{"id":39467,"date":"2018-05-23T06:00:19","date_gmt":"2018-05-22T20:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=39467"},"modified":"2018-05-29T12:45:26","modified_gmt":"2018-05-29T02:45:26","slug":"america-the-democratic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/america-the-democratic\/","title":{"rendered":"America the democratic (part 1)"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

When I write or speak publicly against bipartisanship<\/a> in Australian defence policy, the most common response is, \u2018Why would we want our politics to be more like America\u2019s?\u2019 Which would be a fair point, except that the United States, like Australia, has long held its defence policy at arm\u2019s length from its democracy. But, as Damir Marusic notes in an engaging piece<\/a>, this is changing:<\/p>\n

Over the next few years, America\u2019s role in the world will have less to do with any discernible set of overarching values or ideology. Its behavior will be the product of an increasingly (small-d) democratized and hotly contested domestic politics.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Marusic is an interesting and original thinker, but on this piece he echoes a very common and mainstream trope: security and defence issues are rightly the preserve of the elite and public participation is almost always a problem.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re so used to an absence of democratic voices in foreign policy, and of holding up an ideal of carefully planned, holistic grand strategies, that the fundamentally anti-democratic nature of this approach passes without notice.<\/p>\n

While I\u2019m one of those self-proclaimed elite, and no enemy of careful strategic planning, I have to rebel against this anti-democratic tendency. Not only is the sentiment against American and Australian founding principles, it also stands in contrast to their own successful histories. America\u2019s rise to power from the 18th\u00a0to the 20th\u00a0century was one of insistent democratic contest about the direction of the nation. Even once it had stabilised its position atop the global hierarchy, there were fierce contests and \u2018strategies of containment<\/a>\u2019 rather than a single coherent plan that everyone followed.<\/p>\n

What Marusic rightly picks up, however, is that for the last 20\u201330\u00a0years, these democratic forces have been kept at the margins. And look at the result. The Clinton years are widely seen as a wasted indulgence, the Bush years as incompetent hubris. The \u2018War on Terror\u2019 grinds on, China has comfortably risen to peer competitor status and progress on any of the major global problems\u2014Kashmir, Palestine, Korea, Taiwan, UN reform, climate change, etc., etc.\u2014has been rare. President\u00a0Barack Obama made little headway in solving these problems, or even in overcoming elite controls<\/a> on foreign policy.<\/p>\n

Fed up, the people are now seemingly determined to reassert control. In\u00a02008, Obama listened and Senator\u00a0John McCain didn\u2019t. Obama won the election. In\u00a02016, Trump listened, while Hillary Clinton claimed to have. Trump won. Those within the mainstream view may wish, as Marusic does, to label the coming years as an era of \u2018America the erratic\u2019. And that may be true. But more importantly, it will be an era of \u2018America the democratic\u2019.<\/p>\n

The period of elite control didn\u2019t lead American foreign policy to the promised land. Now we\u2019re in precisely the kind of period where concentrated, rigid strategic policy settings make the least sense. As we\u2019re regularly reminded by officials and commentators, \u2018the scale and pace of change is unprecedented\u2019<\/a>. And yet bizarrely, those who most commonly mouth such sentiments seem to insist that American policy must be one of stability and reassertion of the status-quo.<\/p>\n

The world has indeed changed, so why should America\u2019s global posture remain the same? Why, given the mounting ledger of failures over the last 20\u00a0years, would we want it to? How can it make sense to declare the need for ever-greater flexibility and adaptability, while insisting that the most powerful country in the world hold firm to positions it took in the\u00a01950s?<\/p>\n

I ask that quite literally. Just last week there was an outcry at the thought<\/a> of moving US\u00a0troops from the Korean peninsula, some of whom are stationed where their grandfathers were camped as the ceasefire was declared in 1953.<\/p>\n

America\u2019s problems today are often debated in terms of \u2018power\u2019 and \u2018position\u2019. These are visible and easy to debate. More or fewer ships? Asia or the Middle East? More important, though harder to spot, is the problem of \u2018purpose\u2019. What is America\u2019s role? Why is this the right role for the\u00a0US at this time? How is this role able to inspire those who need to be inspired? (That applies primarily to the American people, but also to allies and influential non\u2011aligned states.)<\/p>\n

Democratic publics may not be efficient, but they\u2019re much more capable than their elites at identifying what truly matters to those who bear the costs in wealth, body and soul for a nation\u2019s stance in the world.<\/p>\n

America needs change. Its international policy settings are divorced from the strategic environment, from public opinion and from its resource capacity. Those who want America to stay firmly involved in the world\u2014as I do\u2014have even more incentive than the radical isolationist to want change. It is the conservative creed<\/a>: \u2018A state without the means of some change is without the means of its own conservation.\u2019 US\u00a0power isn\u2019t being conserved because it isn\u2019t being changed.<\/p>\n

America has nearly unrivalled power and position. But without clear purpose, without an ability to discard that which is no longer important or unable to secure support from home, it will remain an over-extended and weakening power. Doubling down\u2014as Washington has over recent years\u2014has only exacerbated the problems. Only genuine democratic debate can find a new and enduring purpose and role.<\/p>\n

American foreign policy hasn\u2019t been subject to the same partisan polarisation as the rest of its turgid politics. That may be beginning to change and it will carry costs. Policies will shift, promises will be broken and the parties will be pushed towards absolutist positions.<\/p>\n

The opportunities, however, are also substantial in the coming era of \u2018America the democratic\u2019. In a follow\u2011up post, I want to explore what this may mean for Australia and its alliance with America.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I write or speak publicly against bipartisanship in Australian defence policy, the most common response is, \u2018Why would we want our politics to be more like America\u2019s?\u2019 Which would be a fair point, except …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":39468,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2070],"class_list":["post-39467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-us-foreign-policy"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nAmerica the democratic (part 1) | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/america-the-democratic\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" 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