Fire the Bodyguard
Part Three
Capitalism, the
Indispensable System
America, the Indispensable Nation
“Madeleine Albright,
Bill Clinton's Secretary of State, called America
the ‘indispensable nation’ a decade ago.”
So writes the Wall
Street Journal in its lead editorial on Oct. 10, 2009, commenting on the Nobel
Peace Prize award to President Barack Obama (attached). The Journal reveled in
the delicious irony of Madam Albright’s remark:
Mr.
Obama sees the U.S.
differently, as weaker than it was and the rest of the planet as stronger, and
so he calls for a humbler America, at best a first among
equals, working primarily through the U.N. The world's challenges, he emphasized
yesterday, "can't be met by any one leader or any one nation." What this
suggests to us—and to the Norwegians—is the end of what has been called
"American exceptionalism." This is the view that U.S.
values have universal application and should be promoted without apology, and
defended with military force when necessary.
No doubt the former
Secretary of State wishes she hadn’t uttered her memorable phrase, or at least
that President Obama’s critics hadn’t pounced on
it.
But the Journal
misinterprets the Nobel Committee’s agenda. It is precisely because the
“American exception” has proven the world’s rule that the prize was bestowed.
Far from attacking American values, the Nobel Committee – and President Obama –
reaffirmed them. In the Journal’s own words, “Mr. Obama sees the
U.S. … as weaker than it was
and the rest of the planet as stronger, and so he calls for a humbler America, at best a first among
equals, working primarily through the U.N. The world's challenges, he emphasized
yesterday, ‘can't be met by any one leader or any one
nation’.”
“American
exceptionalism” never had anything to do with America’s global power. In decrying
the hegemonic presumption supposedly associated with being the world’s only
superpower, both the Committee and the President actually repudiated the
traditional European reliance on upholding powerful states in securing a
peaceful and orderly world, through old-fashioned Realpolitik, balance-of-power
calculations, and deterrence. Exceptionalism has always stood apart from that
“Old World” realm, and counterposed to it the values associated with the
American Enlightenment, the values of national self-determination, human rights,
anti-imperialism and radical individualism. Exceptionalist doctrine crystallized
in the 19th Century era of American isolation from Europe’s “corruption” and “decadence” and its entangling
games of power politics.
Covert European
anti-Americanism undoubtedly contributed to the motives of the Nobel Committee,
but the values which the Committee publicly rewarded, and which President
Obama acknowledged in his message of acceptance, were affirmations of precisely
the exceptionalism that made America a unique nation, and as such
were a fundamental rejection of what might be termed “European
exceptionalism.”
The source of the
confusion between the ideals of “American exceptionalism” and the realities of
American power lies in the old bipolar world which emerged as the de facto result of World War II.
America was obliged to become
a superpower by virtue of the fact that if it hadn’t, the Soviet Union, by default, would have had the field to
itself – unacceptable to everyone (except the Soviets), especially the still
quite anti-American Europeans. But now the confusion has different roots. The
Soviets are defeated, but America remains – as the world’s only
superpower!
America now finds itself in a
position not unlike that of the world’s economic system, capitalism: hegemonic
by virtue of having no substantial opposition! And the putative opponents of
both of these hegemonies end up strengthening them with their anti-establishment
effusions. The proponents of American power seek to defend its superpower status
by inventing surrogate after surrogate for the old Soviet menace, ranging from
Saddam’s Iraq, to
Iran, to North
Korea, to Islamic terrorism, to rising Chinese
economic power, to reborn Russian totalitarianism. You name it, there’s an
expert and his associated think tank who will forecast it. But the world, and
Americans, grow jaded. So the enemies of American power retaliate by seeking to
weaken American might. Of course to do so they must strengthen all the global
Americanizing tendencies they so loathe.
America defeats her
antagonists with the wall of indispensability: you can’t beat somebody with
nobody. In other words, if you want to tear down America, you can only do it by
Americanizing the world. And that’s where capitalism, the indispensible system,
comes in.
Want to defeat
America? You’ll have to beat her at
her own game. Enrichez
vous!
- Oct. 12, 2010
