Started by DavidByron, Sep 23, 2002, 07:55 PM
Replacing that time-tested and diplomatically pliable stance [the concept of deterrence] are two steel fists. One declares the United States supreme over all nations, now and forever, and warns the world that we will never allow another nation to come close to matching our power. The other bluntly proclaims that we will attack any nation, at any time, in a pre-emptive fashion, if we so choose...Essentially, the new doctrine for American national security offered by the Bush administration erases all borders, along with several centuries worth of respect for territorial, cultural and governmental sovereignty. Despite several sunshine-filled sentences praising NATO and the United Nations, this strategy would seem to offer little say for anyone but the American government and the American military. My way or the highway. With us or against us. Pick your phrase.
Marcy Kaptur, Democrat from Ohio, has said, "Naked aggression is not the American way. America, wake up."
No longer does the U.S. government content itself to rule over a vast continental domain. No longer does it find satisfaction merely in a Monroe Doctrine that proclaims its hegemony in the Western Hemisphere. No, our rulers have declared in sufficiently plain language, in their new "National Security Strategy of the United States," made public on September 20, that they intend to dominate the entire world. Some members of the political class speak openly of empire; others avoid the word but embrace the substance. Make no mistake, however: the American Republic is no longer just sick unto death; it is stone-cold dead.
The historical record is clear," he said. "The U.S. has gone to great lengths to be the dominant power on the earth, first by achieving hegemony in its own region and then by preventing the rise of a peer competitor in other regions like Asia and Europe."In the 19th century, Professor Mearsheimer argues, the United States struggled for regional hegemony by conquering much of North America, justifying it by the notion of Manifest Destiny. Even before came the Monroe Doctrine, in which America's fifth president warned Europeans that "we should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety."By the end of the 19th century, Mr. Mearsheimer said, America's regional hegemony had largely been established. The United States spent most of the 20th century ensuring that "no other state duplicated that accomplishment." After 45 years of cold war and containing the Soviet Union, the United States was clearly not eager to envisage a second round of bipolar politics, much less a multipolar world in which the desires of regional powers would have to be taken into account.The impulse promulgated in the Bush doctrine is certainly not new, he said. "What is new here is that the United States has actually acknowledged what it does, rather than gussy up its impulses with liberal rhetoric."
