The Context of the US-Caricom Meeting in the Bahamas

by Larry Smith

It’s a safe bet that if US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice were white, most of the Bahamian political elite would despise her as one of the chief architects of American “exceptionalism” - a code word for imperialism.

But as a black woman who is fourth in line to the throne – and often regarded as a future presidential candidate - Rice enjoys immense celebrity, especially among leaders of the African diaspora outside the United States, as her meetings with CARICOM in Nassau last week demonstrated.

Her great-grandparents were slaves emancipated in the US Civil War, and three generations of her family lived in Alabama – the heart of the once segregated Deep South. But Rice enjoyed a nurturing middle class upbringing, taking piano, ballet and French lessons. Her father was a Presbyterian minister and her mother a dedicated teacher.

“My parents were very strategic,” Rice once said. “I was going to be so well prepared, and I was going to do all of these things that were revered in white society so well, that I would be armoured somehow from racism. I would be able to confront white society on its own terms.”

And that’s exactly what happened. Rice used her best weapon – education – to achieve fame and power. At the University of Denver she came under the influence of a gifted teacher named Josef Korbel, a Czech refugee from Naziism whose own daughter (Madelaine Albright) would also rise to become secretary of state.

After earning credentials as an expert on the Soviet Union, Rice was picked in 1988 for a job on George Bush senior’s National Security Council, where she grew close to the president and his family. Ironically, she arrived just in time to put her specialty to good use as a traditional foreign policy realist .

The Realists Versus the Moralists
As the Cold War ended and the Warsaw Pact was being dismantled, Rice urged continued engagement with the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev - against the advice of hawks who wanted to deal with the ex-communist Russian president, Boris Yeltsin.

Critics say neither she, nor her colleagues, could conceive of a world without the USSR. According to an article in the New Yorker Magazine, “The argument was about whether the United States should promote regime change and democracy abroad—and it's an argument that's still going on.”

Rice was a campaign advisor to the younger George Bush in 2000 and was appointed national security advisor after his election. By most accounts, she changed her tune during Dubyah’s first administration – switching from a foreign policy realist to a moralist.

The big difference between these two approaches was whether the United States should just react adroitly to events, or use its unprecedented power to “affirmatively undertake to reshape the world”, as the moralists – also called neoconservatives – argue.

During the Cold War, the US followed a cynical balance of power strategy. Corrupt dictators were propped up in return for their help against the Soviet empire. CIA-sponsored coups and wars in places like Iran, Guatemala, Southeast Asia, Brazil, Mozambique and Chile destroyed or subverted legitimate nationalist and democratic movements in the interest of a grand global strategy.

It was not until Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980 that this pattern began to change. Perhaps the best example is South Africa, where the moralists under Reagan hastened the end of the apartheid regime by legislating stiff economic sanctions in favour of democracy. They went on to win the Cold War, engineering the collapse of totalitarian communism.

Rice was responsible for the first National Security Strategy developed by the younger Bush administration – just after 9/11. It set the guiding principles for a more active foreign policy that envisioned the pre-emptive war in Iraq:

“The United States possesses unequaled strength and influence in the world. Sustained by faith in the principles of liberty, and the value of a free society, this position comes with unparalleled responsibilities, obligations, and opportunity. The great strength of this nation must be used to promote a balance of power that favours freedom.”

And as Rice herself told an interviewer in 2002, “if you go through history you can make a very strong argument that it was not acting, or acting too late, that has had the greatest consequences for international politics—not the other way around.”

Towards a Multipolar World
It was in this vein that she supported the (almost) unilateralist 2003 American intervention in Iraq, which damaged relations with countries around the world, including CARICOM, leading to a drop in American credibility. But after being named secretary of state in January of last year, Rice seems to have shifted gears somewhat to repair the damage.

Her goal, analysts say, is to “reconstitute a multilateral consensus on globalization in which the United States is (first among others), guaranteeing the security of world capitalism militarily, but not using its military power to impose policies on its allies and independent limited collaborators (China and Russia) without genuine negotiation and compromise.”

In other words - a multipolar world, in which American leadership is balanced between regional power centres. And just this month, Washington issued its latest National Security Strategy, which accepts the view that we are, in fact, moving toward a multipolar world. This document stresses the importance of "partnering" with regional powers.

“Transformational diplomacy means working with our many international partners to build and sustain democratic, well-governed states that will respond to the needs of their citizens and conduct themselves responsibly in the international system...The times require an ambitious national security strategy, yet one recognizing the limits to what even a nation as powerful as the United States can achieve by itself.”

Misguided Policies
This is the broader context of Rice’s recent meeting with CARICOM leaders in Nassau. Experts say the US is trying to recreate trust, build bridges and become more involved in regional politics. And it is clear that resentment and resistance to American power has been growing in recent years. As one Bahamian diplomat told Tough Call:

“The policies of the US are not producing the results that it desires, and therefore how should friends of the US respond to those policies that are producing such disastrous results? A true friend is one who will point out your mistakes, and who will not encourage you in your wrongdoing. If I am right, then CARICOM and the Bahamas have been true friends to the US, because they have refused to support misguided policies.”

Chief among those “misguided policies” - in the eyes of CARICOM at least – has been the situation in  Haiti, where the Bush administration allowed the elected president, Bertrand Aristide, to be removed by a rebellion in February, 2004. CARICOM’s relations with the US have been strained ever since - but that is a discussion for another day.

Fact is, despite all the whining about American arrogance, Condoleeza Rice’s role is more like that of a senior civil servant than an imperial viceroy. At least that’s the view of Michael Mandelbaum, a former Clinton advisor (now foreign policy professor at Johns Hopkins University) who argues that the US role in shaping the modern global order is both essential and benefits everyone.

The Case for Goliath
In a new book, he contends that this role is not imperialism but governance: “Without the US the world would be a less stable place,” this view says. “Other countries tacitly recognize this, which is why no effective David has come along to challenge the US. That is, no serious country actively opposes the American role in the world, although all have disagreements with the way the US carries out this role.

“This is true of governments within countries. We all agree that our government should do certain things -- protect us, promote economic growth, etc -- but we disagree sharply about the best way to do this. These disagreements are inevitable, normal, indeed desirable. Politics does not disappear just because the US plays the role of the world's government.”

On balance, American supervision makes the world safer and richer, and especially works to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction – which is perhaps our most clear and present danger.

In Tough Call’s younger days it was fashionable to equate the US with the Soviet Union. But today it is obvious which was the real “evil empire”. And although some still view the world through the prism of Pentagon conspiracies, there is a compelling argument that “the governing functions performed by the US have earned begrudging acceptance, a tacit recognition that America is no threat and that its role, on balance, is a positive one.”

The problem, in this view, is not so much US unilateralism or exceptionalism, but the reluctance of other countries to do enough to support the governmental services that the world needs to function effectively.

“As for the UN, it is really a trade association of sovereign states, not a state itself, and so doesn't have the resources to do what the US does. You can no more expect the UN to carry out governmental roles in the world than you can expect the trade association of American hospitals to perform heart surgery.”

The US may not perform its global governmental roles altruistically, and the relevant polices receive support from the American public to the extent that the public believes that they serve American interests. But it so happens that these policies serve the interests of other countries as well, and no-one else is in a position to provide them.

”America is not the lion of the international system, terrorizing and preying on smaller, weaker animals in order to survive itself. It is, rather, the elephant, which supports a wide variety of other creatures— smaller mammals, birds, and insects—by generating nourishment for them as it goes about the business of feeding itself.”

The Ugly Bahamian
Many in the Bahamian political class privately profess a cliched anti-Americanism that dates to the 1960s, and no doubt consider the pursuit of relations with Cuba, Venezuela and China as a way to express these attitudes.

However, it can be easily argued that China is the biggest supporter of American world governance through its investment in US debt and securities, Cuba will change dramatically as soon as Castro falls down again, and odds are that Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez is little more than a flare in the oil field.

The question of relations with these countries is relatively unimportant. It’s a matter of which side we come down on in the crunch, and how best to allocate our scant resources and limited attention.

It was the failure to act on clear priorities and needs that set the tone for the visit of Permanent Secretary Rice. More on that next time.

Comments

[sal]

the last paragraph...you can say that again!

[Gavin Collins]

Great column. Very informative and the position was
very well presented.

[Rick Lowe]

Great article as usual.

This post might be of interest?
http://blogbahamas.typepad.com/blog_bahamas/2006/04/what_did_condi_.html

[simbo]

interesting and insightful article. disagree on some points.Dare you to tell some iraqui civilians that america nourishes them while it feeds on their oil, or some haitians that america was serving them by having the CIA undermine their democartically elected leader? The 'exceptional circumstances' of cuba serve the interests of neither country and reflect stubborn grudes rather than concern for human rights. you yourself say the U.S does not act altruisticly but in a self serving manner. even if in some intances U.S and international interests are united,there is not garuntee they always will be. In The Bahamas we are somewhat sheltered from the devestating impact the U.S has on other countries.We dont see truly deep poverty found in other developing countries, that is directly due to bogus trade policies in the U.S and Europe.The Fact is that U.S and world interests dont seem to be harmonising but becoming increasingly disparate!

[larry smith]

I fail to see how any state's energy requirements can be seen as sinister. What about Chinese efforts to secure energy resources? Is there, as a BBC correspondent recently reported, a "middle kingdom master plan to control the world?"

Is deep poverty and underdevelopment a consequence of liberal economic and political policies, or just the opposite?

In a world with almost 200 states and myriad problems and issues, how can there ever be rigid consistencies in policy application?

And which country or bloc would you rather have supporting our global infrastructure? It all boils down to what kind of society you would prefer to live in.