By Wang Fan
The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation announced on
June 2 this year that it had just thwarted a major attempt by
terrorists to blow up the aviation fuel route at the JFK
International Airport in New York and the four suspects were not
members of Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaida terrorist organization as
people suspected, but Latin Americans.
Though the suspects' families and friends claimed the US
authorities exaggerated facts, the FBI insisted the conspiracy had
been in the works for two or three years and its impact would have
been greater than that of 9/11, had it gone through. It also
indicates anti-American sentiment is persisting in the US
backyard.
Before the latest round of the G8 summit began, Russian
President Vladimir Putin warned on June 3 that, if the US expands
its missile defense system to Russia's front door in Eastern
Europe, Russia might have to aim its ballistic missiles at "new
targets" in Europe.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov hinted soon afterwards
that the US plan to deploy missile defense systems in Poland and
the Czech Republic would pose a threat to Russia. He believed the
US move was designed to "surround Russia" militarily.
Since early this year, Putin has made a string of statements
expressing his utmost dissatisfaction with the US. A kind of strong
confrontational sentiment is floating between the US and
Russia.
Though the claim that a new Cold War is breaking out between the
two countries is a bit over the top, people have to see what the
two sides have to say when Putin meets US President George W. Bush
on Sunday.
We are also witnessing confrontation between the US and Iran,
between the US and the Arab world, and confrontation between the US
and some developing countries or "lost countries".
Even though we are witnessing some progress toward some
resolution on the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula,
confrontation still seems to be the rule of the game for the
US.
Why?
It appears that its domestic and foreign affairs need such
confrontations.
As the only superpower in the world, the US believes its global
goal strategy must be aimed at a clear and present threat or it
will be disoriented. When the Cold War ended, the US suddenly found
itself without a strategic enemy after 40 years of rivalry. As if
in a state of zero gravity, the US went so far as to lament "we
will soon miss the Cold War", followed by a chorus of excited
threats about China.
The 9/11 terrorist attack forced the US to shift its agenda from
conventional security threats to localized unconventional security
threats. But the apparent threat was hard to target and ultimately
the shots had to hit specific countries - hence the war cries
toward the "axis of evil" and other "lost countries".
Meanwhile, the US may still have to learn how to keep friendly
relations with countries other than their traditional allies. The
US and Russia once formed a strategic partnership after the Cold
War. Putin was the first foreign leader to call Bush to express his
condolences after 9/11. And the two men of the same age enjoy a
rather close personal friendship between them.
Russia supported the US war on terror in Afghanistan, but the
latter took the opportunity to take it a step further by expanding
its political and military influence in Central Asia and Outer
Caucasus in the name of fighting terrorism.
Beginning in 2005, the US instigated a series of "color
revolutions" and thus drew several countries originally belonging
in Russia's power sphere under America's protective umbrella. That
made it really difficult for the two countries to maintain their
partnership from then on.
In hindsight there are quite a few examples of the US
deliberately making enemies. After the Cuban Revolution, Cuban
leader Fidel Castro did not have upsetting the US in mind but
wanted to develop bilateral relations with the northern neighbor on
an equal footing.
Unfortunately his overture was flatly rejected by Washington,
which swiftly made Cuba an enemy and carried out a series of
operations designed to overthrow the Cuban administration,
including the assassination of Fidel Castro, resulting in the
lasting state of hostility between the two neighbors separated only
by 150 km of water.
Moreover, the US not only made itself an enemy in Cuba but
pushed it into the arms of its archrival the Soviet Union as well,
further intensifying the already desperate Cold War.
Remember Saddam Hussein? Saddam Hussein received generous
support from the US during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s.
Moreover, America's old habit of drawing the line dies hard.
The stated criteria for drawing the line may change from time to
time, but the core is always ideological. In her speech at the
School of International Relations, Johns Hopkins University, on
April 15, 2002, then presidential advisor for national security
Condoleezza Rice suggested that countries all over the world could
be categorized into four types: the democratic, the transforming,
the rogue and the lost.
Following the 9/11 attack, the US called for an anti-terrorist
alliance, saying any country opposed to terrorism was America's
friend but soon slid back onto the old trail of drawing the line
according to ideology.
The concept of a democratic alliance is one example. The US
foreign strategy has gone full circle from the anti-terrorist
alliance to that of freedom and democracy back to the traditional
-military-political - alliance.
And one of the conditions for joining this traditional alliance
is to identify with America's ideology.
The philosophy and strategy of such traditional alliances have
helped the US form various gangs in the international community and
produced deliberate divides and differences.
Though the cooperation between non-allies is growing in
non-traditional security efforts, it is far from dominant in US
foreign strategy.
The obsession with drawing the line goes a long way back in US
academic circles. From The Coming Conflict with China to
The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World
Order and The Tragedy of Great Power Politics,
demonstrate the notion that realist power politics and Cold-War
mentality are deep-rooted in the minds of some Americans.
And all this stands starkly opposed to the reality of
globalization and inter-dependency as well as such views of world
integration.
Above all, the US finds it difficult to shake off its structural
constraints.
As far as confrontations between the US and other countries
since the end of the Cold War are concerned, it has always been the
US that triggered the conflicts and identified friends and enemies.
The fact that the US deliberately stirred up confrontations over
certain affairs or its relations with certain countries clearly
shows it doesn't give a damn about the consequences.
As former US National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski
emphasizes in his book The Choice: Global Domination or Global
Leadership, America's international status is constituted by
two important realities of our time: the unrivaled American global
hegemony and unprecedented inter-influence in the world
community.
But, as the reality of US foreign policy indicates, the
unrivaled US strength has been abused or over-used while global
inter-influence has been misinterpreted as unilateral influence of
the US over the rest of the world.
A country's outward expansion is usually influenced by two major
factors: self-discipline and check and balance.
In the post-Cold War era, the US has not only overlooked but
also despised self-discipline. And, while restricted by some kind
of a strategic check and balance between major powers, the US,
encouraged by its unrivaled strength, has been doggedly trying to
break free of this constraint. Unrestrained and undisciplined, US
foreign strategy can only be expansionist.
As a general trend this expansionist strategy may be temporarily
reined in but will never lose its nature. Domestically speaking,
various interest groups all have their own pursuits and would
always gang up to seek stronger control over domestic resources by
hyping outside threats, eventually pushing the country into
unrestrained outward expansion.
In her speech titled Transformational Diplomacy on
January 18, 2006, Secretary of State Rice asserts, "America needs
equally bold diplomacy, a diplomacy that not only reports about the
world as it is, but seeks to change the world itself".
She later defined the term as "transformational diplomacy is
rooted in partnership; not in paternalism. In doing things with
people, not for them". Apparently the emergence of transformational
diplomacy represents a re-adjustment following the setback the US
suffered in its bid for global domination by using its military
might in recent years.
However, the structural strength and inertial thinking has
deprived the runaway US of a break on its unilateralist tracks,
leaving it in a limbo where it wanted to stop but couldn't more
than once because of some major regional and even global
issues.
It is worth calling to mind the teachings of its founding
fathers such as Abraham Lincoln, who said the best way to eliminate
an enemy is to turn it into a friend.
Some day the enlightened Americans will realize that only by
making more friends instead of enemies can the US take hold of the
opportunities emerging during the post-Cold War era as it sees it,
and it will lose them and consequently its future if it fails to do
so.
The author is a researcher with the Institute of
International Relations of the China Foreign Affairs
University.
(China Daily June 27, 2007)
