the end of the neo- conservative moment by g. john ikenberry surivival 46, 1 presented by randall...

The End of the Neo-Conservative Moment

by G. John IkenberrySurivival 46, 1

Presented by Randall Kent Cohn

September 15, 2004

Summary

Summary• American foreign policy has been largely controlled for approximately

two years by a group of hard-liner idealogues who call themselves “neo-conservatives”



• The Neo-conservative agenda has focused on asserting US power through unilateral action, withdrawing from international institutions, and pursuing aggressive paths towards democratization of developing areas, particularly the Middle East




• The neo-conservative policy is built on a foundation of faulty assumptions, short-sighted analysis and a misreading of history, and it has had largely disastrous results




• The neo-conservative policy is built on a foundation of faulty assumptions, short-sighted analysis and a misreading of history, and it has had largely disastrous results

• The primary objectives of a new US foreign policy should be to seek to repair the damage the US has sustained in world opinion, reinvigorate the multinational institutions it fought to create over the last 60 years, and restore the delicate moral authority which is its most important asset.

Theoretical SourcesPrimary: G. John Ikenberry, “The End of the Neo-

Conservative Moment” Survival 46, 1.

Supporting: George Kupchan, “The End of the American Era: US Foreign Policy and the Geopolitics of the 21st

Century”

From an address to the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs Feb 27, 2003.

Opposing: Robert Kagan, “Power and Weakness”Policy Review no. 113.

Theory Questions:

Q1.Should the US be bound by international law and be accountable to transnational regimes and institutions ?

Q2.Does the US need to focus on courting European support in order to gain legitimacy in its role as global hegemon ?

Q3.Does the US need international intelligence and operational support in the “global war on terrorism” in particular?

Ikenberry: Yes.The tested American strategy of alliance and partnership and multilateral rule-making will be crucial in an era of new threats and shifting power relations. At the heart of this old order is a strategic bargain that has served America well for decades: the US ties itself to other democratic states and agrees to develop its policies in concert with them, in the process giving up some modest procedural and political freedom of action. In return, the US acquires dependable allies who share the burden and operate within rules and institutions that serve American interests over the long term.


Kupchan: Yes. …we ought to not just back away from international institutions

but recommit to and revitalize them, because these institutions are the lifeblood of a world that doesn't operate by the savage rules of the balance of power. I fear that we are scuttling these institutions because we think we can get away with it as we have so much power; but we are likely to need those institutions a few years down the road -- NATO, the UN, the Kyoto Protocol, the ICC -- only to find them in shambles. We will then have no one but ourselves to blame because it was the U.S. that walked away.



Ikenberry: Yes.American unilateralism got the US into this predicament: American taxpayers are getting stuck with the bill while the EU -- slighted in the Bush administration’s rush to war -- has offered only $250 million for Iraqi reconstruction in 2004. Today, all roads lead to the UN and away from the neo-conservative vision of a unilateral America remaking the Middle East. The Challenge over the medium run will not be to resist UN and allied involvement, but rather, how to induce them to get involved in the perilous Iraqi occupation.


Ikenberry: Yes. American unilateralism got the US into this predicament: American taxpayers are getting stuck with the bill wile the EU -- slighted in the Bush administration’s rush to war -- has offered only $250 million for Iraqi reconstruction in 2004. Today, all roads lead to the UN and away from the neo-conservative vision of a unilateral America remaking the Middle East. The Challenge over the medium run will not be to resist UN and allied involvement, but rather, how to induce them to get involved in the perilous Iraqi occupation.


Kupchan: Yes.

…rather than practicing and striving for preeminence, we should practice strategic restraint. A country that is as powerful as this country, if it is unrestrained, scares the hell out of the rest of the world. I fear that we Americans are today compromising our most precious commodity, our international legitimacy -- the sense that we are a benign power who plays by the rules.

Ikenberry: Yes.

In an age when terrorism is the overriding security threat, offering or withholding American security cooperation does not mean as much as it did during the Cold War…Current threats are less geographically fixed and the United States feels more at risk than its major Asian or European allies. Yet the US needs those allies for assistance in intelligence, law enforcement and a thousand small cooperative gestures every week in the war on terrorism. Contrary to new fundamentalist thinking, the US does not hold all the cards. Indeed, in many ways other countries -- notably those in the EU -- may have a stronger hand when it comes to terrorism.


Kupchan: Yes. …we need Europe. We need Europe partly because some of the most effective tools against terror are the quiet ones: intelligence sharing, freezing of assets, law enforcement. I have no evidence to say that this Europe-U.S. split will make cooperation in taking anti-terrorism measures harder to come by, but I bet it will be the case.

Ikenberry: Yes.In an age when terrorism is the overriding security threat, offering or withholding American security cooperation does not mean as much as it did during the Cold War…Current threats are less geographically fixed and the United States feels more at risk than its major Asian or European allies. Yet the US needs those allies for assistance in intelligence, law enforcement and a thousand small cooperative gestures every week in the war on terrorism. Contrary to new fundamentalist thinking, the US does not hold all the cards. Indeed, in many ways other countries -- notably those in the EU -- may have a stronger hand when it comes to terrorism.


Data Questions:

Q4.Will the US policy of preemption, as demonstrated in Iraq, make marginal revisionist powers more likely to assert themselves by

redoubling their efforts to develop nuclear weapons?

Q5.Does American ‘unipolarity’ face any serious challenges by other powers, in economic, military or political terms ?

Q6.Were factors besides the Strategic Defense Initiative promoted by Reagan-era hardliners (including the buildup of NATO, the ‘World

Peace Movement’ and authentic ideological reform within the USSR) significantly responsible for the ultimate outcome of

the Cold War?

Ikenberry: Yes.

…Fear is a dangerous and self-defeating strategy of global leadership. There is no persuasive evidence that the ‘demonstration effect’ of the Iraq War is working with NK or Iran or other troublesome states. The more likely outcome is that these regimes will continue to seek and keep nuclear weapons so as to establish some deterrence against an American invasion.



Ikenberry: Yes.



Supporting Data: North KoreaQuickTime™ and a

TIFF (LZW) decompressorare needed to see this picture.

The nuclear reactor at Yongbyon

Source: Institute for Science and International Security July 1, 2003

Ikenberry: Yes.



Supporting Data: North Korea


QuickTime™ and aTIFF (LZW) decompressor

are needed to see this picture.




QuickTime™ and aTIFF (LZW) decompressor


Ikenberry: Yes.

American power advantages -- massive, useable and enduring -- are the linchpin of the new fundamentalist go-it-alone strategy of maintaining global order through American domination…But this strategy is premised on a radically inflated view of American power. The United States is preeminent, not omnipotent…in economic and political realms the world is not really unipolar at all.


Ikenberry: Yes.


Supporting Data: Decreasing GDP gap

0

2,000

4,000

6,000

8,000

10,000

12,000

2001 2002 2003

USAEUJapanC/I/B

In b

illio

ns o

f $U

S

Source: World Bank 2004

Ikenberry: Yes.


Supporting Data: Decreasing GDP gap

0123456789

10

1999 2000 2001 2002 2003

USAEUJapanChinaIndiaBrazil

GD

P G

row

th in

% c

hang

e

Source: World Bank 2004



the Cold War?

Ikenberry: Yes.

It was not engagement, détente, ‘paper’ agreements and mutual interest that brought the Soviet Union down, but the Reagan admin’s hard-line policies…boosting military spending and putting ideological pressure on the ‘evil empire’.

This historical narrative provides the ultimate defense for hard-line fundamentalist policies. The problem is that it is flawed history. The real lesson of the end of the Cold War is that the West won because it was united. The United States led the way in building a multilateral economic and security order that generated historically unprecedented prosperity and alliance protection…The Reagan era experience shows that a single, consistent and unambiguous hard-line policy [that of the USSR] was structurally impossible to sustain within the Western order -- and this is why the Cold War ended as successfully as it did



the Cold War?

Q6.

Supporting Data: USSR didn’t Compete

source: Way out there in the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars, and the End of the Cold War by Frances Fitzgerald (2000):

“As CIA analysts discovered in 1983, Soviet military spending had leveled off in 1975 to a growth rate of 1.3 %/annum, with spending for weapons procurements virtually flat. It remained that way for a decade…Soviet military spending rose in 1985 as a result of decisions taken earlier, and grew at a rate of 4.3 %/annum through 1987. Spending for procurement of offensive strategic weapons, however, increased by only 1.4 %/annum in that period…While the US military budget was growing at an average of 8 %/annum, the Soviets did not attempt to keep up, and their military spending did not rise even as might have been expected given the war they were fighting in Afghanistan.”

Were factors besides the Strategic Defense Initiative promoted by Reagan-era hardliners (including the buildup of NATO, the ‘World


the Cold War?

Ikenberry: Yes.

Theory Questions:




Kupchan: Yes.…we ought not just back away from international institutions but recommit to and revitalize them, because these institutions are the lifeblood of a world that doesn’t operate by the savage rules of the balance of power. I fear that we are scuttling these institutions because we think we can get away with it as we have so much power; but we are likely to need those institutions a few years down the road -- NATO, the UN, the Kyoto Protocol, the ICC -- only to find them in shambles. We will then have no one but ourselves to blame because it was the US that walked away.


Q12.Should the US be bound by international law and be accountable

to transnational regimes and institutions ?

Kagan: No.Americans are idealists, but they have no experience of promoting ideals successfully without power. Certainly they have no experience of successful supranational governance; little to make them place their faith in international law and international institutions, much as they might wish to…Americans…still believe in the perfectibility of man, and they retain hope for the perfectibility of the world. But they remain realists inthe limited sense that they still believe in the necessity of power in a world that remains far from perfection. Such law as there may be to regulate international behavior, they believe, exists because a power like the US defends it be force of arms.


Kupchan: Yes.…we ought not just back away from international institutions but recommit to and revitalize them, because these institutions are the lifeblood of a world that doesn’t operate by the savage rules of the balance of power. I fear that we are scuttling these institutions because we think we can get away with it as we have so much power; but we are likely to need those institutions a few years down the road -- NATO, the UN, the Kyoto Protocol, the ICC -- only to find them in shambles. We will then have no one but ourselves to blame because it was the US that walked away.


Ikenberry: Yes. Today, all roads lead to the UN and away from the neo-conservative vision of a unilateral America remaking the Middle East. The Challenge over the medium run will not be to resist UN and allied involvement, but rather, how to induce them to get invovled in the perilous Iraqi occupation.

Kupchan:Yes. rather than practicing and striving for preeminence, we should practice strategic restraint. A country that is as powerful as this country, if it is unrestrained, scares the hell out of the rest of the world. I fear that we Americans are today compromising our most precious commodity, our international legitimacy -- the sense that we are a benign power who plays by the rules.


Ikenberry: Yes. Today, all roads lead to the UN and away from the neo-conservative vision of a unilateral America remaking the Middle East. The Challenge over the medium run will not be to resist UN and allied involvement, but rather, how to induce them to get invovled in the perilous Iraqi occupation.

Kagan: No.By providing security from outside, the United States has rendered it unnecessary for Europe’s supranational government to provide it. Europe’s rejection of power politics, its devaluing of military force as a tool of IR, have depended on the presence of US military forces on EU soil. Europe’s new Kantian order could flourish only under the umbrella of American power exercised according to the rules of the old Hobbesian order. And now, in the final irony, [this] fact allows Europeans today to believe that US military power, and the “strategic culture” that has created and sustained it, are outmoded and dangerous.

Kupchan:Yes. rather than practicing and striving for preeminence, we should practice strategic restraint. A country that is as powerful as this country, if it is unrestrained, scares the hell out of the rest of the world. I fear that we Americans are today compromising our most precious commodity, our international legitimacy -- the sense that we are a benign power who plays by the rules.


Q32.Does the US need international intelligence and operational

support in the “global war on terrorism” in particular?


Kupchan: Yes. …we need Europe. We need Europe partly because some of the mosteffectivetoolsagainst terror are the quiet ones: intelligence sharing, freezing of assets, law enforcement. I have no evidence to say that this Europe-U.S. split will make cooperation in taking anti-terrorism measures harderto come by, but I bet it will be the case.

Q32.Does the US need international intelligence and operational

support in the “global war on terrorism” in particular?


Kagan: No.

Can the US handle the rest of the world without much help from Europe? The answer is that it already does. The US has maintained strategic stability in Asia with no help from Europe. In the Gulf War, European help was token; so it has been more recently in Afghanistan, where Europeans are once again “doing the dishes”; and so it [was] in an invasion of Iraq to unseat Saddam. Europe has had little to offer the US in strategic military terms since the end of the Cold War -- except, of course, that most valuable of strategic assets, a Europe at peace.

Kupchan: Yes. …we need Europe. We need Europe partly because some of the most effective tools against terror are the quiet ones: intelligence sharing, freezing of assets, law enforcement. I have no evidence to say that this Europe-U.S. split will make cooperation in taking anti-terrorism measures harderto come by, but I bet it will be the case.

Data Questions:






the Cold War?

Ikenberry: Yes.

…Fear is a dangerous and self-defeating strategy of global leadership. There is no persuasive evidence that the ‘demonstration effect’ of the Iraq War is working with NK or Iran or other troublesome states. The more likely outcome is that these regimes will continue to seek and keep nuclear weapons so as to establish some deterrence against an American invasion.



Ikenberry: Yes.



Opposing Data: Libya

- Dec. 16, 2003 -- Saddam Hussein is captured by US soldiers in Iraq

- Dec. 19, 2003 -- Libya announcesits decision to “eliminate…materials,equipments and programmeswhich lead to the production of internationally proscribed weapons

The nuclear reactor at the Tajura Nuclear Research Centre

Source: International Atomic Energy Agency, 2004

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor


Ikenberry: Yes.



Opposing Data: Libya-February 28, 2004:

President Qhaddafi tells African Economic Conference,

“Any national state that will adopt this [nuclear procurement] policy cannot protect itself. On the contrary, it would expose itself to danger.”

Libyan President and former Nuclear Pariah Muammar Qhaddafi

Source: VOA News 28 Feb, 2004

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor


Ikenberry: Yes.

American power advantages -- massive, useable and enduring -- are the linchpin of the new fundamentalist go-it-alone strategy of maintaining global order through American domination…But this strategy is premised on a radically inflated view of American power. The United States is preeminent, not omnipotent…in economic and political realms the world is not really unipolar at all.


Ikenberry: Yes.


Opposing Data: Military Dominance

Source: Globalsecurity.org 2004

0 500 1000

MilitaryExpenditures

2004(estimated) in

billions of$US

United KingdomGermanyJapanFranceRussiaChinaUnited States



the Cold War?



the Cold War?

Ikenberry: Yes.

It was not engagement, détente, ‘paper’ agreements and mutual interest that brought the Soviet Union down, but the Reagan admin’s hard-line policies…boosting military spending and putting ideological pressure on the ‘evil empire’.

This historical narrative provides the ultimate defense for hard-line fundamentalist policies. The problem is that it is flawed history. The real lesson of the end of the Cold War is that the West won because it was united. The United States led the way in building a multilateral economic and security order that generated historically unprecedented prosperity and alliance protection…The Reagan era experience shows that a single, consistent and unambiguous hard-line policy [that of the USSR] was structurally impossible to sustain within the Western order -- and this is why the Cold War ended as successfully as it did

Q62.

Opposing Data: From the horse’s mouth

source: Cold War International History Project, 2004

Gorbachev speaking to the Politburo in 1986, before Reykjavic:

“[We] will be pulled into an arms race that is beyond our capabilities, and we will lose it because we are at the limit of our capabilities…If the new round [of arms races] begins, the pressures on our economy will be unbelievable.”

Were factors besides the Strategic Defense Initiative promoted by Reagan-era hardliners (including the buildup of NATO, the ‘World


the Cold War?

Ikenberry: Yes.

Thank YouThank You

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