U.S. under fire over global challenges

The United States is under fire for its lack of boldness in tackling global challenges. And as Mark Sommer writes in this Inter Press Service column, Washington is playing the spoiler.

BERKELEY, California (IPS): As the sole remaining superpower the United States could, if it chose, lead the way in tackling a wide range of urgent global challenges which, if left unchecked, will make the next century even more calamitous than the previous 100 blood stained years.

Even Washington's closest allies lament that, on many key issues, the United States not only is failing to lead but is actively obstructing progress. Too powerful to be a pariah, it plays the spoiler, defying and destroying any near global consensus.

"There is a growing backlash against America's overwhelming economic and military superiority," wrote one commentator in the New York Times.

"America's allies and enemies are increasingly united in resentment of the U.S.. Iran calls America 'the Capital of Global Arrogance.' Unfortunately, that's also what the French, the Malaysians, the Russians, the Chinese, and the Germans call Washington behind its back."

Although some of this resentment can be dismissed as the envy of those who resent their dependence but despise one another too much to unite in opposition, there are sound reasons for their deepening alienation from American foreign policies.

In the view of many observers, where the United States is taking the lead (as in NATO expansion, NAFTA, GATT, the Middle East, and relations with Iraq), its initiatives are muddle headed, misguided and often destructive of other vital commitments. Where it should be leading (as in global warming, UN payments, Third World sustainable development, hunger, poverty, and human rights), it often actively impedes forward movement.

This has been glaringly demonstrated in recent international debates over global warming and UN funding.

Despite its role as chief greenhouse gas polluter, the United States brought the weakest proposal to the table at the Kyoto climate summit, then forced the rest of the world down to its position. Even then, President Clinton said he wouldn't submit the treaty for Congressional approval until developing nations committed themselves to "meaningful" reductions, a condition considered to be a treaty buster.

At the United Nations, meanwhile, even American diplomats admitted: "There never has been a worse time to represent the United States. Resentment against Washington once muted now is expressed openly."

Even close allies are reportedly "incensed" that Washington continues to demand UN action on U.S. foreign policy goals, while reneging on its pledge to pay US$1 billion in back dues and simultaneously demanding that its share of the UN's annual budget (based on the size of its economy) be cut from 25 percent to 20 percent. With little prospect that Congress will authorize its overdue payments, there are now doubts over the future of the United Nations.

Why is the U.S. so out of sync with the rest of the world?

With such overwhelming dominance, U.S. policy makers can afford to act unilaterally with fair certainty that both its friends and enemies are simply too dependent to defy its dictates. But domestic American politics also play a large role.

While President Clinton never claimed to have a great experience in foreign affairs, he came into office in 1993 with a mildly internationalist perspective, advocating multilateral approaches to regional conflicts and increased support for the United Nations. But, after being burned in hot spots like Haiti and Somalia, he became far more cautious. His foreign policy 'modus operandi' now appears to be to avoid committing U.S. troops or resources abroad while aggressively opening foreign markets to U.S. goods and services.

He is also dealing with a congress more insular than any in the past half century. A third of its members don't even possess passports.

Traditionally, Congress yields the foreign policy initiative to the president, uniting behind him "at the water's edge". But in this instance, emboldened by Clinton's timidity, Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Jesse Helms, backed by a militantly unilateralist congressional leadership, has succeeded in hog tying the president on issues ranging from UN dues payments to ambassadorial appointments.

In opting for a go it alone foreign policy, both the Clinton administration and its congressional opponents cite isolationist sentiments in the American electorate. But a recent study by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland reveals that, contrary to these claims, the American public "supports a foreign policy of broad global engagement" that takes into account global and humanitarian concerns, favors paying UN dues, and supports UN peacekeeping.

A leader with the capacity to chart his own course might reach over the heads of a recalcitrant congress to garner public support. President Clinton, however, by nature is a compromiser and he has been outmaneuvered so often that his stance toward congressional opponents now is best characterized as "premature capitulation".

With a weak, distracted president, a defiantly anti foreign congress, and a sympathetic but sidelined public, what can we expect of future American foreign policy? Lacking a consensual goal to replace the Cold War's anti communist crusade, U.S. leadership will likely remain captive to elite economic and political interests seeking to maintain a highly profitable dominance. As a status quo power, the United States simply is acting like any past empire intent on maintaining its hegemony.

What is different today is that the clock is rapidly running out on an urgent agenda of global issues that the world simply cannot afford to be sidetracked by a stubbornly retrograde superpower. It will take the combined forces of enlightened governments, independent global activists, and an awakened public opinion to override the resistance of the entrenched interests that have hijacked and hog tied American foreign policy.

The writer is an author and journalist who directs the Mainstream Media Project, a U.S. based effort to bring new voices and viewpoints to the broadcast media.

Window: "America's allies and enemies are increasingly united in resentment of the U.S.. Iran calls America 'the Capital of Global Arrogance.' Unfortunately, that's also what the French, the Malaysians, the Russians, the Chinese, and the Germans call Washington behind its back."