Pax Americana is reality, America at the Crossroads

Bush & the End of History K Natwar Singh Indian Express: Sunday, July 02, 2006

Francis fukuyama had been a quintessential representative of the Republican Establishment, also known as the Neo-conservative outfit. He fell out with his Neocon colleagues and friends over the Iraq war. In the preface to this book, he tells us why. Another striking revelation is that almost all the hawkish Neocons came from the Jewish community in the 1930s and 1940s. Their names are given, including Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Several served in the second Bush administration, including Paul Wolfowitz, now head of the World Bank.

The wordsmiths of the Neocon intellectual crew coined a new vocabulary— benevolent hegemony, regime change, humanitarian intervention, preemptive strike,unipolarity. Fukuyama, like all ex-fellow travellers(not in the Cold War context) of any hue, is savagely critical, nay, condemnatory, about the invasion of Iraq in early 2003. He emphasises that American misjudgement about Islam cost them dear. The intelligence failures about the existence of Weapons of Mass Destruction showed President Bush and his advisors in poor light and made their European and NATO allies uncomfortable.

Having been the foreign minister of a great country, I can also appreciate the perils a superpower confronts. Generally, governments are seldom clear about their objectives. Information/ intelligence is not adequate, the consequences of a particular tactic, strategy or action can seldom be known in advance...

Fukuyama does not share the undiluted enthusiasm of his erstwhile colleagues about imposing or exporting democracy. Democracy-promotion is not a pill to be swallowed but a process at which nations have to work relentlessly.

In the eyes of Fukuyama, the UN has failed and is beyond reform. An expansion of the Security Council would make matters worse. What is his solution? Multi Multilateralism, a number of smaller groupings like NATO. EU, WTO or Asean to supplement UN efforts.

The terrorist threat looms large over America. It clouds their judgment. The Muslim world distrusts America. “Repairing American credibility will not be a matter of better public relations, it will require a new team and new policies... the dominant image of the US is not the Statue of Liberty but the photographs of the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib.”

Fukuyama’s disenchantment with Neoconservatism must surely place him beyond the pale. Neither Metternich nor Bismark are of much help, or George Kennan, who in the last phase of his very long life had views similar to Fukuyama’s. Pax Americana is reality. Nevertheless, America needs the world. And the world cannot do without America. As Nehru said, “We must co-exist or co-perish.”