this.

Indeed, Zakaria's thesis explains the political success of the United States from their origin as the freest colonies the world had seen. They had inherited the same liberal principles their colonial mistress enjoyed. (From their loss, the British learned that the conclusion of their imperial adventure would be the gradual autonomy and then freedom of all their colonies. And so the greater part of the English speaking world, at least the old Commonwealth, is also an adherent of Kagan's proposition.)

Professor Rhodes has no need to worry. The US remains different from other powers. It is only that both the policy and practice of this administration is more coherent and more based on principle.

The Author
David Flint is an emeritus professor of law. His latest book, The Twilight of the Elites, is published by Freedom Publishing, Melbourne.

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