Une parole franche

As a young researcher, Francis Fukuyama changed the landscape of American political science discourse by his remarkably well timed and well argued description of a new paradigm to inform foreign policy in The End of History (1992). For our analysis of this seminal work and of the author’s later writings, read on…

This four-part analytical article reviews Zbigniew Brzezinski’s post-Cold War writings, from 1997 to 2008.

This four-part analytical article reviews Zbigniew Brzezinski’s post-Cold War writings, from 1997 to 2008.

An analysis of the latest book (2004) by Harvard Professor Joseph Nye setting out the principles of 'smart power,' a PR approach to managing foreign policy which the Obama Administration has taken to heart.

Bizarre ou non, mais les russes se présentent aujourd’hui comme des jeunes - une force très créatrice pour la restructuration du monde dans une direction plus démocratique, plus balancée et plus ouverte aux changements économiques, militaires et politiques dans le monde. La preuve est évidente dans les résultats des réunions des pays BRIC et du Shanghai Cooperation Organisation la semaine passée à Ekaterinbourg. Au meme temps les américains, même les meilleurs conseilleurs du President Barack Obama, s’enlisent dans la pensée de la Guerre Froide – et ils se présentent comme des vieillards

par Gilbert Doctorow

A review of the most recent writings of the leading foreign affairs theorist of America's Neoconservative movement.  Revised 24 February 2010

Dans un article publié hier M. Soros donne des instructions à l’Europe pour contrarier une Russie méchante à ses frontières orientales. Mais le bon professeur ne révèle pas dans son article ses péchés du spéculateur dans la période de capitalisme sauvage à Moscou.

Une Note par Gilbert Doctorow

Mis à jour et complété le 13.02.2009

Pour les américains du camp Néoconservatrice leur domination de l’OTAN ne suffit pas; il faut encore impliquer l’Union Européen dans la projection de force dans le monde sous une tutelle américaine. M. Ronald Asmus nous donne l’explication du mécanisme par lequel les Etats-Unis peuvent donner une politique étrangère manquée à l’Europe.

Une Note par Gilbert Doctorow

AN OPEN LETTER TO SENATOR HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON

To: Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton

U.S. Senate

476 Russell Senate Office Building

Washington, DC 20510

From: Gilbert Doctorow

Brussels, Belgium

Subject: Secretary of State Clinton

Madame Secretary:

Congratulations on your impending nomination and certain confirmation as our next Secretary of State!

In the two months remaining before you assume your new position as dominant influencer and implementer in the sole area of government policy that is truly the domain of the Executive Branch and as third in succession of authority in the federal government, allow me to respectfully ask you to get Real.

By that I mean to put aside the tough talk on foreign policy, the jingoism that maybe was required to further your electoral chances in the right-of-center American heartland and to look at the issues you will be facing in office with fresh, un-ideological eyes, on how best to serve the interests and protect the whole American people and not just certain strata who have profited these past 15 years from the neo-imperialist policies that your husband, with the very dedicated assistance of Secretary Madeleine Albright, put in place and which George W. Bush merely carried to their devastating final conclusions.

In his 2003 study of American intellectual history and military/foreign policy entitled American Empire, Professor Andrew Bacevich, very convincingly delineated all of the elements of a home-grown American imperial ideology that go back to the 1890s and were resuscitated and given new vitality in the post-Cold War administrations of George Bush Senior, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. In the second half of that book, he demonstrates how nearly all of the elements of George W’s hateful policies - the unilateralism, the militarization of foreign policy, the massive outsourcing of intelligence and military operations to private service providers (mercenaries), the proliferation of military interventions either directly or by proxy, the distortion of NATO into a toolkit for American hegemony, the alienation of friends and the provocation of competitors on the world stage (BRIC) – all of this took form in the second term in office of your spouse.

Speaking with declared enemies like Iran, Syria, North Korea and seeking diplomatic solutions to the world’ hotspots as advocated by your new boss, President Barack Obama, constitute a good contribution to changing the atmosphere of world relations. But ‘change we can believe in’ in the sphere of international affairs will take a lot more than improved atmospherics. This is all the more true given your boss’s own susceptibilities to the “Carter syndrome” – the active defense of “human rights” in the world at large that effectively is as dangerous for world peace as Mr Bush’s attempts to spread democracy by force of arms.

The balance between respect for state sovereignty and respect for human rights was violated irrevocably by Bill Clinton’s military intervention in Kosovo in 1998. The recent spat over recognition of Kosovo’s independence, followed by a spat over the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia are just the first indications of what acrimony lies ahead if this source of instability in international affairs is not addressed and corrected. It will be your great challenge and opportunity to move the world onto safer paths by reassuming more traditional policies of respect for other nation-states.

Another major challenge will be in the area of building international security structures suitable to the post-Cold War era. With the assistance of Cold Warrior Madeleine Albright, your husband failed miserably in this task. The attempts to convert US-dominated NATO into the replacement for the United Nations Security Council and to use it to subvert any efforts by Old Europe to put in place its own independent rapid deployment force have brought the world to its present confrontational condition. Russian and Chinese objections to the US hegemony are not “resurgences” of any variety. They are merely the logical self-defense of states under attack from our ill-considered policies based on near-term selfishness and red-neck populism.

You have the opportunity to rein in American foreign policy objectives to those which genuinely correspond to national interest while recognizing the rights of other nations to have and to defend their own interests as well. By proactively bringing the BRIC countries into the inner councils of the world’s economic and security structures, you will harness their dynamism for the common good instead of inciting their obstructionism as goes on at present. As things are now, the world is well on a course similar to that preceding World War I, where the major powers gave blank checks to young, unbalanced and irresponsible powers (read: the Baltic States, Poland, Georgia) while major politicians of both parties in the USA speak as if the challenges of the day were pre-WWII ( meaning issues of appeasement). In effect, both political parties have swallowed without question the framework of analysis given us by the Neoconservatives . It is high time that Democrats like yourself and President Obama extricated themselves from the blinkered ideology of Messrs Fukuyama, Kagan and Company and restored America to what it was for so long – a pragmatic and hope- rather than fear-driven nation..

You and your new boss should recognize that it would be a bitter irony for the Administration of the nation’s first President of Afro-American heritage to perpetuate the White Man’s Burden that your husband’s and George W. Bush’s foreign policies embodied. It is high time to recognize that the world is not a kindergarten, that other nations and their leaders are mature and self-aware, even if they are not democratic and that, left to their own devices, they will find, sooner or later, solutions to their problems without our taking sides on every issue, putting our thumbs on the scales in matters that concern them vastly more than they concern us.

By scaling back our foreign policy objectives in this manner, by curtailing our overblown network of military bases everywhere, you will promote world peace and you will save the nation further shameful entanglements and murderous campaigns that have rightfully brought disgrace on us these past 7 years.

© Gilbert Doctorow, 2008