The national interest and calculations of power

The fundamental truism of foreign policy is that there is always a gap between the desirable and the obtainable. How wide that gap is depends on the power of a given state; for this country, arguably, the apex of power came in 1945. Since then, while we have indeed grown stronger, others have grown, in toto, more so.

I mention this because certain people on the right seem incapable of understanding that there are indeed limitations on American power, which have grown more stark in the last few years, ever since George Bush threw the concept of the national interest overboard in the decision to invade Iraq.

The national interest is a curious thing; Lord Palmerston said once that "England has no eternal allies or everlasting enemies, only permanent interests". Our national interest is broadly defined as stability; this country is a classic status-quo power like 19th-century Britain. We desire, and will fight for, democratic peace in Europe and the Pacific Rim, because that's who we trade with; we desire stability, with or without democratic niceties, in the Mideast and Latin America; in the latter, we also tend to intervene when some country gets too friendly with a power we deem unfriendly to our interests, as Chile found in 1973.

This is a largely stable and self-sustaining system of what could be called informal empire; the countries in the American orbit have a large stake in remaining so, because that orbit is essentially synonymous with the developed world. Undergirding this system are multi-lateral institutions like the UN, which is very much a tool of the American interest despite the rantings of the usual suspects, the WTO, the World Bank and so on. We're also, in one of the few things I am willing to give the Bush people credit for, pursuing an understanding - an entente, if you will - with India, as a balance to China. That policy, of course, was pioneered by Bill Clinton.

What has changed in the Bush era is that the former pre-eminence of stability has been changed to one that stresses 'fighting terrorism'. Below that surface is a willingness to shake things up, as it were; hence, Iraq, and perhaps soon, Iran. The problem with this new approach is two-fold: first, our underlying interest in stability hasn't changed; and second, when we create instability, it requires adequate resources to contain and manage. These resources so-called small-government conservatism is fundamentally unable to provide; there will be no draft, for example, and certainly not a tax increase to pay for whatever we need to manage this new chaos. Nor is it at all clear that 'terrorism' requires this shift in policy; or more to the point, it is reasonably clear that instability aids terrorists, as in, again, Iraq. The same can be said for democratic change; Hamas comes to mind.

Consider North Korea. Bill Clinton had the intent and ability to strike that country; George Bush, with two thirds of the Army not ready for combat due to Iraq, does not. In direct consequence, the North Koreans saw fit to launch a rocket we had made clear we did not wish to see launched on the 4th of July. The loss of face from that is pretty drastic - for us. The lack of a response from us to an outright provocation is the clearest indication of the new limits on American power.

In terms of long-term strategy, the Bush legacy, it seems clear, will be instability that other administrations may, or may not, have the will and ability to manage. That is unfortunate, not merely for its own sake, but because of the newest challenge to confront the post-1989 system; that, of course, is China. That country is going to be, in my mind, the Germany of this century. Germany, of course, grew too strong after its unification in 1871 for the European balance of power to contain or accomodate it; the result were two world wars. What we should be doing right now and in the decades to come is not to waste blood and treasure in a Mideast that will be irrelevant as soon as the oil runs out; rather, we should be integrating China into the existing world order, and preparing to balance it simultaneously. To be sure, China has huge problems, but these problems pale next to its potential power.

The problem with focusing on 'terrorism' is this: we are not taking into account what should be the most natural basis of policy: that intentions are not capabilities. Of course Al Qaeda is dangerous and has goals that would be nightmarish if they were implemented - by the way, us liberals don't support an ideology that relegates women to second-class status, shreds the separation of church and state, and so on, just for record - but policy is never made based on intentions alone. Rather, the deciding factor in crafting policy is the ability of your opponent to implement his goals. Considering the huge imbalance in power between ourselves and a rag-tag bunch of goat herds, what the hell are they going to do? As the saying goes, you and what army? That's something this country needs to learn, instead of literally leaping from crisis into crisis.

That's the national interest of this country. Too bad this government does not have the intellectual tools at its disposal to discern, let alone act on it.