Thomas Riggins
‘Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,
As, to be hated, needs but to be seen;
Yet, seen too oft, familiar with her face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace.’
(Pope, Essay on Man)
Ferguson tells us that Kissinger (whose ideas he seems to embrace) does not pay much attention to Obama’s “strategic incoherence” in his book. Ferguson, however, can read between the lines and detects that Kissinger was inspired by his “dismay” over “the amateurism of the past six years” of Obama foreign policy. Here is a quote from the great man himself: Kissinger asks: ”Where, in a world of ubiquitous social networks, does the individual find the space to develop the fortitude to make decisions that, by definition, cannot be based on a consensus.” Maybe it is foolishness, not fortitude, to try and make decisions based simply on what the “individual” thinks or feels. What decisions, other than what you personally want to eat for dinner, want to do in you spare time, or what movie you want to watch, and the like are “by definition” impossible to decide by consensus?
Kissinger goes on to say that candidates running for office may be forced to spend more time raising money then dealing with the big issues. Does a candidate try to explain his ideas to the people or does he tailor what he thinks to please the voters. Ferguson implies that is what Obama types do because Kissinger's concerns would not have been aroused by the campaigns of such stalwart individuals as John McCain or Mitt Romney who took “scant regards” to focus groups in coming up with their absurd “foreign policy positions.”
Perhaps if they had they would have found out what people were really concerned about and would have abandoned some of their more looney ideas and made a better showings at the polls. Would anyone respect the foreign policy ideas of someone who picked a nut job for his running mate?
Ferguson reveals his own ineptitude when he says Obama made fun of Romney in a debate on foreign policy by saying “The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back” and thinks that those policies would offer better ways “of dealing with Vladimir Putin.” Well, Putin is no Gorbachev and if Ferguson thinks using thirty year old cold war techniques with Russia in the 21st Century is the way to go then he, not Obama, is the one who is “no master strategist.”
The “starting point” of Kissinger’s book, Fergunson writes, is that we are at the end of an "American world order” that was at its high point in the 1980s. The real title, then, of Kissinger’s book should have been, I think, The Loss of American World Domination. Here is how Kissinger himself describes this 1980s word order: it was a time of “an inexorably expanding cooperative order of states observing common rules and norms, embracing liberal economic systems, forswearing territorial conquest, respecting national sovereignty, and adopting participatory and democratic systems of governance.”
A quite imaginary fantasy on Kissinger’s part. Where was the respect for the sovereignty of Nicaragua, of Cuba, of Iran, of Grenada, of Cambodia, of the DPKR, of Vietnam, of Libya. What democratic systems were supported in Central America where the US supported genocide (Guatamala) and fascist regimes in other countries, not to mention in Indonesia and Chile. The “cooperative order” only included states kowtowing to US interests. Kissinger himself helped, in 1970s, overthrow the democratically elected government in Chile and helped institute a fascist regime.
It seems that the American people no longer believe in this “definition” of world order. What Kissinger and Fergunson should have pointed out is that educated American people don’t believe that this fantastic description ever applied to “an American world order.”
We are told there are now three other contending kinds of “world order” on the agenda. They are: 1) A “post-Westphalian European order” [i.e., post the 1648 Peace of Westphalia ending the Thirty Years War and other hostilities], one in Kissinger’s words which is “a system of independent states refraining from interference in each other’s domestic affairs [the US will never stop doing this] and checking each other’s ambitions through a general equilibrium of power.” But the US is a super power, how could such an equilibrium be imposed?
2) An “Islamic world order” based on the ideas of Sultan Mehmed II (who conquered Constantinople in 1453 thus ending the (Eastern) Roman Empire) and who proclaimed “one empire, one faith, and one sovereignty in the world” and
3) a “Chinese order” based on the imperial (actually Confucian) idea of “harmony under heaven” (tian-xia, maybe not such a bad idea, nothing wrong with harmony).
Let’s look more closely at these four kinds of “ideal” world order— American, European, Islamic, and Chinese. We will look at them through the (jaundiced) eyes of Kissinger as reported by Ferguson. Let us dismiss the “American” order as we have already pointed out that it was a Kissinger fantasy. It boiled down to the attempted implementation of a US diktat in international affairs dressed up in democratic phraseology by Kissinger and his likes. It is still the US’s favorite modus operandi but as American power weakens it is becoming harder and harder to enforce.
The other three systems are also flawed. Kissinger thinks the “European” system is departing from its “Westphalian” ideals by trying to form the EU which combines “pooled sovereignty” with attempts to “limit the element of power” in the new institutions it is creating. The problem is that none of the countries in the EU want to end up bossed around by Germany which is where “pooled sovereignty” is taking them.
The problem of the “Islamist world order” [other than the fact that it doesn’t exist] is, according to Kissinger, that it is “based on the fundamentalist version of their religion” and quests for “a global revolution.” This is to take the Islamic State, ISIS, ISIL or whatever you want to call it and the jihadists as far more historically significant than they are.
They are local disturbances, generated in reaction to the failures of the American diktat in their part of the world, and will vanish as soon as the Americans realize it is their own policies, based on ignorance of the culture, religion, and history of the area and motivated more by economic motives than anything else, which cause these groups to form and they then take steps to really disengage from meddling in the area. The UN will have to help the US get out gracefully as the US has shown it is incapable of conducting itself rationally when it comes to dealing with the people in this part of the world.
As for the “Chinese order” (another culture area of which Americans seem ignorant), Kissinger says earlier ideas about the “Middle Kingdom and its tributaries” have been “jettisoned.” It seems the Chinese (and others) are acting as “hyper-Westphalians” and see the area in terms “of aggressively competing nation states.” Kissinger finds this (his own imaginary construct) as “inapplicable” for this region.
There is a slight interruption in Fergunson’s review at this point so that he can fawn all over Kissinger the statesman, the academic, the historical thinker ( he leaves out the war criminal, the supporter of fascists, the accomplice in murder, torture and genocide ). We will return to Ferguson’s analysis in our next installment (part 3 of the review of World Order.)
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