09 March, 1998
America criticized for hegemonic role
WASHINGTON: The moment was among the most memorable in the latest showdown between the United States and Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright,
beset by chanting hecklers in a noisy Ohio gymnasium, aimed for the last word in what had been an unexpectedly stressful "town meeting" to build support for a military strike against Baghdad.
"We are the greatest country in the world," she declared. "What we are doing is serving the role of the indispensable nation, to see what we can do to make the world safer for our children and grandchildren - and for those people around the world who follow the rules."
The next day, she honed that message in a nation-wide TV interview: "If we have to use force, it is because we are America. We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall; we see further into the future."
While Albright's assertions might be seen as a case of excessive exuberance, they reflect growing confidence within US elites about Washington's hegemonic role.
Superficially, this confidence appears justified. The US economy is performing better than any other in the industrialized world, according to macroeconomic measures, while the US Treasury appears to be directing - some say dictating - the terms for the bailout of East Asia through the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank (which sit just three streets away) to pry open long-protected markets to US investment and exports.
On the diplomatic front, Washington is steam rolling NATO expansion through central Europe and into the Baltic states, heedless of Russian protests, while it imposes unilateral sanctions against foreign companies which invest in "rogue" states deemed morally unacceptable by Uncle Sam.
At the same time as it dispatches an armada of naval and air power to the Gulf, in a lavish display of military might designed to intimidate fellow-members of the UN Security Council as well as Iraq, Washington withholds payment of more than $1 billion in back debts to the world body and other multilateral institutions.
"What has the US been doing these past weeks ...other than acting as self-appointed sheriff of the world community," political science professor Ronald Steel wrote in a column of the New York Times.
No wonder that America's allies are displaying growing unease with the way Washington is throwing its weight around these days. In scarcely veiled references to the virtues of a "multipolar" world, leaders of Russia, China and France have complained about the domineering conduct of the US.
At the State Department, this phenomenon is called "The Hegemon Problem", and, in the wake of the latest Iraq crisis, when Washington had a difficult time marshalling international support, it is drawing more attention than ever.
The fear in Washington is that its leadership role in international power politics is provoking a global backlash. A study of the world press by the US Information Agency late last year found some foreign analysts were becoming "almost paranoid about alleged US intentions in the world".
Even some of Washington's boisterous right-wingers appear concerned. "If we do not learn to change our leadership style, we will eventually have enormous resentment across the planet," warned House of Representatives Speaker Newt Gingrich - before the Gulf crisis began late last year.
Both the Iraq crisis and the US-directed financial bailouts have not helped, according to Washington Post columnist Jim Hoagland.
"Hegemons, because they throw their weight around and assume that mankind's interests correspond to their own, foster envy and resentment," according to Steel. "Coalitions form to contain them. Success breeds rebellion."It is in this context that Albright's performance has been so remarkable.
Reflecting on her words, Times columnist Bob Herbert asked: "Has there ever been a better example of the arrogance of power?" That phrase was a reference to the 1967 critique of US policy in Vietnam in which then-Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman William Fulbright argued against "the morality of absolute self-assurance fired by the crusading spirit."
Yet, unlike during most of the Vietnam War, it appears that this spirit may be confined to elite sectors. Two major opinion surveys published last four months ago found a wide and growing gap between elite and popular attitudes in the US precisely on the question of Washington's global role.
The polls, by the Pew Research Centre for People and the Press and the Centre for International Security Studies at the University of Maryland, found that the elite is far more confident than the general public about US leadership in the world and much more ready to use force - unilaterally, if necessary - against perceived foes.
The public, on the other hand, is more inclined to defer to the UN. At the Ohio "town meeting" Albright and other top officials seemed stunned by citizens' tough questions about Washington's moral right to attack Iraq, why most US allies in the region did not support an attack, what Washington hoped to achieve by bombing, and why it applies "different standards of justice" to countries which violated international norms. "I suggest, sir, that you study carefully what American foreign policy is," Albright replied to the last question, provoking one anti-Vietnam War activist to comment: "I feel like I'm back in the sixties."-Dawn/Inter Press Service.