Obviously, it isn't hard to kick a guy when he's down, and Bush more than certainly deserves it. Like Yglesias, I don't disagree with the substance of the statement, but I do distrust the source - Allawi knows even hardcore Bushites would be unwilling to do much of anything to get back at him for it, and I'm sure that it's of some benefit for him domestically to take swipes at the decider when he can. In other words, this smacks more of opportunism than anything else.
The point I'm trying to get to is that we are at a very, very murky time to be considering the future of American power, as Lion would like us to do. For Allawi, an obvious beneficiary of American policies (on an personal level, mind you), to decide that it was not only safe but in his own interest to start tearing into Bush publicly, might suggest to some that the United States really is on the way out. An economic crisis, two unpopular, costly, and debilitating wars, a rising dependence on China for, well, about everything, a perpetual (though temporarily under the radar) energy problem, all of these look pretty bad; just think of Allawi as the canary in the coal mine.
However, it could just as easily suggest that the damage that the Bush administration has done to the US is somewhat temporary. Far from the beginning of a long-term decline, America could just be wallowing in a power "trough", the kind of thing that looks permanent but will rebound in the face of competent management. Obama will be going into office with a lot of goodwill globally; regardless of his own considerable charisma, anyone replacing Bush was bound to benefit from his absence. And let's not forget that we've been here before. Nixon, Reagan, LBJ, Carter, they all felt that they had to take steps to deal with a drop-off in American power - it's only a relatively recent phenomenon (the end of the Cold War) that led America to think of its position as more than just a unipolar moment. As for the rise of China, yes, there are stirrings, but it remains the case that the Chinese government needs America just as bad as America needs China. About a year ago, James Fallows wrote an article about the Sino-American trade arrangement (read it). While the article cautions Americans that the dream has to end sometime, he makes this point:
For China, it has helped the regime guide development in the way it would like—and keep the domestic economy’s growth rate from crossing the thin line that separates “unbelievably fast” from “uncontrollably inflationary.” For America, it has meant cheaper iPods, lower interest rates, reduced mortgage payments, a lighter tax burden
In other words, America loves cheap shit, and China loves giving it away. It's an untenable situation, but this interdependence will prevent, at least in the short term, any kind of direct conflict between the two countries. Anyone who's afraid of China right now has to remember that they need America, bad, just like most of the rest of the world.
And that's my point, I guess. The rest of the world still needs America. What determines whether we're looking at a slow, unstoppable decline in American influence, or just the temporary confluence of a shitload of bad management and bad policy, really depends on how much Obama and Clinton can convince the world of the benefits of Pax Americana during this particularly unpleasant period.
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If Allawi is deriding the President of the United States because he plans to score political points with the Iraqi public, that certainly doesn't speak well to the international standing of the United States--not in diplomatic terms at the very least. A more dire indicator of American failure though might be that Iran, one of the America's supposed geopolitical and ideological enemies, has in Iraq's current PM a strong ally, if not a puppet. Lost in a lot of the reporting of Iraq's democratic birth pangs are the historical sources of Maliki's power. I am obviously not an expert of Iraqi politics, but looking to someone who is, Juan Cole pointed out that during last year's fighting between Iraqi government forces and those of Al-Sadr in Basra, the Badr Brigade, originally trained and funded by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, fought solidly on the side of the government against a group that was ultimately nationalist.
ReplyDelete"The Ministry of Interior in Iraq is a security ministry, and its special police commanders have long been dominated by the Badr Corps militia, which as you can see is very close to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and the ayatollahs in Tehran, but which is also allied with Bush."(http://www.juancole.com/2008/04/iran-supported-al-maliki-against.html)
While this may not necessarily imply by itself the decline of the American empire, as a tangent, it at least illustrates that things in Iraq are really, really complicated.
As for the issue of China, it's probably impossible to predict of the two powers which will emerge the more unhealthily dependent. In purely economic terms, while China does indeed need the United States as a dumping ground for its cheap, melamine tainted shit, it at least has over 2 trillion dollars American dollars under its reserve mattress to throw around while it finds a new partner. America only has such a luxury as long as China (and a host of other countries...China's role is slightly over-hyped I think) are willing to keep lending us money. In the meantime, China's economy is relatively dynamic. What does the American economy have to dig itself out of this hole other than more debt-financed spending?