I disagree completely, and I do so from the perspective of someone who appears to have normalized American foreign policy much less. The real end to Pax Americana didn't come in 2016-2019.
We seem to agree on the starting point; the foundation of the United Nations in 1944. One could trace back American efforts to establish a peaceful, rule-based an prospering world to much earlier dates, but they were of little consequence.
Back in 1939-1944 the United States' "greatest generation" did the most they could to establish a peaceful post-war (or at least post-WW2) order based on rules and diplomacy.
The problem is that they strayed from that path soon, just the United States did after the First World War, when it let the League of Nations fall well short of its potential by not joining it in the first place.
As early as 1953 the United States turned towards the evil side by supporting an anti-democracy coup d'état in Iran. That one was really about big oil interests (which aren't nearly as often behind American policy as the stereotype suggests). Their turn away from being a champion of a rules-based peaceful world was completed at the latest with the overt support for the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961. That one was at least in large part about the red scare.
Ever since, international law, treaty obligations and the desire for a peaceful prospering world were pushed away by even slight desires to manipulate, disrupt, destroy, punish or kill. I'm talking about subverting democratically elected governments (example Chile 1973), about supporting tyrants, about covering up murder, about abductions, about torture (support for and doing it), about habitual bombing of countries, about supporting a war of aggression with military force (Gulf War) and about illegal invasions of countries (Laos, Grenada, Panama, Iraq) here.
I understand American readers are not really accustomed to see those
historical actions described this way, but the preceding two passages are
solidly supported by historical facts. Whether ends justify means is another question, but the means used were not in support of a rules-based international order for peace and prosperity.
- - - - -
The Pax Americana wasn't sabotaged post 2016 by Trump. It had already been turned into a myth by the 1960's. Peace wasn't mostly maintained in the Western world by some American grand strategy, but by the common enemy Warsaw Pact and by European reconciliation and unification efforts since the mid 1950's.
Writers used to blather a lot about "global policeman", particularly in the 90's. That, too, ended in 1953. There's only been a couple global bullies of varying sizes since. UN blue helmet troops come the closest to 'global policeman' role, but they're rather some object security guards or border guards than policemen.
So in the end, I think Krugman looks at the history of the past sixty years through a rosy mythology lens and his partisanship only recently allowed him to see some shadows. Other authors and scholars (such as Bacevich) have a much more complete field of view and offered much better observations and opinions about American foreign policy. Krugman is worth having our attention in regard to trade economics and many other macroeconomic topics, though.
S O
.
The US rules based order.
ReplyDeleteEstablish a surface level discursive cover for their business as usual global empire games.
Use interpretations of this structure to draw up casus belli to 'have your cake and eat it'. Further strengthen their empire while maintaining moral justification.
Attack any other players attempts at empire building using flat codified language from the rules based order.
Offer these services to domestic or 'pay to play' commercial interests that benefit individual politicians (Carlyle Group, Halliburton et al), political parties or the US in a wider sense.
The rules based order was never about morality in geopolitics. It was never about empowering an order that existed above the nation state (their nation state). It was a cover, because they wanted to maintain appearances. They wanted deniability.
The age of empire was over. They were too late, read some of the commentary on the Philippine US war, they destroyed their own founding principals, their constitution. Their origin myth, "We will not be like the pre-existing powers". They took foriegn territory, they cowed a population.
Post WW2, what about Greece, Portugal, Italy? Look at their meddling with Harold Wilson, Gough Whitlam, CND (Duncan Campbell did some good work in the '80s on that).
Obama supposedly got rid of the Munroe Doctine, he gave a speach. He was lying. Now they don't even pretend. The Munroe Doctrine is an assertion of hegemonic ownership. All those ruffled feathers about the use of the term "near abroad" when the russians rolled into Ukraine.
Im rambling. Its too big a topic. The world has never been governed by morality, justice or law. Not for one year. Powers with economic or military strength or superiority are governed and controlled from within, by their own populations willingness to engage in the political process and exercise their power to direct the action of their state. As that waxes and wanes, geopolitical outcomes are effected in accordance.
Might is right. Try and argue against that, you get ignored, blackballed, or rolled over by a tank.
Nah, I think they seriously wanted a peaceful world in the 40's (though it's unclear to me how much they were willing to keep Latin America do its own thing).
DeleteI think the problem is that they left that course.
I wonder why the myth is so widely believed. It might be an indication that I'm simply wrong, but I cannot reconcile historical facts with the story of the United States as maintainer of a rules-based order for peace and pürosperity.
We've argued this multiple times now. So I'll keep it to one point.
DeleteYou draw on The League of Nations, Wilson etc... I would say that is indicative of their national (persistent) view of international order. Rules for thee, not for me.
You can see the same thing with UNCLOS. They set up the rules that others are to be governed by, then refuse to ratify it themselves. (Another large topic, so for examples sake only)
The US has been a global empire since 1902. It has wanted to be a global empire. It still wants to be a global empire. The difference is that it recognises it has to be more deft than previous iterations on that game.
Limit the amount of global political power by leveraging their monopoly (a 51% attack). Maintain that order while extracting labor, resources and profit to support their economy (and societal elites in order to keep control of domestic politics).
The difference between a 'rules-based' order for peace and prosperity and a bullying-based order is small for those on the good side of the bully (or too strong to be overly bullied) - and let's face it, that covers the vast majority of the world.
ReplyDeletePluto 1 of 2:
ReplyDeleteSven, you're basically right from the outside. I'm going to give you the US internal perspective which helps explain Krugman's inaccuracies, at least a little bit.
The League of Nations was a non-starter for the general US population. Woodrow Wilson broke his own health trying to make it a reality in the US but all the US was interested in after WWI was forgetting the whole unpleasant experience.
You are correct that the "Greatest Generation" DID get it right and tried to set up the UN correctly and to make the US a key support for the rule of international law, as you say, "Pax Americana."
They were undercut by their own fear of the Soviet and Chinese governments pulling dirty legislative tricks to prevent international law long enough to solidify a lead that would be impossible to defeat. In essence, the late Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations became enamored with the fear of the "bad guys" getting to rule the world because they didn't HAVE to support the laws. This gave the "Great Powers" players within the US government such as Robert McNamara and Richard Nixon to return to the "Game of Nations, Spies, Dirty Tricks" in the name of preventing the "bad guys" (now defined to include anybody the US goverment might fear). It appeared from inside the US that you had to burn down the legal infrastructure in order to save it from the "bad guys." Yes, I know it's stupid but that's how the US leaders and people saw it. I agree that it was profoundly stupid but they didn't want to hear it and they had the power to avoid hearing it. "Pax Americana" was now a sick joke in most of the world but considered a vital necessity in the US.
"Tricky Dick" Nixon was the last of these leaders and he so thoroughly destroyed that doctrine so thoroughly in his attempt to defend himself (from his own actions) that it could no longer be used. That resulted in the election of a somewhat wealthy, very morale, not well educated peanut farmer with relatively little political experience in 1976. There just wasn't anything left in the US government doctrine to justify its abusive (for everybody including the US citizens) policies.
Actually, I already mentioned that the U.S. turned away from international law under the Eisenhower administration.
DeleteSven, I wasn't arguing against your comments. I was highlighting the view from inside the US at that time to help make Krugman's comments somewhat more understandable to the people who don't have the "benefit" of living inside the influence bubble of the US government.
DeleteAs near as I can tell, the US government has two modes of operation on foreign policy, myopic and overruled by what's easiest for internal policy. Unfortunately, I do not foresee a change any time soon and it is probably going to cost us even more after the 2020 elections.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeletePluto 2 of 2:
ReplyDeleteJimmy Carter was a catastrophe for the US goverment (although it was even worse for him) and that led directly to the Reagan administration's emphasis on foreign policy via the US military. This policy had the advantage of being less interventionist, more profitable (at least in key parts of the US), and safer for everybody all the way around. But the collapse of the Soviet empire in the era of George the first (Bush) totally undercut their reason for existing and it quietly collapsed (but left lots of pleasant memories, big military budgets that could not be shrunk, and big profits that were not considered altogether a bad result in certain very influential parts of US boardrooms).
Bill Clinton (charismatic, and smart, but terribly undisciplined) started the Democrats on the road to recovery before taking them and himself over the edge in a series of unforced mistakes that left him supporting massive military budgets just to stay politically alive. "Pax Americana" had become a meaningless catch-phrase that brought back good memories of better days (within the US anyway) but wasn't directly challenged in the US as a bad idea, just a poorly maintained one.
George Bush II attempted to give "Pax Americana" meaning again but being asigning the task to "Tricky Dick's" last protege, Richard Cheney, turned out to an incredibly bad idea. At least Cheney developed the policy of stand-off attacks which reduced the US footprint in the host/victim country and made violation of international law less blatant in the eyes of the US. The fact that it led to 9/11 and other major Terrorist coups was glossed over in the need to retaliate or be seen as weak by other powers. I've never understood George II's views on "Pax Americana" morality and Christianity on this point and I doubt I every will. But the Defense industry was humming and the US was unified and we were striking the "bad guys" and the US felt like it was enforcing "Pax Americana" even though it was going the opposite direction with every one of the thousands of missile strikes at "targets of opportunity."
Barak Obama, the first President to actually think through A FEW issues in foreign policy since Eisenhower, toned down the missile strikes and military budget a bit and started the US back towards the true "Pax Americana" of the 1940's and first half of the 1950's but it wasn't high on his huge priority list and he let it continue secret dirty wars in the name of protecting the world from war. I know, that still doesn't make any sense.
Trump is the first President to totally fail to give "Pax Americana" some form of meaning (or at least lip-gloss). Trump flat out regards the rest of the world with uniform hostility and treats everybody (inside and outside the US) with hostility unless they are currently and shamelessly feeding his ego (ex-Communist governments have proven to be disturbingly effective in this regard).
The fact that all major US government institutions tend to absorb immigrant populations about 35 years after they hit (the current Latin American wave is due to hit in about 15-20 years) makes his choices even less intelligent and incomprehensible to everybody in the US and outside of it. For the first time since the mid-1950's people in the US and the rest of the world now fully share the uncomfortable truth that "Pax Americana" is well and truly dead. It just wasn't generally understood in the US until now.
The question I ask is, "what comes next?" I fear the answer can be found in a wargame called "Crisis 2020" although it may have to wait until 2035 to occur.
1) Reagan wasn't less interventionist than Carter AT ALL.
Delete2) Carter was no catastrophe. There has been a lot of smear attacks in the past 40 years, but historical facts show that the Carter administration was roughly average.
3) GWB didn't attempt to work for any Pax Americana whatsoever - his Neocon gang pushed for wars of aggression, and got one.
They had a historic opportunity for reconciliation even with Iran, and they blew it intentionally.
1) I'm sorry Sven, there were an embarrassing number of typos in my comments above. I didn't mean to imply that Reagan was less interventionist than Carter (you're definitely right that Carter was anti-interventionist in general) but that Reagan was less interventionist than Nixon and his predecessors dating back to the late Eisenhower administration.
Delete2) Carter on foreign policy was as naïve as they come and his handling of the amazingly messy Iran hostage crisis was almost as bad as possible. About the only way he could have done worse (and this was NEVER considered by the Carter administration) was threatening nuclear attack against Iran. The fiasco of the bungled raid to free the hostages was the last thing that guaranteed Reagan's victory in 1980 and Carter managed to keep it surprisingly close even after then.
3) Once again, you're technically correct about GWB but he used "Pax Americana" and "bad actors" as arguments to support his agenda and the US public bought it hook, line, and sinker. So from the US perspective, GWB ordered a bunch of world-supported police actions instead of a bunch of randomly timed strikes against approximately random targets with the blind intent of kicking off a terrorist cycle of retaliation. They approximately succeeded and that got us into our current uncomfortable position today.
Reagan sent troops to and bombed Lebanon (for pure domestic purposes), bombed Libya, invaded Grenada, supported the war in Afghanistan and supported civil war in Nicaragua.
DeleteNixon didn't do terribly much other than escalating the already long-ongoing Vietnam War, supporting the coup in Chile and supported Israel.
Nixon may have got more people killed, but he was much less original in his interventionism. I think Reagan restarted the idea that "war works" after it had been discredited by Vietnam.
Carter; most foreign policy-interested people in a great power appear to mistake self-discipline in a leader for weakness.
The U.S. would have saved five trillion $ and thousands of citizens' lives if it had had a president Carter in 2001.
The easiest thing to do is to hold a loudmouth speech, then order some foreign land be bombed. Lots of loudmouths with beards and an AKSU rested next to them do it nowadays.
Stupid, uncivilised, unimaginative, cowardly cunts.