Iconoclast Changes Mind

The point of the Iconoclast’s endorsement is that its editorial page has changed its mind about Mr. Bush, after inspecting the record. In 2000 the paper endorsed Mr. Bush; moreover, the paper also supported the invasion of Iraq because of the threat Mr. Bush said that country represented; finally, the paper concludes, Mr. Bush let us down, none of what he claimed has turned out to be right and, therefore, the paper has arrived at the only logical conclusion: Mr. Bush must be replaced and let someone else come in to fix the mess that the Bush administration created.

But it’s not just the Iconoclast that is revising its position on Mr. Bush and Iraq. Even that bedrock of neo-conservatism, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), is reconsidering Mr. Bush’s military unilateralism. In an article entitled “The End of the Unipolar Myth,” a fellow at the AEI writes:

“With American casualties in Iraq passing 1,000, and regions of the country descending into more destructive violence, the limits of U.S. military power are on display. The Bush administration’s scramble to strike repeated compromises in Iraq, and its failure to achieve stability there, raise fundamental questions about the limits of American power.”

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“As Zbigniew Brzezinski put it recently, “Preponderance should not be confused with omnipotence.” It has been obvious since the later stages of the Vietnam War that overwhelming firepower is not enough for victory. Though the American death toll was significantly lower than the Vietnamese (58,000 versus 3 million), the superpower was unable to avoid defeat; media coverage of the devastating happenings eventually undermined credibility both at home and abroad.

The war in Iraq and its chaotic aftermath, however, highlight the basic unipolarist misconception that sophisticated military and economic power are sufficient to subdue any adversary.

The United States possesses by far the largest pile of sophisticated weaponry on earth, yet its conventional military power is severely stretched in fighting one and a quarter wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

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“The “war on terrorism,” for its part, is far more complex than a massive deployment of men and munitions against a clearly perceived enemy-state or coalition of states. In this war, terrorism is not the enemy; it is a battle tactic used by an elusive, globally dispersed, well-funded enemy. Building a worldwide coalition of allies to fight such an enemy is not a policy choice. It is the only option in a war without conventional battlefields. The formidable superiority of U.S. economic power is also under threat. The rapidly ballooning expense of the Iraq war is increasing budget deficits that were already huge. This is also intensifying a gathering U.S. fiscal crisis of growing debt, now financed by foreign capital.

Thanks to persistently large current account deficits, the United States last year borrowed from abroad at an unprecedented rate of $4 billion a day Asian, European and Middle Eastern lenders are buying what they see as dollar assets.”

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“The United States today, even with its travails in Iraq, remains much more than the world’s dominant power. As former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright once asserted, America is still the world’s “indispensable power.” It can create avoidable crises by plunging into poorly planned wars of choice, as in Iraq; or it can intervene as a coalition head to create relatively benign outcomes, as in the first Gulf war. But it would be hard to resolve a major world crisis without the active help of the United States. In other words, America continues to occupy the world’s leadership position. But it’s a board chairman’s job, requiring persuasion, the creation of consensus and discreet flexing of power, as well as popular acceptance. Its tasks cannot be performed by a lone maverick. If the United States wants to reassert itself as a widely accepted, and respected, leader of the democratic world, it will have to carry the world with it. Its efforts will fail if it continues to believe it can wield unilateral power indefinitely in a unipolar world.”

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http://www.aei.org/news/filter.all,newsID.21288/news_detail.asp

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For more on the American Enterprise Institute see here.