The NY Times Magazine on the weekend had a long, rambling essay about American empire, written by Michael Ignatieff. It's as good a summary of the state of the world today as I've read recently. I tend to agree with most of what Ignatieff has to say. In brief, he argues that whether or not it is recognized by the American people, the U.S. has an empire today that is as real and tangible as any in the past. Under attack, it may well be right to attack back, but its success is ultimately going to rest on a lot more than military potency. If it can succeed in delivering democracy and peace not just to Iraq, but also to the rest of the Middle East as well, it may yet end up improving its own safety and its foreign image. Obviously, the fear is that Mr. Cheney and Co. only go halfway and leave a messy autocratic system in place in Iraq (and/or fail to resolve the Israeli/Palestinian mess) which would almost certainly make things worse, from both a security and foreign image perspective. As Ignatieff says,


I got a glimmer of hope on the issue yesterday, from seeing this article suggesting that the U.S. may, indeed, be preparing to do more than remove Saddam Hussein.

I guess my current perspective comes down to this:

• I really don't like Bush, the way he was brought to power, the people he is friends with, his belief system, his hypocrisy, or his government.
  
• I can tell the difference between a government and a country, and though I don't like the U.S. government that doesn't mean I don't like the U.S. itself.
  
• I kinda like the U.S., for many reasons, not least of which is that it serves as a beacon for the best educated thinkers of our time, has the will to improve itself, and the institutions to execute that will (even if it doesn't always do it).
  
• Given the choice between a war in Iraq going badly for the U.S., and a war in Iraq going well for the U.S., I think any sane outside observer would have to hope for the latter, even if the war itself is misguided.
  
• Therefore I wish the U.S. well, while hoping and praying that they understand what they're getting into.
  
• And I'm not sure I could come up with a better alternative to war, given where they are. Though Saddam Hussein may not be the imminent threat the Bushies paint him as, there's no doubt he's a very bad man who should not be allowed to have bad weapons.
  
• Of course there's a lot of bad men who should not be allowed to have bad weapons, and there's no way military power's going to stop all of them, so the U.S. better figure out how to start winning friends again. Really helping democracy flourish in the Middle East would be a hugely important start.
  
• I firmly believe that a world with one superpower is a safer world than one without a superpower at all. I know enough history to think that people who are romantic about the past are delusional.

Well, more points could follow, but you get the idea. One last thought: there's a whole lot of hand-wringing in the world at the moment, but there aren't a lot of suggestions as to what should be done. The U.S. right wing is, in my humble opinion, not the best source of ideas for how to fix the world. It's high time the rest of us started offering alternatives. At the moment, the best alternatives seem to keep coming from the same few observers at Harper's and the NY Times. Maybe we should stop thinking about the U.S. as a single entity and start working to support those alternative voices.
posted by Tom at 11:03 AM | link |