Donald Trump’s controversial statements this week about the US claiming territories like Greenland and the Panama Canal zone are no doubt absurd.
Can Russia now claim to have been conned out of selling Alaska to the US nearly 200 years ago? Can France make a similar claim over the 1803 Louisiana Purchase? Would Mexico like to take California and Texas back?
And yet, Trump is doing more than merely pre-bargaining scene-setting here – and there is recent historical precedence for taking him a lot more seriously than we are. We’ve been here before with the US’s post-9/11 neoconservative dream and failed war on terror.
Clinton’s Project
During Clinton’s second term in the White House in the 90s there was a strong view on the political right, especially in the neoconservative wing of the Republican Party, that the US was missing a trick in world affairs. The Soviet Union had collapsed, leaving just one world superpower. Surely this meant that the US had the God-given task of leading the world to a great new American century?
To further this aim, the Project for a New American Century was set up in 1997. It was seen by its supporters as rooted in US values and espousing market fundamentalism across the world in the true neoliberal mould. Moreover, this was just the right time, with the 2000 presidential election beginning to loom on the political horizon.
There was certainly a religious dimension to the idea, perhaps dating right back to the Puritans and the idea of America as the “city on the hill”. After all, that was not too far away from the Victorian view of the British Empire with its global civilising mission.
The PNAC certainly attracted attention, though its appeal was far from universal, but Bush’s administration was formed to include a clutch of neoconservatives and assertive realists, especially when it came to foreign and security policy.
They included Vice-President Dick Cheney, with his chief of staff, Lewis “Scooter” Libby. At the Pentagon there was the Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, and with him was a key advisor, Paul Wolfowitz. Finally, and keeping an eye on the State Department, there was John Bolton. For all of them, along with scores of others across the administration, PNAC had a strong following.
The extent of the shift was seen in the very early months. The new administration moved rapidly towards developing a national missile defence even if it meant withdrawing from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and risking a new arms race. There was opposition to UN conventions on the prevention of terrorism and the initiation of negotiations to prevent the weaponisation of space as well as a markedly critical view of UN discussions on the control of light weapons.
Although it might have seemed a specialised matter, one change in US Policy was a negative approach to plans to strengthen the 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC).
That had been designed to ban the development of a whole range of weapons but from the start it had lacked any mechanism for policing it. There was plenty of support to improve it but there was also opposition, not least from US biotech industries, so the chance was lost.
Perhaps the most controversial change of all was the new administration’s decision to withdraw from the Kyoto Protocols on climate change, a move that was strongly opposed in Europe where many states continued with the treaty while ignoring the Bush stance.
America First then and now
Overall, what was clear was that from then on the US would only consider multilateral agreements where they were clearly in US interests. It was a stance described by a leading neoconservative writer, Charles Krauthammer, five months into the new administration in June 2000.
“Multipolarity, yes, when there is no alternative. But not when there is. Not when we have the unique imbalance of power that we enjoy today – and has given the international system a stability and essential tranquillity that we enjoy today. The international community is far more likely to enjoy peace under single hegemon. Moreover, we are not just any hegemon. We run a uniquely benign imperium.”
The language and the fluidity of the approach may be some way from the crude rhetoric of Donald Trump but the key element – Americans must always come first – was there for all to see, just as it is now apropos Trump and MAGA. All that said, it is well worth remembering what came next.
The 9/11 attacks happened just as the Bush administration had got fully into its stride and it had a massive effect on government thinking, the more so because it struck right at the heart of the neoconservative view of the world. It is well-nigh certain that any US administration would have reacted initially with force, but for the Bush White House it would be a long-term global response.
At first it seemed to work, al-Qaida was dispersed and the Taliban regime in Afghanistan was terminated within three months. In January 2002, Bush gave a triumphant State of the Union Address and he extended the war to an “axis of evil” encompassing Iraq, Iran and North Korea. Barely a year later the Saddam Hussein regime had been terminated and the New American Century was very much back on track.
But from then on it was downhill all the way as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan went badly wrong. Taken together these post-9/11 wars have already seen nearly five million people killed and close to 40 million people displaced from their homes.
Given where Trump is coming from, even if Greenland stays where it is, he will have further ideas about greatness, and when he hits obstacles – he will be tempted to escalate. That’s when it will be worth looking at what happened to the Project for the New American Century which wound up in 2006 after failure in Iraq.
First published by openDemocracy
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