From Kennan to Bush’s Lone Star Nation, US goals the same

Roger Bybee, 24.03.2005 11:20

 

With George W. Bush continually spewing contempt for international law, some have mistakenly held up Cold War architect George F. Kennan, who recently died at age 101, as a paragon of democracy. But whether using international institutions to advance the US empire or going it "Lone Star Nation" style, the goals of US policy have been obsessed with protecting corporate power and global inequality.

Bush’s Lone Star Nation, Kennan’s
internationalism share same goals

By Roger Bybee

The Lone Star Nation foreign policy of George W. Bush, which prides itself on flaunting international law and contempt for multilateral institutions, was drawn into stark contrast recently with the death of Cold War strategist George F. Kennan at age 101.

Bush has responded to the foreign-policy challenges of today with the menacing doctrine of “preventive war” and preparation for “full spectrum warfare” ranging from under the waters to outer space. Support for the International Criminal Court is now sufficient provocation for the US to suspend foreign aid to nations who back the ICC.

The bristling level of hostility for multilateral institutions was put on full display when Bush named John Bolton to be ambassador to the UN, whose legitimacy he has continually disparaged, and Paul Wolfowitz to the World Bank, for which he has no apparent qualifications except for dedication to neo-conservative “free-market fundamentalism.” Former World Bank chief economist Joseph Stiglitz promptly predicted that the appointment would trigger outbreaks of violence in response to World Bank-imposed austerity programs.

Yet at crucial moments, even George W. Bush feels a need to make token gestures in the direction of multilateralism. When confronted with the humiliating absence of real support from other nations for his invasion of Iraq, Bush proudly unveiled a “Coalition of the willing” of some 40 nations.

This mighty coalition, touted to be as broad as that in the first Gulf War, is actually composed largely of woefully dependent, tiny nations that included a host of tiny nations like Palau, Micronesia, El Salvador that offered no financial support, no troops, but could add numbers to the list of US supporters. There were also a handful of what Donald Rumsfeld has called “New Europe” nations, which as Noam Chomsky has pointed out, translates into national governments that were cheerfully willing to override the sentiments of the vast majority of their peoples, in contrast to “Old Europe” nations where governments respected the democratic will of their populations. .

Amidst the Bush unwillingness to acknowledge the legitimacy of other nations having a significant role in world affairs, the legacy of George Kennan has been used to draw a sharp contrast. Faced with the military strength and political prestige of the Soviet Union after the Allies’ defeat of Hitler in World War II, Kennan advanced a doctrine of “containment” that stressed multilateral institutions like NATO and political and ideological maneuvering rather than simple military confrontation.

The NY Times was among many media outlets that praised Kennan’s vision and faith in democratic institutions. “In 1946, when most of the world was bewildered and frightened by the rise of the Soviet Union, he felt certain a dictatorship could be defeated by a free society, so long as it kept faith with its own traditions and institutions.”

However, Kennan’s actual approach subordinated democracy to the protecting the supremacy of US economic interests. In the name of fighting the horrors of Stalinism, Kennan and the US consistently sided with brutal right-wing dictatorships over democratic governments and movements that chose to be independent of American directives. Thus, the US helped to topple democratically-elected governments in Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954, and Chile in 1973, among others.

A rarely-cited Kennan quote from 1948 summarizes the essence of US foreign policy: “We have 50% of the world’s wealth but only 6.3% of its population. In this situation, our real job in the coming period is to maintain this position of disparity. To do so, we have to dispense with all sentimentality… we should cease thinking about human rights, the raising of living standards and democratization.” (from John Pilger, The New Rulers of the World, 2002.)

Clearly, while largely spurning multilateral institutions and even the rhetoric of international cooperation, the Bush administration has maintained a strong continuity with Kennan’s policy of “maintain(ing) this position of disparity.” The specter of Osama bin Laden and “global terrorism” has conveniently replaced that of Joseph Stalin and Communism.

And with harsh, authoritarian allies like Pakistan, China, Russia, and Uzbekistan, the US government continues to eagerly dispense with all “sentimentality” about human rights, global living standards, and democratization.

Roger Bybee is a Milwaukee writer and activist who can be reached at  [email protected]

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