"The End of the American Century" on Kindle!

The End of the American Century is now available electronically on "Kindle" from Amazon.com. I myself am still a little skeptical of this method of reading books, but even so I think it is cool! And the price is right!

How Torture Hurts and Weakens the U.S.

Mark Danner is our contemporary Diogenes, searching (often vainly) for the honest man and using dogged empiricism to establish the truth. His focus in recent years has been on the U.S. use of torture and his latest report, in the New York Review of Books, is "The Red Cross Torture Report: What It Means."

As a followup to my recent post on the Spanish court considering criminal charges against U.S. officials for the justification and use of torture, I offer these two quotations about the effects of U.S. torture on our values and our security.

The first is from President Obama, in an interview on 60 Minutes:

I mean, the fact of the matter is after all these years how many convictions actually came out of Guantánamo? How many terrorists have actually been brought to justice under the philosophy that is being promoted by Vice President Cheney? It hasn’t made us safer. What it has been is a great advertisement for anti-American sentiment. Which means that there is constant effective recruitment of Arab fighters and Muslim fighters against US interests all around the world.... The whole premise of Guantánamo promoted by Vice President Cheney was that somehow the American system of justice was not up to the task of dealing with these terrorists.... Are we going to just keep on going until the entire Muslim world and Arab world despises us? Do we think that’s really going to make us safer?

And Danner's response to Obama's sentiments:

This is as clear and concise a summary of the damage wrought by torture as one is likely to get. Torture has undermined the United States’ reputation for respecting and following the law and thus has crippled its political influence. By torturing, the United States has wounded itself and helped its enemies in what is in the end an inherently political war—a war, that is, in which the critical target to be conquered is the allegiances and attitudes of young Muslims. And by torturing prisoners, many of whom were implicated in committing great crimes against Americans, the United States has made it impossible to render justice on those criminals, instead sentencing them—and the country itself—to an endless limbo of injustice. That limbo stands as a kind of worldwide advertisement for the costs of the US reversion to torture, whose power President Obama has tried to reduce by announcing that he will close Guantánamo.

Canadian Perspectives on "The End of the American Century"

Perhaps it is not so surprising that I have gotten more reactions to my book from outside the U.S. than inside it--especially from Canada. I have been interviewed on Canadian national television and radio, and have received more emails about the book from Canada than from any other country (including the U.S.).

The following is a recent email from Ann Ridyard from Montreal, who is a retired manager with a manufacturing company. Her thoughts, I venture to say, reflect those of many from north of the border. She gave me permission to post this, with her name. My responses to her points are indicated in brackets [].

-------------
Dr. Mason,

I finished reading your superb book The End of the American Century recently
and I wanted to write to thank you for publishing such a well-documented and
interesting book. You put into words all my thoughts and observations
concerning life in America at the beginning of this century.

As a Canadian living in Montreal, I feel that I received better information
from non-U.S. based media outlets than you did in the USA during the Bush
years. I was elated when Mr. Obama was elected as the new President, his
arrival could not have arrived at a better time.

I would like to offer a few comments.

1- Chapter 8, the World Sours on the US: I believe that most people felt
that the first Bush presidency was stolen from Al Gore. Furthermore, Bush
was still an unknown quantity. However, when Bush was re-elected for a
second term after the invasion of Iraq and the discovery not of weapons of
mass destruction but rather the discovery of Bush/Cheney lies, most
non-Americans were astounded and that caused the 'souring' to extend to the
American people at large.

[I had a similar response, Ann. I thought it was bad enough that this playboy millionaire was elected in the first place. It was his re-election in 2004 that prompted my writing of this book. See my earlier post on "The End of America's Shame")]

2- Military service was obligatory for many years and obeying a superior
officer was drummed into the population. This respect and blind obedience
to authority could be a reason why the people believe the president no
matter what.

[I am also astounded by the tendency of the public--and the media--to blindly accept whatever the president has to say. But I don't think obligatory military service explains this, since the military draft in the U.S. was ended in 1973. In my view, which I discuss in my book, it is the poor state of public education in the U.S., which erodes the ability of Americans to think critically about public affairs, and to effectively evaluate data and evidence]

3- This is just a thought, but could it be that keeping a large segment of
the population in poverty assures that there will always be an ample supply
of soldiers?

[I do not think there is any conspiracy here to stimulate the flow of young people into the military by keeping people poor. But I do think that the high rates of poverty, and the poor career prospects for many young people, does lead them into the military]

4- I believe that the G.W. Bush presidency came as close to a disguised
dictatorship as it could get. It is fortunate that the presidency is
limited to two terms, if not for that, I think Bush would have tried to
steal it another time. We all breathe easier now that Mr. Obama is
president.

[I agree! G.W. Bush, with his abuse of executive authority and of fundamental human and Constitutional rights--especially habeas corpus--took us farther away from democratic politics than we have been in many generations. Obama is, indeed, a breath of fresh air!]

Once again, thank you for your fine book, I have recommended it to family
and friends. I continue to read and reflect on your comments posted on the
'endoftheamericancentury' website.

Yours truly,

Ann Ridyard

China Now Has Top 3 Banks in World

China now has the three largest banks in the world, measured by market capitalization. This is a stunning change, and yet another indicator of China's rapid emergence as a global economic power. According to a New York Times article, three years ago, China did not have a single bank among the world's top 20. Now it has the top three and four of the top ten.

The United States, due in part to the banking and financial crisis, has dropped considerably in global banking. In 2006, the U.S. had 7 of the top 20 banks, including the top 2. Now it has just 3 of the top 20 and the largest, Morgan Stanley, is rated fifth.

If banking is so crucial to market economies--as Americans are constantly being reminded that it is--then the decline of US banks, in combination with the rise of Chinese ones, provides another example of the relative decline of the United States.

Furthermore, it seems that the Chinese economy, and its banking system, is in position to weather the storm of the global financial and economic meltdown. Most of the big banks in the West lost 20% or more of market value in the first two months of 2009. In China, the top two banks lost only 3% and 8% in value, respectively and the third largest, the Bank of China, actually increased by 5%.

As the New York Times notes, while most of the world is in financial collapse, "China's economy has suddenly become too big--and too healthy, expected to grow by at least 6.3 percent this year--for the rest of the world to ignore."

Kenneth Lieberthal, a Brookings Institution scholar who oversaw White House Asia policy from 1998 to 2000, sees China as one of the first countries to emerge from the current crisis and one of the very few countries that will emerge from it "without having high levels of government debt."

Lecture on the Rising Powers and the Decline of the US

On April 1, I gave a lecture on "The Rising Powers and the Decline of the U.S." as part of the Foreign Policy Association's "Great Decisions" series, sponsored by the Mid-North Shepherd's Center in Indianapolis. A video of this presentation (50 minutes) including pictures of the slides in my powerpoint presentation, is viewable at this link. (You might want to fast-forward through the first few minutes, where we struggled with the microphones and audio!).

The End of the American Century Appears in Chinese

Welcome to the Chinese readers of The End of the American Century! I hope some of you will visit this site, and contribute to it.

The book has just appeared in Chinese, published by the Shanghai Lexicographical Publishing House, and translated by Professor Ni Lexiong and Sun Yunfeng of the Shanghai University of Political Science and Law.

(See my 4/28 post on Shanghai Conference on The End of the American Century)



Further information and some Chinese reviews and commentary on the book are available (in Chinese) at this link.

Spanish Court Questions U.S. Use of Torture

Last week, a Spanish court took the first steps in opening a criminal investigation against Bush administration officials for violating international law in providing the legal framework for the U.S. government’s use of torture. Among those the court is expected to indict are former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and former Justice Department lawyer John Yoo, who is now a professor at the University of California at Berkeley.

John Yoo was the author of the so-called “torture memos” which justified the use of torture and argued that the U.S. should ignore the Geneva Conventions, which explicitly prohibit torture.

The United States is a party to the Geneva Conventions, and also to the 1984 Convention Against Torture, which is binding on 145 countries, including the U.S. Torture is explicitly prohibited in numerous other international treaties, including the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights; the International Covenant on Civil and Human Rights; and the American Convention on Human Rights. Most scholars also believe torture violates the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition on “cruel and unusual punishment.”

So there is plenty of legal precedent to assert that Gonzales, Yoo and other Bush administration officials—probably even the president himself-- were in violation of international law.

The Spanish initiative comes on the heels of two damaging new reports on the Bush administration’s use of torture. The Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility is investigating whether the legal advice of Yoo and others “was consistent with the professional standards that apply to Department of Justice attorneys,” according to Newsweek. If Attorney General Holder accepts the report, it could be forwarded to state bar associations for possible disciplinary action.

An even more damning report by the International Red Cross on the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo has been brought to light by Mark Danner, in a short article in the New York Times and a longer one in The New York Review of Books. The Red Cross reports—basically verbatim accounts of interviews with Guantanamo prisoners—makes absolutely clear, according to Danner, “that the United States tortured prisoners and that the Bush administration, including the president himself, explicitly and aggressively denied that fact.”

Danner concludes, as I have done in The End of the American Century, that the U.S. use of torture not only eroded our own values, but further poisoned the global reputation of the U.S. and stimulated the recruitment of terrorists around the globe. The decision to torture, writes Danner,

“harmed American interests by destroying the democratic and Constitutional reputation of the United States, undermining its liberal sympathizers in the Muslim world, and helping materially in the recruitment of young Muslims to the extremist cause. By deciding to torture, we freely chose to embrace the caricature they had made of us.”

Of course it was not just at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo that prisoners were tortured. Jane Mayer, author of The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals, convincingly shows that the use of torture was a central tool in the battle against terrorism. Even though President Bush denounced the use of torture, the tactics he denounced were exactly the same as those he had authorized and encouraged in the extensive worldwide network of secret prisons set up to hold and interrogate suspected terrorists. As the distinguished historian Alan Brinkley wrote in a review of The Dark Side:

"it would be difficult to find any precedent in American history for the scale, brutality and illegality of the torture and degradation inflicted on detainees over the last six years; and it would be even harder to image a set of policies more likely to increase the dangers facing the United States and the world.”

By almost any measure, the decisions of Yoo and Gonzales were legally incompetent. At the very least, their recommendations, and the decisions taken by President Bush, were violations of international law. They come close to crimes against humanity. They should be brought to account in this country, under American law. But Yoo, far from facing indictments in the U.S. continues to teach at one of the most prestigious law schools in the U.S., and continues to find a hearing for his views in the pages of the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.

Perhaps it will take a European court, in the end, to have him, and other Bush officials, account for their decisions. For a Spanish court to indict them will be largely symbolic, of course, since the U.S. is unlikely to extradite them to Spain. But symbols are important. And one of the most important symbols of all was President Obama’s categorical assertion, in the first weeks of his presidency, that

“under my administration, the U.S. does not torture.”