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نزال الرقم "1"
صحيفة
الايكونومست - 28/6/2007
على الرغم من إصابتها و سرعة
غضبها و فعاليتها التي ليست كما
يجب, فان أمريكا لا تزال القوة
التي يحسب لها حساب
Still
No.1
Jun
28th 2007
From
The Economist print edition
Wounded,
tetchy and less effective than it should be,
America
is still the power that counts
EVEN
the greatest empires hurt when they lose wars. It is not
surprising then that
Iraq
weighs so heavily on the American psyche. Most Americans
want to get out as soon as possible, surge or no surge;
many more wish they had never invaded the country in the
first place. But for a growing number of Americans the
superpower's inability to impose its will on
Mesopotamia
is symptomatic of a deeper malaise.
Nearly
six years after September 11th, nervousness about the
state of
America
's
“hard power” is growing (see article).
Iraq
and
Afghanistan
(another far-off place
where the
United States
,
short of troops and allies, may be losing a war) have
stretched the Pentagon's resources. An army designed to
have 17 brigades on active deployment now has 25 in the
field. Despite bringing in reservists and the National
Guard, many American troops spend more than half their
time on active duty; the British spend a fifth.
Other
demons are jangling
America
's
nerves. There is the emergence of China as a rival
embryonic superpower, with an economy that may soon be
bigger than America's (at least in terms of purchasing
power); the re-emergence of a bellicose, gas-fired
Russia; North Korea's defiance of Uncle Sam by going
nuclear, and Iran's determination to follow suit;
Europe's lack of enthusiasm for George Bush's war on
terror; the Arabs' dismissal of his democratisation
project; the Chávez-led resistance to Yankee
capitalism in America's backyard.
Nor
is it just a matter of geopolitics. American bankers are
worried that other financial centres are gaining at Wall
Street's expense. Nativists fret about
America
's
inability to secure its own borders. As for soft power,
Abu Ghraib,
Guantánamo Bay
,
America
's
slowness to tackle climate change and its neglect of the
Palestinians have all, rightly or wrongly, cost it
dearly. Polls show that ever fewer foreigners trust
America
,
and some even find
China
's
totalitarians less dangerous.
Power to the wrong people
A
sense of waning power is not just bad for the
self-esteem of Americans. It is already having dangerous
consequences. Inside the
United States
,
“China-bashing” has become a defensive strategy for
both the left and the right. Isolationism is also on the
rise. Most Democrats already favour an
America
that “minds its own business”.
Outside
America
,
the consequences could be even graver.
Iran
's
Islamic revolutionaries and
Russia
's
Vladimir Putin have both bet in different ways that a
bruised Uncle Sam will not be able to constrain them.
Meanwhile, a vicious circle of no confidence threatens
the Western alliance: if
Italy
,
for instance, concludes that a weakened
America
will not last the course in
Afghanistan
,
then it will commit even fewer troops to the already
undermanned NATO force there—which in turn prompts
more Americans to question the project.
Yet
America
is being underestimated. Friends and enemies have
mistaken the short-term failure of the Bush
administration for deeper weakness. Neither American
hard nor soft power is fading. Rather, they are not
being used as well as they could be. The opportunity is
greater than the threat.
It
is hard to deny that
America
looks weaker than it did in 2000. But is that really due
to a tectonic shift or to the errors of a single
administration? Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld reversed
the wise Rooseveltian doctrine, “Speak softly and
carry a big stick”. After September 11th the White
House talked up American power to an extraordinary
degree. In that brief period of “shock and awe” when
Americans were from Mars, their Venutian allies were
lucky to get invited to the show (indeed, in
Afghanistan
some “old” Europeans were initially turned away).
Meanwhile, Mr Bush declared a “war on terror”,
rather than just on al-Qaeda, broadening the front to
unmanageable dimensions (and paving the way for Guantánamo).
While
the talk was loud, the stick was spindly. Defying his
generals, Mr Rumsfeld sent too few troops to
Iraq
to pacify the country. Disbanding the Iraqi army
compounded the error. Regardless of whether
Iraq
was ever winnable, it is hard to imagine any future
American administrations making such schoolboy howlers
when it comes to regime change.
America
the indispensable
Yet
in one way Mr Bush is unfairly maligned. Contrary to the
Democratic version of history,
America
did not enjoy untrammelled influence abroad before he
arrived. The country that won the cold war also endured
several grievous reverses, notably
Vietnam
(where 58,000 Americans
were killed—16 times the figure for
Iraq
).
Iran
has been defying
America
since Jimmy Carter's
presidency, and
North Korea
for a generation before that. As for soft power,
France
has been complaining about
Coca-Cola and
Hollywood
for nearly a century.
From
this perspective of relative rather than absolute
supremacy, a superpower's strength lies as much in what
it can prevent from happening as in what it can achieve.
Even today,
America
's
“negative power” is considerable. Very little of any
note can happen without at least its acquiescence.
Iran
and
North Korea
can defy the Great Satan, but only
America
can offer the recognition the proliferating regimes
crave. In all sorts of areas—be it the fight against
global warming or the quest for an Arab-Israeli peace—
America
is quite simply indispensable.
That
is because
America
still has the most hard power. Its volunteer army is
indeed stretched: it could not fight another small war
of choice. But it can still muster 1.5m people under
arms and a defence budget almost as big as the whole of
the rest of the world's. And it could call on so much
more: in relation to the country's size, its defence
budget and army are quite small by historical standards.
Better diplomacy would enhance its power. One irony of
the “war on terror” is that Mr Bush's
hyperventilation worked against him in terms of getting
boots on the ground: neither his own countrymen nor his
allies were sure enough that they were really under
threat. (And why should they be? An American-led West
spent four decades tussling with a nuclear-armed empire
that stretched from
Berlin
to
Vladivostok
;
al-Qaeda is still small beer.)
The
surveys that show America's soft power to be less
respected than it used to be also show the continuing
universal appeal of its values—especially freedom and
openness. Even the immigrants and foreign goods that so
worry some Americans are tributes to that appeal (by
contrast, the last empire to build a wall on its border,
the Soviet one, was trying to keep its subjects in). Nor
is it an accident that anti-Americanism has fed off
those instances, such as
Guantánamo
Bay
,
where
America
has seemed most un-American. This is the multiplier
effect that Mr Bush missed: win the battle for hearts
and minds and you do not need as much hard power to get
your way.
That
lesson is worth bearing in mind when it comes to the
challenge of
China
.
China
is likely to be more and
more in
America
's
face, whether buying American firms, winning Olympic
gold or blasting missiles into space. Merely by growing,
China
is disrupting the politics of the Pacific. But that does
not mean that it is automatically on track to overtake
America
.
Its politics are fragile (see article)
and
America
's
lead is immense. Moreover, economics is not a zero-sum
game: so far, a bigger
China
has helped to enrich
America
.
An
America
that stays open to
China
—an
America
that sticks to American
values—is much more likely to help fashion the
China
it wants.
If
America
were a stock, it would be a “buy”: an undervalued
market leader, in need of new management. But that
points to its last great strength. More than any rival,
America
corrects itself. Under pressure from voters, Mr Bush has
already rediscovered some of the charms of
multilateralism; he is talking about climate change; a
Middle East
peace initiative is
possible. Next year's presidential election offers a
chance for renewal. Such corrections are not automatic:
something (a misadventure in
Iran
?) may yet compound the
misery of
Iraq
in the same way Watergate
followed
Vietnam
.
But
America
recovered from the 1970s. It will bounce back stronger
again.
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9407806
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