WASHINGTON -- Across the world, "America may be less well regarded today than at any time in its history," according to a report issued last week by a bipartisan group of politicians and foreign policy experts. But "it is not too late to reverse these trends, even in the Arab and Muslim World," the report found.
The "Commission on Smart Power" that penned the report was convened by the Center for Strategic International Studies, a non-partisan think tank. Titled "A Smarter, More Secure America," the report calls on the next U.S. President to embrace three foreign policy themes to guide U.S. global engagement: "a renewed commitment to the United Nations, reinvigorating our alliances, and working to erase the perception that the United States has double standards when it comes to abiding by international law."
The list of authors who contributed to the report is long, and includes
both Republicans and Democrats. Among them are former Supreme Court Justice
Sandra Day O'Connor, Republican U.S. Rep. Chuck Hagel, David M. Rubenstein,
cofounder and managing director of the Carlyle Group, and Anthony Zinni, the
former head of U.S. Central Command.
The commission's co-chairmen, Richard L. Armitage, who served as deputy
secretary of state under Colin Powell during the first term of the Bush
administration, and Harvard University Professor Joseph S. Nye Jr., were on
Capitol Hill and television last week touting the report's findings -- along
with their own largely critical views of the Bush administration's foreign
policy.
Armitage, for instance, sharply criticized the administration on public
television's "Charlie
Rose Show" Nov. 6. "Leadership is not simply a matter of vision,
it is that for sure, but it's vision, execution and accountability,"
Armitage told Rose. "The latter two traits of leadership, that is execution
and accountability, have not been existent in this administration and I think
the president has paid a very dear price for it."
He pointed to the Iraq war, claiming that while President Bush had the
"vision" to topple Saddam Hussein, the subsequent implementation of
the war's strategy has been a failure, with no one held accountable.
Why America's Image Has Suffered
The report cites a variety recent polls as evidence of the slide in worldwide
public opinion of the United States, among them a 2007 BBC World Service poll of
more than 26,000 people across 25 countries. One in two of that poll's
respondents agreed that "the United States is playing a mainly negative
roll in the world."
A 2006 Zogby poll, which found that the majority of people in Saudi Arabia,
Egypt, Morocco, Jordan and Lebanon said their opinion of the United States had
declined in the past year, was also cited.
A key cause for the decline of America's image, the report claims, has been the
U.S. response to 9/11. The nature of the horrific attacks, the report asserts,
made the country "angry and frightened," and found leaders working to
restrict foreigners' access to visas and surround U.S. "embassies with
concrete barriers and barbed wire."
The report also cites regional reactions against U.S.-backed
globalization policies, and a Bush administration shift away from supporting
agreements and institutions with widespread international support, as causes for
the rise in anti-American sentiment.
Additionally, it notes a rise in perceptions of "American
incompetence," pointing specifically to how the rest of the world viewed
the "weak response to the catastrophe caused by Hurricane Katrina."
Defining Smart Power
Commission Chairman Nye, who is largely credited with coining the term
"soft power" during the 1990s, defines "smart power" as:
"The ability to combine your hard power -- coercion carrots and sticks --
with your ability to get what you want through attraction, which is soft
power."
Nye, who appearing with Armitage on "Charlie Rose," cited the Cold War
as a bygone era when "we were pretty good at this."
"We had hard military power that deterred Soviet aggression but we also had
soft power in the sense of our ideas, values and public diplomacy behind the
iron curtain that eroded their faith of communism behind the wall," he
said. "When the wall finally went down it went down not under a barrage or
artillery but under hammers and bulldozes."
Comparing those events to today's "generation-long struggle
against extremist terrorism," Nye said "we've got to be able to
combine our hard instruments and our soft instruments into a strategy."
"That's smart power, that ability to combine the two," he said.
"If you rely solely on hard so that it undercuts your soft then you don't
have a strategy, and that's unfortunately, I think, what we've been doing."
Armitage suggested that in the wake of 9/11 the United States has
missed opportunities to win public favor abroad because it allows security
concerns to crush the ability of U.S. leaders to connect personally with foreign
countries. He cited the actions of China's current leadership as a shining
alternative to the often aggressive and sometimes hostile manner with which the
Bush administration interacts with the foreign populations during official
visits abroad.
During a 2004 meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Chile,
for instance, Chinese President "Hu Jintao came early to Chile, he stayed,
he toured around, he invested in vineyards and everything else," Armitage
said. "He was a very friendly guest, where, because of our own security
concerns, we come in very heavy with 800 or 900 people, our own armored
limousines, several helicopters, C-5s, etc., and all in all it gives a very
different impression."
Armitage added that from a geopolitical standpoint, China
in recent years has been "very instructive" in "using all the
tools in their tool kit" to project smart power.
A New Multilateralism
Noting that, "throughout the Cold War, American leaders defined
internationalism in terms of treaties and institutions," the report
stresses the need for the United States to "work through treaties,
alliances, and multilateral organizations -- so-called norms-based
internationalism."
For example, it says an expanded Group of Eight, including an additional five
members in China, Mexico, India, Brazil and South Africa, could provide a forum
for forging common solutions to global problems.
"The next administration should seek to strengthen the G-8 summit
process," the report asserts, "by proposing a set of high-level
meetings on those issues routinely addressed by the G-8 that require sustained
global attention: energy and climate; non-proliferation; global health;
education; and the world economy."
Calling further on the United States to favor multilateral over unilateral
action in its foreign policy, the report says "the next president should
put priority on reforming the United Nations more broadly, reworking the
governance structures of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, and
jumpstarting World Trade Organization negotiations and strengthening its
enforcement."
Sitting with Enemies
The Boston Globe last week reported that "both Democratic and Republican
lawmakers on Capitol Hill said they hoped the report would spark a national
debate about America's changing global role."
Armitage and Nye appeared
before the House Government Reform Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign
Affairs Nov. 6 to tout the report's recommendations.
The committee's chairman, U.S. Rep. John Tierney, a Democrat, said the report
"spells out the path for our country to get back on the offensive, and I
don't mean that in a military sense."
Nye and Armitage asserted that its recommendations should serve both Republicans
and Democrats running for President in 2008.
Their public statements, however, seemed also to be indirectly geared toward
affecting the current debate over U.S. policy toward Iran, and its pursuit of
nuclear weapons.
Specifically, Armitage, who resigned from the State Department in late
2004, was critical of the Bush administration's reluctance to more directly
engage in talks with Iran.
"I don't necessarily think that you need to come away from every diplomatic
encounter with someone winning and someone losing," said Armitage.
"Sitting across the table from an Iranian or a North Korean for that matter
is an activity in diplomacy, surely, but it's also an ability to engage these
folks, it's an ability to get some intelligence, it's a lot more than just
diplomacy. I think it's the better part of wisdom to sit down with your enemies
without conditions."
Guy Taylor is World Politics Review senior
editor.