Cluster Bombs Used by Libya--and by the U.S.

The New York Times has a front-page story today on how "Qaddafi is using cluster bombs in civilian areas." This is an atrocity and a tragedy, of course, but it is difficult for the U.S. to raise much of a fuss about it, because U.S. armed forces have also used cluster bombs in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Yemen. There is an international treaty--the Convention on Cluster Munitions--that bans the stockpiling and use of such weapons, but the U.S. is one of the few countries that has not signed the treaty. Fifty-six countries have ratified the Convention, and another 52 have signed but not yet ratified it. Among those that have not signed it are Israel, Pakistan, Libya....and the United States.

Chapter 6 of The End of the American Century, on "Abandoning International Order," documents the refusal of the U.S. government to sign dozens of international treaties and conventions that almost every other country in the world has adopted. It is this unilateralism and exceptionalism that has withered America's stature and moral authority in the world, and is one of the factors that makes it difficult for the U.S. to resume the leadership it held for so long in the postwar period.

Andrew Bacevich on The Limits of U.S. Power

Andrew Bacevich’s book The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism, has much in common with my own book The End of the American Century but is, if anything, even more pessimistic about the outlook for the United States. Bacevich, a retired military officer and currently professor of history and international relations at Boston University, recently visited Butler as part of the Drew Brahos lecture series.

The Limits of Power sees three interrelated crises afflicting the U.S.: the crisis of profligacy; the political crisis; and the military crisis. The guiding ideological light in his book is the early 20th century American theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr (who I also quote in my book). During the Cold War, Niebuhr complained about U.S. tendency to hubris and sanctimony, which Bacevich views as even more prevalent now, becoming “the paramount expressions of American statecraft.”

As Bacevich sees it, our failures abroad (including especially the Iraq War) are a function of our unending consumer appetites at home. “The collective capacity of our domestic political economy to satisfy those appetites has not kept pace with demand. As a result, sustaining our pursuit of life, liberty and happiness at home requires increasingly that Americans look beyond our borders. Whether the issue at hand is oil, credit, or the availability of cheap consumer goods, we expect the world to accommodate the American way of life.”

“Centered on consumption and individual autonomy, the exercise of freedom is contributing to the gradual erosion of our national power.”

The Iraq War is just the latest step in the gradual erosion of U.S. power, weakening us both externally and internally as we refuse to face up to our own problems. He includes a wonderfully revealing quote from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld from October 2001:

“We have two choices. Either we change the way we live, or we change the way they live. We choose the latter.”

Bacevich is scathingly critical of the American political system, which he sees broken and corrupted by an imperial presidency, a “feckless” Congress, and an incompetent national security structure. Our democracy has been hijacked, he says, by a political elite who “have a vested interest in perpetuating the crises that provide the source of their power.”

These are powerful charges and surprisingly radical, coming from someone who has been part of the establishment and who considers himself a conservative. When Butler faculty and students met with him over breakfast, we raised the question of whether the capitalist system itself was broken, given the arguments he made in his book and his lecture. However, even though he sees little hope for any kind of economic or political recovery in the U.S., Bacevich maintains a firm commitment to capitalism and democracy. Many of us found this to be paradoxical. If the system is broken and can’t be fixed, shouldn’t we be searching for some alternative?

The Limits of Power is a powerful and sobering analysis and critique of the American prospect. The message is similar to that of my book, though there are differences. Bacevich focuses more on the U.S. itself, whereas I link what is happening in the U.S. with broader international and global trends. While both of us decry American consumerism, he focuses more on the cultural (and even spiritual) aspects of this, while I spend more time on the economic and social consequences of it. Neither one of us is terribly optimistic about the outcome, but the last pages of my book offer some inklings of hope, whereas the last paragraph of The Limits of Power is thoroughly downbeat. He quotes, once again, Niebuhr to the effect that social orders inevitably destroy themselves in an effort to prove they are indestructible. “Clinging doggedly to the conviction that the rules to which other nations must submit don’t apply,” concludes Bacevich,

“Americans appear determined to affirm Niebuhr’s axiom of willful self destruction.”

The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism (American Empire Project)

Guns on Campus Would Add to the Mayhem

One of the themes of The End of the American Century is the exaggerated and destructive aspects of "American Exceptionalism"--the tendency for Americans to see themselves as exceptional, different and better than other peoples and countries. This takes extreme form in the combination of individualism and violence in this country, which is manifested in the peculiar (and exceptional!) obsession with individual gun ownership. The prevalence of firearms in the U.S.--almost as many as there are people--contributes to some 30,000 firearm deaths each year, and a homicide rate that is far higher than any other industrialized country.

For people in other countries, the levels of violence and the prevalence of guns in the U.S. invoke both amazement and horror. Global opinion surveys show that the two most common negative characterizations of Americans by foreigners are "greedy" and "violent." They contribute to the growing disillusionment with the U.S. (and with American citizens) in other countries, and to the view of the U.S. as being violent both in its foreign policy and inside its own borders.

In recent years, the National Rifle Association (NRA) has been pushing for the adoption of "conceal carry" laws in the states, and lately has been arguing for laws that would allow more guns on college campuses. They claim to see this as a way to avoid tragedies like those at Virginia Tech where a student killed 32 people in 2007. But few experts believe that arming students could prevent such a tragedy, and that it will simply lead to an increase in campus firearms injuries and deaths.

The NRA-sponsored bill in my state, Indiana, was introduced by a lifelong NRA member who wrote a letter to the Indianapolis Star arguing in support of the bill, Senate Bill 12. Below is my response to his letter, which appeared on the Star's website at the following link.

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Nothing positive to gain from guns on college campuses

Posted: February 13, 2009

In his recent letter to the editor, state Sen. Johnny Nugent contends that "allowing guns will make our campuses safer." He is a sponsor of Senate Bill 12, which would "prohibit a state college or university from regulating in any manner the ownership, possession, carrying, or transportation of firearms or ammunition." Nugent believes that

"the only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun."

It would seem, though, that the best people to ask about security and safety on campus are the campus safety and police departments. Nugent would find that they overwhelmingly oppose this measure, as would almost all faculty and staff on campuses (as I am). Butler University Public Safety Director is Ben Hunter was formerly an officer with the Indianapolis Police Department. When I asked Hunter his views on this, he wrote "I am against the idea of carrying weapons on campus" and continued as follows:

"As a lifelong supporter of responsible gun ownership, I can attest that educational institutions and employers should be allowed to regulate their buildings and properties. Having students, faculty and staff possibly carrying guns on campus could result in accidental discharges, a false response to a threat and untrained persons that create an operational danger for (police). Proponents of such legislation will often talk about how well trained persons can assist with these threats; the only issue is that their training does not come close to what police officers are required to undertake."

College campuses are already much safer than the community in general, with far lower levels of both homicides and suicides. Surely, this is due, in part, to the prohibition of guns by most universities. Probably the biggest consequence of allowing guns on campus would be an increase in the incidence of suicide. Suicide is already the third leading cause of death for Hoosiers of college age, but suicides are much less common on college campuses than off. Since the most common means of death in suicides is a gun, increasing the number of guns on campus will only make suicides more likely.

Before pushing this law onto colleges and universities, our legislators should consult with those who are most familiar with the situation: the public safety departments, mental health professionals, and the deans of student life. I can't imagine that any of them would want to see more guns on campus.

U.S. Rejects Cluster Bomb Treaty

The Cluster Munitions Treaty was signed in Oslo, Norway earlier this month by 94 countries, not including the United States. The government of Afghanistan did sign, in a last minute shift, and in the face of intense diplomatic pressure from the Bush White House. This story illustrates several themes of The End of the American Century.

Cluster bombs are munitions dropped from the air or ground-launched that eject smaller submunitions or bomblets over a wide area. They are most commonly employed to kill enemy personnel or destroy vehicles. At least fifteen countries have used cluster munitions, including the U.S.in Iraq and Afghanistan, and both Russia and Georgia in their conflict earlier this year. The most extensive use, however, was by U.S. bombers over the Ho Chi Minh trail in Laos during the Vietnam War. It is estimated that at least 9 million unexploded bomblets remain in Laos.

These unexploded bomblets are the biggest problem with these weapons. Like landmines (which are also banned under an international convention), the unexploded munitions remain a deadly hazard for civilians long after a conflict ends. Often they are brightly colored and look like baseballs, attracting children and with deadly results. A third of cluster bomb casualties are children.

Like the international treaty that banned land mines, the impetus for a cluster bomb ban grew out of an international grass roots movement. The Cluster Munition Coalition brought together some 300 "civil society organizations" from 80 countries, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Handicap International. The coalition also includes the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, an organization that won the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize.

The convention banning cluster bombs was signed in Oslo by 94 countries, including U.S. allies like Britain, Germany, France and Japan, but not including the U.S. Other non-signatories include Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Iran and Israel. Unexpectedly, Afghan President Hamid Karzai ended up signing the treaty that bans the weapons that have devastated his country. According to the New York Times, Karzai's change of heart was particularly affected by testimony from cluster-bomb victims, including Soraj Ghulam Habib, a 17 year old from the city of Herat who lost both legs when he accidentally stepped on a cluster remnant seven years ago. The Bush administration had urged Karzai not to sign it, so his decision, according to The Times, "appeared to reflect Mr. Karzai's growing independence from the Bush administration."

The U.S. has begun to bend to international pressure on the issue, and has not actually employed cluster bombs since 2003. A State Department official told the Times that cluster bombs were sometimes more humane than conventional ones. "As an example, he said that antennas on a roof could be taken out efficiently with a cluster bomb, without bringing the building down."

Some expect President-Elect Obama to support the treaty, and his team has said it will "carefully review" the treaty. However, as London's The Economist points out,

"Mr. Obama will find it hard to change American policy once he realizes that cluster munitions make up more than half of the country's bomb stockpile."

The U.S. refusal to sign this treaty is part of a larger pattern and long-term trend of the U.S. disengaging from international law and the global community--a theme I develop in a chapter on "Abandoning International Order" in The End of the American Century. There is a long list of international treaties that the U.S. has not ratified. These include the UN convention prohibiting discrimination against women; the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child; the treaty banning land mines (signed by 122 nations), the Kyoto Treaty on global warming; and the treaty establishing the International Criminal Court, to try individuals for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. All of these treaties have been signed by the vast majority of the world's nations. The only other country besides the U.S. to reject the Rights of the Child convention is Somalia, which has no functioning government.

For each of these treaties, the U.S. has its reasons for non-participation. But the very fact of the U.S. not participating in these international conventions sends a bad signal to the rest of the world. It is a sorry sign of U.S. "exceptionalism" and is an important factor in the declining popularity of the U.S. around the world, even before the extremely unpopular Bush administration. The U.S. shift away from international law is particularly tragic because no country was more important in establishing international law and institutions (like the U.N.) in the years after World War II.

The about-face of the Afghan government is also telling in several ways. On the one hand, the Bush administration pressure on the Afghan government to reject the treaty is also part of a pattern. While other administrations have failed to participate in important international treaties, the Bush White House has gone out of its way to keep other countries from doing so. The most egregious example of this is the International Criminal Court. Shortly after President Bush "unsigned" the ICC statute, he urged Congress to pass the American Servicemembers Protection Act. This legislation gives immunity to U.S. personnel from the court. It also provides for punitive actions against countries that are parties to the ICC, but which refuse to confer immunity to Americans. For many people around the globe, it seemed as if the U.S. was asserting that Americans were above the law when it comes to war crimes and crimes against humanity.

On the other hand, Karzai's rejection of pressure from his protector and benefactor, shows just how weak the U.S. has become in the international arena. The United States, and particularly its current president, has become so marginalized that it can not even influence a country that is utterly dependent on the U.S. Washington has lost an enormous amount of face in the global community, and has little left in its arsenal of "soft power." It will take a major and sustained effort by the Obama administration to repair the damage. But it is unlikely that U.S. reputation, power and influence will ever return to where it was.

Can the US Regain Supremacy? Should It?

In my CBC Radio interview yesterday (see previous blog post) with Anna Maria Tremonti, there was one question she asked that gave me pause. She had first asked if I thought the U.S. is losing its superpower status. When I answered in the affirmative, she followed up with “Can it regain it?” I said I thought not, and went on to say that in a globalized and interdependent world, both the country and the world are better off without a superpower. But I think this needs some elaboration.

There is, first of all, both a descriptive (factual) and normative (value judgment) aspect to this question. Will the U.S. regain its superpower status? And should it do so. I believe the answer is negative to both questions, but the reasoning behind them are similar.

Some scholars have argued that the world needs a powerful and stabilizing force, and that the United States is the only country in a position to play this role. The British historian Niall Ferguson has made this case in his book Colossus, as has the U.S. political scientist Michael Mandelbaum in The Case for Goliath. And through much of history, there has been a big single power that has played this role in great swaths of the planet—Rome, Britain, Spain, the Ottomans, etc. All of those empires are now gone.

The 21st century world is different in several important respects. First, power and influence are more diffuse. There are numerous “rising powers”—China, India, Brazil, Iran, Russia, South Africa—and they are spread all over the globe. None of them want or need a super powerful country encroaching on their turf, or telling them how to behave.

Second, the world is more interdependent, particularly in economic terms—“flat” in Thomas Friedman’s evocative phrase. Prosperity and security are being built on trade, cooperation and compromise. Some countries are bigger and wealthier than others and will naturally play a more substantial role in this globalized community. A “superpower”—economic or military—distorts and destabilizes such a system.

Third, the most important issues facing the globe now require cooperation, consultation, compromise and diplomacy rather than brute strength or intimidation. Global warming, environmental deterioration, epidemics, famine, and drought are the most pressing threats to humanity. All of them require the participation of all states, regardless of their wealth, power and ideology. A superpower, with its tendency to unilateralism and arrogance, can only hinder such cooperation.

For all of these reasons, the U.S. will not, and should not, play the dominant and directing global role that it did through most of the 20th Century.

In addition to these global factors are domestic U.S. ones. In the American Century, the U.S. had the world’s biggest economy, its richest citizens, the best schools, the finest system of medical care, and the most successful democracy. It can no longer make such claims, both because of our own decline in the past two decades, and because other countries have been catching up. Most developed countries now surpass the U.S. in the quality of life, health care delivery, and education, and have much lower levels of poverty, inequality and violence. The vaunted U.S. economy (which for so long was a house of cards built on multiple levels of debt) has now begun an inevitable decline. Until the encouraging results of last week’s election, even the U.S. political system was rickety, with low levels of voting and participation, very unequal representation, erosion of fundamental rights, and questionable electoral outcomes.

So whereas in the 20th Century, the U.S. carried global influence because of its own domestic model of success (in addition to its military strength), it can no longer make those claims of exceptionalism. The rest of the world has caught up.

The U.S. has already lost the status of sole superpower. Even if we wanted it, other countries don’t recognize or accept it. And both the U.S. and the rest of the world will be better off if we don’t regain it.

Is the bartender finally presenting us the bill?

Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson has a column today in the Indianapolis Star entitled "A Rude awakening from the American dream." He, like most of us, is bewildered by the economic upheavals and wonders if this means that the U.S. will become poorer and if the "next generation of Americans [will] lead lives of less affluence and comfort."

"I want to know if this is some kind of financial reckoning for the way we've been living so far beyond our means. Is the bartender finally presenting us the bill for our tab?"

He worries, as we all do, that this economic crisis "may be more than just an episode."

"I'm worried that what's at stake is not just a few years of lost economic growth, but our traditional notion of the American dream."

He wants straight talk from Obama and McCain.

"Don't give me empty words about American exceptionalism. Tell me in plain language what our new place is in the world and how we're going to give our children the good life that we've enjoyed."

I second all of these sentiments by Mr. Robinson, but I fear the answers are not what he would like to hear. We do need straight talk and truthtelling from our leaders, but it will mean facing up to the reality that the U.S. place in the world will be diminished, and our children will not have the affluence that we have enjoyed--mostly on borrowed money. But a good life can be built on other things than consumerism and instant gratification.