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An American Foreign Policy for a Unipolar World

(American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research) Charles Krauthammer - On December 26, 1991, the Soviet Union simply gave up and disappeared - and something new was born, a unipolar world dominated by a single superpower unchecked by any rival and with decisive reach in every corner of the globe. We are unlike Rome, unlike Britain and France and Spain and the other classical empires of modern times, in that we do not hunger for territory. That's because we are not an imperial power. We are a commercial republic. We don't take food; we trade for it, which makes us something unique in history. Now what is a unipolar power to do? The oldest and most venerable answer is to hoard that power and retreat. This is known as isolationism. Isolationism is an important school of thought historically, but is so obviously inappropriate to the world of today - a world of export-driven economies, of massive population flows, and of 9/11, the definitive demonstration that the combination of modern technology and transnational primitivism has erased the barrier between "over there" and over here. Today, multilateralism remains the overriding theme of liberal internationalism. Multilateralism manifests itself in the slavish pursuit of "international legitimacy" - and opposition to any American action undertaken without universal foreign blessing. Historically, multilateralism is a way for weak countries to multiply their power by attaching themselves to stronger ones. But multilateralism imposed on Great Powers, and particularly on a unipolar power, is intended to restrain that power. Which is precisely why France is an ardent multilateralist. The "international community" is a fiction. It is not a community, it is a cacophony - of straining ambitions, disparate values, and contending power. What keeps the international system from degenerating into total anarchy? Not the phony security of treaties, not the best of goodwill among the nicer nations. In the unipolar world we inhabit, what stability we do enjoy today is owed to the overwhelming power and deterrent threat of the United States. Who do you call if someone invades your country? You dial Washington. Of course one acts in concert with others if possible. It is nice when others join us in the breach. Unilateralism simply means that one does not allow oneself to be held hostage to the will of others. The doctrine of preemption, in particular, has been widely attacked for violating international norms. What international norm? The one under which Israel was universally condemned for preemptively destroying Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981? Does anyone today doubt that it was the right thing to do, both strategically and morally? In a world of terrorists, terrorist states, and weapons of mass destruction, the option of preemption is especially necessary. Deterrence does not work against people who ache for heaven. Against both undeterrables and undetectables, preemption is the only possible strategy.
2004-02-27 00:00:00
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