Lecture 15 - The Post Cold War Years: the United States in the “Unipolar Age” Flashcards
[Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations?, “Foreign Affairs, 1993]
“It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations. The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future”
[Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man, “The National Interest”, 1989]
“The triumph of the West, of the Western idea, is evident first of all in the total exhaustion of viable systematic alternatives to Western liberalism … What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of postwar history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government”
Declinists
♣ New Parameters of Power: geoeconomics vs. geopolitics
♣ Decreasing competitiveness of US Economy vis-à-vis new “geoeconomic rivals”
♣ Imperial Overstretch
♣ Culture Wars and Moral Decline + End of WWII “greater generation”
♣ Cuts to defense budget
Triumphalists
♣ Victory in the Cold War
♣ No alternatives to US led global liberal order: celebration of United Nations and New World Order
♣ No alternative to US «benevolent» power
♣ Triumph of neoliberal model
George Bush, January 1991 - new world order
“We have before us the opportunity to forge for ourselves and for future generations anew world order– a world where the rule of law, not the law of the jungle, governs the conduct of nations. When we are successful – and we will be – we have a real chance at thisnew world order, an order in which a credible United Nations can use its peacekeeping role to fulfill the promise and vision of the U.N.’s founders”
George Bush, May 1992 - international organizations as new forces for peace.
“Where in the past, international organizations like the U.N., the United Nations, had been paralyzed bycold warconflict, we will see a future where they can now be a force for peace. Where in the past, many times the heaviest burdens of leadership fell to our Nation, we will now see more efforts made to seek consensus and concerted action”
3 keywords to describe US foreign policy in the 1990s
♣ War
♣ Unilateralism
♣ Interdependence
Rediscovering War after CW: causes and possibilities
♣ Superior military power, despite cuts: no balancer; no Cold War constraints; expanding high-tech military gap
♣ Relegitimization of war: war in the name of international law + war in the name of human rights = «Just War»
♣ Invisible/Painless/Playstation sort of War
[Michael Walzer, “The Triumph of Just War Theory”, 2002]
American strategy in the Gulf war was the result of a compromise between what justice would have required and the unrestrained bombing of previous wars; taken overall, targeting was far more limited and selective than it had been, for example, in Korea or Vietnam”
First Gulf War
1991
Operation Desert Storm
(17 January 1991 – 28 February 1991) in its combat phase, was a war waged by coalition forces from 34 nations led by the United States against Iraq in response to Iraq’s invasion and annexation of Kuwait.
[Michael Walzer, “Regime Change and Just War”, 2006]
“In the first Gulf War of 1991, the United States and its allies fought in strict accordance with the classic just-war paradigm: they stopped fighting once the invasion of Kuwait had been decisively defeated. They did not march on Baghdad; they did not aim at the overthrow and replacement of the Baathist regime; nor did they do anything to make it possible for the Iraqi people to turn Saddam Hussein out of office”
“The First Casualty: The War Correspondent as Hero & Myth-maker from the Crimea to Iraq” by Phillip Knightley
“The first casualty when war comes, is truth,” said American Senator Hiram Johnson in 1917. In his gripping, now-classic history of war journalism, Phillip Knightley shows just how right Johnson was. From William Howard Russell, who described the appalling conditions of the Crimean War in the Times of London, to the ranks of reporters, photographers, and cameramen who captured the realities of war in Vietnam, The First Casualty tells a fascinating story of heroism and collusion, censorship and suppression.
The Unilateral Temptation
♣ From the New World Order to the country that «stands tall and sees further than other nations into the future»
♣ Greater confidence: economic recovery and technological revolution
♣ Obsolescence of the UN and its National Security Council
♣ Delegitimization of UN in the US (long term trend)
[Jesse Helms, Chairman Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 1.2000]
Most Americans do not regard the United Nations as an end in and of itself—they see it as just one part of America’s diplomatic arsenal. To the extent that the U.N. is effective, the American people will support it. To the extent that it becomes ineffective—or worse, a burden—the American people will cast it aside.
