Abstract
It's easy to discover the limits of power. Just try threatening those who have nothing to lose.
A calamitous assumption lies at the root of the Bush administration's foreign policy. It is clearly stated in the opening line of the National Security Strategy: “The United States possesses unprecedented–and unequaled–strength and influence in the world.”
The collapse of the Soviet Union presented for the United States what has been described by some theorists as a “unipolar moment.” To capitalize on its opportunities, they said, the United States needed to shed any restraints limiting its unilateral use of force.
This argument was succinctly put by Robert Kagan, an important “unipolar” theorist, one of the thinkers who have influenced Bush administration policy. Kagan argued in the June 2002 Policy Review, and elsewhere, that the United States, by virtue of its immense power, should now deal with threats in a different way from those who possess far less power.
Kagan gave the example of a man living in the wilderness whose abode is threatened by a bear. If the man possesses a gun, he will deal with the threat by hunting it down. If he does not possess a suitable weapon, he will deal with the threat by staying out of the way. Because, Kagan argued, unlike Europe, the United States is in a position to face up to its threats, it must and will pursue a foreign policy qualitatively different from that of Europe–or from that of any other country in the world, for that matter.
Such an argument has the merit of being readily intelligible to large numbers of people. It's a one-eyed view of international relations, built on the assumption that force, the capacity to break buildings and kill people, is the primary source of power in the world. The country that has more force, according to this theory, can tell those with less force what to do. And those with less force have no option but to obey, provided they properly understand the consequences of defiance.
And if force is the wellspring of power, then the United States stands at the apex of the world's power hierarchy by virtue of its immense armed force and weaponry. And it will, according to the National Security Strategy and the likes of Kagan, exercise its power to promote order, prosperity, and liberty in a dangerous and chaotic world.
Possessed by this delusion, the Bush administration has proclaimed itself the guardian of international order. And in the name of this mission, the United States has claimed for itself the mandate to wage war wherever it wants, against whomever it wishes, and for whatever reasons suit its fancy.
But suppose we tweak the cornerstone assumption upon which this gilded ambition stands. Suppose we see power not as a function of military strength, but more as the ability to get somebody to do something they would not otherwise do. How brightly will American power glitter in the light of this definition? Here in Pakistan, we know all too well.
In the days immediately following September 11, 2001, the world witnessed an astonishing standoff between the president of the United States, purportedly the most powerful man in the world, and Mullah Omar, the one-eyed warlord of a student militia barely ruling Afghanistan, the poorest, most war-torn country in the world. A greater disparity in the credentials of two men would be hard to find.
“Hand over bin Laden! He has perpetrated a great crime on my country,” demanded the most powerful man in the world.
“Produce the evidence,” answered the one-eyed warlord.
“If you do not hand him over immediately, we will wage war on you and get him ourselves!” threatened the most powerful man in the world.
“We are ready to go there,” calmly replied the one-eyed warlord.
And no matter how hard he tried, no matter how much he threatened dire consequences, the most powerful man in the world could not get the one-eyed warlord to do his bidding.
To understand the gravity of what was demonstrated during this event, consider the response of the ruler of the country next door. The United States presented Pervez Musharraf, president of Pakistan, with a stark choice: cooperate with us while we wage war on your ally or prepare to share in his fate. Musharraf's speech to the nation on September 15, delivered to explain the humble choice he made, made clear what was at stake. The Americans had hinted at a strike on Pakistan's “strategic assets,” and the choice before him, according to Musharraf, was whether to save Pakistan at the expense of its alliance with the Taliban, or keep the alliance and share the ally's fate.
Right here in our neighborhood, at the exact same moment, the United States showed it had the ability to get Musharraf to do something he would never have done otherwise, and a spectacular inability to get Mullah Omar to do so. Why did Musharraf come to heel so readily while Mullah Omar was defiant to the last? Especially considering that the disparities in power were far greater between the United States and the Taliban and the United States and a nuclear-armed Pakistan?
Strangely enough, Pakistan's strategic assets, its nuclear weapons, those repositories of enormous destructive power, turned out to be a political liability at a critical moment when the country faced mortal danger. It had been made amply clear to Musharraf that the United States would not hesitate a moment to knock those weapons out, should he choose unwisely. Nuclear weapons aside, Pakistan's army had too much to lose in a confrontation with the United States, and quite a bit to gain from an alliance. It was this calculus that worked to U.S. advantage in wielding power over Musharraf.
And what did Mullah Omar have to lose? He knew that the United States would wage a terrible war on the Taliban. But Mullah Omar did not get where he was by being squeamish about war or afraid of death. After all, he was raised in a refugee camp and had known war all his adult life. If one listened even briefly to the words of his spokesman in Pakistan, it was obvious that he was well aware of the stakes.
He took the gamble.
And it remains to be seen whether the United States has won the war or not. Few in Pakistan believe that it has–nobody wins a war in Afghanistan, not even the Afghans.
So the actions of the one-eyed warlord bring us to a conclusion somewhat at odds with the one-eyed vision of the “unipolar moment.” Huge discrepancies of force failed to translate into power over the ragtag Taliban at the same time that the United States was able to threaten nuclear-armed Pakistan into subservience. The conclusion: the threat of force works better with those who have something to lose.
But force will not sway those people who have already decided that their lives are barely worth living. The capacity to shape the circumstances of their lives, to set the horizons within which they can make a reasonably secure investment in their future, will yield far more power over them than any threat of material damage.
Which brings up another view on the nature of power. Let's consider that instead of the capacity to inflict material damage, power is the ability to control outcomes. In a complex situation with multiple actors, power should allow the dominant player to control the situation and steer it to the desired outcome. How well has the United States fared in the exercise of power seen in that way?
Following the bombing runs on the Taliban, which forced them to fall back onto secure ground to regroup, the United States entered Afghanistan vowing to build a stable, secular, progressive, democratic state. Targets were set in the Bonn Accords to measure progress. They included drafting a constitution, building a civil infrastructure, disarming the warlords, and creating a national Afghan army. Two years later, how far has the United States been able to move toward these desired outcomes?
Ask Zalmay Khalilzad, the newest U.S. envoy, who has only recently taken up residence in Kabul. The poor fellow has to be housed in a metal container while his reinforced premises are being built. Or better still, ask the chief of Central Command, Gen. John Abizaid, who described combat operations in Afghanistan as “every bit as much and every bit as difficult as those that go on in Iraq.” Or perhaps ask Gen. Andrew Leslie, deputy commander of the international peace force in Afghanistan: “The security situation in Afghanistan is not getting any better. And if the international community does not do something, it's bound to get worse.”
Or ask the 15-member Security Council mission headed by Gunter Pleuger, the German ambassador to the United Nations, who, after examining the realities on the ground in Afghanistan, warned that “the conditions necessary for a credible political process are not yet in place.” He said that the delegates had seen how “the lack of security–some call it ‘the rule of the gun’–affected the entire Afghan peace process.”
Disarming the warlords and triumphing decisively over the Taliban and Al Qaeda forces are key to attaining the objectives of the Bonn Accords. As Lakhdar Brahimi pointed out very early to the United Nations, economic reconstruction and the opening up of opportunities in the civilian sector of the economy is key to a successful disarmament plan. The longer the struggle against the resurgent Taliban/Al Qaeda forces drags on, the more this essential task gets delayed.
But because many of the warlord armies are needed to fight the counterinsurgency, instead of being disarmed, the warlords are actually increasing in power in the face of the rising tide of guerrilla-style attacks from across the border. The United States is thus caught between two contradictory objectives–making progress toward one set of goals undermines efforts toward achieving the other.
So who, exactly, is controlling the situation in Afghanistan? And toward what outcome? U.S. interests are deeply enmeshed with the reconstruction, while the interests of its enemies lie in prolonging chaos. The immense military supremacy that the United States enjoys compared to all the other players in the Afghan arena appears to be of limited utility in achieving the goals that are necessary to secure American interests. The one-eyed warlord can see and understand his end of the situation very well. But who will explain things to the one-eyed theorist?
Perhaps power in international relations is a relative measure. It is relative not only to the power of one's competitors, but to the tasks one has to perform. Relative to the tasks that Germany and Japan have before them, the amount of power they wield is considerable. But relative to the tasks the United States has taken upon itself, its power is already beginning to seem inadequate.
A great power, drunk on delusions of its own omnipotence, stiff with the arrogance that indulgence in such follies bring, is something Pakistanis are intimately familiar with. We see the same follies in our feudal lords, with their bands of armed retainers to terrorize their tenants; in street-corner thugs and machine politicians with underworld roots, who quickly begin to think that there is no end to their power and they can do anything. We have had our fair share of thugs like Rumsfeld and Cheney, charlatans like Wolfowitz and Perle, and all-guts-and-no-brains prodigals like George W. Bush.
A great power, drunk on delusions of its own omnipotence, stiff with the arrogance and indulgence that such follies bring, is something Pakistanis are intimately familiar with.
It is a strange irony, but the crooks, hypocrites, and sycophants who populate the Bush administration have succeeded in making American foreign policy very intelligible to ordinary folk in Pakistan.