Thomas P.M. Barnett, writing in the World Politics Review, gives a strong endorsement of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's foreign policy blueprint outlined in her speech last week at the Council on Foreign Relations. Clinton moved firmly away from unilateralism, which Barnett summarized thus:
Following 9/11, the Bush-Cheney neocons accurately diagnosed a global architecture that needed dramatic restructuring, but they set about doing so with a strategic impatience that was startling. Hard-power wars were expected to trigger immediate regional transformation (i.e., southwest Asia), with follow-on nation-building a brief afterthought to be outsourced to government contractors.
He gives Hillary credit for recognizing the obvious, which is, as she put it: "Today, we must acknowledge two inescapable facts that define our world: First, no nation can meet the world's challenges alone...Second, most nations worry about the same global threats."
This approach calls for expanding the "outreach" of the USA to include emerging global powers such as China, India, Brazil, Turkey, Indonesia, and South Africa. Hillary is engaging one of those powers--India--this week.
The unilateralism of the neo-cons feared the emergence of new powers, and tried to contain them. The Clinton/Obama approach "instead seeks to shape their rise," much as Britain did with a rising America a hundred years ago. "It paid off handsomely," says Barnett, "allowing Britain to punch above their strategic weight across the entire 20th century."
What we are witnessing today, in such rising pillars as Brazil, Russia, India and China, is the same self-preserving effort to assert diplomatic-military capabilities in the face of rising economic-network exposure -- as in, vulnerabilities. We can choose to understand that natural instinct and shape it to our collective advantages -- Clinton's message -- or we can fear it and reflexively hedge our bets: in effect, taking on all challenges and all comers.
Photo: Hillary in India--AFP/Getty images/foreignpolicy.com
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