How September 11 changed the nature of US interventions

U.S. Foreign Policy: Pre and Post 911 term that appears repeatedly in discussions of American foreign is hegemony. Uncertainty regarding the meaning of this term led to the dictionary. The Oxford Desk Dictionary and Thesaurus, 1997 offers the fairly straightforward definition of "leadership, esp. Of one nation over another." Considering the contexts that the term was found in, another dictionary was consulted and this led to concepts that brought various commentators perceptions into better focus. The Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 1993 leaves no doubt as to the potentially negative aspects of hegemony in two ways. The explication directly connected with the term says: [Gk hegemonia, fr. Hegemon, leader, fr.hegeisthai to lead -- more at SEEK] (1567) preponderant influence or authority over others: DOMINATION. Following either the "Seek" or "Domination" thread only leads to further realization that the writers using the term are not being flattering to the foreign policy of the United States.

With the guiding question here being whether or not there has been a marked difference in foreign policy since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, it is first valuable to look at U.S. foreign policy over the years. Although some writers say that for most of our history we have minded or mostly minded our own business, this being the viewpoint of Conservative spokesman Patrick J. Buchanan, a survey of American foreign policy doesn't necessarily show this.

American foreign policy basically begins with dealings with the British when the America was a colony. It was then the contention that Americans shouldn't have to bear the burden of England's on-going wars with France through the heavy taxation being levied by the British. If history books are to be believed, this long-standing complaint met with continuous arrogant refusal on the part of British to change colonial (read imperial) policies, thus leading to the American Revolutionary War. Americans look at the issues as they were put forth and say, "We had the right and the obligation to ourselves to go to war for the privilege of making our own destiny."

Next war up was about 30 years later in 1812. The surface issues had to do with British impressments of American naval personnel. The issue that wasn't discussed loudly was the idea that we could grab the whole landmass of Canada to be part of the United States. This proved to be a bad idea but one that wasn't easily let go of. As late as 1837, there was still activity towards Canada and America being one nation. Finally, in 1842, the Webster-Ashburn Treaty settled the boarder between the U.S. And Canada.

The next war, if you will is with Mexico over the annexation of New Mexico. This starts in 1846 and runs through early 1848. In the words of Timetables of History,

Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ends Mexican-U.S. war in Feb.; ratified in Oct.; U.S. gets Texas, New Mexico, California, Utah, Arizona, and parts of Colorado and Wyoming from Mexico in return for large indemnity.

Again, oddly enough, there is about a 30-year gap. The American Civil War came much quicker, it had actually been incubating through all this time.

In 1898, the Spanish-American War starts. Public issues include the sinking of the U.S. ship "Maine." The underlying issues seem to be more about getting the Spanish presence completely out of the North American sphere. For $20 million dollars we acquired not only Cuba and Puerto Rico, but Guam and the Philippines as well. Why isn't stated.

From this point, America managed to stay out of conflict until WWI which it entered reluctantly. After WWI, America, again, tried to isolate itself from the constant turmoil in the world. However, as Germany and Italy pursued their policies of expansion, the U.S. was supplying arms and munitions to the countries who would eventually become its allies. It could be supposed that the policy of supplying arms was seen by Germany and Italy as a measure of engagement. At any rate, once Pearl Harbor was bombed, there no was no longer a question as to whether or not the U.S. would go to war.

It isn't clearly obvious in the reading what the theories are for our involvement in Korea other than concern with the spread of Communism. This fear or propaganda or motivation, whatever one wishes to lable the mindset, would control American foreign policy for the next 50 years. Communism took over from Nazi Germany as the "Great Satan" and the new threat to democracy.

It was at this time that the massive programs of American foreign aid became part of U.S. foreign policy. The early parts of the programs were to rebuild Germany and Japan. Was it humanitarian or self-protective? Although it is difficult to understand how anyone believed that two such shattered cultures could possibly rebuild fast enough and strong enough to become a threat again, this has been suggested as a reason why the rebuilding was done.

America went through many years of "buying" countries away from the Soviet Union and of course, the U.S.S.R. was attempting to do the same thing. Arms, munitions, technology, and, at least for American foreign aid, there was a measure of food, medicine and aid workers. Nevertheless, there has been a steady series of military engagements: Korea, Viet Nam, Granada, El Salvador, and Persian Gulf I, to just hit the highlights.

One might ask why America can't seem to find a foreign policy, any more, that doesn't include military intervention. Is just a phase in our development as a nation? After all -- look at what was happening all over Europe, the Middle East, and the Far East during the years when the U.S. wasn't getting involved. It would be impossible to list all the various wars that went on. Is it that innocent, or does it go back to that word hegemony?

There is something in place at this time in American government policy called the National Security Strategy. In its own words, it says, "Our forces will be strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military build-up in hopes of surpassing or equaling, the power of the United States." (Chomsky, 2003) Chomsky, (2003) goes on to quote international affairs specialist, John Ikenberry (2002) Chomsky says Ikenberry describes the declaration as a grand strategy [that] begins with a fundamental commitment to maintaining a unipolar world in which the United States has no peer competitor," a condition that is to be permanent [so] that no state or coalition could ever challenge [the U.S.] as global leader, protector, and enforcer." The declared "approach renders international norms of self-defense -- enshrined by Article 51 of the UN charter -- almost meaningless. More generally, the doctrine dismisses international law and institutions as of "little value." Ikenberry continues: The new imperial grand strategy presents the United States [as] a revisionist state seeking to parly its momentary advantages into a world order in which it runs the show, prompting others to find ways to work around, undermine, contain and retaliate against U.S. power. (Chomsky, 2003)

If it were just a liberal like Chomsky saying these things it might be possible to take them lightly or even dismiss the ideas. This, however is not the case. Patrick J. Buchanan, spokesperson for the Conservative Right, says many of the same things and draws many of the same conclusions. First of all, Buchanan has been trying to get his message across for some time. In 1999, he wrote a republic, Not an Empire: Reclaiming America's Destiny and in 2004 he published Where the Right Went Wrong. Both books sound many of the same themes. Buchanan calls for America to get back to what it does best -- innovate and manufacture. He calls for America to stop interfering in the politics and governments of other countries. He calls for the U.S. To get out of the constantly increasing number of foreign military commitments that have and are being made. He lists treaty arrangement after arrangement that would obligate the United States to engage in military action on behalf of all sorts of countries. Buchanan also proposes that America needs to revamp its trade policies because so much manufacturing that used to be done here has gone overseas -- including components and parts for American missiles and other armaments. Buchanan is concerned on behalf of the American economy. It would seem a more logical concern would center around the possibilities of potential sabotage. Another American leader, Senator Robert J. Byrd -- a Democrat and at the opposite end of the political spectrum from Buchanan also has many of the same concerns. In his recent book, Losing America: Confronting a Reckless and Arrogant Presidency, he describes, as does Buchanan in Where the Right Went Wrong, an executive branch of American government that is out of control and a Congress that doesn't seem to have the will or the backbone or perhaps the understanding, to do anything about it.

Further, there are the commentators who write for foreign policy journals and journals that report on presidential issues. A long passage is quoted here by way of showing what all these various writers are concerned about: (Kane, 2003)May 2002 brought the odd spectacle of ex-President Jimmy Carter standing shoulder to shoulder in Havana with one of the U.S. government's oldest enemies, Cuban president Fidel Castro. Carter, on a mission to convey a message of friendship to the Cuban people and to seek some common ground between Cuba and the United States, made a point of meeting and encouraging local democratic, religious, and human rights activists. In a televised address, he endorsed the rights of dissidents and urged democracy on the island nation (Sullivan 2002). He also advocated an end to the U.S. embargo on Cuba (a call immediately echoed at home by 20 Democratic and 20 Republican representatives in Congress).

President George W. Bush's administration responded angrily to Carter's latest adventure as international arbiter. A senior state department official tried to sabotage the ex-president's visit with a carefully timed release of a report claiming that Cuba was conducting bio-weapons research and sharing its findings with other "rogue nations." Bush himself was quick to reaffirm the sanctions on trade and travel, demanding free elections and a liberalization of Cuba's economy as preconditions of U.S. relaxation. Bush was of course concerned with the votes of large numbers of Cuban-Americans in Florida whose Republican sympathies are closely tied to a strong anti-Castro stance. He was also reportedly angry, in a week when he was finalizing an arms reduction deal with the Russians, at being upstaged in the media by the peripatetic elder statesman. Nevertheless, there was a certain irony in his implied charge that Carter, who had once put human rights centrally on the foreign policy agenda of the United States, was giving aid and comfort to a notorious violator.

There was also an interesting question as to the essential difference, if any, between Carter's excursion and Bush's own previous visit (in February 2002) to China where, in a similarly televised address, he had issued a democratic challenge to the Chinese Communist leadership (Allen and Pan 2002). Bush had not, of course, made continuing U.S. Chinese trade dependent on democratic progress in China, but policy inconsistency is not what concerns me here. (Kane)

It seems rather clear that only the approved members of the American community are allowed to speak and they are only allowed to speak approved sentiments. As a former President and someone who apparently keeps up with what is going on in the world, why should Carter not do his part to help the cause of peace? Further, human rights, not American values always was an issue for Carter. Kane (2002) writes:

President Carter's human rights initiative was a direct response to this crisis of faith in American values. The attraction of human rights was that they were precisely not American, despite having a great deal of commonality with traditional American values. With its foreign policy at the service of universal human rights, America could conceivably avoid the charge of cultural imperialism. Significantly, Carter did not reject the exceptionalist tradition but intended rather, by this means, to save it. A human rights policy would ensure consistency and dispel hypocrisy in foreign policy, thus realizing at last the unity of American power and virtue.(Kane)

It rather appears, for all the statements the current administration, particularly, makes, peace isn't really on the official agenda. It does appear that the writers who are deeply concerned about America and its future have the right of it to be concerned.

The final writer whose ideas will be dealt with here is Robert Dallek. In his book the American Style of Foreign Policy: Cultural Politics and Foreign Affairs, Dallek, (1983) a professor of history at University of California, Los Angles, puts forth the idea that the reasons America, or any other country goes from one war to another, have to do with dealing with internal pressures and needing to distract public opinion from what is going on -- or not going on at home. He opens his first chapter with this quote:

Corruption dominates the ballot-box, the legislatures, the Congress, and touches even the ermine of the bench. The people are demoralized;...the newspapers are largely subsidzed or muzzled; public opinion silenced; business prostrated; our homes covered with mortgages; labor impoverished; and the land concentrating in the hands of the capitalists. The urban workmen are denied the right of organization for self-protection....The fruits of the toil of millions are boldly stolen to build up the collasal fortunes for a few...From the same prolific womb of governmental injustice we breed two great classes -- tramps and millionaires.

Is it written by a communist? No. It sounds like it comes right out of a magazine article or editorial opinion piece of 2005. Actually, it was written in 1892 by Fredrick Jackson Turner. The implication of this quote in Dallek's book seems to be that American government doesn't learn from its mistakes and doesn't change how it behaves. President Grover Cleveland was quoted in August of 1896 as saying..."There seemed to be an epidemic of insanity in the country just at this time." In Dallek's view the unrest at home was responded to with the Spanish-American War. The 1890's were a time of great tensions due to public feelings about what was going on in the country. It was a time that spawaned many protest movements, humanitarian movemnts and other ideas that "threatened to revolutionize American life." Dallek quotes a historian who says, "War with monarchial, Catholic, Latin Sapin had no purpose but to relive emotion." Dallek further says:

By acting to resuce Cuba from Spain's destructive rule, Americans were also rescuing themselves from oppressive conditions at home. Further, by fighting the war with local militia rather than a well-integrated national army, Americans made the conflict into a celebration individualism and small-twon culture, prized values of their past.

Is that what is happening now with the war in Iraq? The U.S. economy has been taking a pounding due in large part to thirty years of open trade. The good paying manufacturing jobs have been either farmed out overseas or deeply mechanized so that the numbers of actual workers have been cut. The only real growth area seems to be low paying service sector jobs. Did the American government need some way to distract people's attention. In the late 1890's, the foundation disruption to the American way of life was industrialization -- the change from small towns and farm life to big cities and factories. It seems as though the reverse is now happening and it is causing just as much disruption so America needs another war -- maybe many of these wars. Will the U.S. finally get itself embroiled with all of the Middle East? What kinds of madmen see war as the answer to everything?

America is now at war in Iraq. The people were bombarded with information about Saddam Hussein and how awful he and his regiem were. However, this is what Zunes (2003) has to report:

With antipathy towards Iraq so strong as to lead the United States to engage in an ongoing low-level bombing campaign and to lead the most devastating sanctions regime in modern history, it is perhaps surprising that the United States tolerated the abuses of Saddam Hussein's regime for as long as it did. Most of us familiar with the Middle East did not have to wait until Iraq's August 1990 invasion of Iraq to know that Saddam Hussein was a vicious dictator. Many of the crimes committed by the Iraqi ruler now cited by U.S. officials as examples of the heinous nature of his regime were actually committed in the 1980s when the U.S. was quietly supporting Saddam in his war with Iran. (Italics added)