Failure of the American Foreign Policy and Multilateral Setup

When it comes to foreign policy ideologues, there are as many as there are experts. Widely quoted experts tend to identify themselves as neo-conservatives, nationalists, realists, liberals and rationalists. Ironically, US despite being home to the best of foreign policy schools such as Georgetown, John Hopkins, Harvard and Columbia, foreign policy experts seem to have lost sense of a coherent foreign policy.

Not that this incoherence is a recent phenomenon - American foreign policy started loosing the consensus it enjoyed in the post second world war era starting late 1960s. US emerged as the undisputed superpower in the world after the second world war. It took on a leadership role in the post war reconstruction efforts and was able to gain acceptance as a leader by advocating protection of human rights, promotion of free trade, adoption of democracy and creation of a multilateral set up.

In the late 1960s however these principles which formed the backbone of US foreign policy started to take a backseat and the Nation became obsessed with the ideal of winning the Cold War and defeating communism globally. It eventually won the cold war but ended up creating a distrust in the mind of other nations in the process. US was now seen as a superpower which was not afraid to use its hard and soft power unilaterally for promoting its hegemonic interests.

The incoherence in the US foreign policy accelerated further after it won the cold war. American policy makers saw winning the cold war as a mandate to bully others into accepting a bundled package of democracy and economic liberalization regardless of their readiness. It also instilled a sense of supremacy which led the policy makers to assume they had the right to abide or overrule the very multilateral system US helped create in pursuit of its own interests.

US turned a blind eye to the genocide in Rwanda that cost more than 800,000 lives but pushed for intervention in Kosovo. Classified documents released to the public reveal how the Clinton administration knew of the Rwanda genocide and the plan to eliminate Tutsis and modest Hutus. Some say the non intervention was due to the earlier fiasco in Somalia while some say Rwanda didn't matter as it possessed no noteworthy energy reserves and had no strategic geopolitical value. Some also contend Rwanda was alien land with which Americans shared no identity. On the other hand even though the US intervened in the Balkans with force and cooperation of the NATO, the result was only a qualified and partial success. This brings me to the middle east policy.

Middle east has vast energy reserves and is geopolitically strategic. The fact however is that Foreign policy with regards to the middle east is now a clearly visible failure as well. Israel and Palestine are not even remotely close to resolving the conflicts and most of the middle east is rising up in protest for freedom. Mobarak who was eventually disowned by Obama was once the favorite ally of the US and Israel in the middle east. Mobarak was showered with American arms and greenbacks to remain friendly to Israel and keep Islamic militancy in check. His autocratic means and oppression of Egyptian didn't bother.

It is pertinent however to ask ourselves; in a global world where everyone is competing for the finite amount of resources, should America be expected to promote democracy and human rights or should it be allowed to choose its allies and policies pragmatically on the basis of their strategic value. Why should the American taxpayers be made to pay for keeping Israel safe at the cost of annoying countries with enormous energy reserves and keep spending money and earn hatred of locals while intervening in civil wars? I am afraid, there is no easy answer to this question.

Truth is it is not just the US that wants to intervene out of strategic interests or many a times out of compulsion, but also that the world has come to rely upon the US for solving any and every conflict. That says a great deal about the ineffectiveness and failure of the entire multilateral set up created after the second world war. UN is turning out to be a disaster after all those years of hard work. It has not been able to fulfill even the most basic of its reactionary duties. Expecting it to react pro-actively would be like expecting Microsoft to outsmart Apple and Google.

It is also a telling example of how ineffective the EU has been in rising up as a genuine superpower. Secondly, US by being so hegemonic and vocal about its role in the world has bred the impression among countries and the people that its ready to defend the basic principles of Human Rights, Democracy and Free Trade. My feeling therefore is that if you carefully breed a sense of dependency into the mind of others, you are also supposed to live up to those carefully bred expectations and this is where the US has lost ground.

The financial crisis where many see the American financial system as responsible for pushing the world into recession has further dented American credibility in the global establishment. Given all this, America need to reorient itself and try to be persuasive and respectful and give up bullying. We have seen how one solution doesn't fit all in the failure of democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan imposed by the US. We have also seen how we cant come to rely upon the Americans to bail out each and every problem in the world.

Therefore what we need is an urgent and fundamental reform of the UN and the Security Council. We cannot trust 5 veto wielding nations to protect the sovereignty and security of other 187 member nations, especially when they are competing among themselves to capture more and more energy resources and geopolitical leverage. This reform process need to start with the expansion of Security Council and elimination of veto power. The General Assembly need to come out of its dysfunctional state and exert its influence. It needs to have a strong and equipped reserve military that can be rapidly deployed to control situations such as Libya and prevent events such as the Rwanda genocide from occurring again. Unless the UN emerges out of its hibernation or a strong replacement multilateral organization is set up, we would continue to have whats happening in the Middle East and Africa.