US Super League: Democratic at Home, Imperial Abroad

A lot of people who admire the democratic values of the US as practised within their country are perturbed by the domineering way in which the Bush administration is flouting international public opinion and the UN charter, which was largely its own creation.
Liberals, both in the US and elsewhere, used to deplore that during the Cold War years Washington supported military dictatorships the world over and was estranged from the largest democracy - India.
Similarly, secular US had no compunctions in nurturing jehadi fundamentalism in the ''80s as an instrumentality to fight the Soviet Union. Today''s jehadi terrorism as well as Saddam Hussein are the nemeses of reckless US leadership policies. History does not bear out the belief that a country''s external policy reflects its internal values.
The Greeks were developing and practising democracy even as they sustained slavery as indeed happened in the US too. The Romans who laid the foundations for the rule of law practised slavery and created a vast empire, the loot from which enriched Rome.
The Americans became the first democracy with a written constitution emphasising human rights but extended their territory to the Pacific coast through the genocide of native Americans. The British were evolving into a democracy as their empire expanded to cover the whole globe. So did the French.
The reason for this disconnect between domestic and external values is self- evident. While within a country people live under the rule of law, the international system is essentially anarchic.
The UN, with its five veto-wielding powers - an acknowledgement of the role of power and anarchical nature of the system - cannot provide a binding rule of law for nations. That is being demonstrated by Washington''s behaviour now.
We live in a period immediately after the Cold War which was an aberration in history. It produced the bipolar world. In the past, wars between two powerful empires decided that one of them emerged victorious and dominated the system.
This did not happen during the Cold War because both the US and the USSR developed nuclear weapons and missile delivery systems at about the same time. This made war between them rationally unthinkable.
Hence, for the first time in history, two powers armed to the teeth and with capabilities to destroy life on the planet sat down and signed the Paris accord. The Soviet Union collapsed because of its own internal contradictions and the US became the sole superpower.
It is often forgotten that before the US, Britain was the sole superpower in the 19th century and the first 40 years of the 20th century. Britannia ruled the waves and the sun did not set on the British empire because the Royal Navy was the dominant instrumentality which imposed British will across the globe.
Britain fought and won a war to impose opium on China. Britain, with France as the junior partner, carried out fundamental regime changes in West Asia after defeating the Othoman empire in World War I. The British also laid the foundation for the state of Israel with the Balfour declaration pledging its support to large-scale Jewish immigration into Arab Palestine.
The British, a democracy at home, justified their colonialism as a civilising mission just as Washington is talking of democratising West Asian regimes. Such a thesis was acceptable to the British public then as the US assertion of its right to reconstitute the West Asian polities is to the American public now. Washington''s behaviour, therefore, follows the classical pattern of great powers.
Great powers have risen and declined. If only great powers had combined their power with wisdom they would not have perhaps declined. The US as the sole superpower has some unique characteristics. In a planet now covered by nation-states, it is not necessary for Washington to exercise physical control outside its territory to assert its status.
It combines in itself all the parameters of power - military, economic and technological. In this age when all parameters of power are knowledge-based, Washington is investing heavily in enhancing its intellectual assets. It can attract the best brains from any part of the world and make them American citizens.
The US has a self-image of being the only indispensable nation on earth. Its strategy is to not permit any other nation or combination of nations to acquire capabilities to challenge it in any of the parameters of national power.
Its aim is to ensure that its relationship with each of the other major balancers in the international system - European Union, Russia, China, Japan and India - is better than their relationship with each other. That is why the present combination of Germany, France and Russia in opposing the war against Iraq infuriates the US establishment.
For at least for the next 50 years, the US is not likely to be challenged as the sole superpower. How long its status would last beyond that will depend largely on domestic developments or the ability of other major powers to unite and countervail it.
The latter eventuality does not appear highly probable and the former is unpredictable because of the changes in the demographic profile of the US. In these circumstances, the world has to reconcile itself for the present to a US which is democratic domestically and imperialist in its international relations, in other words, a US driven by its urge to maintain itself as the sole superpower forever, if that is possible.