Jim Garrison, president of the State of the World Forum -- a
global network whose members include such distinguished
figures as Mikhail Gorbachev, Oscar Arias, George Schultz,
Jane Goodall, and Elie Wiesel -- has been engaged since the
1970s and 1980s in the citizen diplomacy movement to reduce
nuclear tension between the United States and the Soviet
Union. He’s refined his skills at facilitating private
discussions among leaders across national boundaries and
disciplines in several gatherings, of which the State of the
World Forum and the Commission on Globalization have been
the most recent examples.
Garrison has published several books, the latest of which,
America as Empire: Global Leader or Rogue Power?,
was published by Berrett-Koehler earlier this year. In it,
Garrison urges his readers to acknowledge that America is an
empire and asks what kind of empire America can and should
be. Garrison is also the author of Paraview Press’
.
Alexander Dake spoke with Jim Garrison about empire, an
issue made even more important in light of the upcoming
presidential elections.
AD: In your book America as Empire you
describe America’s ascent from republic to empire. You see
in the current situation the opportunity for the U.S. to
become a transitional empire that will lead the world into
liberal democracy. Could you explain that a bit more?
JG: First of all it’s important for Americans to
internalize that not only is the U.S. the strongest nation
in the world, but also the strongest nation in the history
of the world. The U.S. currently controls more nations than
any empire in history, both formally and informally. At the
same time, history has moved beyond the nation state as the
ultimate reservoir of sovereignty. That is a very important
fact, because it means that even though the U.S. seems like
a very mighty fortress, it rests on shifting sands. Still,
the U.S. has had leadership before which made the best out
of difficult circumstances and used those circumstances to
build international cooperation and institutions based on
American strength and vision.
AD: How do you characterize these times and the
current state of the world?
JG: We are currently in the third major crisis of
global affairs since the world wars of the last century. The
world is interlinked by communication, trade, and travel in
a way never attained before. The world is also beset by
issues that can only be resolved globally: from ozone
depletion to global warming, from overfishing to
deforestation, from water scarcity to HIV/AIDS, from poverty
and organized crime to failed states. The great tragedy in
the world today is that never before has a nation been so
strong as the U.S., never before has the world desperately
needed dynamic leadership so much, and never before has that
leadership been so conspicuously absent.
AD: When you speak of absent leadership you mean
absent American leadership?
JG: Absolutely. If you look back in history, the
first crises of world affairs were addressed and resolved by
American leadership and American presidents. The initial
surge of globalization was very unregulated, and it ended up
in the calamity of the First World War. It was
Woodrow Wilson, who after WWI made the first
international attempt at global governance by establishing
the League of Nations. After the world had descended into
the Second World War, two other American presidents,
Franklin Roosevelt and
Harry Truman, used the sovereignty of the U.S. to build
what I call Global Governance 2.0. Most of the institutions
around the world that frame international norms and
procedures today were actually established under the
leadership of the U.S. -- the UN system and the Bretton
Woods institutions: the World Bank and IMF, the GATT (now
the WTO), and NATO.
AD: What are you looking for in current American
leadership?
JG: I call for a new Roosevelt, somebody who sees
that the task of the U.S. is to be proactive and
fundamentally constructive in the international arena. The
main task for U.S. leadership is not the war on terrorism;
it’s not to lead the global economy. It is to build the next
generation of global institutions that will begin to deal
adequately with the range of global problems facing the
world.
AD: It seems that the U.S. is doing exactly the
opposite of what you are prescribing: the war on terrorism
is the main policy component of the current administration.
JG: Indeed, so America is at a fundamental choice
point. It is about how our country will be remembered and
that will be determined by how we lead or not lead. If we
could build the next generation of global institutions, we
would make obsolete the need for empire at a national level,
which is what the U.S. currently represents. The U.S. could
go down in history as the final empire, which I believe is a
much more elegant and historically momentous achievement
than chasing around the world for members of invisible
networks and building in the U.S. a national security state
on the erosion of our civil liberties.
AD: What other lessons do you draw from your study of
the history of empires?
JG: I discovered that certain empires could last an
amazingly long period of time and others only an amazingly
short period of time. The empires that lasted the shortest
period of time have overaccentuated military supremacy. The
empires that have lasted the longest -- like Rome, like
Britain, like the Ottomans -- lasted because they combined
military supremacy with building institutions that were
perceived by the governed by and large to be fair. Wilson
and Roosevelt, too, combined military and economic power
with building international institutions and using
international law, which were mostly perceived by the rest
of the world as being fair.
AD: During your travels around the world, how do you
view the current attitude of the international community to
the current American policies?
JG: The international community shows an allergic
reaction to this administration. The reason is not because
this administration is conservative or Republican, but
because it is deconstructing the international system as we
know it -- an international system, as I just explained,
which was built by previous U.S. presidents. This
administration is marginalizing the UN, is disrupting the
international rule of law, has invaded Iraq by violating
international law, is seeding anarchy around the world, and
is replacing international norms and procedures with what
the administration calls the coalition of the willing. I
think that this unilateral foreign and military policy and a
complete obsession with the war on terrorism are causing a
lot of anxiety and resistance around the world.
AD: Is this not too harsh of a view of this
administration? People around the world have criticized U.S.
administrations before, have they not?.
JG: First of all, I think what is going on among
American allies is much more systemic and deeper than ever
before. In the last 24 months the approval ratings of the
U.S. have dropped dramatically overseas. Even in a staunch
ally such as Canada, the approval rating of the U.S. has
dropped by over 40 percent. Those
polls are replicated in Europe, Latin America, and Far
East Asia. Precisely at the point where we need a new
Woodrow Wilson or Franklin Roosevelt, President Bush is
spending more money on
military expenditures than the rest of the world
combined. The U.S. will spend next year over $500 billion on
military procurement. In the meantime, all other major
problems such as health, poverty, and the environment are
not being addressed, neither here nor globally. It seems to
me that the current administration is totally out of sync
with a large part of America and the rest of the
international community.
AD: Do you see any role for the international
community or America’s old allies to influence America
toward becoming the transitional empire you would like to
see?
JG: It’s hard to say. Obviously in the upcoming
elections, only Americans can vote. I think that, for
example, Europeans need to follow their own principles and
stand up against the Bush administration whenever they need
to. Tony Blair is a demonstration of what happens to people
who think they can use their special relationship with the
U.S. to influence American behavior. Tony Blair has not
influenced an iota of the Bush agenda. Rather, the Bush
administration has manipulated Blair, and the UK and the
world know it. I think Blair could have emerged as a real
European statesman, but he didn’t understand the basic
cynical motivation of the current administration.
AD: George Soros, someone you know well, has recently
published
The Bubble of American Supremacy, in which he
takes a definitely partisan position, blaming the current
administration and the Bush doctrine for taking the U.S. in
the wrong direction. Do you agree that this is a partisan
issue of Republican versus Democratic politics?
JG: I think it’s important to point out that Wilson,
Franklin Roosevelt, and Truman were all Democrats. I think
the Democratic Party has a deeper appreciation for the kind
of multilateral institutions and the principles of
multilateralism than the Republican Party. Republicans tend
to emphasize military strength. Democrats reinforce the
principles of collegiality. For example, under Bill Clinton,
the U.S. experienced one of the most efficient U.S.
economies in modern American history. At the end of
Clinton’s second term, there was a huge government surplus
and close to full employment, and by and large the world
approved of U.S. policies. Then in less than four years of
the Bush administration, we have gone to a
hyper-militaristic mode, to some extent triggered by the
trauma of 9/11, but largely based on a neo-conservative
agenda. It is hard to ignore those historic differences.
AD: You speak of the necessity of new international
institutions to deal with the current crises in the world.
How do you see those institutions developing?
JG: Let’s just talk a moment about Iraq. It’s only a
matter of time before the next Saddam Hussein, the next
Adolf Hitler, the next Slobodan Milosevic arises somewhere
in the world. The world community needs to use the failure
of Iraq (or the failure of Kosovo, for that matter) to
design a mechanism to ensure that the new Saddam Hussein is
spotted early on, that the international institutions are
alerted in the appropriate way, and that the international
community can exercise the appropriate responses to ensure
that we do not have more genocide or more massive erosion of
civil liberties. The world did not respond in time to what
was going on in the former Yugoslavia. The world watched
Saddam Hussein for 10 years, and the international community
did not react. In both cases the U.S. went outside the UN
with various allies and took out Milosevic and Hussein. I
believe that the invasion of Iraq was just as much a fault
of an inactive and paralyzed UN as it was of a hyperactive
and malevolent Bush administration. The essential point is
that the international system designed 60 years ago is
working less and less, and the U.S., as the founder of the
UN, should make the UN relevant again for the 21st century
rather than marginalizing it.
AD: In your book, you mention the establishment of
the International Reconstruction Fund. What would be its
role and what other kinds of institutions do we need?
JG: The more the world globalizes, the more human
interaction takes place at a global level. We have to build
those regulatory institutions at a global level that we
enjoy at a national level. According to the IMF, one-third
of the 200 nations in the world today are either failing or
have already failed. Nations like Iraq, Afghanistan,
Somalia, the Sudan, Yugoslavia -- the list goes on. We do
not have any mechanism at the international level to help
these countries. The international situation is eroding and
getting worse. If we had an International Reconstruction
Fund that had $20 to $30 billion at its disposal, it could
start rebuilding these countries under international norms
and procedures. Another example is the World Trade
Organization, which works reasonably well. But it needs to
be balanced with a global environmental organization. We
also need the International Labor Organization to have as
much efficacy and teeth as its counterpart, the WTO. We need
a global Security and Exchange Commission to deal with
international capital markets. For these initiatives to take
form, we will urgently need visionary leadership from the
U.S.
AD: It is clear you do not see that kind of visionary
leadership currently in the White House. What would it mean
to your ideas and proposals, or even to the current crises
in general, if George W. Bush would be reelected in
November?
JG: These ideas will be discarded by the new Bush
administration, just like many other good ideas are being
discarded right now. If the American people reelect him then
I believe it will do irreparable damage to the goodwill and
reputation of the U.S. abroad, it will do irreparable damage
to democracy here at home, and it may be an administration
from which neither the U.S. or the world will soon recover.
The American people and the international community should
be aware that George W. Bush won’t suddenly change his
current policies and turn into a nice guy if reelected. A
reelection will give him a mandate to deepen a
neo-conservative agenda, which essentially is to establish
military supremacy over the world for the next 50-75 years.
That’s why I firmly believe that the upcoming election is
the most critical one in our lifetime. |
