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1、ANNE APPLEBAUM The New New World Order America and the New Geopolitics IN THE EARLY 1990s,during the heady months that followed the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the worlds diplomats, states- men,andjournalistscompetedtodescribeanddefi netheshape of the new, postCold War world. The straightforward se
2、t of rulesthathadgovernedAmericanforeignpolicysincethe1940s no longer applied. Our “friends” were no longer defi ned by their anticommunism, and our “enemies” were no longer de- fi ned by their affi liation with the Soviet Union. Many of the institutions created during the Cold War suddenly seemed i
3、r- relevantNATO among themand many of the specialists who had worked in these institutions suddenly found them- selves at loose ends. Some of the responses to the new situation were philo- sophical. Optimists like Frances Fukuyama claimed that we had reached the “End of History”: liberal democracy a
4、nd cap- italism had triumphed, ideological struggle was over for good. Hoover Press : BraveDP5 HPLEBN0100 04-24-:2 09:54:00rev1page1 PessimistslikeSamuelHuntingtonpredictedtheopposite:the onset of new “civilizational” wars between the West, Islam, and the Confucian world. Almost unnoticed, a very, v
5、ery few peopleoddballs like Gary Hart and Peggy Noonanpre- dicted that international terrorism would soon threaten Amer- ican society, replacing the threat of nuclear war. In the event, most of the institutional and political re- sponses to the new situation had very little to do with any of these s
6、chools of thought. Instead, they developed ad hoc, in responsetocrisesliketheIraqiinvasionofKuwaitortheBalkan wars. If American policymakers had any philosophy at all, it was usually a rather superfi cial version of Fukuyamas opti- mism: the world is getting safer, and our job is to help it get safe
7、r faster. Duringwhat will now be rememberedas the post Cold War erathe long decade that stretchedfrom November 1989 to September 2001many practitioners of foreign policy did not think much about new threats that might face the United States. Instead, they argued about what it meant to conduct foreig
8、n policy in a world without any central threat at all. As a result, there was no real organizing American diplo- maticprincipletospeakof.True,GeorgeBushSeniorinvented the phrase the “New World Order.” But he had no policy to go with it: once the Gulf War ended, the coalition he had built to fi ght i
9、t quickly fell apart. Bill Clinton did have plenty of poli- cies, but no philosophy with which to link them. “Nation- building” was the phrase sometimes used to talk about Amer- ican policy in the Balkans and in Haiti. “Democracy-promo- tion” is perhaps more accurate. In practice, this meant that al
10、l around the worldin China, in Russia, in Malaysia, all over Africa,and above all in SerbiatheUnitedStates lecturedand scolded and promoted its system, complaining about the clo- sure of opposition newspapers, protesting the incarceration of Hoover Press : BraveDP5 HPLEBN0100 04-24-:2 09:54:00rev1pa
11、ge2 2ANNE APPLEBAUM opposition leaders. The State Department issued annual as- sessments of other countries human rights records. NATO spent some of its time debating the pros and cons of enlarge- ment, and even more of its time organizing peace-keeping operations in the Balkans. At the same time, m
12、ore tasks were shifted onto the backs of multilateral institutions, the U.N. in particular,which were not prepared to shoulder the burdens of managing the world. Some of these policies were not new. The United States had been promoting human rights abroad at least since the era of Jimmy Carter. In t
13、he past, however, democracy-promotion was part of the Cold War, and could be justifi ed at home and abroadonthosegrounds.Promotingdemocracyforitsownsake turned out to be more diffi cult, politically, than might have been expected. Professional diplomats hated it. One told me recently of the relief h
14、e feels, knowing he will no longer have tospendhisdayspushingAmericanvaluesdownotherpeoples unwilling throats. Congressmen hated it too, since they could neverexplaintotheirconstituentswheretheAmericannational interest lay in Kosovo. The business community couldnt un- derstand why the oppression of
15、Tibet need disrupt their trade with China. Ordinary Americans could never follow the intri- cacies of democracy-promotion, and have, as a result, consis- tentlyrefusedtoread,think,orevenspeakaboutforeignaffairs for the past decade. But even human rights activists hated the inconsistencies of U.S. fo
16、reign policy. Everyone knew that the United States complained far more about the anti-democratic policies of in- debted Kenya than it did about the far nastier anti-democratic policies of oil-rich Saudi Arabia. Everyone knew that the United States placed sanctions on India and Pakistan for pos- sessing nuclear weapons, but not on Israel. Democracy-pro- Hoover Press : BraveDP5 HPLEBN0100 04-24-:2 09:54:00rev1page3 3The New New World Order motionpleasedno one, not even those who spe
