 | | | | by Brendan O'Neill |
As the transatlantic spat over Iraq continues, one thing has become clear: unilateralism is out.
| None of the major powers wants to be seen to be 'going it alone' over the Iraqi crisis. America and Britain are sticking together on the pro-invasion front, and have won the support of Eastern European states in what some are calling 'the new NATO'. The French/German/Belgian axis is demanding further weapons inspections, claiming to be upholding the principles of the United Nations in its stand against America's rush to militarism.
| According to one commentator, the old-style clash of the great powers has been replaced by a 'clash of multilateralisms' - with one side holding out for a 'strong, militaristic multilateralism' and the other calling for a 'determined diplomatic multilateralism'. In truth, behind the multilateral-speak of modern international relations, the big powers appear to be pursuing their own interests under the guise of an increasingly fictitious 'international community'. In an age when unilateralism is frowned upon, national interests dare not speak their name.
| Unilateralism has become the dirty word of international relations. Consider how the U-word has become the insult to end all insults among the major powers. French prime minister Lionel Jospin has chastised American unilateralism over the war on terror, claiming that 'for my government, the world must operate on international principles and rules negotiated by all, accepted by all and adopted for the benefit of all' (1).
| Others attack the USA for acting unilaterally over the Kyoto Protocol and missile defence (2). Some liberal commentators even criticise the Bush administration's AIDS spending as a unilateral act. In his January State of the Union address, Bush said he would commit $15billion to combating AIDS around the world, but because 90 percent of the money would go 'into projects directly administered by US agencies' he was chastised for being unilateral (3). According to the Boston Globe: 'AIDS activists said the proposal suggests that the US wants to act unilaterally and does not trust global coalitions.' (4)
| Writing in the right-wing National Review, US journalist Matthew Baise claims the U-word has become 'a favourite of those who wish to heap shame on the US for its carelessness of the feelings of other nations', and calls on US leaders to continue asserting our 'self-interest' (5). No doubt it's true that Bush critics are using the unilateralist tag to have a go at America, but America has not responded by defending its right to act unilaterally. On the contrary, in recent months US leaders have thrown the unilateralist insult back at their critics.
| | | US leaders throw the unilateralist insult back at their critics |
| President Bush has consistently played down America's alleged Empire-ambitions over Iraq. On 11 November 2002, Bush declared: 'We have no territorial ambitions, we don't seek an Empire.' (6) Instead he flagged up how 'we and our allies have fought evil regimes and left in place self-governing and prosperous nations', and claimed that only a unified stand against Iraq can succeed. 'We work better as a posse', he said.
| Even Richard Perle, a leading Pentagon hawk on all matters military, utters the word unilateralism as a poisonous slur these days. At the end of last year, Perle was asked about German politicians' accusations that America is seeking to act unilaterally over Iraq - and far from defending America going it alone, Perle accused Germany of trying selfishly to do its own thing. 'For the German chancellor to say he will have nothing to do with action against Saddam Hussein, even if approved by the United Nations, is unilateralism', said Perle (7).
| As for those 'cheese-eating surrender monkeys' (as one US commentator describes the French) - apparently their moral cowardice is only outflanked by their nasty unilateralist tendencies. In response to French claims that America is acting unilaterally over Iraq, US commentators have pointed to the Ivory Coast as an example of 'France's own unilateral action'. According to the Washington Post, 'France's solitary stance in the Ivory Coast jars with its opposition to any unilateral US move on Iraq' (8).
| Behind the Bushies' bellicose rhetoric about Iraq, US leaders seem to be ever-more cautious about taking firm unilateral action in international affairs. So instead of telling the UN, France or Germany to get lost, Bush officials have gone back to Europe again and again, in an attempt to shore up multilateral support for launching military strikes against Saddam's regime.
| There may be heated exchanges between America and Europe, but the Bush administration's response to France and Germany's dithering has not been to ditch these 'Old European' states, but to seek some level of transatlantic agreement. After weeks of European leaders expressing their concern about war, Bush officials, according to the New York Times, threatened to 'confront France, Germany and other sceptics of military action against Iraq by demanding that they agree publicly that Iraq has defied the UN Security Council' (9). Instead of saying au revoir to the French and Germans, or publicly upbraiding them, US policy seems to be to search for a lowest common denominator that they can all agree on.
| This is reflected in Britain and America's new strategy in relation to the UN - to get at least nine votes from the UN Security Council's 15 members, and from that position challenge France, Russia or China to dare veto the will of the UN majority. As the New York Times points out, just a month ago both Britain and the USA were 'still hoping for unanimous Council approval' - now they seem so desperate for some sort of UN approval that they are willing to settle for a simple majority and for abstentions from France, Russia and China.
| | | America has sought support among the former foot soldiers of the 'Evil Empire' |
| In the absence of Western European support, the USA has sought a coalition elsewhere, among its former sworn enemies of Eastern Europe - some of which states are still led by the old communist leaders who were once the foot soldiers of the 'Evil Empire'. US secretary of state Colin Powell boasts that 'at least a dozen' countries are on board America's pro-invasion train, while one US commentator hails 'the former communist states of Central and Eastern Europe that have emerged as some of Washington's strongest diplomatic allies' as the real 'new Europe' (10).
| In the post-Cold War world, unilateral action has become a no-go zone for the major powers. No nation - whether America, Britain, France or Germany - seems keen to do their own thing in international affairs, instead seeking alliances wherever and whenever they can find them. Why? Two post-Cold War trends had a lasting detrimental impact on the idea of taking unilateral action: Western powers' conservative instinct to keep multilateral institutions together in the aftermath of the Cold War; and the rise of the supposedly selfless 'humanitarian intervention' of the 1990s.
| With the end of the Cold War in the late 1980s and early 90s, many predicted that there would be renewed clashes between the great powers. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 - and the unravelling of the anti-communist alliance that had bound Western states together in the postwar period - led to concern that America's global dominance might be challenged by European powers, especially the newly united Germany.
| Consider some of the headlines from American foreign policy journals in the early 1990s: 'Averting anarchy in the New Europe'…'The Unipolar Illusion: why new great powers will rise'…'International Primacy: is the game worth the candle?'. These give a sense of the kind of fears that were occupying American minds in the post-Cold War period - fears about new power clashes between Western elites and the burden of America's unipolar position in the New World Order.
| Yet for all the concern about new big power conflicts, explicit Western tensions were subsumed beneath a broader caution in the heady months and years after the end of the Cold War. In response to the uncertainty that came at the end of the Cold War, Western elites were keen to keep a hold of as much of the past as they could. They tried desperately to hold on to the certainties of the international framework that had defined the postwar decades, and to find new and meaningful roles for old Cold War institutions like the UN and NATO (see What now for NATO?, by Brendan O'Neill).
| In this confused period, Western powers were not inclined towards unilateral action, or anything else that might upset the already fragile international order. Rather, as the postwar alliances unravelled in the 1990s, the major powers' instinct was to try desperately to keep them together. President George Bush senior spent the early 1990s making speeches about 'adapting and renewing NATO for the New World Order', while European leaders talked up a 'new UN for a new world'.
| | | Humanitarian intervention created an inversion of power in international relations |
| The rise of humanitarian intervention further impacted on notions of unilateral or self-interested action on the world stage. Throughout the 1990s, foreign intervention was increasingly justified in humanitarian terms. Everywhere from Somalia and Bosnia, to Kosovo and Afghanistan, Western powers claimed to be intervening abroad, not out of selfish, territorial or economic interests, but for the welfare and rights of those less fortunate than us in the West.
| In reality, humanitarian intervention was largely staged for a domestic audience, rather then being driven by concern for people around the world. Military action became an attempt to invest Western elites with a sense of moral purpose that was lacking in the domestic sphere - and to present their foreign interventions as altruistic and internationalist rather than self-serving.
| But for all the hoped-for benefits of humanitarianism, such interventions started to remove explicit notions of Western power from international affairs - instead making foreign intervention contingent on helping others, delivering human rights and generally doing the right thing for the third world. Consequently, any idea of military intervention that put Western interests before anybody else's became increasingly unacceptable - which is one reason why, to this day, Western powers are defensive about accusations of launching wars for oil, prestige, Empire or anything else that smacks of their own selfish agendas.
| The 1990s era of humanitarian intervention created something of an inversion of power in international relations. Military might was increasingly called up in the name of helping poor and beleaguered peoples around the globe. The most powerful were not those who were the most assertive or self-interested, but those who did the most to push humanitarianism around the world. Western elites continually denied having imperial or territorial ambitions and claimed to have no selfish or strategic interest in other nation's affairs. And this further undermined notions of unilateral action on the world stage.
| The impact of the humanitarian agenda on the assertion of Western power can be seen most starkly in the trajectory of the current Bush administration. Before coming to power in 2000, Bush and co promised that, unlike President Clinton before them, they would prioritise America's 'national interest' over notions of an 'international community' in foreign affairs. Yet after 11 September 2001, less than a year into their administration and in the aftermath of the biggest-ever terrorist attack on American soil, the Bush administration attempted to justify their Afghan intervention and the broader war on terror in the language of humanitarianism.
| The end result is a world order where the major powers are cautious and defensive about asserting their interests explicitly. Over Iraq, the USA is increasingly hiding behind the fig leaf of British support and Eastern European compliance to give its planned attack on Iraq a cover of internationalism. And France and Germany are asserting their own preferred outcome for the Iraq crisis under the cover of the UN and 'traditional European values'.
Brendan O'Neill is coordinating the spiked-conference Panic attack: Interrogating our obsession with risk, on Friday 9 May 2003, at the Royal Institution in London.
Read on:
What now for NATO?, by Brendan O'Neill
Iraq: inspecting the situation, by Brendan O'Neill
spiked-issue: War on Iraq
(1) Discours à l'occasion des 'Dialogues pour la Terre', Speech by Lionel Jospin, 22 February 2002
(2) Unilateralism's not a bad word, Matthew Baise, National Review, 14 March 2002
(3) Big spending on AIDS seen as go-it-alone plan, Boston Globe, 30 January 2003
(4) Big spending on AIDS seen as go-it-alone plan, Boston Globe, 30 January 2003
(5) Unilateralism's not a bad word, Matthew Baise, National Review, 14 March 2002
(6) Bush warns of 'full force' against Iraq, if needed, Reuters, 12 November 2002
(7) Europe lacks moral fibre, says US hawk, Guardian, 13 November 2002
(8) Fears grow of French 'mission creep' in Ivory Coast, Washington Post, 24 December 2002
(9) US set to defy that allies agree Iraq is defying UN, Steven R Weisman, New York Times, 23 January 2003
(10) Continental divide, David R Sands, Washington Times, 9 February 2003
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