Leviathan

I have been putting my degree to use, as it were, contemplating the meanings of the War on Terror for the international stage for this new century. Of late, I’ve been forced to look at the world diplomatic dynamic in much the same way as Jacques Chirac: the U.S. providing global security, because no other state has the capacity or the will. Russia might become a player again, in a few decades, but its power has been historically land-locked, ever driven at the little states of Eastern Europe and the Middle East. China is a contender already, but China has always devoted its attention to being Chinese, which they consider far more interesting than the game of nations (they may be right). There’s the Franco-German axis, attempting to be the magnetic core of a European superstate, but the EU is about to be flooded with Eastern European states that are less than enthusiastic about joining a node of anti-American power, and if Tony Blair’s speech to Congress yesterday wasn’t a promise to lead them in that, I don’t know what is.


So Russia’s being Russia, China’s being China, Europe is still being Europe, and we’re left holding the bag. Serbia needs a lesson? Call the Yanks. Liberia’s in trouble? Call the Yanks. Iraq’s thumbing its nose at the Security Council? Call the Yanks, unless of course they have security interests of their own regarding Iraq, in which case dragging our feet and calling the Yanks names if they grow impatient with our incessant procedural niceties is appropriate.


It is this last which has many Americans in a quasi-isolationist fit, perfectly willing to handle our own business without permission from the states whose security we guarantee; indeed ready to tell the UN to vacate lower Manhattan if they don’t like it. Just what does the rest of the world plan to do about it? Tax our trade? Two can play that game, and we’ve got the longer tail. As to diplomatic sanctions, let me direct your attention to Iraq again.


This is the problem with being the Leviathan, this grumpy insistence on having our way, because there isn’t anybody who can truly compel us otherwise. To the Leviathan, all others are varying degrees of puny. What other state is even in our weight class, militarily speaking? The Brits and the Commonwealth have got the professionalism but not the numbers. Most of the Third World is laughable. There are a few powers we’d never be able to conquer (China), and a few we’d never be dumb enough to try to conquer (Russia), but nobody who could best us very long in a particular theater of operations. Even Vietnam, where we did everything wrong short of siding with Ho Chi Minh, managed to turn out halfway decent when the shooting stopped (we didn’t lose that war until the South fell in 1975, and the only reason that happened was because somebody shut off the aid and refused President Ford’s request to send in the B-52’s. But I digress).


But military might is as destructive as it is transient. It is useless without diplomatic surety and flexibility. The history if Europe is filled with the stories of states (Charles V’s Holy Roman Empire, Louis XIV’s France, Hitler’s Germany) whose military might did nothing so much as unite all other powers against them. We might find the idea of fearing the Italian navy laughable now, but it wasn’t always so, and the history books are even more filled with stories of underestimated foes beating the favorite. Napoleon thought the Italians were pretty sorry, too, for all the good it did him. Even the strongest man needs friends.


The key word there being friends. We know the difference between “friendly states” and “states that act like friends while un-secretly trying to pull a William of Orange (Louis XIV’s implacable enemy) and embarrass us when we’re trying to get something accomplished.” I can understand Europeans feeling like we’re arrogant, like we need to be reminded of our limitations. What I can’t understand is feeling the need to do this while we’re trying to fight back against a corrosive ideology and the corrupt states that back it; bravely attempting to shut down the force that’s poisoned international diplomacy for decades.


What manner of man wants to live with terrorism? What manner of fool looks at someone willing to blow himself up just so long as he takes Jewish children with him, and decides that giving this person what he wants will defuse the situation? Do the Europeans really think that compromise is the way to ensure their security? It’s an easy thing to say that “Better Saddam than Bush,” is no different from “Better Hitler than Blum,” and I can feel eyes rolling when I point it out. But I think the fact that both mustachioed goose-steppers were really fond of Mein Kampf is more than a coincidence.


Blair was right: The US needs to listen as well as lead. If we treat our allies like the ancient Athenians did, NATO will go the way of the Delian League. And our allies will be just as shocked to discover that today’s Koran-sporting Spartans aren’t any more palatable. Leaders need to listen, and be persuasive. But followers need to follow as well as question and advise. De Gaulle understood that. Every time he yanked one of the eagle’s talons, he polished another one. For every gesture of independence, there was another calculated to demonstrate that the Atlantic Alliance mattered to him. When Kruschev started sticking nukes in Cuba, de Gaulle was the first man in Kennedy’s corner. I don’t see de Gaulle’s successor making those kind of moves. And he needs to. For Leviathan to be tamed, it must be cajoled as well as castigated.