Since US policy has tended to treat Central America as the back-yard of the US, administrations have always felt at liberty to use coercive diplomacy or even force to achieve their national interests.’ Discuss
American interventionism in the western hemisphere is not something that has appeared during the Cold War though it can be said that it was accentuated during that period.
In 1823, President Monroe stated that America (as a whole) was no longer a land for colonisation for the European powers. From that time on, the western hemisphere was to be free from the colonial empires and was to become the axis of influence for the US.
In 1898, The Spanish-American War set the expansionist policies under President William McKinley(R) as part of the Monroe Doctrine and the Manifest Destiny (superiority of American values, ‘exceptionalism’). The Philippines and Hawaii were annexed and Cuba became a protectorate (granting a 99-year lease on the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base). Only at that time the US really became an economic and military power which could rule and influence the hemisphere. No power in the American continent could be in competition with the vast and powerful century-old democracy. It is often argued that since that power could not be counterbalanced, America tended to treat Central America as its back-yard.
America has employed different ways and approaches to perpetuate its influence, such as coercive diplomacy, direct intervention trough the use of military power, and undercover operation perpetrated by the CIA.
Coercive diplomacy strategy needs to be separated from deterrence as it does not involve the use of threats or shows force to dissuade, but it uses limited force and partial threats to force and adversary to stop one domestic or foreign policy. It must be said that ‘coercive diplomacy is not a military strategy at all but rather a political strategy.’[1]
Therefore, the strategies of overthrowing governments as in Dominican Republic, Grenada and Panama do not belong to coercive diplomacy but to the use of force through direct intervention.
US policy in Central America can be seen by some as a way of denying Cuba and the Soviet Union bases. In fact the region ‘has few resources and is of little direct economic importance to the US- indeed only 2 percent of US Foreign investment and trade is with Central America.’[2] However it must be underlined that for strategic reasons, because the power and credibility of the US were at a stake, because it seemed vital to the administration to demonstrate that US hegemony in the region was intact, administrations felt a real concern of what was going on in the region.
‘Neither Presidents Lyndon Johnson nor Richard Nixon invoked the Monroe doctrine by name, but the thinking and rhetoric of both about Latin America were infused with Monroeism, focus now on one clear, negative objective: no more Cubas.’[3] Consequently, US interventionism, direct or indirect, can be explained by the fact that the Cold War was not only ‘a contest between superpower billiard balls’[4], but an ideological struggle between two superpowers.
Guy Poitras claims that in the 1980s three different strategies of containment could be observed in Central America: Containment of the left, where the US sought to contain and overturn the Nicaraguan regime which was seen as the source of the problem in the region; containment of the conflict, which was the approach of the major western European and Latin American countries to settle the problematic situation; and containment of counterrevolution, which was the policy the Nicaraguan government developed in order to hold and repel at bay US hegemony.
For chronological reasons we shall first focus in Guatemala. In 1951 the Guatemalan people elected Col. Jacobo Arbenz, a socialist, to the presidency. In 1954, the CIA orchestrated the first successful overthrown of a government which bright down the constitutional government of Jacobo Arbenz. Although the communist party was weak in Guatemala, America saw the evils of communism as a threat. Preoccupation on the American United Fruit Company existed, but the ideological threat was considered to be too important to negotiate a peaceful way-out as it did with Bolivia and the tin mines. Was there a real threat or did the fears of communism prevail over democracy? Harold Moulineu argues that: ‘In retrospect, the ‘threat’ seems to have been simply a result of the democratic process working its difficult way through Guatemalan politics and culture. For thirty years after the US repression of the threat in 1954, Guatemala experienced no genuine democracy.’[5]
Another direct intervention through force in American history was the Invasion of Grenada. On March 1979, a bloodless coup led by Maurice Bishop, the New Jewel movement leader established a Marxist-Leninist government which quickly aligned with Cuba and the Soviet Union. Accusation followed from the Reagan administration claiming that Grenada was transporting weapons to other Central American countries and was building an airport to assist the Soviets and the Cubans. In October 1983, ‘Operation Urgent Fury’ was launched and 7,000 American troops invaded the island and encountered 1,500 soldiers and 600 Cubans (most of them military engineers). Although the invasion was opposed by Canada and UK (because the country is part of the commonwealth), the Reagan administration decided to act unilaterally because it saw threats of communism.
After the US invasion of Grenada in October 1983 American troops captured important Grenadian documents that demonstrated the extremely limited support the Soviets were giving to the Caribbean island.
We shall treat now the Dominican Republic intervention another use of force that America perpetrated to ‘achieve foreign policy interests.’
The prevention of another Cuba (and a massive one) was the fundamental point that drove Johnson to indirect interventionism in Brazil in 1964 and pushed the administration to encourage the Brazilian military officers to overthrown the leftist democratic government of Joao Goulart. The same fears of red ideologies drove the president to the 1965 military invasion of the Dominican Republic.
From 1915 to 1934 the country was under American military government, and after the withdrawal of the American forces the country was ruled by Rafael Trujillo, a military dictator who ‘was a stench in American diplomatic nostrils, but who was vocally anti-Nazi during WWII and anti-Communist thereafter.’[6] Fidel Castro’s success against the brutal Batista, warned the Eisenhower administration that if Trujillo, half despot and brutal as Batista, remained in power he might be succeeded by another Castro, a Dominican one, and probably with Cuba’s help.
Trujillo was assassinated in May 1961 in circumstances which remain murky to this day. In early 1962, Juan Bosch, poet and lifelong opponent of Trujillo, won the first free democratic election for president. Bosch, who was unpopular with the military and the wealthy, was overthrown in September 1963. Several presidents through Latin America saw this situation as a test to American devotion to democracy, but the superpower accepted and recognised the military triumvirate in early 1964. One year later the military regime was proving itself ever less effective in governing. The US could at that point have worked negotiation to ceasefire, to call new elections or simply restore the illogically deposed elected socialist president Juan Bosch. But Johnson, haunted with fears of communism, launched ‘Operation Power Pack’ and invaded the island with 23,000 marines claiming that otherwise Castro would be soon commanding the country. An inter-American peace force led by the Brazilian regime which the US had help to reach power, took over command in an international peace-keeping force in late 1965. As Gaddis claimed this policy was coherent with US policy since America did not carry the burden of the situation once the intervention was over. ‘A persistent theme of latter-day Monroeism was that by keeping the hemisphere secure, and not having erect defences on ‘our own doorstep,’ the US could deploy forces all over the world.’[7]
With no doubt, the most significant and important issue that shaped American foreign policy through the 1980s was Nicaragua, a nation in where coercive diplomacy and economic and military coercion was used.
There was little foreign direct investment of the US in Nicaragua, and expropriations of property were principally directed to the Somoza family and its associates, not US interests.
The principal negotiation efforts on the Nicaraguan issue included the Contadora Plan (Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia and Panama; and later the ‘support group’ of Argentina Brazil, Peru and Uruguay formed in July 1985). But differences between Nicaragua and the Tegucigalpa group blocked a treaty agreement. After the Contadora negotiations collapsed in January 1987, initiatives by President Arias shift Costa Rica to a more neutral position. A first draft of the Arias plan was discussed by the presidents of Costa Rica, Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. But the Reagan administration did more to punish than to reward Costa Rican efforts in the Arias plan. The Nicaraguan government was prepared to do concession but the US administration would not accommodate the least to the situation. Reagan opposed negotiations with El Salvador to settle the internal war.[8]
A second meeting in Esquipulas, Guatemala, this time with the presence of Daniel Ortega culminated in the signing of the Esquipulas II treaty in August 1987.
‘Indeed, theses multilateral negotiations represented and unprecedented level of cooperation among the Latin American nations, and one of the most significant and concerted challenges ever posed to US hegemony in the western hemisphere.’[9]
It should be remembered that the Sandinista regime won the 1984 ‘fair democratic’ (so qualified by the 2000 international observers) elections by more than 70% of the votes and though they preferred a single-party Leninist model they allowed a domestic opposition to exist and function in contrast to the governing situation in Cuba.
American people were opposed to an invasion of the Latin American country and were not convinced of the necessity of the financial aid the contras were receiving. As a consequence it was difficult for the administration to convince Congress to obtain extra funds and the situation became even worse for Reagan when in 1987 the Congress shifted to the Democrats.
The desire to acquire more military funds to finance the contra guerrilla led the administration to unconstitutional practises of funding as the November 1986 Iran-Contra affair scandal.
Although it always rhetorically presented a ‘two- track approach’ the Reagan administration was frequently contradictory and on ad hoc bases. As a matter of fact there was no consensus with in the policymaking apparatus because inter-bureaucratic differences existed. On the one hand, administration’s hardliners in the NSC (William Clark, Oliver North), the CIA (William Casey), at the State Department (Alliot Abrams), at the UN (Jeane Kirkpatrick) and at the Defence Department (Caspar Weinberger), fundamentally aimed to eliminate the Sandinista regime by nullifying coercive diplomacy by vetoing State Department attempts to negotiate; on the other hand, ‘US officials who entered into negotiation - Enders, Quainton, Shultz, shlaudeman and Habib- did not speak for the entire Reagan administration.’[10]
Of course the hardliners’ policy prevailed as they detained all key positions. The contra army served as the principal mean of military coercion, and the trade embargo as the economic one. ‘The economic dimension of the policy has received less attention, even though it was arguably more effective.’[11] In fact, the contra war did not achieve the objective of overthrowing the government, whereas the costs of war and the 1985 full-trade embargo, which violated the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT), created huge inflation in the country making the situation unsustainable what obliged the Sandinitas in the medium term to end the war and to call for new elections. At the UN, the Security Council voted 11-1 (with 3 abstentions) against the trade embargo the US decreed on the Latin American country. ‘European powers tended to believe that the Left should not be isolated or contained but integrated and moderated within the western economic and trading system.’[12]
Furthermore, the Reagan administration used other economic coercive measures to destabilise the Nicaraguan economy. It reversed the Carter administration policy on loans toward the Argentinean and Chilean harsh military regimes (which had killed an estimated 30,000 and 6,000 ‘insurgents’ in each countries) in order to obtain more votes in the ‘Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo’. Together the USA, Chile and Argentina controlled enough votes in the IBD to reject the fishing boat loan, and other loans that were essential to the agricultural and underdeveloped economy of Nicaragua. ‘But like the Inter-American Development Bank, the World Bank was susceptible to pressure from it principal contributor.’[13]Thus, Washington pressured on the regional and international banks was arguably more effective than other means.
The US also used direct ways of damaging the economy. Director of the CIA William Casey and his chief of operations for Latin America were responsible for the 19 attacks targeting the Nicaraguan oil storages facilities conducted by the US Special Forces between September 1983 and April 1984. Moreover, the mining of Nicaraguan three major harbours and the ‘great coffee war’ also constituted ways of damaging the weak stability of an economy highly dependent on trade. In Nicaragua, the US never could claim to any degree of international agreement. The UN Security Council condemned with several resolutions American actions especially the US mining of the Nicaraguan harbours (13-1, with 1 abstention).
A solution to the decade-long conflict did not come from the US itself. In February 1989 American capacity to obstruct an agreement was weakened as Bush had just taken office. An accord was signed by the five Central American countries calling for elections in February 1990, but the Bush administration refused to lever the military coercion of the contras and only did lever it when Violeta Chamorro won the elections against the Sandinitas.
‘The specific objective of overthrowing the Sandinistas and the more general precedent of making self determination selectively applicable only to certain types of political systems as determined unilaterally by the US were rejected by the western allies, by the countries in the region, and by the UN.’[14]Furthermore, the United States was convicted at the International Court of Justice (Nicaragua vs. US) for using unlawful means of destabilisation.
‘Political change in Managua was precipitated not by US-supported guerrillas but by an electoral process which the US government had always doubted, and by an extended, tortuous of series of regional negotiations which the US had consistently undermined.’[15] Coercive threats are best combined with inducements and cooperation, that is to say a ‘carrot-and-stick’ policy of coercive diplomacy, not the pure coercion the US practice in Nicaragua. The bullying American strategy in Central America did not aim mutual accommodation but only search to implement the policies which would allow the hardliners to obtain unilateral submission. In short, negotiations served as a useful cover for bullying tactics and to obtain concessions from Managua. Negotiations that the administration only respected rhetorically while it was working secretly to block them.
Although US coercive policies shape the process, American policy was repeatedly undermined by small Central American countries that sought and end to the contra war and the internal contradiction within the US administration.
The positive development of the conflict for American interests was also influenced by the fact that the Soviets found that another Cuba was too costly, especially in the 1980s when Soviet influence around the globe was declining as a consequence of a long suffering economy.
The final use of force that the US perpetrated in Latin America during the Cold War was the Invasion of Panama. ‘Operation Just Cause’ deposed General Manuel Noriega, who had worked for the CIA from late 1950s to the1980s, in December 1989. The Bush administration incursion into Panama deployed 27,684 troops and over 300 aircrafts. Unnecessary, between 3,000 and 4,000 civilians died. On December 22nd and 29th, the OAS and The UN passed resolutions deploring the invasion and calling for a rapid withdrawal.
The reader gains the impression that in many cases the US overreacted prematurely as there was no S.U. intervention or very marginal involvement. ‘A spectre haunted the US. It was the spectre of communism anywhere in the Americas.’[16] Administrations tended to see red everywhere in the region were socialist, not necessarily communist, movements developed.
‘For nearly two centuries the US has claimed a right to exclude certain systems’ from the America, and during the 20th century it has claimed to know which system ought to prevail throughout the hemisphere.’[17] American interventionism during the Cold War was not so different from previous periods, but America’s power was much greater. Hence, the reader infers and identifies that the claim that America has treated Central America as his back-yard in order to achieve its foreign and domestics interests is very close to reality. A country that preaches that the world should adhere to the American ‘exceptionalism’, the values of democracy and free-trade, was more concerned about capitalist trade and self interests policies (sometimes ineffective), than about the freedom of the Latin American peoples to choose their way of undertaking democracy.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Jentleson, Bruce W, ‘The Reagan administration and Coercive Diplomacy: Restraining more than remaking Governments,’ Political Science Quarterly 106 (1991) 1, PP. 57-82.
Roberts, Kenneth, ‘Bullying and Bargaining- The United States, Nicaragua, and Conflict Resolution in Central America’, International Security 15 (autumn 1990)2, pp. 67-102
Leogrande, William, ‘Making the Economy Scream: US economic sanctions against Sandinista Nicaragua’ Third World Quarterly 17 (1996) 2, pp. 329-348
Bulmer-Thomas, Victor and Dunkerley, James, The United States and Latin America: The New Agenda, (1999). Chapter 2 Jorge I. Dominguez: ‘US Latin American Relations during the Cold War and its aftermath.’
Gaddis, Smith, The Last Years of the Monroe Doctrine, 1945-1993, (1994). Chapter 6: ‘No More Cubas: The Monroe Doctrine under Johnson and Nixon.’
Poitras, Guy, The Ordeal Of Hegemony: The United States and Latin America, (1990). Chapter 5: ‘The Containment of Central America.’
Molineu, Harold, US Policy Toward Latin America: from Regionalism to Globalism. 2nd ed. 1990. Chapter 3: The Sphere of Influence in the Cold War.
[1] Jentleson, Bruce W, ‘The Reagan administration and Coercive Diplomacy: Restraining more than remaking Governments,’ Political Science Quarterly 106 (1991) 1, P.58.
[2] Poitras, Guy, The Ordeal Of Hegemony: The United States and Latin America, (1990). Chapter 5: ‘The Containment of Central America.’ p. 85.
[3] Gaddis, Smith, The Last Years of the Monroe Doctrine, 1945-1993, (1994). Chapter 6: ‘No More Cubas: The Monroe Doctrine under Johnson and Nixon.’ P. 113.
[4] Bulmer-Thomas, Victor and Dunkerley, James, The United States and Latin America: The New Agenda, (1999). Chapter 2 Jorge I. Dominguez: ‘US Latin American Relations during the Cold War and its aftermath.’ P.36.
[5] Molineu, Harold, US Policy Toward Latin America: from Regionalism to Globalism. 2nd ed. 1990. Chapter 3: The Sphere of Influence in the Cold War. P. 57.
[6] Gaddis, Smith, The Last Years of the Monroe Doctrine, 1945-1993, (1994). Chapter 6: ‘No More Cubas: The Monroe Doctrine under Johnson and Nixon.’ P. 123.
[7] Gaddis, Smith, The Last Years of the Monroe Doctrine, 1945-1993, (1994). Chapter 6: ‘No More Cubas: The Monroe Doctrine under Johnson and Nixon.’ P. 129.
[8] Carothers, 1991, pp. 86-92 in: Bulmer-Thomas, Victor and Dunkerley, James, The United States and Latin America: The New Agenda, (1999). Chapter 2 Jorge I. Dominguez: ‘US Latin American Relations during the Cold War and its aftermath.’ P.44.
[9] Roberts, Kenneth, ‘Bullying and Bargaining- The United States, Nicaragua, and Conflict Resolution in Central America’, International Security 15 (autumn 1990)2, p. 81.
[10] Roberts, Kenneth, ‘Bullying and Bargaining- The United States, Nicaragua, and Conflict Resolution in Central America’, International Security 15 (autumn 1990)2, p.98.
[11] Leogrande, William, ‘Making the Economy Scream: US economic sanctions against Sandinista Nicaragua’ Third World Quarterly 17 (1996) 2, pp. 329.
[12] Poitras, Guy, The Ordeal Of Hegemony: The United States and Latin America, (1990). Chapter 5: ‘The Containment of Central America.’ p. 89.
[13] Leogrande, William, ‘Making the Economy Scream: US economic sanctions against Sandinista Nicaragua’ Third World Quarterly 17 (1996) 2, pp. 335.
[14] Jentleson, Bruce W, ‘The Reagan administration and Coercive Diplomacy: Restraining more than remaking Governments,’ Political Science Quarterly 106 (1991) 1, PP. 82.
[15] Roberts, Kenneth, ‘Bullying and Bargaining- The United States, Nicaragua, and Conflict Resolution in Central America’, International Security 15 (autumn 1990)2, p. 68.
[16] Bulmer-Thomas, Victor and Dunkerley, James, The United States and Latin America: The New Agenda, (1999). Chapter 2 Jorge I. Dominguez: ‘US Latin American Relations during the Cold War and its aftermath.’ P.49.
[17] Bulmer-Thomas, Victor and Dunkerley, James, The United States and Latin America: The New Agenda, (1999). Chapter 2 Jorge I. Dominguez: ‘US Latin American Relations during the Cold War and its aftermath.’ P.37.
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Should the United States embrace the idea of an American Empire? Critically examine the arguments for and against an American Empire.
It is undeniably paradoxical to talk of an American Empire considering that the US was born in opposition to the idea of Empire itself. The Founding Fathers might have looked for the establishment of an empire, but if that was the case it was one of freedom, one that could opposed the tyrant characteristics of the British Empire under George III. Today, the US still remains an ‘empire by denial’ but we have entered a time when US critics tend to use less and less the euphemism American ‘hegemony,’ and have a tendency to replace it for the word empire. As a matter of fact, there is a growing number of people who now employ the term American Empire, and the word is more and more accepted by several American scholars and the American establishment.
The Empire’s behaviour was clearly distinguishable, for instance, in 2001 when the Office of the Secretary of Defense organized a study at the Naval War College to ‘explore strategic approaches to sustain US predominance for the long term which drew comparisons between the US and the Roman, Ottoman, Chinese and British Empires.’[1] Even though the US has several similarities to other previous empires, two main differences that the American empire shows are: that the US does not look for territorial domination but for an economic one; and that is not neighbouring any other great power. In the past, the US experienced a kind of formal empire with the1898-Spanish-American War which set the expansionist policies of President William McKinley(R) as part of the Monroe Doctrine and the Manifest Destiny (The Philippines and Hawaii were annexed and Cuba became a protectorate). Today the American Empire tends to be informal but their military remains massive and world-wide spread.
At present, the US military has more than 750 installations in more than 130 countries around the globe, its total military spending accounts for 40-45 % of the world’s defence overall spending and is greater than those of the next 14 countries combined. However, in the economic realm ‘it is far less powerful than it was, say, 20 years ago—before Europe and China became more serious economic actors—or immediately after the Second World War, when it controlled 70 per cent of the world’s financial resources.’[2]
To critically shed light on the advantages and constraints of an American empire it would be interesting to determine whether what the contemporary world necessitates is an empire which is concerned on the development of peace and understanding between cultures, or an economic neoliberal empire which actually aims for the free international exchange of commodities, labour and capital, that is to say economic domination (as the status quo favours only the richest countries). It is undeniable that peace and prosperity are completely linked to each other but it is less clear whether the American Empire is focusing more on the economic development of an elite than in the societal well-being of the planet’s inhabitants, the development of plutocracy rather than democracy.
To better analyse the positive or negative impacts of an American Empire we shall first treat the arguments that let us believe that unipolarity would have unhelpful consequences for the world’s stability. In a second step we shall shed light on the approaches which could make us think that the consequences of the US ruling are constructive and beneficial for the rest of the world.
The first evidences that lead the observer to consider that an American Empire is more harmful than beneficial are based on recent developments. In fact, there is a growing list of rejected international treaties such as the Kyoto Protocol, the International Court of Justice and a succession of rejections of arms control accords that suggest that the US is fully embracing the imperial policy of unilateralism. Without a doubt, the US has got two logics of acting, multilateralism or coercive domination (and decrease of commitments to share the internationals laws and treaties), it is the latter the one which has been increasingly privileged since the end of the Cold War.
The most obvious recent development of unilateral action was in the Middle East. In Iraq the American Empire invaded and occupied the country for unclear and debatable reasons going from WMD, oil, and the establishment of a democratic country and/or the strengthening of Israel in the region. After Baghdad fell in April 2003, the Bush administration placed a U.S. administrator in charge of the country until U.S. officials eventually handed sovereignty back to the Iraqis, but they made clear they would do so only after a government was installed that accorded with U.S. interests, regardless of what Iraqis wanted. Moreover, the Bush administration also declared support for privatizing the Iraqi economy. Even though occupying forces are forbidden from selling state assets under the fourth Geneva Convention the White House awarded the great bulk of contracts for rebuilding Iraq and its oil industry to U.S. firms.[3] Hence, one century after the McKinley invasion of the Philippines, after invading, occupying and dominating the Iraqi people the US was claiming once again that it was liberating them.
After September 11 the world had an unambiguous choice: ‘either with us or against us,’ something that is remindful of the Cold War era when the Manichean American conception of the world was easily distinguishable. The American Empire’s arrogance of power was manifested in a new conception of defence, pre-emptive attacks. Any state having WMD, or at least said to have any, or having any connexion to terrorism had heard the American anti-terrorism ultimatum- an ultimatum which ‘is high-handed and permits the arbitrary application of American power everywhere.’[4] In the 2002 ‘National Security Strategy’, the Bush administration sent a message to the world: ‘the United States government asserts the right to bomb, invade and destroy whatever country it chooses,’ and it refuses to respect any international law when go against their ‘vital’ interests.[5] But what were those vital interests? Perhaps those that the vice-president reported. The 2001 Cheney Report on US energy needs ‘identified Saddam as America’s main enemy and urged the US to use all the necessary means against him, including military intervention.’[6] Later, when President G. W. Bush delivered his speech in front of the UN before the invasion of Iraq he made clear that: ‘the purposes of the US should not be doubted. The Security Council resolutions will be enforced… or action will be unavoidable.’
The role of the dollar as the key currency in the world shall not be undermined as it constitutes one of the most important means of economic imperialism. The 1944-United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference, commonly known as the Bretton Woods Agreements, gave the possibility to the American economy to counting on the IMF to support its dollars assets, and not having to be linked to the gold standart anymore. Thus, since the values around the world and much of the nations reserves are in dollars, the US dominates not only its own economy but also the value of the savings and reserves in foreign countries. This entire context offers to the US the capability of having low interest rates, allowing massive twins-deficit in the American economy, because is principally financed by foreign countries (especially the poorer countries which can not get money in the market at low interest rates because they are nor ‘reliable’), which actually finance and lend money to the famished American consumers.
From the end of the WWII, in order to establish neo-imperial reign in Latin America, Asia, and the Middle East, the United States did not annex countries, but instead ‘Washington sought to dominate these countries' economies and keep friendly governments in power—through quiet subversion or, if necessary, outright military intervention.’[7] The paradox is that free-trade is, and was, preached more for others than for the US itself; Thus, the ‘Washington consensus’ about neoliberalism has led to American global dominance of world markets. In the mean time the US continuous to subsidy its agriculture, as the EU and Japan, and intermittently some of its industries such as the steel and textiles one.
‘As the world’s dominant state, the US championed GATT (WTO)-and the Bretton Woods institutions- as a way of locking in other countries to an open world economy that would ensure massive economic gains for itself.’[8] Consequently, the US Treasury dominates the World Bank and the IMF and uses credit and loans as one of the most important sources of foreign policy. Once a country has acquired debt the US Treasury through the WB or the IMF and all the other international financial organisms (which are subjugated to these to banks) put pressure in countries to undertake ‘structural adjustment programs’ whose purpose is to liberalise the economy, the labour and the capital market, the privatisation of government enterprises, and the imposition of fiscal austerity. That fiscal austerity translates itself in the cutting of governing spending specially in health and education, which accentuates the difference between developed and underdeveloped countries and perpetrates the task of raw-material provider to the poorest countries (something that is in some way the continuity of colonial mercantilism).
Another reasons which could lead us to claim that America shall not lead the world unilateraly is the so-called American belief of the superiority of their values. The Manifest Destiny, the ‘city-upon-a-hill’ puritan conception of what America should be, represents a danger for the world as exceptionalism leads to phanatism and it can be compared with muslim fundamentalist which also believe in the superiority of their values. Senator J. William Fulbright obeserved in 1968, ‘the British called it the ‘white man’s burden, the French ‘la mission civilisatrice’ , Nineteenth-century Americans called it ‘manifest destiny.’ It is now called the ‘responsabilities of power’, ‘the promotion of democracy,’ ‘the promotion of freedom.’[9]
Not a minor theme is the religious character of the American society. The multiplicity of Chiristian sects and the very important pace religion occupies in the American society produce clashes with most of the European countries which tend to be more secular, with all the muslim countries, and with the Asian civilisations which have a totally different conception of spirtuality and do not understand the western conception of religion.
There are authors who claim that the unilateralist character of ther American Empire is positive since multilateralsim has been tried with poor results and catastrophic consequences. Thus, Krauthammer states that Europe had practice multilateralism for centuries and it never worked and because of that he describes unipolarity as more benign.[10] But can we really compare that period of time with today’s considering that states only had conventional weapons? The writer does not give enough importance to the development of nuclear weapons. It is not only the improvement of a kind of warhead, its power is so great that creates deterrence to a point that no nuclear power would dare to attack another nuclear power.[11]
It can be argued that up until know, with few exceptions, the US has preferred indirect rule and informal empire to achieve its policies of formal empire.[12] The methods of formal rule are visible as they are military ones, but US methods of indirect ruling and informal Hyperpuissance are usually achieve through NGOs, foundations, International Organizations and corporations, and local elites. The role the culture constitutes, the so-calles soft power, in the survival of an Empire shall not be undermine. American cultural imperialism, which was present during the Cold War world-wide and acted through philanthropic foundations and other NGOs, prepared the societies for economic neoliberalism.[13]
When dealing with the arguments for an American Empire, the first thing which is important to note is that the unipolarity of the world today is due to the reason that ‘other major states are not making systematic choices to pull away from and balance against the United States.’[14] It may not be forgotten the offshore balancing power that the US played when entering both World Wars leading to the victory of the allies, and the fact that the US provided relatively peace for the last 60 years by helping to organize and by encouraging the formation of International organization such as the UN and NATO after WWI and WWII leading to the end of communism. Therefore, since the end of the Cold War has altered the characters of the threat for the EU and Japan, Taiwan and South Korea, it has also changed the way these countries observe the US, not anymore as a security provider but a Hegemonic ruler. But, ‘How can one talk of empire when one of the United States’ obvious impulses abroad has been to advance the cause of national democracy and self-determination?’[15]
Another reason not to fear the American empire is the thesis that demonstrate that democratic countries as the US, which has it power primarily institutionalised, are less willing to use power in arbitrary cases in other democracies. Today, the Asian and EU countries do not want to dominate the ‘Colossus’ but just to predict its moves by means of international agreements and institutions. Moreover, American power is now more tolerable than the power of previous empires ‘because in the age of nuclear deterrence American military power cannot be used for conquest against other great powers.’[16]
Pro- US Empire critics also remembered the readers that America’s unique global power supremacy allowed balancing Iraq in the Gulf War by supporting its neighbours and it balanced China by supporting Taiwan, South Korea or even Vietnam.[17] Furthermore, Kosovo and Rwanda provide another example of why an American Empire is necessary: in order to stop the slaughter of innocents in NATO’s doorstep,[18] and in Africa. Had the US army not set up the air-bridge to eastern Zaire in the wake of the Rwanda genocide, even more people would have perish.[19] In addition, at present, there are still countries which need the imposition of authority from an external power. It is for instance the case of Sudan, Ethiopia, Liberia some years ago, North Korea, etc. Thus, it is claimed that the role of the US is to provide stability and order to these countries which would help develop institutions, public goods, justice and flourishing markets.
In A World Without Power, Niall Ferguson claims that ‘Apolarity could turn out to mean an anarchic new Dark Age: an era of waning empires and religious fanaticism; of endemic plunder and pillage in the world's forgotten regions; of economic stagnation and civilization's retreat into a few fortified enclaves.’[20] Deekap Lal asserts that it is actually imperialism what necessitates the Middle East to restore order and to embrace modernity, to fight the century-old confusion that persists in the Islamic souls about modernity which leads to believe in jihad. He goes even further by arguing that the Wilsonian-type moral persuasion that the Europeans preach to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict through an UN-lead multilateral action is the usual tactic of the weak powers.[21]
Concerning the failed completion of stability and democracy in Iraq and the Middle East, Philip Bobbitt declares in his ‘constitutional theory’ that democracy and human rights are above sovereignty. He claims that states as Iraq, being not democratic and not protecting human rights, should expect American interventionism because the US is democratic, immensely powerful and committed to human rights, and for that reasons it has the might and right to attack Iraq and others. He also maintains that for those same reasons pre-emptive action to countries trying to develop WMD is legitimate and that in these cases the US must have international law immunity.[22] One of the main reasons to the necessity of unilateralism, it is argued, is that the United Nations Security Council is not legitimate as it allows misrepresentation and keeps an image of the world after the WWII.
During the Cold War years the best understanding between two different and opposed worlds happened when détente was tried. Later on, the end of the Soviet Union was not a consequence of the hardliners of the Reagan Administration but a decision from the SU themselves to reform and open to the world (perestroika and glasnost) because of its great economies. Force might be the easiest way to achieve a goal but it does not guaranty long term duration.
If the US keeps choosing to act unilaterally its ability to dominate and transform countries will remain limited. Nothing which is achieved by force and unilaterally is durable as it has not real legitimacy and ‘liberated’ peoples actually feel themselves oppressed in the medium term. The every-day massacre that produced the invasion of Iraq and the unsolved problems with the Taliban in Afghanistan can attest of the consequences of acting by its own. Moreover, these last two unilateral interventions did not diminish but accentuated the development of WMD around the World. Hence, North Korea and Iran understood that the only way not to be invaded was to put more resources in the developing of their nuclear capabilities while the empire was busy with Afghanistan and Iraq.
As we have seen, unilateralism leads to unbalanced actions, policies and viewpoints. For instance, how to solve the problems in the Middle East when ‘in 2003, even Israelis tended to see the US as favouring them rather that the Palestinians.’[23]
Because global economic and political interdependence tends to grow, America will probably be obliged to sustained multilateral policies even if it faces resistance from internal ideologies. It is undeniable that today the UN does not fully represent the world and the US has a great responsibility in stopping the democratisation of the International Organisation. The US has the dilemma of multilateralism or the development of the American Empire. Unilateralism is entirely based on power and coercive repression of ‘rogue’ states by partial conception and policies; whereas multilateralism is based on international law and a more impartial viewpoint. The dilemma is jungle-ruling, where the stronger animal dominates the others, or societal ruling, which differentiates human being from other mammals, where institutions and law and not force are the soul of stability, democracy, peace and understanding.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Ikenberry, G. John, 'Liberal Hegemony or Empire?’ American Power in the Age of Unipolarity’ in Held & Koenig-Archibugi eds., American Power in the 21st Century, Cambridge: Policy Press, 2004, pp. 83-113.
Mann, Michael, ‘The First Failed Empire of the Twenty-First Century,’ in Held & Koenig-Archibugi eds., American Power in the 21st Century, pp. 52-82.
Bacevich, Andrew J, ed., The Imperial Tense: Prospects and Problems of American Empire, Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2003. Chapter1: Back to an Imperial Future, pp. 5-81.
Cox, Michael, ‘Empire by Denial: The Strange Case of the United States,’ International Affairs, Vol. 8 (2005) 1, pp. 15-30.
Judis, John B, ‘Imperial Amnesia’, Foreign Policy, July/August 2004.
Ferguson, Niall, ‘A World Without Power,’ Foreign Policy, July/August 2004.
Ferguson, Niall, Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire. Penguin, March, 2005. Introduction, pp. 1-29.
[1] Ferguson, Niall, Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire. Penguin, March, 2005. Introduction, p. 6.
[2] Cox, Michael, ‘Empire by Denial: The Strange Case of the United States,’ International Affairs, Vol. 8 (2005) 1, p. 25.
[3] See Judis, John B, ‘Imperial Amnesia’, Foreign Policy, July/August 2004. pp. 5-6.
[4]Krauthammer, Charles, ‘The Unipolar Era,’ in Bacevich, Andrew J, ed., The Imperial Tense: Prospects and Problems of American Empire, Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2003. p. 53.
[5]North, David, ‘America’s Drive for World Domination,’ in Bacevich, Andrew J, ed., The Imperial Tense: Prospects and Problems of American Empire, Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2003. p. 67.
[6] Mann, Michael, ‘The First Failed Empire of the Twenty-First Century,’ in Held & Koenig-Archibugi eds., American Power in the 21st Century, pp. 76-77.
[7] Judis, John B, ‘Imperial Amnesia’, Foreign Policy, July/August 2004. p. 4.
[8] Ikenberry, G. John, 'Liberal Hegemony or Empire?’ American Power in the Age of Unipolarity’ in Held & Koenig-Archibugi eds., American Power in the 21st Century, Cambridge: Policy Press, 2004, p. 103.
[9] Ferguson, Niall, Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire. Penguin, March, 2005. Introduction, p. 23.
[10] Krauthammer, Charles, ‘The Unipolar Era,’ in Bacevich, Andrew J, ed., The Imperial Tense: Prospects and Problems of American Empire, Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2003. p. 59.
[11] We may understand through this point why America is at present so interested in trying to develop the so-called ‘Star Wars’ Missile Defense Anti-ballistic System.
[12] Ferguson, Niall, Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire. Penguin, March, 2005. Introduction, p. 12.
[13] See F. Stonor Saunders, Who Paid the Piper? The CIA and the Cultural Cold War. London: Granta, 1999.
[14] Ikenberry, G. John, 'Liberal Hegemony or Empire?’ American Power in the Age of Unipolarity’ in Held & Koenig-Archibugi eds., American Power in the 21st Century, Cambridge: Policy Press, 2004, p. 89.
[15] Cox, Michael, ‘Empire by Denial: The Strange Case of the United States,’ International Affairs, Vol. 8 (2005) 1, p. 21.
[16] Ikenberry, G. John, 'Liberal Hegemony or Empire?’ American Power in the Age of Unipolarity’ in Held & Koenig-Archibugi eds., American Power in the 21st Century, Cambridge: Policy Press, 2004, p. 95.
[17] Krauthammer, Charles, ‘The Unipolar Era,’ in Bacevich, Andrew J, ed., The Imperial Tense: Prospects and Problems of American Empire, Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2003. p. 61.
[18] Rieff, David, ‘ Liberal Imperialism,’ in Bacevich, Andrew J, ed., The Imperial Tense: Prospects and Problems of American Empire, Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2003. p.12.
[19] Ibid, p. 24.
[20] Ferguson, Niall, ‘A World Without Power,’ Foreign Policy, July/August 2004. p. 2.
[21] See Deepak, Lal, ‘ In Defense of Empires,’ in Bacevich, Andrew J, ed., The Imperial Tense: Prospects and Problems of American Empire, Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2003. pp.43-44.
[22] See Mann, Michael, ‘The First Failed Empire of the Twenty-First Century,’ in Held & Koenig-Archibugi eds., American Power in the 21st Century, pp. 53-54
[23] Mann, Michael, ‘The First Failed Empire of the Twenty-First Century,’ in Held & Koenig-Archibugi eds., American Power in the 21st Century, p. 76.
The Empire’s behaviour was clearly distinguishable, for instance, in 2001 when the Office of the Secretary of Defense organized a study at the Naval War College to ‘explore strategic approaches to sustain US predominance for the long term which drew comparisons between the US and the Roman, Ottoman, Chinese and British Empires.’[1] Even though the US has several similarities to other previous empires, two main differences that the American empire shows are: that the US does not look for territorial domination but for an economic one; and that is not neighbouring any other great power. In the past, the US experienced a kind of formal empire with the1898-Spanish-American War which set the expansionist policies of President William McKinley(R) as part of the Monroe Doctrine and the Manifest Destiny (The Philippines and Hawaii were annexed and Cuba became a protectorate). Today the American Empire tends to be informal but their military remains massive and world-wide spread.
At present, the US military has more than 750 installations in more than 130 countries around the globe, its total military spending accounts for 40-45 % of the world’s defence overall spending and is greater than those of the next 14 countries combined. However, in the economic realm ‘it is far less powerful than it was, say, 20 years ago—before Europe and China became more serious economic actors—or immediately after the Second World War, when it controlled 70 per cent of the world’s financial resources.’[2]
To critically shed light on the advantages and constraints of an American empire it would be interesting to determine whether what the contemporary world necessitates is an empire which is concerned on the development of peace and understanding between cultures, or an economic neoliberal empire which actually aims for the free international exchange of commodities, labour and capital, that is to say economic domination (as the status quo favours only the richest countries). It is undeniable that peace and prosperity are completely linked to each other but it is less clear whether the American Empire is focusing more on the economic development of an elite than in the societal well-being of the planet’s inhabitants, the development of plutocracy rather than democracy.
To better analyse the positive or negative impacts of an American Empire we shall first treat the arguments that let us believe that unipolarity would have unhelpful consequences for the world’s stability. In a second step we shall shed light on the approaches which could make us think that the consequences of the US ruling are constructive and beneficial for the rest of the world.
The first evidences that lead the observer to consider that an American Empire is more harmful than beneficial are based on recent developments. In fact, there is a growing list of rejected international treaties such as the Kyoto Protocol, the International Court of Justice and a succession of rejections of arms control accords that suggest that the US is fully embracing the imperial policy of unilateralism. Without a doubt, the US has got two logics of acting, multilateralism or coercive domination (and decrease of commitments to share the internationals laws and treaties), it is the latter the one which has been increasingly privileged since the end of the Cold War.
The most obvious recent development of unilateral action was in the Middle East. In Iraq the American Empire invaded and occupied the country for unclear and debatable reasons going from WMD, oil, and the establishment of a democratic country and/or the strengthening of Israel in the region. After Baghdad fell in April 2003, the Bush administration placed a U.S. administrator in charge of the country until U.S. officials eventually handed sovereignty back to the Iraqis, but they made clear they would do so only after a government was installed that accorded with U.S. interests, regardless of what Iraqis wanted. Moreover, the Bush administration also declared support for privatizing the Iraqi economy. Even though occupying forces are forbidden from selling state assets under the fourth Geneva Convention the White House awarded the great bulk of contracts for rebuilding Iraq and its oil industry to U.S. firms.[3] Hence, one century after the McKinley invasion of the Philippines, after invading, occupying and dominating the Iraqi people the US was claiming once again that it was liberating them.
After September 11 the world had an unambiguous choice: ‘either with us or against us,’ something that is remindful of the Cold War era when the Manichean American conception of the world was easily distinguishable. The American Empire’s arrogance of power was manifested in a new conception of defence, pre-emptive attacks. Any state having WMD, or at least said to have any, or having any connexion to terrorism had heard the American anti-terrorism ultimatum- an ultimatum which ‘is high-handed and permits the arbitrary application of American power everywhere.’[4] In the 2002 ‘National Security Strategy’, the Bush administration sent a message to the world: ‘the United States government asserts the right to bomb, invade and destroy whatever country it chooses,’ and it refuses to respect any international law when go against their ‘vital’ interests.[5] But what were those vital interests? Perhaps those that the vice-president reported. The 2001 Cheney Report on US energy needs ‘identified Saddam as America’s main enemy and urged the US to use all the necessary means against him, including military intervention.’[6] Later, when President G. W. Bush delivered his speech in front of the UN before the invasion of Iraq he made clear that: ‘the purposes of the US should not be doubted. The Security Council resolutions will be enforced… or action will be unavoidable.’
The role of the dollar as the key currency in the world shall not be undermined as it constitutes one of the most important means of economic imperialism. The 1944-United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference, commonly known as the Bretton Woods Agreements, gave the possibility to the American economy to counting on the IMF to support its dollars assets, and not having to be linked to the gold standart anymore. Thus, since the values around the world and much of the nations reserves are in dollars, the US dominates not only its own economy but also the value of the savings and reserves in foreign countries. This entire context offers to the US the capability of having low interest rates, allowing massive twins-deficit in the American economy, because is principally financed by foreign countries (especially the poorer countries which can not get money in the market at low interest rates because they are nor ‘reliable’), which actually finance and lend money to the famished American consumers.
From the end of the WWII, in order to establish neo-imperial reign in Latin America, Asia, and the Middle East, the United States did not annex countries, but instead ‘Washington sought to dominate these countries' economies and keep friendly governments in power—through quiet subversion or, if necessary, outright military intervention.’[7] The paradox is that free-trade is, and was, preached more for others than for the US itself; Thus, the ‘Washington consensus’ about neoliberalism has led to American global dominance of world markets. In the mean time the US continuous to subsidy its agriculture, as the EU and Japan, and intermittently some of its industries such as the steel and textiles one.
‘As the world’s dominant state, the US championed GATT (WTO)-and the Bretton Woods institutions- as a way of locking in other countries to an open world economy that would ensure massive economic gains for itself.’[8] Consequently, the US Treasury dominates the World Bank and the IMF and uses credit and loans as one of the most important sources of foreign policy. Once a country has acquired debt the US Treasury through the WB or the IMF and all the other international financial organisms (which are subjugated to these to banks) put pressure in countries to undertake ‘structural adjustment programs’ whose purpose is to liberalise the economy, the labour and the capital market, the privatisation of government enterprises, and the imposition of fiscal austerity. That fiscal austerity translates itself in the cutting of governing spending specially in health and education, which accentuates the difference between developed and underdeveloped countries and perpetrates the task of raw-material provider to the poorest countries (something that is in some way the continuity of colonial mercantilism).
Another reasons which could lead us to claim that America shall not lead the world unilateraly is the so-called American belief of the superiority of their values. The Manifest Destiny, the ‘city-upon-a-hill’ puritan conception of what America should be, represents a danger for the world as exceptionalism leads to phanatism and it can be compared with muslim fundamentalist which also believe in the superiority of their values. Senator J. William Fulbright obeserved in 1968, ‘the British called it the ‘white man’s burden, the French ‘la mission civilisatrice’ , Nineteenth-century Americans called it ‘manifest destiny.’ It is now called the ‘responsabilities of power’, ‘the promotion of democracy,’ ‘the promotion of freedom.’[9]
Not a minor theme is the religious character of the American society. The multiplicity of Chiristian sects and the very important pace religion occupies in the American society produce clashes with most of the European countries which tend to be more secular, with all the muslim countries, and with the Asian civilisations which have a totally different conception of spirtuality and do not understand the western conception of religion.
There are authors who claim that the unilateralist character of ther American Empire is positive since multilateralsim has been tried with poor results and catastrophic consequences. Thus, Krauthammer states that Europe had practice multilateralism for centuries and it never worked and because of that he describes unipolarity as more benign.[10] But can we really compare that period of time with today’s considering that states only had conventional weapons? The writer does not give enough importance to the development of nuclear weapons. It is not only the improvement of a kind of warhead, its power is so great that creates deterrence to a point that no nuclear power would dare to attack another nuclear power.[11]
It can be argued that up until know, with few exceptions, the US has preferred indirect rule and informal empire to achieve its policies of formal empire.[12] The methods of formal rule are visible as they are military ones, but US methods of indirect ruling and informal Hyperpuissance are usually achieve through NGOs, foundations, International Organizations and corporations, and local elites. The role the culture constitutes, the so-calles soft power, in the survival of an Empire shall not be undermine. American cultural imperialism, which was present during the Cold War world-wide and acted through philanthropic foundations and other NGOs, prepared the societies for economic neoliberalism.[13]
When dealing with the arguments for an American Empire, the first thing which is important to note is that the unipolarity of the world today is due to the reason that ‘other major states are not making systematic choices to pull away from and balance against the United States.’[14] It may not be forgotten the offshore balancing power that the US played when entering both World Wars leading to the victory of the allies, and the fact that the US provided relatively peace for the last 60 years by helping to organize and by encouraging the formation of International organization such as the UN and NATO after WWI and WWII leading to the end of communism. Therefore, since the end of the Cold War has altered the characters of the threat for the EU and Japan, Taiwan and South Korea, it has also changed the way these countries observe the US, not anymore as a security provider but a Hegemonic ruler. But, ‘How can one talk of empire when one of the United States’ obvious impulses abroad has been to advance the cause of national democracy and self-determination?’[15]
Another reason not to fear the American empire is the thesis that demonstrate that democratic countries as the US, which has it power primarily institutionalised, are less willing to use power in arbitrary cases in other democracies. Today, the Asian and EU countries do not want to dominate the ‘Colossus’ but just to predict its moves by means of international agreements and institutions. Moreover, American power is now more tolerable than the power of previous empires ‘because in the age of nuclear deterrence American military power cannot be used for conquest against other great powers.’[16]
Pro- US Empire critics also remembered the readers that America’s unique global power supremacy allowed balancing Iraq in the Gulf War by supporting its neighbours and it balanced China by supporting Taiwan, South Korea or even Vietnam.[17] Furthermore, Kosovo and Rwanda provide another example of why an American Empire is necessary: in order to stop the slaughter of innocents in NATO’s doorstep,[18] and in Africa. Had the US army not set up the air-bridge to eastern Zaire in the wake of the Rwanda genocide, even more people would have perish.[19] In addition, at present, there are still countries which need the imposition of authority from an external power. It is for instance the case of Sudan, Ethiopia, Liberia some years ago, North Korea, etc. Thus, it is claimed that the role of the US is to provide stability and order to these countries which would help develop institutions, public goods, justice and flourishing markets.
In A World Without Power, Niall Ferguson claims that ‘Apolarity could turn out to mean an anarchic new Dark Age: an era of waning empires and religious fanaticism; of endemic plunder and pillage in the world's forgotten regions; of economic stagnation and civilization's retreat into a few fortified enclaves.’[20] Deekap Lal asserts that it is actually imperialism what necessitates the Middle East to restore order and to embrace modernity, to fight the century-old confusion that persists in the Islamic souls about modernity which leads to believe in jihad. He goes even further by arguing that the Wilsonian-type moral persuasion that the Europeans preach to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict through an UN-lead multilateral action is the usual tactic of the weak powers.[21]
Concerning the failed completion of stability and democracy in Iraq and the Middle East, Philip Bobbitt declares in his ‘constitutional theory’ that democracy and human rights are above sovereignty. He claims that states as Iraq, being not democratic and not protecting human rights, should expect American interventionism because the US is democratic, immensely powerful and committed to human rights, and for that reasons it has the might and right to attack Iraq and others. He also maintains that for those same reasons pre-emptive action to countries trying to develop WMD is legitimate and that in these cases the US must have international law immunity.[22] One of the main reasons to the necessity of unilateralism, it is argued, is that the United Nations Security Council is not legitimate as it allows misrepresentation and keeps an image of the world after the WWII.
During the Cold War years the best understanding between two different and opposed worlds happened when détente was tried. Later on, the end of the Soviet Union was not a consequence of the hardliners of the Reagan Administration but a decision from the SU themselves to reform and open to the world (perestroika and glasnost) because of its great economies. Force might be the easiest way to achieve a goal but it does not guaranty long term duration.
If the US keeps choosing to act unilaterally its ability to dominate and transform countries will remain limited. Nothing which is achieved by force and unilaterally is durable as it has not real legitimacy and ‘liberated’ peoples actually feel themselves oppressed in the medium term. The every-day massacre that produced the invasion of Iraq and the unsolved problems with the Taliban in Afghanistan can attest of the consequences of acting by its own. Moreover, these last two unilateral interventions did not diminish but accentuated the development of WMD around the World. Hence, North Korea and Iran understood that the only way not to be invaded was to put more resources in the developing of their nuclear capabilities while the empire was busy with Afghanistan and Iraq.
As we have seen, unilateralism leads to unbalanced actions, policies and viewpoints. For instance, how to solve the problems in the Middle East when ‘in 2003, even Israelis tended to see the US as favouring them rather that the Palestinians.’[23]
Because global economic and political interdependence tends to grow, America will probably be obliged to sustained multilateral policies even if it faces resistance from internal ideologies. It is undeniable that today the UN does not fully represent the world and the US has a great responsibility in stopping the democratisation of the International Organisation. The US has the dilemma of multilateralism or the development of the American Empire. Unilateralism is entirely based on power and coercive repression of ‘rogue’ states by partial conception and policies; whereas multilateralism is based on international law and a more impartial viewpoint. The dilemma is jungle-ruling, where the stronger animal dominates the others, or societal ruling, which differentiates human being from other mammals, where institutions and law and not force are the soul of stability, democracy, peace and understanding.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Ikenberry, G. John, 'Liberal Hegemony or Empire?’ American Power in the Age of Unipolarity’ in Held & Koenig-Archibugi eds., American Power in the 21st Century, Cambridge: Policy Press, 2004, pp. 83-113.
Mann, Michael, ‘The First Failed Empire of the Twenty-First Century,’ in Held & Koenig-Archibugi eds., American Power in the 21st Century, pp. 52-82.
Bacevich, Andrew J, ed., The Imperial Tense: Prospects and Problems of American Empire, Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2003. Chapter1: Back to an Imperial Future, pp. 5-81.
Cox, Michael, ‘Empire by Denial: The Strange Case of the United States,’ International Affairs, Vol. 8 (2005) 1, pp. 15-30.
Judis, John B, ‘Imperial Amnesia’, Foreign Policy, July/August 2004.
Ferguson, Niall, ‘A World Without Power,’ Foreign Policy, July/August 2004.
Ferguson, Niall, Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire. Penguin, March, 2005. Introduction, pp. 1-29.
[1] Ferguson, Niall, Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire. Penguin, March, 2005. Introduction, p. 6.
[2] Cox, Michael, ‘Empire by Denial: The Strange Case of the United States,’ International Affairs, Vol. 8 (2005) 1, p. 25.
[3] See Judis, John B, ‘Imperial Amnesia’, Foreign Policy, July/August 2004. pp. 5-6.
[4]Krauthammer, Charles, ‘The Unipolar Era,’ in Bacevich, Andrew J, ed., The Imperial Tense: Prospects and Problems of American Empire, Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2003. p. 53.
[5]North, David, ‘America’s Drive for World Domination,’ in Bacevich, Andrew J, ed., The Imperial Tense: Prospects and Problems of American Empire, Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2003. p. 67.
[6] Mann, Michael, ‘The First Failed Empire of the Twenty-First Century,’ in Held & Koenig-Archibugi eds., American Power in the 21st Century, pp. 76-77.
[7] Judis, John B, ‘Imperial Amnesia’, Foreign Policy, July/August 2004. p. 4.
[8] Ikenberry, G. John, 'Liberal Hegemony or Empire?’ American Power in the Age of Unipolarity’ in Held & Koenig-Archibugi eds., American Power in the 21st Century, Cambridge: Policy Press, 2004, p. 103.
[9] Ferguson, Niall, Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire. Penguin, March, 2005. Introduction, p. 23.
[10] Krauthammer, Charles, ‘The Unipolar Era,’ in Bacevich, Andrew J, ed., The Imperial Tense: Prospects and Problems of American Empire, Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2003. p. 59.
[11] We may understand through this point why America is at present so interested in trying to develop the so-called ‘Star Wars’ Missile Defense Anti-ballistic System.
[12] Ferguson, Niall, Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire. Penguin, March, 2005. Introduction, p. 12.
[13] See F. Stonor Saunders, Who Paid the Piper? The CIA and the Cultural Cold War. London: Granta, 1999.
[14] Ikenberry, G. John, 'Liberal Hegemony or Empire?’ American Power in the Age of Unipolarity’ in Held & Koenig-Archibugi eds., American Power in the 21st Century, Cambridge: Policy Press, 2004, p. 89.
[15] Cox, Michael, ‘Empire by Denial: The Strange Case of the United States,’ International Affairs, Vol. 8 (2005) 1, p. 21.
[16] Ikenberry, G. John, 'Liberal Hegemony or Empire?’ American Power in the Age of Unipolarity’ in Held & Koenig-Archibugi eds., American Power in the 21st Century, Cambridge: Policy Press, 2004, p. 95.
[17] Krauthammer, Charles, ‘The Unipolar Era,’ in Bacevich, Andrew J, ed., The Imperial Tense: Prospects and Problems of American Empire, Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2003. p. 61.
[18] Rieff, David, ‘ Liberal Imperialism,’ in Bacevich, Andrew J, ed., The Imperial Tense: Prospects and Problems of American Empire, Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2003. p.12.
[19] Ibid, p. 24.
[20] Ferguson, Niall, ‘A World Without Power,’ Foreign Policy, July/August 2004. p. 2.
[21] See Deepak, Lal, ‘ In Defense of Empires,’ in Bacevich, Andrew J, ed., The Imperial Tense: Prospects and Problems of American Empire, Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2003. pp.43-44.
[22] See Mann, Michael, ‘The First Failed Empire of the Twenty-First Century,’ in Held & Koenig-Archibugi eds., American Power in the 21st Century, pp. 53-54
[23] Mann, Michael, ‘The First Failed Empire of the Twenty-First Century,’ in Held & Koenig-Archibugi eds., American Power in the 21st Century, p. 76.
How successful was President Clinton in devising a new ‘grand strategy’ for America’s post-Cold War foreign policy?
The end of the Cold War has left the United States as the sole superpower. America had a tremendous preponderance since the bipolarity that had characterised the world for the last four decades had disappeared. President Clinton took power in 1993 and became the first president to be elected in the Post-Cold War period. His predecessor, President George W. H. Bush, had to deal with the end of the Cold War but his four-year term was more a period of stabilization of the global geopolitical situation than one of new doctrines and strategic development of a new foreign policy. Although Bush announced that it was time for a ‘New World Order’ this concept was merely rhetoric, the substance of his foreign policy was to keep the Status Quo since the consolidation of capitalism favoured the American geopolitical and economic hegemony.
When William Clinton took office, there was no real threat to American preponderance and this unprecedented position gave him a tremendous freedom of action. He had to formulate a strategy in a post-Cold War era which was full of uncertainty but also of opportunity. ‘The United States had an enduring interest in peace, because a major global conflict would threaten his preeminence.’[1]Even though the democratic chief executive had less experience in matters of foreign policy than his pragmatic predecessor, he understood the necessity of having some clear guiding principles in foreign policy affairs not to rely on ad hoc basis. But his new approach was not a conventional one, ‘the Clinton administration perceived a strong connection between the domestic and foreign realms. What engaged Clinton most after all, was the economy, and he and his advisers, to a degree than Cold War administrations, appreciated the intimate relationship between the domestic and international economies.[2]’ Consequently, it can be said that since most citizens were uninterested in foreign policy due to the preponderance of American power, they elected a President in 1992 and a Congress (two third of Rep. Senators did not have passports) in 1994, which were much more concerned in domestic matter than in foreign policy issues. Therefore, it must be expected that if a ‘grand strategy existed’, it had to be shape in relation to people and government’s features.
Considering that there was no clear political, economic and military opponent when Clinton came to power; Was Clinton then successful in creating a new strategic design to expand or maintain the favour existing situation? To better analyse the Clinton administration foreign policy accomplishments and failures in setting a ‘grand strategy’ if there was one, we shall firstly deal with what his ‘doctrine’ was, that is to say what and why Clinton attempts to establish a new different approach to foreign policy. In a second term, we shall treat the negative points, failures and lack of support that his administration faced during the two terms the former Governor of Arkansas resided as Commander-in-chief. And lastly in a third instance, we shall focus in the existence of such a Clinton’s ‘strategic design’, and analyse what positive achievements brought his foreign policy and how logic it was. Only after answering these questions we shall be able to say whether Clinton was successful devising a grand strategy.
When we focus on the Administration’s foreign policy we must underline that many of the Clinton’s foreign advisers had already worked during the presidency of Jimmy Carter (1977-1981). The top foreign policy posts of his cabinet participants were Warren Christopher as Secretary of State, Anthony Lake as National Security Advisor, Will Perry as Secretary of Defense, and Madeleine Albright as US ambassador to the United Nations. It was not unexpected that during the first year of mandate the administration approached foreign policy in an idealistic way. This first phase was called economic engagement and prone a liberal internationalist approach which focus in the building of economic ties between the international community and the United States. As we already said, the Clinton administration saw domestic security very much tied to foreign policy. The director of the NSC, Anthony Lake, declared that the larger pool of democracies disseminated in the world, the greater American security and prosperity. The administration claimed that democracies are less likely to make war to each other.
With the creation of NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) in 1993, and the World Trade Organization (WTO), after the Uruguay Round, in 1994 (which its predecessor was the GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade), Clinton searched the stabilization and the creation of new democracies by deepening the concept of free market economies and by seeking the development of Big Emerging Markets (BEM). The administration underlined the importance of interdependence by arguing that ‘free trades and open markets don’t just promote economic advancement and democracy. They also promote a stable world political order[3]’, which of course favoured America. It was also added that as countries engage more in trade, their economies become more specialize. This evolution leading to interdependence between foreign markets and foreign goods creates mutual economic dependence and prosperity. Furthermore, this idea was back by the concept the 1950s sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset developed. Lipset claimed that ‘economic development tends to increase the general level of education, which promotes changes in political culture and political attitudes. These, in turn, encourage democracy.[4] The concept of trade as actor which ‘socializes’ countries can be clearly observed in the approach toward China of the Clinton administration.
However, because of different international events as Bosnia, Somalia, Haiti, Russia and the Middle East, the administration had to adapt his international approach. As a matter of fact, a greater commitment to international developments had to be taken, but the question was to what extent. The US should adopt a foreign policy which should be between neo-isolationism and global interventionism. These second phase in Clinton’s foreign policy, which extended itself since the late 1993 to circa 1995, was called ‘Democratic Engagement and Enlargement’ and sought to give more coherence and structure to the administration ‘grand design’. The approach continued to aim the opening of new market economies but had a more realistic slant.
The administration started to embrace greater commitment to liberal internationalism and made clear that the US would act unilaterally or multilaterally. This new degree of realism can be observed with Lake’s assertion that ‘only one overriding factor can determine whether the US should act multilaterally or unilaterally, and this is America’s interests.’
It was still argued that economic cooperation and not conflict motivated the evolution and proper behaviour of states which led to democracy. Democratic and market values persisted to form and inseparable group in Clinton’s viewpoint.
‘Finally, the Administration backed the idea of enlargement because it was convinced that democracy more generally contributed to global stability and security, especially in those countries that were in transition from communism to capitalism[5].’
In 1995, as a consequence of the criticism of the press about foreign interventions as Haiti, Somalia or Bosnia; and due to Republicans who argued that the executive branch had no effective foreign policy, the Clinton administration became even more realistic. Clinton reshuffled his advisors and secretaries appointing M. Albright as Secretary of State, William Cohen as Secretary of Defense and Sandy Berger at the head of the NSC.
Selective engagement, which was the new administration approach, meant that the US was going to continue to lead the world affairs but now was going to engage only if American interest were at stake, that is to say on matter of national criteria. The United States would be willing to use military force but only if diplomacy failed and the use of force was the last option. As a matter of fact, ‘the administration’s use of the diplomatic and economic tools of foreign policy has been far more adept than its use of military force’[6]
Moreover, it made clear that America had fewer predispositions to multilateral actions and would be more amenable to act unilaterally. It would also focus more in stabilizing the relation between key states and less on remaking the international system. In other words the economic and military goals lost some ground and the military and political ones gained primacy.
Let’s now focus in the negative points, failures and lack of support that the democratic administration had concerning foreign policy matters. Clinton was accused by critics to be a president who only cared about domestic policies and who did not understood foreign policy issues. These claims were more specifically made during the first year of his mandate, it was later clear that different voices and opinions characterized his foreign policy cabinet. The cacophony of different viewpoints and the lack of a strong spokesperson did not give credibility to the competence of his staff and at that time the foreign policy was seen as incoherent, contradictory, indecisive and lacking of purpose and vision. ‘Republicans routinely criticised him for abandoning Bush’s geopolitical axioms in favour of an excessively commercial and humanitarian foreign policy.’[7]
Being democracy enlargement Clinton’s plan, for opponents the administration had no clear guide arguing that the strategy was incomplete as it did not specify how to promote democracy. Reviewers claimed that another mischief of the administration concerning this theme was the belief that ‘market economies’ could only work in democratic states and they added that Clinton failed by making universal that what had work in America had also to work abroad. This kind of ‘universalism’ of American democratic values is close to what Cox describes the ‘Wilsonian fallacy of trying to make other countries assume a form of government for which they were probably not suited and certainly unwilling to adopt.’[8]
As Clinton saw that domestic and foreign policies were ‘two faces of the same coin’, critics claimed that ‘while he cared deeply about the global economy, he viewed it primarily through the eyes of a domestic policy president striving to sustain American prosperity by winning access to foreign markets.[9]’
It was also advanced that the administration failed to act quickly in the Balkans, did not succeed to challenge China over human rights, and did not commit to engagement in the genocide of Rwanda.
It was also declared that ‘by using an ultimatum at the Rambouillet conference that Serbia was certain to reject, the United States most likely provoked what could have been an avoidable war[10].’ It was for this reason that many critics stated Clinton’s responsibility causing the war in the Balkans without anticipating the terrible consequences.
But if the human right record in the ex-Yugoslavia was ambiguous, the errors in Rwanda were tragic because ‘despite clear signs that mass slaughter was being planned there, the United States helped derail the U.N. peace effort.[11]’
In terms of relationship with other great foreign power, the deteriorating understanding to Russia was seen as very negative. The empathy with Russia declined as a consequence of the expansion of NATO, the indifference to Russian interests in the Balkans, Chechnya and Caspian Basin and the scrapped of the Anti- Ballistic Missile Treaty.
Concerning the proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction, Clinton failed to convince the Senate to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty allowing China and India to reach as sophisticated WMD as American ones. Moreover, he is blame for not persuading Pakistan and India to avoid nuclear weapon testing in 1998; for not preventing the collapse of the UN inspections in Iraq; and for the unclear and ambiguous outcome of the Agreements with North Korea in 1994.
Thirdly, we have now the necessity to treat Clinton’s legacy, analyse what positive achievements brought his foreign policy and explain if these policies were part of a grand design.
Not to treat Clinton’s world economic strategy as a ‘grand design’ policy would be a significant mistake. Clinton profoundly believed that economic interdependence and democracy created peace and kept the world order which significantly favoured American interests. In fact, ‘in the minds of American leaders, including President Truman, the fundamental case of both wars was the rise of illiberal, autocratic states.’[12]Of course, for people who understand ‘grand strategy’ in terms of conventional military deterrence, containment or a race toward armament will not see it the same way. But, ‘ if grand strategy is defined as a coherent set of foreign policies aimed at the overall strengthening of the country’s position in the world, then the promotion of democracy and the other liberal order-building impulses constitute such a grand strategy.’[13]
In some way when Clinton came to power he found himself in a similar position to Truman’s 1947 one. President Truman then decided to create the National Security Council and the CIA in order to deal with the communist threat in terms of geopolitical and economical security. But when Clinton came to office capitalism had already defeated communism, so he decided to expand capitalist throughout the world by wedding domestic policy and foreign policy. Clinton created the NEC (National Economic Council) as a response to a new era in world politics. The NEC was a cluster of economic agencies that can be compared to Truman’s creation of the NSC. In addition, the head of the NEC, the secretary of Treasury Robert Rubin and the director of the Office of Management and Budget were always present in the meetings of the NSC. Clinton put a lot of emphases in the necessity that the NEC and the NSC work together.
Furthermore, in order to promote American economic hegemony, to stabilize the BEM markets for American investments and to establish a definitive ‘new world order’ where free market societies rule, Clinton called for the strengthening of the International Monetary Found and the World Bank.
The weight of economy in foreign policy matters can be clearly observed in the relation toward China where the Secretary of Treasury Robert Rubin had played a much important role in shaping and influencing the Chinese than Secretary of State Madeleine Albright or NSC director Berger.
Another reason President Clinton saw to influence the world order in an indirect way through economy was that Americans were uninterested about foreign policy and that they cared more for the domestic economic prosperity. Clinton, a liberal who opposed the Vietnam War and understood its lessons, did not approve direct military intervention unless it was the last solution. Moreover, people where against money spending and life losses in regions where America had no interest and in places they did not even know where to situate.
‘In many ways, the Clinton approach has deep roots in the Founder’s vision of commerce as the essence of democracy.’[14] His grand design, which tied at the same time economic and foreign policies, resulted in the creation of 240 separate trade agreements, the tearing down of barriers to US goods and investment and the creation of the WTO and NAFTA. Positive outcome consequences of the latter accords were the greatest economic prosperity in American history, the creation of 1.7 millions jobs related to export, a low unemployment rate throughout both of his terms, the strengthening of democracy in Latin America, Asia and some former communist countries and more importantly by keeping of the status quo which preserved American preponderance in economic, military and geopolitical issues in the world.
Even though many critics have been made to his conventional foreign policies in crisis like Somalia and Bosnia, it must be said that he did not inherit a positive legacy in those areas from Bush’s mandate. In issues like the CTBT or the missile defence, ‘its principal mistakes have come in to partisan pressure at home’[15]. It must be remembered that since the 1994 mid-term elections President Clinton governed without majority in the Congress.
What it is hardly criticisable to the Clinton administration is the expansion of the NATO to ex-Soviet communist satellites such as Czechoslovakia, Poland and Hungary; the leadership the administration showed in Kosovo and Bosnia, the stabilization of relations with China; the role it played in the Good Friday Agreements; the continuous engagement in the search of peace in the Middle East; the reduction of the threat of WMD when persuading Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan to give up their inherited-Soviet arsenal; the ratification of the Chemical Weapons Convention; and the agreements to freeze and dismantled the nuclear program with North Korea in the late 1990s.
The Cold War was a war of economic ideologies in which capitalism opposed communism. Since the Truman doctrine every American president had tried to defeat communism by means of idealistic and realistic conceptions of foreign policy. In the 1990s, after the fall of communism, President Clinton successfully consolidated the capitalist market economy throughout the world and deepened American economic hegemony. His administration stabilized the world order, in a period where much was to lose, by means of economic geopolitical strategy. This essay has demonstrated that Clinton’s ‘grand strategy’ existed but was not a conventional military one. In fact, being no potential military threat and having high levels of unemployment and twin deficits in the domestic economy, the Commander-in-Chief focused in an economic foreign policy which would promote democracy abroad and bring prosperity at home.
His grand design was based on the enlargement of free market economies and democracies. The creation of the NEC, the NAFTA, the WTO and the strengthening of the Big Emerging Markets’ economies were silent hidden undeclared weapons of global financial domination. These commercial treaties enabled the enlargement of American economic preponderance in the world by opening new markets to American investments and exportable goods. Furthermore, trough globalization Clinton committed America to be involved and to lead world affairs. Even though the administration failed to deal with some crisis and had to adapt itself during the eight years of mandate, it can not be said that Clinton was unsuccessful in devising a grand strategy. As this paper has revealed, despite the greater degree of realism in Clinton’s second term, the administration always maintained for the necessity of an economic engagement. To shape the world affairs and to keep American preponderance not a conventional foreign policy was needed but a new economic tactic approach.
In addition, it can not be said that Clinton’s foreign policy is a continuation of Bush’s because when the Republican only talked of promotion of global trade and of a new world order. Bush’s statements concerning these matters were mainly rhetoric
To conclude, the reader gains the impression that Clinton’s grand strategy seems to be a logic response to the development of world events. Once communism defeated, the time for capitalist expansionism should come.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
McCormick, ‘The Clinton Administration: Foreign Policy after the Cold War’, 4th edition, 2004, chapter 6, 215-320.
Michael Cox, ‘Wilsonian Resurgent? The Clinton Administration and the Promotion of Democracy,’ in M. Cox et al (eds), American Democracy Promotion, pp.218-242
John Ikenberry, ‘Why export Democracy? The ‘Hidden Grand Strategy’ of American Foreign Policy,’ The Wilsonian Quarterly, 23/1, 1999.
Stephen Walt, ‘Two cheers for Clinton’s Foreign Policy,‘ Foreign Affairs, 2000, pp 63-79.
Richard A. Melason, ‘American Foreign Policy since the Vietnam War: The search of Consensus from Richard Nixon to George W. Bush,’ 4th edition, 2005, pp. 233-287.
Colin Campbell, Bert A. Rockman, ‘The Clinton Legacy, Engaging the World: First Impressions of the Clinton Foreign Policy Legacy ‘chapter 10 (Emily Goldman and Larry Bernman), 2000.
D. McKay, ‘American Politics and Society,’ 5th edition, 2001, chapter 16: American Foreign Policy in the Post-Cold War, The American World Role, pp. 311-317.
Davies, McKeever, ‘Politics USA’, chapter 21: Foreign Policy in the 1990s, 2nd edition, 2006, pp. 340-347.
[1] Stephen Walt, ‘Two cheers for Clinton’s Foreign Policy, ‘Foreign Affairs, 2000, p 67.
[2] Richard A. Melason, ‘American Foreign Policy since the Vietnam War: The search of Consensus from Richard Nixon to George W. Bush,’ 4th edition, 2005, p 240.
[3] John Ikenberry, ‘Why export Democracy? The ‘Hidden Grand Strategy’ of American Foreign Policy,’ The Wilsonian Quarterly, p.4.
[4] John Ikenberry, ‘Why export Democracy? The ‘Hidden Grand Strategy’ of American Foreign Policy,’ The Wilsonian Quarterly, p.3.
[5] Thomas Carrothers, ‘Democracy’, Foreign Policy, 107 (1997), pp.11-18.
[6] Colin Campbell, Bert A. Rockman, ‘The Clinton Legacy, Engaging the World: First Impressions of the Clinton Foreign Policy Legacy ‘chapter 10 (Emily Goldman and Larry Bernman), 2000, p.230.
[7] Richard A. Melason, ‘American Foreign Policy since the Vietnam War: The search of Consensus from Richard Nixon to George W. Bush,’ 4th edition, 2005, p 284
[8] Michael Cox, ‘Wilsonian Resurgent? The Clinton Administration and the Promotion of Democracy,’ in M. Cox et al (eds), American Democracy Promotion, pp.219.
[9] Richard A. Melason, ‘American Foreign Policy since the Vietnam War: The search of Consensus from Richard Nixon to George W. Bush,’ 4th edition, 2005, p 281.
[10] Stephen Walt, ‘Two cheers for Clinton’s Foreign Policy‘ Foreign Affairs, 2000, p 76.
[11] Stephen Walt, ‘Two cheers for Clinton’s Foreign Policy‘ Foreign Affairs, 2000, p 77.
[12] John Ikenberry, ‘Why export Democracy? The ‘Hidden Grand Strategy’ of American Foreign Policy,’ The Wilsonian Quarterly, p.2.
[13] John Ikenberry, ‘Why export Democracy? The ‘Hidden Grand Strategy’ of American Foreign Policy,’ The Wilsonian Quarterly, p. 6.
[14] Colin Campbell, Bert A. Rockman, ‘The Clinton Legacy, Engaging the World: First Impressions of the Clinton Foreign Policy Legacy ‘chapter 10 (Emily Goldman and Larry Bernman), 2000, p.238.
[15] Stephen Walt, ‘Two cheers for Clinton’s Foreign Policy‘ Foreign Affairs, 2000, p 74.
When William Clinton took office, there was no real threat to American preponderance and this unprecedented position gave him a tremendous freedom of action. He had to formulate a strategy in a post-Cold War era which was full of uncertainty but also of opportunity. ‘The United States had an enduring interest in peace, because a major global conflict would threaten his preeminence.’[1]Even though the democratic chief executive had less experience in matters of foreign policy than his pragmatic predecessor, he understood the necessity of having some clear guiding principles in foreign policy affairs not to rely on ad hoc basis. But his new approach was not a conventional one, ‘the Clinton administration perceived a strong connection between the domestic and foreign realms. What engaged Clinton most after all, was the economy, and he and his advisers, to a degree than Cold War administrations, appreciated the intimate relationship between the domestic and international economies.[2]’ Consequently, it can be said that since most citizens were uninterested in foreign policy due to the preponderance of American power, they elected a President in 1992 and a Congress (two third of Rep. Senators did not have passports) in 1994, which were much more concerned in domestic matter than in foreign policy issues. Therefore, it must be expected that if a ‘grand strategy existed’, it had to be shape in relation to people and government’s features.
Considering that there was no clear political, economic and military opponent when Clinton came to power; Was Clinton then successful in creating a new strategic design to expand or maintain the favour existing situation? To better analyse the Clinton administration foreign policy accomplishments and failures in setting a ‘grand strategy’ if there was one, we shall firstly deal with what his ‘doctrine’ was, that is to say what and why Clinton attempts to establish a new different approach to foreign policy. In a second term, we shall treat the negative points, failures and lack of support that his administration faced during the two terms the former Governor of Arkansas resided as Commander-in-chief. And lastly in a third instance, we shall focus in the existence of such a Clinton’s ‘strategic design’, and analyse what positive achievements brought his foreign policy and how logic it was. Only after answering these questions we shall be able to say whether Clinton was successful devising a grand strategy.
When we focus on the Administration’s foreign policy we must underline that many of the Clinton’s foreign advisers had already worked during the presidency of Jimmy Carter (1977-1981). The top foreign policy posts of his cabinet participants were Warren Christopher as Secretary of State, Anthony Lake as National Security Advisor, Will Perry as Secretary of Defense, and Madeleine Albright as US ambassador to the United Nations. It was not unexpected that during the first year of mandate the administration approached foreign policy in an idealistic way. This first phase was called economic engagement and prone a liberal internationalist approach which focus in the building of economic ties between the international community and the United States. As we already said, the Clinton administration saw domestic security very much tied to foreign policy. The director of the NSC, Anthony Lake, declared that the larger pool of democracies disseminated in the world, the greater American security and prosperity. The administration claimed that democracies are less likely to make war to each other.
With the creation of NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) in 1993, and the World Trade Organization (WTO), after the Uruguay Round, in 1994 (which its predecessor was the GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade), Clinton searched the stabilization and the creation of new democracies by deepening the concept of free market economies and by seeking the development of Big Emerging Markets (BEM). The administration underlined the importance of interdependence by arguing that ‘free trades and open markets don’t just promote economic advancement and democracy. They also promote a stable world political order[3]’, which of course favoured America. It was also added that as countries engage more in trade, their economies become more specialize. This evolution leading to interdependence between foreign markets and foreign goods creates mutual economic dependence and prosperity. Furthermore, this idea was back by the concept the 1950s sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset developed. Lipset claimed that ‘economic development tends to increase the general level of education, which promotes changes in political culture and political attitudes. These, in turn, encourage democracy.[4] The concept of trade as actor which ‘socializes’ countries can be clearly observed in the approach toward China of the Clinton administration.
However, because of different international events as Bosnia, Somalia, Haiti, Russia and the Middle East, the administration had to adapt his international approach. As a matter of fact, a greater commitment to international developments had to be taken, but the question was to what extent. The US should adopt a foreign policy which should be between neo-isolationism and global interventionism. These second phase in Clinton’s foreign policy, which extended itself since the late 1993 to circa 1995, was called ‘Democratic Engagement and Enlargement’ and sought to give more coherence and structure to the administration ‘grand design’. The approach continued to aim the opening of new market economies but had a more realistic slant.
The administration started to embrace greater commitment to liberal internationalism and made clear that the US would act unilaterally or multilaterally. This new degree of realism can be observed with Lake’s assertion that ‘only one overriding factor can determine whether the US should act multilaterally or unilaterally, and this is America’s interests.’
It was still argued that economic cooperation and not conflict motivated the evolution and proper behaviour of states which led to democracy. Democratic and market values persisted to form and inseparable group in Clinton’s viewpoint.
‘Finally, the Administration backed the idea of enlargement because it was convinced that democracy more generally contributed to global stability and security, especially in those countries that were in transition from communism to capitalism[5].’
In 1995, as a consequence of the criticism of the press about foreign interventions as Haiti, Somalia or Bosnia; and due to Republicans who argued that the executive branch had no effective foreign policy, the Clinton administration became even more realistic. Clinton reshuffled his advisors and secretaries appointing M. Albright as Secretary of State, William Cohen as Secretary of Defense and Sandy Berger at the head of the NSC.
Selective engagement, which was the new administration approach, meant that the US was going to continue to lead the world affairs but now was going to engage only if American interest were at stake, that is to say on matter of national criteria. The United States would be willing to use military force but only if diplomacy failed and the use of force was the last option. As a matter of fact, ‘the administration’s use of the diplomatic and economic tools of foreign policy has been far more adept than its use of military force’[6]
Moreover, it made clear that America had fewer predispositions to multilateral actions and would be more amenable to act unilaterally. It would also focus more in stabilizing the relation between key states and less on remaking the international system. In other words the economic and military goals lost some ground and the military and political ones gained primacy.
Let’s now focus in the negative points, failures and lack of support that the democratic administration had concerning foreign policy matters. Clinton was accused by critics to be a president who only cared about domestic policies and who did not understood foreign policy issues. These claims were more specifically made during the first year of his mandate, it was later clear that different voices and opinions characterized his foreign policy cabinet. The cacophony of different viewpoints and the lack of a strong spokesperson did not give credibility to the competence of his staff and at that time the foreign policy was seen as incoherent, contradictory, indecisive and lacking of purpose and vision. ‘Republicans routinely criticised him for abandoning Bush’s geopolitical axioms in favour of an excessively commercial and humanitarian foreign policy.’[7]
Being democracy enlargement Clinton’s plan, for opponents the administration had no clear guide arguing that the strategy was incomplete as it did not specify how to promote democracy. Reviewers claimed that another mischief of the administration concerning this theme was the belief that ‘market economies’ could only work in democratic states and they added that Clinton failed by making universal that what had work in America had also to work abroad. This kind of ‘universalism’ of American democratic values is close to what Cox describes the ‘Wilsonian fallacy of trying to make other countries assume a form of government for which they were probably not suited and certainly unwilling to adopt.’[8]
As Clinton saw that domestic and foreign policies were ‘two faces of the same coin’, critics claimed that ‘while he cared deeply about the global economy, he viewed it primarily through the eyes of a domestic policy president striving to sustain American prosperity by winning access to foreign markets.[9]’
It was also advanced that the administration failed to act quickly in the Balkans, did not succeed to challenge China over human rights, and did not commit to engagement in the genocide of Rwanda.
It was also declared that ‘by using an ultimatum at the Rambouillet conference that Serbia was certain to reject, the United States most likely provoked what could have been an avoidable war[10].’ It was for this reason that many critics stated Clinton’s responsibility causing the war in the Balkans without anticipating the terrible consequences.
But if the human right record in the ex-Yugoslavia was ambiguous, the errors in Rwanda were tragic because ‘despite clear signs that mass slaughter was being planned there, the United States helped derail the U.N. peace effort.[11]’
In terms of relationship with other great foreign power, the deteriorating understanding to Russia was seen as very negative. The empathy with Russia declined as a consequence of the expansion of NATO, the indifference to Russian interests in the Balkans, Chechnya and Caspian Basin and the scrapped of the Anti- Ballistic Missile Treaty.
Concerning the proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction, Clinton failed to convince the Senate to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty allowing China and India to reach as sophisticated WMD as American ones. Moreover, he is blame for not persuading Pakistan and India to avoid nuclear weapon testing in 1998; for not preventing the collapse of the UN inspections in Iraq; and for the unclear and ambiguous outcome of the Agreements with North Korea in 1994.
Thirdly, we have now the necessity to treat Clinton’s legacy, analyse what positive achievements brought his foreign policy and explain if these policies were part of a grand design.
Not to treat Clinton’s world economic strategy as a ‘grand design’ policy would be a significant mistake. Clinton profoundly believed that economic interdependence and democracy created peace and kept the world order which significantly favoured American interests. In fact, ‘in the minds of American leaders, including President Truman, the fundamental case of both wars was the rise of illiberal, autocratic states.’[12]Of course, for people who understand ‘grand strategy’ in terms of conventional military deterrence, containment or a race toward armament will not see it the same way. But, ‘ if grand strategy is defined as a coherent set of foreign policies aimed at the overall strengthening of the country’s position in the world, then the promotion of democracy and the other liberal order-building impulses constitute such a grand strategy.’[13]
In some way when Clinton came to power he found himself in a similar position to Truman’s 1947 one. President Truman then decided to create the National Security Council and the CIA in order to deal with the communist threat in terms of geopolitical and economical security. But when Clinton came to office capitalism had already defeated communism, so he decided to expand capitalist throughout the world by wedding domestic policy and foreign policy. Clinton created the NEC (National Economic Council) as a response to a new era in world politics. The NEC was a cluster of economic agencies that can be compared to Truman’s creation of the NSC. In addition, the head of the NEC, the secretary of Treasury Robert Rubin and the director of the Office of Management and Budget were always present in the meetings of the NSC. Clinton put a lot of emphases in the necessity that the NEC and the NSC work together.
Furthermore, in order to promote American economic hegemony, to stabilize the BEM markets for American investments and to establish a definitive ‘new world order’ where free market societies rule, Clinton called for the strengthening of the International Monetary Found and the World Bank.
The weight of economy in foreign policy matters can be clearly observed in the relation toward China where the Secretary of Treasury Robert Rubin had played a much important role in shaping and influencing the Chinese than Secretary of State Madeleine Albright or NSC director Berger.
Another reason President Clinton saw to influence the world order in an indirect way through economy was that Americans were uninterested about foreign policy and that they cared more for the domestic economic prosperity. Clinton, a liberal who opposed the Vietnam War and understood its lessons, did not approve direct military intervention unless it was the last solution. Moreover, people where against money spending and life losses in regions where America had no interest and in places they did not even know where to situate.
‘In many ways, the Clinton approach has deep roots in the Founder’s vision of commerce as the essence of democracy.’[14] His grand design, which tied at the same time economic and foreign policies, resulted in the creation of 240 separate trade agreements, the tearing down of barriers to US goods and investment and the creation of the WTO and NAFTA. Positive outcome consequences of the latter accords were the greatest economic prosperity in American history, the creation of 1.7 millions jobs related to export, a low unemployment rate throughout both of his terms, the strengthening of democracy in Latin America, Asia and some former communist countries and more importantly by keeping of the status quo which preserved American preponderance in economic, military and geopolitical issues in the world.
Even though many critics have been made to his conventional foreign policies in crisis like Somalia and Bosnia, it must be said that he did not inherit a positive legacy in those areas from Bush’s mandate. In issues like the CTBT or the missile defence, ‘its principal mistakes have come in to partisan pressure at home’[15]. It must be remembered that since the 1994 mid-term elections President Clinton governed without majority in the Congress.
What it is hardly criticisable to the Clinton administration is the expansion of the NATO to ex-Soviet communist satellites such as Czechoslovakia, Poland and Hungary; the leadership the administration showed in Kosovo and Bosnia, the stabilization of relations with China; the role it played in the Good Friday Agreements; the continuous engagement in the search of peace in the Middle East; the reduction of the threat of WMD when persuading Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan to give up their inherited-Soviet arsenal; the ratification of the Chemical Weapons Convention; and the agreements to freeze and dismantled the nuclear program with North Korea in the late 1990s.
The Cold War was a war of economic ideologies in which capitalism opposed communism. Since the Truman doctrine every American president had tried to defeat communism by means of idealistic and realistic conceptions of foreign policy. In the 1990s, after the fall of communism, President Clinton successfully consolidated the capitalist market economy throughout the world and deepened American economic hegemony. His administration stabilized the world order, in a period where much was to lose, by means of economic geopolitical strategy. This essay has demonstrated that Clinton’s ‘grand strategy’ existed but was not a conventional military one. In fact, being no potential military threat and having high levels of unemployment and twin deficits in the domestic economy, the Commander-in-Chief focused in an economic foreign policy which would promote democracy abroad and bring prosperity at home.
His grand design was based on the enlargement of free market economies and democracies. The creation of the NEC, the NAFTA, the WTO and the strengthening of the Big Emerging Markets’ economies were silent hidden undeclared weapons of global financial domination. These commercial treaties enabled the enlargement of American economic preponderance in the world by opening new markets to American investments and exportable goods. Furthermore, trough globalization Clinton committed America to be involved and to lead world affairs. Even though the administration failed to deal with some crisis and had to adapt itself during the eight years of mandate, it can not be said that Clinton was unsuccessful in devising a grand strategy. As this paper has revealed, despite the greater degree of realism in Clinton’s second term, the administration always maintained for the necessity of an economic engagement. To shape the world affairs and to keep American preponderance not a conventional foreign policy was needed but a new economic tactic approach.
In addition, it can not be said that Clinton’s foreign policy is a continuation of Bush’s because when the Republican only talked of promotion of global trade and of a new world order. Bush’s statements concerning these matters were mainly rhetoric
To conclude, the reader gains the impression that Clinton’s grand strategy seems to be a logic response to the development of world events. Once communism defeated, the time for capitalist expansionism should come.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
McCormick, ‘The Clinton Administration: Foreign Policy after the Cold War’, 4th edition, 2004, chapter 6, 215-320.
Michael Cox, ‘Wilsonian Resurgent? The Clinton Administration and the Promotion of Democracy,’ in M. Cox et al (eds), American Democracy Promotion, pp.218-242
John Ikenberry, ‘Why export Democracy? The ‘Hidden Grand Strategy’ of American Foreign Policy,’ The Wilsonian Quarterly, 23/1, 1999.
Stephen Walt, ‘Two cheers for Clinton’s Foreign Policy,‘ Foreign Affairs, 2000, pp 63-79.
Richard A. Melason, ‘American Foreign Policy since the Vietnam War: The search of Consensus from Richard Nixon to George W. Bush,’ 4th edition, 2005, pp. 233-287.
Colin Campbell, Bert A. Rockman, ‘The Clinton Legacy, Engaging the World: First Impressions of the Clinton Foreign Policy Legacy ‘chapter 10 (Emily Goldman and Larry Bernman), 2000.
D. McKay, ‘American Politics and Society,’ 5th edition, 2001, chapter 16: American Foreign Policy in the Post-Cold War, The American World Role, pp. 311-317.
Davies, McKeever, ‘Politics USA’, chapter 21: Foreign Policy in the 1990s, 2nd edition, 2006, pp. 340-347.
[1] Stephen Walt, ‘Two cheers for Clinton’s Foreign Policy, ‘Foreign Affairs, 2000, p 67.
[2] Richard A. Melason, ‘American Foreign Policy since the Vietnam War: The search of Consensus from Richard Nixon to George W. Bush,’ 4th edition, 2005, p 240.
[3] John Ikenberry, ‘Why export Democracy? The ‘Hidden Grand Strategy’ of American Foreign Policy,’ The Wilsonian Quarterly, p.4.
[4] John Ikenberry, ‘Why export Democracy? The ‘Hidden Grand Strategy’ of American Foreign Policy,’ The Wilsonian Quarterly, p.3.
[5] Thomas Carrothers, ‘Democracy’, Foreign Policy, 107 (1997), pp.11-18.
[6] Colin Campbell, Bert A. Rockman, ‘The Clinton Legacy, Engaging the World: First Impressions of the Clinton Foreign Policy Legacy ‘chapter 10 (Emily Goldman and Larry Bernman), 2000, p.230.
[7] Richard A. Melason, ‘American Foreign Policy since the Vietnam War: The search of Consensus from Richard Nixon to George W. Bush,’ 4th edition, 2005, p 284
[8] Michael Cox, ‘Wilsonian Resurgent? The Clinton Administration and the Promotion of Democracy,’ in M. Cox et al (eds), American Democracy Promotion, pp.219.
[9] Richard A. Melason, ‘American Foreign Policy since the Vietnam War: The search of Consensus from Richard Nixon to George W. Bush,’ 4th edition, 2005, p 281.
[10] Stephen Walt, ‘Two cheers for Clinton’s Foreign Policy‘ Foreign Affairs, 2000, p 76.
[11] Stephen Walt, ‘Two cheers for Clinton’s Foreign Policy‘ Foreign Affairs, 2000, p 77.
[12] John Ikenberry, ‘Why export Democracy? The ‘Hidden Grand Strategy’ of American Foreign Policy,’ The Wilsonian Quarterly, p.2.
[13] John Ikenberry, ‘Why export Democracy? The ‘Hidden Grand Strategy’ of American Foreign Policy,’ The Wilsonian Quarterly, p. 6.
[14] Colin Campbell, Bert A. Rockman, ‘The Clinton Legacy, Engaging the World: First Impressions of the Clinton Foreign Policy Legacy ‘chapter 10 (Emily Goldman and Larry Bernman), 2000, p.238.
[15] Stephen Walt, ‘Two cheers for Clinton’s Foreign Policy‘ Foreign Affairs, 2000, p 74.
Is presidential power simply the ‘power to persuade’?
The American executive branch of power is usually seen as the most powerful branch of government in the world. The US president represents America in the world and is also the figure that unifies and shows leadership in domestic politics.
This image is not only shared by Americans, but also by a great number of the global population. It is the result of a century of US financial, military and strategic dominion. Furthermore, the president’s importance grew with each major crisis or armed conflict since the beginning of the Great War.
Yet in many aspects, the presidency is also one of the most circumscribed branches in American politics. The reason to that is that the Founding Fathers of the American constitution were afraid of tyranny. They were little enthusiastic about giving too much power to a single individual. The Framers did not want to replace George III figure by a new one, instead they wanted to check this branch, and they considered this branch of power, not as a special one, but as one more in the system of checks and balances. The constitutional convention first had to choose between to solutions: a president or and executive council (which had been experienced in some states). The debate centered on the possible dangers of a powerful, single central authority. The framers saw a dynamic congress leading America, the final choice of a president resulted from a concern of unity between the thirteen states. As a matter of fact the US constitution does not focus in the executive branch of power, it sets several way of checking presidents. But it also gives prerogatives to the presidential branch in order to check the two other branches (the legislative and the judiciary one).
‘Wherever Law ends, Tyranny begins.’
‘The reason why men enter into society, is the preservation of their property ; and the end why they authorize a legislative, is, that there may be laws made, and rules set as guards and fences to the properties of all the members of the society, to limit the power, and moderate the dominion of every part and member of the society.’ (John Locke)
The love of democracy is that of equality.
There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetuated under the shield of law and in the name of justice. (Montesquieu)
The Framers were inspired in the political theories of the Frenchman Montesquieu and the Englishman John Locke. They distinguished between executive, legislative, and judicial powers, and created three separate institutions to exercise these powers. An equilibrium among these institutions would ensure democracy and equality between individuals.
The II article of the American constitution sets the constitutional powers of the presidential branch of power.
Some critics claim that there are so many checks in the presidential branch of power that a president must persuade Congress and the electorate in order to obtain what he wishes. One of the most well-known characters to state this was Richard Elliott Neustadt.
Neustadt was the Special Assistant of the White House Office from 1950-53 under President Harry S. Truman and continued to advise John F. Kennedy and later Lyndon B. Johnson in the 1960s. In his book, Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents: The Politics of Leadership, he examined the decision-making process at the highest levels of government. Neustadt states that the President is actually rather weak in the U.S. government, being unable to make significant change without the approval of the Congress. Moreover, he claims that in practice the President must rely on ‘The Power of Persuasion’ and on his professional reputation in order to convince the electorate and the legislative branch. It is this power of political seduction, rather than the power to command, that shapes the limits of presidential power.
...the power of the presidency is the power to persuade. (Richard Neustadt)
But, is it simply the power to persuade? That would mean that the president has not the power people tend to imagine he has. In order to find a satisfactory answer to this topic, we will first focus and analyze on the powers that the president do have. In a second part we will treat all the limits the presidency faces when governing. Finally, we will conclude and answer whether it is persuasion the most important characteristic that a president should have in order to govern the United States; or whether he can still lead the country with the power that the constitution provides him.
When treating the power of the presidential power, we realize that the constitution is very clear about the limits of the presidency in some aspects, but in some others the framers left that for future generations. Article II of the constitution sets and describes all the powers that are given to the president. The president is elected for four years, and since the twenty second amendment which was adopted in 1951 as a response to F.D. Roosevelt four elections, he can only serve two terms of office (this fact will be treated in the later as it weakens presidential authority during the second term).
The president is endowed with the following executive powers granted in the constitution: the power to issue rules, regulations and instructions to federal agencies. Those are called Executive orders and they give a lot power to president since the constitutional formulation leaves much room for interpretation and evolution.
Furthermore, Congress may grant special powers in case of emergency (war, terrorist attacks, etc.). That means that the president through these statutory powers may create new federal agencies and so giving more power to the executive. This was the case with the creation of the new Homeland Security department, under George W. Bush presidency, after the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001.
‘President John F. Kennedy only held six cabinet meetings in three years, while President Nixon believes that ‘no president in his right mind submits anything to his cabinet’ (Pious, 1996, p.188)
The president is the leader of the cabinet. A cabinet is not provided in the constitution, what can explain the lack of actual power; it has a strictly consultative role. In 2005, there were fifteen departments forming the core executive. In that way Cabinet is weak and the president is extraordinarily powerful because cabinet depends only in the president’s will to deal or not to deal with a matter. The system of checks and balances is not applied in this case since Congress can not approve or disapprove cabinet since it has no power of influence on it. Nevertheless, it has rarely been a source of advice upon which the president relies on. They exist to serve goals of secondary importance with the exception of the Defense Department, the State Department and the Treasury Department (are much more important for the head of the executive).
‘The cabinet […] exits by custom and functions by presidential initiative and is therefore what the executive chooses to make of it’ (Koenig, 1996, p.188)
The executive office has experience an important growth since its creation in 1939. At the present time it includes the National Security Council, the Council of Economic advisors, and the office of Management and Budget. Secretaries, sub-secretaries, assistants are top-officials which are nominated by the president for the group of federal agencies which work directly with the president. These nominations require senatorial confirmation. They are usually confirmed by the Senate, but in recent years the Upper House launched deep investigations. That was the case of the appointed Attorney-General Alberto Gonzalez who was strongly opposed by some senators but was finally accepted.
The executive leader has the power to check the judiciary branch by nominating many federal judges and members of the Supreme Court. This is maybe the most important legacy that a president can leave for future generations since the judges he appoints are appointed for life-time. President George W. Bush leaves in this way a very important conservative legacy with the nomination of Samuel Alito and John Roberts to the Supreme Court in recent years.
Another judiciary power that the presidency disposes is the power to grant pardon. That was the case with Reagan and O. North; and with President Nixon (Watergate scandal) who was pardon (after resignation) by his ex-vice president and at the moment president Gerald Ford.
‘It is the duty of the President to propose and it is the privilege of the Congress to dispose.’ (Franklin D Roosevelt)
Another direct power of the president is the legislative role. The president is the chief formulator of public policy and the only spokesman for policy at national level: in his campaign and his legislative program; in his ‘State of the Union’ message to Congress. His administration prepares the budget proposals that will be discussed in the House of Representatives. Thus, he is in fact responsible of budgetary choices as deficit, etc.
It is also the power to veto legislation that provides the presidency with a very important political weapon, maybe one of the most important constitutional ones. The president can in this way negotiate with Congress about acts. His veto cannot be overturned without a two-thirds vote in the House and Senate. This not only gives the president a check on Congress, but it enables him in advance to "balance" legislative interests (particularly if Congress is controlled by the opposition party). In practice very little is vetoed by the president but it always exists the threat, this leads to a contribution of both sides to reach everyone interest.
The article II of the constitution endows the president with the powers of Commander-in-chief of the armed forces of the United States of America. The president can not declare war, it is the Senate which does it, but he can mobilize troops without consent for sixty days (in practice it does not happen without consensus). He is responsible of more than one and a half million soldiers and of the budget for the Defense Department (it is more than four hundred billion dollars a year, this represents the double of spending for defense of all twenty five Europeans Union countries combined). The power of Commander-in-chief has been tested in the 1812-1814 war against Britain (James Madison), during the American civil war when Abraham Lincoln was president (1861-1865), during the Great War with Woodrow Wilson (1914-1918), during the Second World War with F. D. Roosevelt and later Harry Truman(1939-1945), in the Cold War (1945-1991), during the Vietnam war with Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford (1965-1975), during the Gulf War in 1991 (George Bush), in the 1990s with the conflict in the ex-Yugoslavia under William Clinton, and in recent years by George W. Bush in the War of Afghanistan (2002) and the invasion of Iraq (2003-?).
Another remarkable feature of the executive power is that under the constitution, the president is the head of the US diplomacy. He is responsible for the relations with foreign countries. He manages all official foreign policies with the help of the secretary of state which he personally appoints. Moreover, he appoints ambassadors and other diplomatic personnel, he negotiates and sign treaties and he has personal contact with foreign leaders (some of these prerogatives will be discussed later since they required senatorial agreement).
All those characteristics are directly expressed in the American constitution, but the president dispose of some unwritten powers that he does not fail to use. The president embodies the unity of the nation. He is the symbol of the national interest in contrast to Senators, who represent the interest of the states, and Representatives, who represent the local interests. The president is the head of the party he represents. An extra characteristic of indirect power is that a president has much more power during the first year of mandate. This is call ‘the honeymoon’ period because presidential decisions and wishes about foreign and domestic policies are not put it in doubt because of the popularity that the administration has in the first twelve months of mandate.
Since the end of the Second World War, the executive power has grown significantly in what is taking decisions of foreign policy after each major crisis or armed conflict. The Senate, even though it has prerogatives not to, usually respects more and more what president and their advisors decide about steps to follow in what concerns wars or other crucial foreign policy decisions.
We have above realized that the president has many direct political powers which are described in the US constitution, and some others that are not mention but that they exist and are keenly used by leaders of the executive. The reader also discovered that there are checks and balances which circumscribed those powers, in some cases more importantly than in others. This question will be developed in the following lines, and we shall also treat whether presidential power is merely persuasion, or whether the prerogatives of the presidency are strong enough to govern without political consensus.
When the Founding Fathers conceived the constitution in the Philadelphia Convention, they established several ways of checks and balances on the presidency. For example, an executive order must be in conformity with statuary law or the federal courts will declare it unconstitutional. Another way of preventing a tyrant was the creation of the Electoral College which results in an indirect election of the president.
Congress can check the president in several different ways: it can refuse to pass a bill the president wants to; by passing a law over the president’s veto; by refusing to approve a presidential appointment (only the Senate has this prerogative); by mounting an investigation; by refusing to sign a treaty the president signed with a foreign power (is subject to the "advice and consent" of two-thirds of the Senate). Most of these checks need a majority of two thirds or of three fourths of Congress.
Presidents can also be checked by the judiciary branch. It is call judicial review, which is the power of the federal court to declare an order null or unconstitutional. For instance, the suspension of the Habeas Corpus and the use of military courts for some cases by Abraham Lincoln during the American Civil War were declared unconstitutional. That established a judicial precedent for the citizens which protect their civil rights during war time. A second case has happened recently with the Guantanamo Bay Prison. The Supreme Court declared that the right of those prisoners were not guaranteed in the Cuban Base, and that treatment did not respect the Geneva Convention engagements.
Congress can also use the impeachment power in order to remove a president from office. This prerogative has not been usual in the American history. Only three of them faced it: Andrew Johnson; Richard Nixon who resigned in 1974 after the House Judiciary Committee recommended his impeachment for covering up crimes connected to the Watergate scandal; and Bill Clinton who was set free by the Senate in 1999 after being impeached by the House of Representatives.
Another issue is the one of the civil servants. Many presidents found very frustrating to work with the federal bureaucracy. Truman and Carter had difficulties to persuade the civil servants even though they were democrats. The task tends to be even more difficult for Republicans since civil servants identified themselves more with the Democratic Party. Without persuading them president can not act as fast as they would like to. Even Ronald Reagan, ‘the great communicator’, had problems when trying to influence and persuade the federal bureaucracy employees.
The media's the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that's power. Because they control the minds of the masses. (Malcolm X)
The media are far more powerful than the President in creating public awareness and shaping public opinion, for the simple reason that the media always have the last word. (Richard Nixon)
The Framers created a system of checks and balances to protect democracy and to avoid tyranny. But they designed this model accounting on the existence of three branches of power in the United States. They could not know the incredible development that the media would experience especially in the second half of the twentieth century. Newspapers, radios, magazines, and more specially television consolidate what many political scientists call ‘the fourth branch of power’. The media shapes the perception of the people to an extent that the Framers could not imagine. As a result, the consciousness of politicians about the impact that their image has in the citizens, started to develop after the first televised presidential debate in 1960. The political combat between Richard Nixon (conservative) and John F. Kennedy (Democrat) had two winners. For the people who listened the radio Nixon was the clear winner, for the ones who watched the debate on television there was no doubt that the young, tanned, catholic and democrat candidate won.
‘Drastic action can be costly, but it can be less expensive than continuing inaction.’ ‘I prefer Presidents ... more skeptical than trustful, more curious than committed, more nearly Roosevelts than Reagans. I think the former energize our governmental system better and bring out its defects less than do the latter. ‘
‘...the power of the presidency is the power to persuade.’ (Richard Neustadt)
Richard Elliott Neustadt developed the idea that presidencial power is the power to persuade. He claimed that powers granted to president are not huge and that there existed several checks and balances. He argued that a president with a clear and simple message which is accompanied by evidence and documents will have improved chances for convincing the electorate and Congress.
Neustadt raised the concept of ‘presidential Capital’, that is to say, popular and political popularity and prestige, in order to pursuit their objectives and wishes. He talked of the importance of a combination of vision, political skills and timing in order to have success with a reform. It is in some way presidential intuition and knowledge of seduction what will guarantee the acceptance of his policy. Popularity is instrumental sincepopular presidents are powerful politicians. He said that during the ‘Honeymoon’ period the president has more authority because popularity is usually higher. Presidents have stronger public opinion and Congress approval during the escalation of a conflict, armed crisis, wars or terrorist attacks because they have the national leadership to unify the country. This increased in presidential approval declines over time that is why, presidents use public appearances to build support in formal opportunities: State of the Union, or in informal opportunities: media events.
Another presidential resource is the use of public opinion polling to promote a programme. This is specially used in ‘hard times’ by the executive office in Congress (when the majority of a House or of both Houses is represented by the opposing political party).
Conclusion
The reader realizes that the president is endowed with several constitutional powers. Few of them are not checked or slightly supervised by the other two branches of government. One can not say that president can properly govern without political and public consensus (that is to say without legitimacy).
One the one hand, presidents are circumscribed by several constitutional limits, and that weakened them. A president has to agree and bargain with Congress when he does not dispose of the majority in one, or in of both houses about the acts he wishes to pass. On the other hand, the presidency is advantageous because of his relation with the media. Whenever he pronounces and develops a topic, the media starts discussing it. The president can persuade the electorate sometimes more easily than Congress since all the microphones and cameras are pointed to him. Persuasion has become a presidential must-have skill, without this political power to seduce and to be heard president can not govern.
‘From now on, I think it is safe to predict, neither the Democratic nor the Republican Party will ever nominate for President a candidate without good looks, stage presence, theatrical delivery, and a sense of timing.’ (James Thurber)
Gerald Pomper claims that Al Gore lack of persuasion lead him to a defeat in the 2000 elections. He argues that Gore did not seduce the electorate ‘because his campaign ignored the voting tendencies of the electorate’.
Jimmy Carter sometimes appeared casually dressed to show himself as ‘the man of the people’. When the statistics showed that he was perceived failing in domestic and foreign policies, he adopted the ‘Rose Garden strategy’. He invited the cameras and showed himself with ambassadors, foreign presidents and let people witness him signing very important bills or treaties.
Ronald Reagan, ‘the great communicator’, was re-elected in 49 out of 50 states in the 1984 elections. He and Bill Clinton were two presidents which reached Americans with a very clear and intelligent speech. The fact that a former actor has had such an important score in American elections shows the importance of reaching, persuading, seducing the people. The same can be said from President Clinton who even after the Lewinsky affair was re-elected because of the good health of the economy, and more importantly due to his skills to convince the electorate, to persuade the public opinion, to communicate with the press.
Can it be said then that presidential power is ‘simply’ the power to persuade? The word ‘simply’ is to extremist because it undermines presidential prerogatives. There is no doubt that without persuasion such a work can not be accomplished, but ‘simply’ connotes and denotes the idea that the president does not have constitutional powers.
There is no doubt of the importance of persuading the electorate, Congress, and foreign powers in order to accomplish the desired policy. Presidents use their skills to convince more and more in key issues as: in moral values, education, taxes, terrorism, economy, health, wars, jobs and foreign affairs.
The weight of the media in the American society (and in the world) continues to grow extraordinarily. Probably, the power of persuasion will become an even greater indirect power of the executive branch in the future. A president must show self-confidence and must be persuasive to properly govern such an important world power.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
McKeever, Zvesper & Maidment, Politics USA, 1999
R Singh, American Government and Politics, 2003
D McKay, American Politics and Society, 2001, 5th edition.
Websites
Us Department of State
http://usinfo.state.gov/
Cornell University
http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct
Wikipedia and Larousse Encyclopaedias.
University of Michigan Documents Centre
http://www.lib.umich.edu/libhome/Documents.center/index.html
Media
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com
This image is not only shared by Americans, but also by a great number of the global population. It is the result of a century of US financial, military and strategic dominion. Furthermore, the president’s importance grew with each major crisis or armed conflict since the beginning of the Great War.
Yet in many aspects, the presidency is also one of the most circumscribed branches in American politics. The reason to that is that the Founding Fathers of the American constitution were afraid of tyranny. They were little enthusiastic about giving too much power to a single individual. The Framers did not want to replace George III figure by a new one, instead they wanted to check this branch, and they considered this branch of power, not as a special one, but as one more in the system of checks and balances. The constitutional convention first had to choose between to solutions: a president or and executive council (which had been experienced in some states). The debate centered on the possible dangers of a powerful, single central authority. The framers saw a dynamic congress leading America, the final choice of a president resulted from a concern of unity between the thirteen states. As a matter of fact the US constitution does not focus in the executive branch of power, it sets several way of checking presidents. But it also gives prerogatives to the presidential branch in order to check the two other branches (the legislative and the judiciary one).
‘Wherever Law ends, Tyranny begins.’
‘The reason why men enter into society, is the preservation of their property ; and the end why they authorize a legislative, is, that there may be laws made, and rules set as guards and fences to the properties of all the members of the society, to limit the power, and moderate the dominion of every part and member of the society.’ (John Locke)
The love of democracy is that of equality.
There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetuated under the shield of law and in the name of justice. (Montesquieu)
The Framers were inspired in the political theories of the Frenchman Montesquieu and the Englishman John Locke. They distinguished between executive, legislative, and judicial powers, and created three separate institutions to exercise these powers. An equilibrium among these institutions would ensure democracy and equality between individuals.
The II article of the American constitution sets the constitutional powers of the presidential branch of power.
Some critics claim that there are so many checks in the presidential branch of power that a president must persuade Congress and the electorate in order to obtain what he wishes. One of the most well-known characters to state this was Richard Elliott Neustadt.
Neustadt was the Special Assistant of the White House Office from 1950-53 under President Harry S. Truman and continued to advise John F. Kennedy and later Lyndon B. Johnson in the 1960s. In his book, Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents: The Politics of Leadership, he examined the decision-making process at the highest levels of government. Neustadt states that the President is actually rather weak in the U.S. government, being unable to make significant change without the approval of the Congress. Moreover, he claims that in practice the President must rely on ‘The Power of Persuasion’ and on his professional reputation in order to convince the electorate and the legislative branch. It is this power of political seduction, rather than the power to command, that shapes the limits of presidential power.
...the power of the presidency is the power to persuade. (Richard Neustadt)
But, is it simply the power to persuade? That would mean that the president has not the power people tend to imagine he has. In order to find a satisfactory answer to this topic, we will first focus and analyze on the powers that the president do have. In a second part we will treat all the limits the presidency faces when governing. Finally, we will conclude and answer whether it is persuasion the most important characteristic that a president should have in order to govern the United States; or whether he can still lead the country with the power that the constitution provides him.
When treating the power of the presidential power, we realize that the constitution is very clear about the limits of the presidency in some aspects, but in some others the framers left that for future generations. Article II of the constitution sets and describes all the powers that are given to the president. The president is elected for four years, and since the twenty second amendment which was adopted in 1951 as a response to F.D. Roosevelt four elections, he can only serve two terms of office (this fact will be treated in the later as it weakens presidential authority during the second term).
The president is endowed with the following executive powers granted in the constitution: the power to issue rules, regulations and instructions to federal agencies. Those are called Executive orders and they give a lot power to president since the constitutional formulation leaves much room for interpretation and evolution.
Furthermore, Congress may grant special powers in case of emergency (war, terrorist attacks, etc.). That means that the president through these statutory powers may create new federal agencies and so giving more power to the executive. This was the case with the creation of the new Homeland Security department, under George W. Bush presidency, after the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001.
‘President John F. Kennedy only held six cabinet meetings in three years, while President Nixon believes that ‘no president in his right mind submits anything to his cabinet’ (Pious, 1996, p.188)
The president is the leader of the cabinet. A cabinet is not provided in the constitution, what can explain the lack of actual power; it has a strictly consultative role. In 2005, there were fifteen departments forming the core executive. In that way Cabinet is weak and the president is extraordinarily powerful because cabinet depends only in the president’s will to deal or not to deal with a matter. The system of checks and balances is not applied in this case since Congress can not approve or disapprove cabinet since it has no power of influence on it. Nevertheless, it has rarely been a source of advice upon which the president relies on. They exist to serve goals of secondary importance with the exception of the Defense Department, the State Department and the Treasury Department (are much more important for the head of the executive).
‘The cabinet […] exits by custom and functions by presidential initiative and is therefore what the executive chooses to make of it’ (Koenig, 1996, p.188)
The executive office has experience an important growth since its creation in 1939. At the present time it includes the National Security Council, the Council of Economic advisors, and the office of Management and Budget. Secretaries, sub-secretaries, assistants are top-officials which are nominated by the president for the group of federal agencies which work directly with the president. These nominations require senatorial confirmation. They are usually confirmed by the Senate, but in recent years the Upper House launched deep investigations. That was the case of the appointed Attorney-General Alberto Gonzalez who was strongly opposed by some senators but was finally accepted.
The executive leader has the power to check the judiciary branch by nominating many federal judges and members of the Supreme Court. This is maybe the most important legacy that a president can leave for future generations since the judges he appoints are appointed for life-time. President George W. Bush leaves in this way a very important conservative legacy with the nomination of Samuel Alito and John Roberts to the Supreme Court in recent years.
Another judiciary power that the presidency disposes is the power to grant pardon. That was the case with Reagan and O. North; and with President Nixon (Watergate scandal) who was pardon (after resignation) by his ex-vice president and at the moment president Gerald Ford.
‘It is the duty of the President to propose and it is the privilege of the Congress to dispose.’ (Franklin D Roosevelt)
Another direct power of the president is the legislative role. The president is the chief formulator of public policy and the only spokesman for policy at national level: in his campaign and his legislative program; in his ‘State of the Union’ message to Congress. His administration prepares the budget proposals that will be discussed in the House of Representatives. Thus, he is in fact responsible of budgetary choices as deficit, etc.
It is also the power to veto legislation that provides the presidency with a very important political weapon, maybe one of the most important constitutional ones. The president can in this way negotiate with Congress about acts. His veto cannot be overturned without a two-thirds vote in the House and Senate. This not only gives the president a check on Congress, but it enables him in advance to "balance" legislative interests (particularly if Congress is controlled by the opposition party). In practice very little is vetoed by the president but it always exists the threat, this leads to a contribution of both sides to reach everyone interest.
The article II of the constitution endows the president with the powers of Commander-in-chief of the armed forces of the United States of America. The president can not declare war, it is the Senate which does it, but he can mobilize troops without consent for sixty days (in practice it does not happen without consensus). He is responsible of more than one and a half million soldiers and of the budget for the Defense Department (it is more than four hundred billion dollars a year, this represents the double of spending for defense of all twenty five Europeans Union countries combined). The power of Commander-in-chief has been tested in the 1812-1814 war against Britain (James Madison), during the American civil war when Abraham Lincoln was president (1861-1865), during the Great War with Woodrow Wilson (1914-1918), during the Second World War with F. D. Roosevelt and later Harry Truman(1939-1945), in the Cold War (1945-1991), during the Vietnam war with Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford (1965-1975), during the Gulf War in 1991 (George Bush), in the 1990s with the conflict in the ex-Yugoslavia under William Clinton, and in recent years by George W. Bush in the War of Afghanistan (2002) and the invasion of Iraq (2003-?).
Another remarkable feature of the executive power is that under the constitution, the president is the head of the US diplomacy. He is responsible for the relations with foreign countries. He manages all official foreign policies with the help of the secretary of state which he personally appoints. Moreover, he appoints ambassadors and other diplomatic personnel, he negotiates and sign treaties and he has personal contact with foreign leaders (some of these prerogatives will be discussed later since they required senatorial agreement).
All those characteristics are directly expressed in the American constitution, but the president dispose of some unwritten powers that he does not fail to use. The president embodies the unity of the nation. He is the symbol of the national interest in contrast to Senators, who represent the interest of the states, and Representatives, who represent the local interests. The president is the head of the party he represents. An extra characteristic of indirect power is that a president has much more power during the first year of mandate. This is call ‘the honeymoon’ period because presidential decisions and wishes about foreign and domestic policies are not put it in doubt because of the popularity that the administration has in the first twelve months of mandate.
Since the end of the Second World War, the executive power has grown significantly in what is taking decisions of foreign policy after each major crisis or armed conflict. The Senate, even though it has prerogatives not to, usually respects more and more what president and their advisors decide about steps to follow in what concerns wars or other crucial foreign policy decisions.
We have above realized that the president has many direct political powers which are described in the US constitution, and some others that are not mention but that they exist and are keenly used by leaders of the executive. The reader also discovered that there are checks and balances which circumscribed those powers, in some cases more importantly than in others. This question will be developed in the following lines, and we shall also treat whether presidential power is merely persuasion, or whether the prerogatives of the presidency are strong enough to govern without political consensus.
When the Founding Fathers conceived the constitution in the Philadelphia Convention, they established several ways of checks and balances on the presidency. For example, an executive order must be in conformity with statuary law or the federal courts will declare it unconstitutional. Another way of preventing a tyrant was the creation of the Electoral College which results in an indirect election of the president.
Congress can check the president in several different ways: it can refuse to pass a bill the president wants to; by passing a law over the president’s veto; by refusing to approve a presidential appointment (only the Senate has this prerogative); by mounting an investigation; by refusing to sign a treaty the president signed with a foreign power (is subject to the "advice and consent" of two-thirds of the Senate). Most of these checks need a majority of two thirds or of three fourths of Congress.
Presidents can also be checked by the judiciary branch. It is call judicial review, which is the power of the federal court to declare an order null or unconstitutional. For instance, the suspension of the Habeas Corpus and the use of military courts for some cases by Abraham Lincoln during the American Civil War were declared unconstitutional. That established a judicial precedent for the citizens which protect their civil rights during war time. A second case has happened recently with the Guantanamo Bay Prison. The Supreme Court declared that the right of those prisoners were not guaranteed in the Cuban Base, and that treatment did not respect the Geneva Convention engagements.
Congress can also use the impeachment power in order to remove a president from office. This prerogative has not been usual in the American history. Only three of them faced it: Andrew Johnson; Richard Nixon who resigned in 1974 after the House Judiciary Committee recommended his impeachment for covering up crimes connected to the Watergate scandal; and Bill Clinton who was set free by the Senate in 1999 after being impeached by the House of Representatives.
Another issue is the one of the civil servants. Many presidents found very frustrating to work with the federal bureaucracy. Truman and Carter had difficulties to persuade the civil servants even though they were democrats. The task tends to be even more difficult for Republicans since civil servants identified themselves more with the Democratic Party. Without persuading them president can not act as fast as they would like to. Even Ronald Reagan, ‘the great communicator’, had problems when trying to influence and persuade the federal bureaucracy employees.
The media's the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that's power. Because they control the minds of the masses. (Malcolm X)
The media are far more powerful than the President in creating public awareness and shaping public opinion, for the simple reason that the media always have the last word. (Richard Nixon)
The Framers created a system of checks and balances to protect democracy and to avoid tyranny. But they designed this model accounting on the existence of three branches of power in the United States. They could not know the incredible development that the media would experience especially in the second half of the twentieth century. Newspapers, radios, magazines, and more specially television consolidate what many political scientists call ‘the fourth branch of power’. The media shapes the perception of the people to an extent that the Framers could not imagine. As a result, the consciousness of politicians about the impact that their image has in the citizens, started to develop after the first televised presidential debate in 1960. The political combat between Richard Nixon (conservative) and John F. Kennedy (Democrat) had two winners. For the people who listened the radio Nixon was the clear winner, for the ones who watched the debate on television there was no doubt that the young, tanned, catholic and democrat candidate won.
‘Drastic action can be costly, but it can be less expensive than continuing inaction.’ ‘I prefer Presidents ... more skeptical than trustful, more curious than committed, more nearly Roosevelts than Reagans. I think the former energize our governmental system better and bring out its defects less than do the latter. ‘
‘...the power of the presidency is the power to persuade.’ (Richard Neustadt)
Richard Elliott Neustadt developed the idea that presidencial power is the power to persuade. He claimed that powers granted to president are not huge and that there existed several checks and balances. He argued that a president with a clear and simple message which is accompanied by evidence and documents will have improved chances for convincing the electorate and Congress.
Neustadt raised the concept of ‘presidential Capital’, that is to say, popular and political popularity and prestige, in order to pursuit their objectives and wishes. He talked of the importance of a combination of vision, political skills and timing in order to have success with a reform. It is in some way presidential intuition and knowledge of seduction what will guarantee the acceptance of his policy. Popularity is instrumental sincepopular presidents are powerful politicians. He said that during the ‘Honeymoon’ period the president has more authority because popularity is usually higher. Presidents have stronger public opinion and Congress approval during the escalation of a conflict, armed crisis, wars or terrorist attacks because they have the national leadership to unify the country. This increased in presidential approval declines over time that is why, presidents use public appearances to build support in formal opportunities: State of the Union, or in informal opportunities: media events.
Another presidential resource is the use of public opinion polling to promote a programme. This is specially used in ‘hard times’ by the executive office in Congress (when the majority of a House or of both Houses is represented by the opposing political party).
Conclusion
The reader realizes that the president is endowed with several constitutional powers. Few of them are not checked or slightly supervised by the other two branches of government. One can not say that president can properly govern without political and public consensus (that is to say without legitimacy).
One the one hand, presidents are circumscribed by several constitutional limits, and that weakened them. A president has to agree and bargain with Congress when he does not dispose of the majority in one, or in of both houses about the acts he wishes to pass. On the other hand, the presidency is advantageous because of his relation with the media. Whenever he pronounces and develops a topic, the media starts discussing it. The president can persuade the electorate sometimes more easily than Congress since all the microphones and cameras are pointed to him. Persuasion has become a presidential must-have skill, without this political power to seduce and to be heard president can not govern.
‘From now on, I think it is safe to predict, neither the Democratic nor the Republican Party will ever nominate for President a candidate without good looks, stage presence, theatrical delivery, and a sense of timing.’ (James Thurber)
Gerald Pomper claims that Al Gore lack of persuasion lead him to a defeat in the 2000 elections. He argues that Gore did not seduce the electorate ‘because his campaign ignored the voting tendencies of the electorate’.
Jimmy Carter sometimes appeared casually dressed to show himself as ‘the man of the people’. When the statistics showed that he was perceived failing in domestic and foreign policies, he adopted the ‘Rose Garden strategy’. He invited the cameras and showed himself with ambassadors, foreign presidents and let people witness him signing very important bills or treaties.
Ronald Reagan, ‘the great communicator’, was re-elected in 49 out of 50 states in the 1984 elections. He and Bill Clinton were two presidents which reached Americans with a very clear and intelligent speech. The fact that a former actor has had such an important score in American elections shows the importance of reaching, persuading, seducing the people. The same can be said from President Clinton who even after the Lewinsky affair was re-elected because of the good health of the economy, and more importantly due to his skills to convince the electorate, to persuade the public opinion, to communicate with the press.
Can it be said then that presidential power is ‘simply’ the power to persuade? The word ‘simply’ is to extremist because it undermines presidential prerogatives. There is no doubt that without persuasion such a work can not be accomplished, but ‘simply’ connotes and denotes the idea that the president does not have constitutional powers.
There is no doubt of the importance of persuading the electorate, Congress, and foreign powers in order to accomplish the desired policy. Presidents use their skills to convince more and more in key issues as: in moral values, education, taxes, terrorism, economy, health, wars, jobs and foreign affairs.
The weight of the media in the American society (and in the world) continues to grow extraordinarily. Probably, the power of persuasion will become an even greater indirect power of the executive branch in the future. A president must show self-confidence and must be persuasive to properly govern such an important world power.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
McKeever, Zvesper & Maidment, Politics USA, 1999
R Singh, American Government and Politics, 2003
D McKay, American Politics and Society, 2001, 5th edition.
Websites
Us Department of State
http://usinfo.state.gov/
Cornell University
http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct
Wikipedia and Larousse Encyclopaedias.
University of Michigan Documents Centre
http://www.lib.umich.edu/libhome/Documents.center/index.html
Media
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com
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