Note: This is a selection from Redefining the Gap, part of tdaxp’s SummerBlog ‘06

Attempts to find empirical proof for Barnett’s Core-Gap hypothesis have increases since I first attempted operationalizing the gap. Coming Anarchy has looked a…

Since the end of the Cold War, the power of the US hasn’t really been balanced in the global system. The EU has shown little appetite to unite and balance it. However there is movement in the East: the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (principally Russia and China) is being joined by Iran and India as full members. Checks and balances will no doubt develop.

The Europeans are like an old dog but only know one trick: roll over.

I would say that the criticism of the Bush admin in terms of their supposed unilateralism are overblown. It seems quite obvious to me that Bush has engaged heavily in diplomacy. Perhaps he hasn’t put as much emphasis on it as others would like, but he’s also refused to rule out military force, which many others (especially Europeans) basically do, either implicitly or explicitly. So Bush relies a little less on diplomacy and a little more on the use of military force, this is a bad thing when others refuse all military force? What good is diplomacy without military force to back it up?
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But George W. Bush is not wrong to think that America’s security depends on how other countries, particularly in the Islamic world, govern themselves. In the long run, more accountable government can help drain the fury upon which jihadism feeds. Where Bush — like Burnham before him — goes wrong is in believing that America can unilaterally declare a moral standard while exempting itself. For President Bush, freedom is a one-way conversation. The United States calls on other countries to embrace liberty; we even aid them in the task. But if they call back, proposing some higher standard that might require us to modify our actions, we trot out John Bolton. For the rest of the world, freedom requires infringements upon national sovereignty. But for the United States, sovereignty trumps all.

and…

Most Muslims, according to polls, do not consider democracy an alien notion; in fact, they hunger for it. They simply do not believe that it is America’s real goal. And that is largely because they do not feel that America abides by the principles it preaches. As the Jordanian journalist Rami Khouri has noted: “George Bush talks in terms of the U.S. having a national mission to promote freedom in the world. . .everybody in the world looks at the U.S. and asks, Where is the moral and the legal and the political authority for you to do this? The authority has to come out of some kind of reference point, some legitimate reference point — treaties, international law, international conventions, U.N. Security Council resolutions, General Assembly consensus, some mechanism that has credibility.”

I do not necessarily think that the UN is the proper mechanism because it seems almost as broken as the Gap, but the point is that the ability to militarily destroy any country on the planet without any countervailing force is not what gives us the authority or the credibility to invade the Gap in the name of Democracy. Our authority and credibility can only come from our willingness to participate in the global conversation, not just merely dictate our demands. As the author of the NYT peice puts it: America’s power to intervene effectively overseas depends on its power to persuade and not merely coerce. The power to persuade depends on a willingness to be persuaded. Its more than just about the bombs!

Here’s the rest of the NYT article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/30/magazine/30liberal.html

Very interesting posts, Chirol. And thanks for the commentary at the end. Brings it all home. The Europeans know that they’ve got to get serious about security, they just can’t tell they’re constituents what this entails.

That’s actually Dave Schuler.