Paul Buchanan: With Bush back, what is the world to do?

COMMENT


Riding a wave of conservative Christian-nationalist sentiment galvanised by a campaign that played on fear rather than reason, and which used the mantle of moral values and strong leadership to cloak disdain for alternative perspectives (foreign and domestic), the re-election of George W. Bush means that the policy of unilateral pre-emption is likely to continue.

Some argue that President Bush will moderate the empire-building ambitions of the neo-conservative hawks in the Pentagon and White House. But that assumes that he has a multilateral-oriented alternative in mind, and that the President believes he needs to moderate what has been a course of action favourable to his political interests.

Yet Mr Bush is not of the disposition to compromise on his original (and as he sees it, God-given) mission. That would require the replacement of the Secretary of Defence and his lieutenants throughout the national security policy apparatus, retooling of the foreign policy apparatus towards compromise-based solutions, and a commitment to independent intelligence assessment.

It would also require a change of mindset on the part of the Vice-President, as well. Instead, it is Colin Powell who will go.

The re-election of Mr Bush is good for al Qaeda (which explains Osama bin Laden's video interjection just before the election). Al Qaeda needs Mr Bush as much as the President needs the spectre of Islamic terrorism to continue to sell his own religiously inspired vision of the proper world order.

Hence, thanks to renewal of his mandate, al Qaeda will continue to find recruits among the masses of Muslims infuriated by the United States' carpet-bomb approach to the "War on Terror". After all, there are many sides to war, and terrorism is just another tactic in guerrilla warfare, which in turn is prolonged irregular conflict against superior military forces in which psychological and symbolic blows trump raw destructive power over time.

With the US military commitment growing entrenched rather than diminishing in much of the Muslim world, the scope of the guerrilla enterprise grows as well.

That is the first option. But what is the rest of the international community to do? There are five non-terrorist responses to Mr Bush's re-election.

Countries can attempt to curry favour with the US by joining (however quietly) the Coalition of the Willing (Australia, Colombia, Denmark, El Salvador, Britain, Israel - the tail that wags the dog - Italy, Japan, Poland, Russia and South Korea).

They can adopt a "business as usual approach" by maintaining diplomatic relations while trying to steer clear of the pressures to join the Coalition (Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, India, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Sweden and Turkey). This may involve offering military and diplomatic assistance to US efforts in areas other than Iraq or Afghanistan, but with far less public fanfare.

If not that, countries can fundamentally disagree with the US but hunker down and "grin and bear it" in an effort to survive unscathed the four remaining years that Mr Bush has in office (most of the Muslim world, Mexico and Venezuela).

Countries may try to move between those positions, as has happened with defectors from the Coalition of the Willing such as Hungary and the Philippines, and which may well be the future approach of front-line Muslim states such as Indonesia and Pakistan.

They can be defiant and attempt to achieve a deterrent that will ward off US pre-emptive aggression or serve as leverage for the extraction of negotiated concessions with the West (Iran and North Korea), or they can thumb their noses at the US given their strategic unimportance (Cuba and Zimbabwe).

Finally, they can show independent resolve, individually or together, to increase the costs to the US of its foreign adventures, as done by Belgium, France, Germany, Greece and Spain. However, this last stance involves certain costs on their part as well, which augurs poorly for a united response that can withstand the divide and conquer tactics the US will use against those who oppose it.

The US has leverage on its side. The Bush Administration is suspected of allowing the slide of the US dollar (by expanding the money supply and allowing federal deficits to rise exponentially without raising interest rates or taxes) to drive up the cost of imports from European states that refused to join the Coalition of the Willing.

Most countries cannot withstand such pressure and may have to opt for the politics of acquiescence rather than confrontation. The United Nations will not recover from the Iraq oil-for-food scandals and the marginalisation of the Security Council in the lead-up to the invasion to the point of being an effective counterpoint to the US project anytime soon. Other regional entities, to include the European Union, are even less able to do so.

The best international position to be in is off the US security radar screen. The blueprint for invisibility is made of three conditions: general underdevelopment, geo-strategic irrelevance and no exploitable industrial minerals. Hence most small African, Caribbean and South Pacific island states continue unhindered in their own affairs (for the time being).

In sum, countries can try the path of individual or collective rapprochement, hoping that the US assumes a multilateral orientation of its own accord without others having to pay a heavy price in submission to the short-term logics of the War on Terror (with the domestic consequences that will entail).

Or they can unite in an opposition coalition that, in its refusal to accede to the US worldview, raises the costs to the US of continuing to go it alone in world affairs, especially in the military realm.

The prospects of another four years of the Bush Doctrine may seem daunting, but at least there are options. The question is: what is the path best chosen?

* Paul Buchanan, director of the working group on alternative security perspectives at the University of Auckland, is visiting fellow at the Institute of Strategic and International Studies in Lisbon, Portugal.