US tendency towards military force may be replaced by diplomacy if the Democratic candidate is elected
ONE-THIRD of US voters have cast early ballots. The other two-thirds vote tomorrow, with the polls strongly favouring Barack Obama. His extraordinary ability to communicate a promise of non-threatening change has raised expectations around the world. The more successful Obama is at fulfilling these expectations, the greater the challenge will be for the rest of us as we address new global realities.
One benchmark will be who the occasional tenants of the newly-built Baladia City, about 6km from the Egyptian town of Rafah, turn out to be. Baladia looks much like other Arab towns in the region with almost 1,100 buildings including a town centre, shops, a hospital and a mosque. Despite being brand new, Baladia boasts a casbah complete with narrow alleys and old-style buildings with 1.5m thick walls.
There is nothing exceptional about architects regurgitating pastiche copies of traditional styles. What makes Baladia exceptional is that it was built by US army engineers, and US taxpayers funded most of the $45 million cost. This august engineering body, renowned for its skills in building and maintaining the levees around New Orleans, has not become a conduit for some new philanthropic US Middle Eastern policy. Baladia is a ghost town, built as the National Urban Training Centre for Israeli forces.
It is, from time to time, populated by Arab-speaking Israeli soldiers and designed to provide a realistic setting wherein other Israeli units can “train in an environment that simulates the real urban battle”, according to the centre’s commander, Brig Gen Uzi Moskovich. It will also serve as a training resource for US soldiers and marines.
If US units begin to train regularly in Baladia from 2009 onwards, we will know that there is little new in Washington’s foreign policy approach. If it remains primarily an Israeli resource, Washington will be shifting.
Bill Clinton, campaigning for Obama in Florida last Wednesday, described such a move as “diplomacy first, military force as a last resort; bring the troops home from Iraq, be a force for peace”.
Washington has preferred military force to diplomatic negotiations, particularly multilateral ones, for the past eight years, but the tendency to reach for Theodore Roosevelt’s “big stick” has marked US policy for much longer. Barack Obama has placed multilateral engagement with the rest of the planet at the core of his foreign policy approach. Practical and budgetary considerations will reinforce this option.
Washington and Baghdad are already negotiating a timetable for the progressive withdrawal of US forces from Iraq. Much of the US military equipment there will be scrapped. Many of the Humvees, trucks, armoured vehicles and other items are too damaged, or too worn out, to warrant the cost of being shipped home. Replacements for regular army and national guard units are going to chew a significant hole in US defence spending over the coming years.
An Obama administration would also begin to construct a universal healthcare system. The ailing US car-making industry is negotiating a government bailout. Federal and state governments will have to devise and fund tools to help families retain their homes.
Repairing and replacing elements of the country’s infrastructure, from railways and bridges to electricity transmission grids, is going to place further demands on the federal budget.
These unavoidable and competing demands on government resources will make their presence felt as our planet comes to terms with its new security environment. The era of wars between states is ending.
It is impossible today to elaborate a credible scenario where Country A mobilises its forces to attack Country B. Pick any country – France, Brazil, or China, for example. Identify a country that could conceivably attack any one of them . . and the answer comes out as zero. Reverse the process to identify a country that France, Brazil or China might invade – and the answer also comes out as zero.
If we are not going to attack each other, we need to move on to enhancing our common security.
Across the world there is a chronic shortage of the types of forces and equipment needed for the peace and security missions of such a system. On October 23rd, the EU concluded talks on the deployment of four Russian Mi-8 transport helicopters and 100 service personnel with Moscow. These negotiations began during the Russo-Georgian conflict. The parallel joint UN-African Union mission due to deploy across the border in Darfur remains ineffective, for it is even more poorly funded and equipped than its EUfor counterpart.
It is against this slowly emerging reality that the EU debate on security co-operation, and the creation in 2004 of the European Defence Agency, must be seen. In a traditional approach, the agency could become a vehicle for increased armament production – if all EU members so agreed.
There is a peculiar obsolete symmetry between, say, naval officers arguing for more and better warships, and those who have traditionally opposed security agreements and structures. Both defend arguments rooted in a vanishing past.
Future security will depend on common structures – on availability of highly trained and superbly equipped personnel. Far more operational helicopters and far fewer combat aircraft and armoured vehicles, designed to protect their occupants rather than destroy their counterparts, will be required.
Our planet’s only superpower is about to embark on such a transformation, possibly breathing life into our embryonic global structures. In such a common architecture, the very concept of neutrality – being neutral between opposing forces – would cease to exist.
If the alleyways around Baladia’s casbah remain empty of GIs, they may be harbingers of a much less bellicose, and consequently much more secure, world.