03 Jun 2014 | Tony Leon | Original Publication: BDlive
The US finds its leadership in
the world confronted by a sea of troubles, writes Tony Leon
A GREAT deal happens in just 24 hours in New York. Last Wednesday in the
Big Apple, I participated in two such happenings and watched a third, each of
them connected to the others and the wider world, illustrating both the height
and the shrunken limits of what US President Barack Obama calls "American
exceptionalism".
The morning began with a visit to the recently inaugurated National
September 11 Museum, situated at "Ground Zero", where the twin towers
of the World Trade Center once stood.
That was until that fateful morning 13 years ago, when 3,000 people,
from more than 60 countries, were immolated or leapt to their deaths when
terrorist hijackers flew two planes into the edifices of the US headquarters of
global capitalism and trade. As Thomas Friedman noted, thus began a war started
by a "super-empowered angry man (Osama bin Laden)", who struck the
homeland with deadly force, which led even the most hardened New Yorkers to
regard the site of the attack as hallowed ground.
The museum itself is a monument to decorum. It contains more than 10,000
items collected from the carnage of that day. There is a roll call of the dead engraved
around the two reflecting memorial pools on the precise site where the twin
towers once proudly stood. The attack, of course, revealed just how vulnerable
even the strongest nation is when confronted with an extremist ideology with no
limits in its tactics or strategy.
Precisely how the US protects itself and its allies from the risk of
future attacks and the metastasising of the global networks of terror that now
afflict our own continent, from Nigeria to the Sahel, was the subject of
another event that day in upstate New York.
Obama arrived at the military academy in West Point to deliver a
"commencement address" (US-speak for graduation ceremony) for the
cadets.
In reality, it was yet another attempt by the much-criticised
commander-in-chief to reset and restate his foreign and military policy, which
both left and right in this hyper-divided nation have pummelled for its
indecisiveness and caution.
I thought he struck a note of realism when he told the graduating cadets
— and, of course, the US’s many friends and enemies beyond West Point: "US
military action cannot be the only — or even primary — component of our
leadership in every instance. Just because we have the best hammer does not
mean that every problem is a nail."
He then offered a blend of multilateral engagement, military action
where vital interests are at stake, and a form of outsourcing the war on terror
to countries at the coalface of it through a proposed $5bn fund for local
training and resources. Perhaps the cash-strapped and resource-poor African
Union will find this tempting, but some, in view of their anti-western bias,
will be unwilling to take this proffered largesse.
The speech was, in fact, a thinly veiled repudiation of the legacy of
former president George Bush, whose response to 9/11’s ineradicable stain on
the US’s hitherto invincible psyche was to launch two invasions. As the
thoughtful conservative columnist Christopher Caldwell noted: "Changing US
foreign policy after George Bush is the main thing he was elected to do. He has
done it."
But, at the same time, the US finds its leadership in the world
confronted by, literally and metaphorically, a sea of troubles from Chinese
aggression in the South China Sea to Russian revanchism in Ukraine, Iran going
nuclear, and failed and warring states elsewhere in the Middle East. And
uber-cautious Obama would rather err on the side of indecision than blunder
into the wars without end launched by his predecessor.
He also operates with a shrunken budget and the smallest number of soldiers
since before the Second World War, and a loss of appetite from his citizenry
for further foreign engagements. The Pew Center polling group last year
published a survey showing that, for the first time since 1964, a majority of
Americans felt their country should "mind its own business
internationally".
In fact, 1964 was the subject of a mesmerising play I saw the same
evening — All the Way, starring the outstanding Bryan Cranston of Breaking Bad
TV fame (if you haven’t watched the series yet, you should).
In this production, he portrays in riveting detail president Lyndon B
Johnson and shows, in the 50th anniversary year, how Johnson used an armoury of
his extraordinary powers of personal persuasion and legislative mastery to push
through the Civil Rights Act in the teeth of the fiercest resistance from his
native South.
Of course, the play also alludes to the beginning of the US’s deepening
involvement and commitments in Vietnam. And so the master of domestic politics
was to witness his presidency implode in the paddy fields of Southeast Asia.
Perhaps another reason for Obama’s caution in the world.
• Leon is the author of Opposite Mandela
(Jonathan Ball) Follow him on Twitter: @TonyLeonSA OR on Facebook: facebook.com/TonyLeonSA
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