Masters of Illusion American Leadership in the Media Age Phần 2 ppsx

P1: FCW 0521857449c02 Printer: cupusbw CUNY475B/Rosefielde 0 521 85744 9 November 3, 2006 11:50 28 National Security in the New Age Soviet Union the world was relatively unchanging on its political surface. The two superpowers and their alliances grappled for advantage with the threat of nuclear annihilation keeping the contest within bounds (although, as we shall see, only barely). But underneath the surface great changes were in the making. The sudden collapse of the Soviet Union issued in a new world in which the new currents suddenly broke to the surface and flowed more strongly. There is a current of economic advance in east Asia – the Asian economic miracle that is real and of enormous significance, thrusting China to the forefront of geopolitics; there is a current of revolution in the Arab world that has now drawn much of the world into its ferment and to which we refer as terrorism; there is a current of American economic, technological and military leadership that make it the sole superpower; there is a current of moral and economic weakening that suddenly has left Russia fractured but strongly armed; and there is a current of finished business that left the close alliance between the United States and Western Europe against the Soviets obsolete. These currents, now racing along the surface of the international order, bring with them impatient demands for change. Rising powers insist on recognition; new aspirations demand to be satisfied. Yet there is in inter- national relations an enormous inertia. Change is often accompanied by turmoil; but the international system seeks quietude. It is a principle of today’s international community advanced by its primarily European advo- cates that the avoidance of war is the central objective of the system. But where change is necessary, can peaceful means alone accommodate it; and if there is no risk of war, will any advantage of importance be relinquished to a current have-not? Hence, our focus on avoiding war is coupled with an implicit support for the status quo. Ye t the world is changing very much. Some nations are growing and strengthening; others are declining and weakening. Change is inevitable, but if we provide no mechanism for it, then a cause for war is supplied. Conflict is often not sought for itself, but is a symptom of a change that needs to be made. Despite our attempts to preserve peace and to keep change in the world within narrow boundaries, the untidy globe keeps bubbling. Of all the states (more than one hundred) in existence in the world in 1914, only eight escaped a violent change of government between then and the early 1990s. 12 Change of a dramatic nature is very common and to anticipate stability in a world in which economics and demographics are rapidly altering is another form of wishful thinking – wishing to escape the hard work of accommodating large scale change among nations. P1: FCW 0521857449c02 Printer: cupusbw CUNY475B/Rosefielde 0 521 85744 9 November 3, 2006 11:50 Long-Term Economic Realism 29 Order in the world must conform to the realities of economic power that is changing fast. So the world order must change. When the world changes and the world order does not, great conflict ensues. The reason the peace of Versailles after World War I didn’t last, but gave way instead to World WarIIwas that the Versailles peace “conformed neither to history, nor to geography, nor to economics.” 13 Strategy and leadership are most important in international relations. Forexample, the sudden change in the Palestinian situation in the winter of 2005 was due to a change in the strategic setting in the Middle East as a result of the removal of Saddam Hussein from the leadership of Iraq, and the death of Yasser Arafat. Saddam’s replacement removed a strong support for the violence inPalestine,and Arafat’s deathremoveda leader who had apersonal agenda and a particular political base and commitment to tactics which caused him to support violence. Absent the change in the strategic situation caused by theAmerican invasion of Iraq, and the change inleadership caused by the removal of Saddam and Yasser Arafat from the scene, the prolonged violent stalemate between Israel and the Palestinians would have continued without a new effort for accommodation. It was these two changes that were necessary – in strategic situation and in leadership – and all the commentary focusing on other factors for the four years previously was simply irrelevant verbosity. Buteveninthe Middle East American leaders seem afraid of dramatic change. The inclination of the United States to support the status quo ante, whatever it may be, is evident in the approach we’ve taken to Iraq. We have tried to preserve the unity of the country, even though there are strong reasons for not doing so, including that Iraq was cobbled together with little rhymeorreason by colonial powers after World War I. But our leadership lacks the vision to either dismantle Iraq or include it as a whole in some broader unity within the Arab world – either of which might be a better solution than trying to stick the country together again. 14 The United States could have divided Iraq in three; then held oil revenues as incentive for the regions to work out peace – by unity, federation, or peaceful separation. Alternatively, we might have forced Iraq into a wider federation with Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. We did neither. Such actions need boldness of concept as well as of action. Modern American administrations sometime act boldly, but never think boldly. The challenge to the American president is to lead modifications in the international order that are required by the dramatic changes underway, and in order to do so to gain the support of an electorate mislead by public culture. P1: FCW 0521857449c02 Printer: cupusbw CUNY475B/Rosefielde 0 521 85744 9 November 3, 2006 11:50 30 National Security in the New Age PRESIDENTIAL CANDOR How should a leader deal with a gullible public, largely uninformed about history and about events abroad, and subject to manipulation by partisan opponents? Plato addressed the issue more than two thousand years ago. He con- cluded, “If anyone at all is to have the privilege of lying, the rulers of the state should be the persons; and they in their dealings either with enemies or with their own citizens, may be allowed to lie for the public good.” 15 We make very different demands on our presidents in the United States today. We ask that they be candid with us about what they are doing and why. This is part of the idealism of our public culture. It is a total denial of the essence of diplomacy (or of cocktail party etiquette), which holds it polite to conceal opinions and motives that might offend another. But there is something to be said for it in a democracy, in which the electorate cannot be properly informed without honest communication from the nation’s leadership. Public trust in America in leaders in all fields continues to drop. In this environment, silence, denial and closed door decision making are almost always interpreted as evidence of bad faith. 16 The new maturity of the American people, limited though it is, may permit more candor in presidential communication and thereby point a way out of the current morass of distrust. The opportunity offers three key things for American political leadership: r It may be possible for a president to act militarily with the full support of the American people, quite unlike the situation in Vietnam; Americans are in general savvy enough to understand presidential leadership offered honestly in a cold logic of defense grounded in a necessary geopolitical orientation; and r It may now be possible for a president to lead Americans in our defense without either the complete cynicism of Old World power politics or the wishful thinking of overly ambitious schemes to remake the world in our own image. r There may be a role for deception in tactical operations, where surprise is often the difference between life and death for soldiers and between success and failure for the mission. But in matters of basic strategy, what we are doing and why, then deception, especially for momentary political gain, usually is found out and the results – U.S. citizens slowly realizing that they have been betrayed by their country – are both irreversible and unfortunate. At the least, people are confused about objectives and don’t know what they should do to support them. At the worst, people P1: FCW 0521857449c02 Printer: cupusbw CUNY475B/Rosefielde 0 521 85744 9 November 3, 2006 11:50 Long-Term Economic Realism 31 cease to trust the government. Fearing distrust, the government goes to increasing lengths to try to salvage falsehoods, and so digs itself into a deeper and deeper hole. In such a circumstance, success can be perceived as failure, and the world turned upside down. The best policy for an American government is that suggested by a father to a daughter in the movie Moonstruck:“Tellthem the truth, Dear. You might as well. They find out anyway.” r Examples are readily available in recent American history. Lyndon Johnson was bitterly attacked when it was discovered that the Gulf of To nkin resolution, which played an important part in the initial justi- fication of the Vietnam War, was based on an incident the significance of which had been much exaggerated. And Richard Nixon was as bit- terly criticized when he gained support for his presidential bid in 1968 by promising that he had a plan to exit the Vietnam war, and then expanded the fighting into Cambodia in May 1970. Because of the unwillingness of political leaders to be candid with the public about threats and their objectives in choosing how to meet them, a promising new approach that is well fitted to the new sorts of dangers facing the United States is likely to be discarded with an increasingly unpopular war. It is na ¨ ıve to suggest that political leaders can be completely candid; this violates basic norms of diplomacy. The White House must always weigh the value of the truth against its cost, said a high official of the Clinton administration to us. “Often the cost of candor is too great, and the White House can’t tell the truth.” The current predilection of American administrations for posturing about moral motives while making plans and taking actions based on more realistic assessments of international situations is certain to create massive distrust in periods longer than a few months. This doesn’t mean that we should abandon objectivity, but rather that we should be much more mod- est about moralizing. We favor sophisticated candor, in which there is honesty about strategic aims, but not na ¨ ıve recounting of unnecessary detail. Being a master of illusion entails telling people how things seem, and how we need to cope with imponderables, as a counter to wishful thinking, deceitful or otherwise. At thecoreof thechallenge to American leadership inthese times isto address successfullycounter arguments that insist thatthere are nothreats otherthan those posed by misunderstandings or our own actions threatening others. Forexample,it is argued that because Iraq was apparently not involved in the P1: FCW 0521857449c02 Printer: cupusbw CUNY475B/Rosefielde 0 521 85744 9 November 3, 2006 11:50 32 National Security in the New Age attack on the World Trade Center, it was not a legitimate target of terrorist activity. By this standard, Nazi Germany – which was never informed by Japan of the attack on Pearl Harbor until after it occurred and played no role in the attack – was not a legitimate target of American arms during World War II. Unless a President can address successfully arguments of this type, he cannot lead effectively in the modern world. The probability is our country will always have inadequate presidents, partisan media, and citizen misperceptions. The inadequacy of leadership lies in the inability of presidents to either select a proper course or to com- municate it persuasively to the public, or both. The roots of the limitations of American presidential leadership lie in the attitude of the electorate toward issues of foreign policy (specifically, the lack of historical knowledge and the emphasis on domestic concerns), the selection process for presidential can- didates (which emphasizes partisanship and exaggerates the strength of the extremes in both parties), and the character of the public culture (with its emphasis on the immediate versus the middle and long term, its preference for sensationalism and partisanship rather than accuracy, and its projec- tion of our own values onto other cultures). Each of these factors can be altered, but efforts so far have been largely unavailing and a serious effort to address all three at once is not currently on the horizon. The best that can be hoped for is some advance in each arena, perhaps as a partial result of studies like this one that may raise a bit the consciousness of the public about these issues. Forewarned by studies such as this, the great strength of the American democracy which arises from the energy and commitment of its people may again redress the shortcomings of its leadership. CHAPTER 2: KEY POINTS 1. America has changed since 9/11; there is a new maturity and objectivity about international threats which is in conflict with our dominant public culture. It is possible that our national leadership can seize the opportunity to be more candid with the American people about the threats we face and the appropriate ways to counter them, wherever our leaders aren’t themselves befuddled by our public culture. 2. Country-by-country analysis doesn’t work in realistically assessing national security threats. The world is full of interrelations and complexities; so that things are often done indirectly. The public cul- ture has no patience for these complexities, and simplifies to a degree that reality is lost. P1: FCW 0521857449c02 Printer: cupusbw CUNY475B/Rosefielde 0 521 85744 9 November 3, 2006 11:50 Long-Term Economic Realism 33 3. Instead of country-by-country relationships, there are vortexes of dan- ger in different regions of the world and in the possible alliance of rivals wherever they are located. 4. We seek an approachtointernational policythat is objectiveand consis- tent. We are fact-driven and, as economists, bring quantitative analysis to usually largely qualitative discussions about national security policy in which quantitative information gets muddled in the confusion of our public culture. 5. There are four significant threats to America from abroad at this time. They are, in sequence of crisis over the next three decades: terrorism, Russian remilitarization, Chinese nationalistic ambitions and military modernization, and the distant rivalry of a integrated European state. Since the terrorist attacks on 9/11, we have focused primarily on the first risk: terrorism. Although attention to terror is warranted, we must not lose sight of thefact thatterror is a series oftragic incidents, whereas nuclear war with Russia,China androgue states remains a mortal threat to our national survival. Military skirmishes should they occur with the Eu will be conventional. P1: FCW 0521857449c02 Printer: cupusbw CUNY475B/Rosefielde 0 521 85744 9 November 3, 2006 11:50 34 P1: FCW 0521857444c03 Printer: cupusbw CUNY475B/Rosefielde 0 521 85744 9 November 3, 2006 11:58 part t wo AMERICAN PUBLIC CULTURE AND THE WORLD A mericans have big illusions about the world that keep our nation from countering threats effectively. These illusions are embodied in the nation’s public culture. It’s national in scope, and extraordinarily resistant to change, despite a changing world. Illusions generated by public culture are very broad in their appeal – reaching across the ideological spectrum and appealing to both conservatives and liberals. 35 P1: FCW 0521857444c03 Printer: cupusbw CUNY475B/Rosefielde 0 521 85744 9 November 3, 2006 11:58 36 P1: FCW 0521857444c03 Printer: cupusbw CUNY475B/Rosefielde 0 521 85744 9 November 3, 2006 11:58 three “Smooth Comforts False” – The Illusions That Confuse Us Smooth comforts false, worse than true wrongs. Shakespeare, HenryIV,Part II, lines 39–40 We have become accustomed to preconceiving world events. The public culture of a country expresses these preconceptions, and many of us accept them uncritically and are strongly committed to them. Convictions planted in us by our public culture are nearly unshakable because they are reinforced continually. Shakespeare got it right in HenryIVwhen he wrote “smooth comforts false, worse than wrongs” – in part because we recognize wrongs for what they are and try to right them; but smooth comforts that are false, the illusions of public culture, are not recognized as wrong and we do not erect defenses against them or try to correct them. “Man’s general way of behaving,” Maimonides wrote, “is to be influenced by his neighbors and friends – letting his customs be like the customs of the people of the country.” America has a very distinct public culture – a set of “socially” approved ideas about what the world ought to be. These ‘idols,’ as Francis Bacon observed centuries, ago garble public discourse by confusing us as to what is reality and by tempting us to try to make the world like we wish it were. Every nation has its own “self-evident” values, a popular culture that shapes approved attitudes and establishes rules of permissible partisan debate. The benefits of consensus in a world roiled by contentious pri- vate interests, the elusiveness of truth, and ethical ambiguities make some common ground imperative. Central to our public culture are values involving democracy, economic liberty, social justice, tolerance, diversity, equal opportunity, conflict avoid- ance, reason and progress. Opinions differ about the application of these concepts. Is balloting in authoritarian states democracy? Is preemption 37 [...]... At the start of the 1990s, Russia slipped into a severe economic crisis The proper reaction was economic crisis management, something we do for ourselves and others frequently The most recent severe crises we’ve dealt with were in Southeast Asia at the time of the financial crisis (beginning in 1997) and in Argentina (beginning after the turn of the millennium and leading to default on the country’s international... unlikely and, in some instances, the unthinkable.”8 But, of course, exactly such a classic struggle for domination is underway, with all the other powers accusing the United States of leading the contest and the United States denying that it is initiating any such struggle In September 20 05, former President Clinton assured the people of the world that “one thing is clear – the vast majority of us, from... participating in the kind of system the United States has tried to build China’s growing economic might and diplomatic sophistication enable it to achieve more of its objectives within the kind of international system the Untied States hopes to stabilize in Asia China and the United States seem closer to a genuine meeting of the minds than ever before.” 12 “China’s move to the market and opening to the outside... liberals in the United States today accept the peculiar idealism that is the result of the combination of the two doctrines and is the capstone of our public culture Because these illusions are incorrect and misleading, their general acceptance in our public culture is insidious and dangerous Public culture is able to exert an astonishing in uence over our perception of events, causing us to react in inappropriate... business interests more than the needy, while continuously shifting the burden onto the middle class Republicans talk about defense, but their actions are often inconsistent, while Democrats who stress peaceful diplomacy are frequently aggressively interventionist Both parties pay homage to the American credo, and drape themselves in the flag insisting they are acting in the national interest, but in. .. PUBLIC CULTURE The persistence of the illusions of American public culture in the face of widening global inequity, world wars, genocide, terrorism and emerging new great power threats is more than a matter of failed individual intellect 11:58 P1: FCW 0 521 857444c03 Printer: cupusbw 56 CUNY475B/Rosefielde 0 521 85744 9 November 3, 20 06 American Public Culture and the World Wishful thinking about American free... more often than not is countervailed by the contradictory goals of some of its constituencies The perpetual expansion of business friendly state programs winds up expanding the size of government, ballooning the national debt, and shifting the burden to consumers instead of putting more money in their pockets Democrats match this by expanding social programs in ways that often benefit government administrators,... behavior Increasing economic power for a nation has often been used to strengthen it for conflict; this was certainly the case for Germany in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, for Japan in the twentieth century and for the Soviet Union in the twentieth century There is good reason to fear that it will be so for China in the twenty-first century The Chinese leadership are aware of the history of Germany,... New World Order In fact, only toward the end of the decade, riding the wave of the information revolution, did a new order begin to assert itself It is based not on the old balance -of- power equation, but on the key pillars of globalization, democracy, American pre-eminence, and collective problem solving The Cold War order was organized around the clash of opposing theories about the best way to... suspect So, the growth picture is very mixed, and those that are growing are leaving the others behind Some observers appreciated early the continuing risks of conflict In the spring of 20 00 a major foreign policy journal carried three articles on Russia dealing respectively with economic decline, political instability, and the supposed coming breakup of the Russian Federation respectively There was also . relations. Forexample, the sudden change in the Palestinian situation in the winter of 20 05 was due to a change in the strategic setting in the Middle East as a result of the removal of Saddam Hussein from the leadership. others frequently. The most recent severe crises we’ve dealt with were in Southeast Asia at the time of the financial crisis (beginning in 1997) and in Argentina (beginning after the turn of the. liberals in the United States today accept the peculiar idealism that is the result of the combination of the two doctrines and is the capstone of our public culture. Because these illusions are incorrect