Barking at the Superpower

...Auden on the outbreak of World War II, "All the dogs of Europe bark...

...Their successors are coming soon to a newspaper or television station near you...

...Debatable again...

...Charles A. Kupchan, author of The End of the American Era (Knopf, 373 pp., $27.50), is likewise a senior fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations and teaches international relations at Georgetown, the other dominant university in the foreign-relations business...

...Not if we decide to win...

...You pay your money and you take your choice...

...The ideals of the American and French revolutions spread fitfully until the two World Wars made them dominant forces everywhere...

...The surviving inhabitants of Tel Aviv and west Jerusalem would be house hunting on Long Island...

...The war on terrorism is a sideshow for Kupchan too, but not for the same reasons Mandelbaum gave...

...From the deployment of cruise missiles in Europe during the early 1980s to the Gulf War to Bosnia and Kosovo to Afghanistan, the last four U.S...

...The U.S...

...The dangers he represents are overstated...

...The ongoing spread of liberal democracy and capitalism are [sic] leading to the 'end of history,' the obsolescence of major war, and a world in which satisfied nations will learn to live happily alongside each other...

...Second, where their conclusions differ, the differences tend to be narrow...

...It is not a U.S...

...Similarly, not much has been heard about Asian forms of communitarian capitalism since the Japanese economy tanked a decade ago...

...In the world of the 21st century," Mandelbaum boldly prophesies, "great war is the nonbarking dog...

...Economic power, though still latent, will inevitably be followed by political and even military power...

...No major war will ensue because, whatever reservations they may have about American "hegemony," in the aftermath every major government supported the United States and the liberal ideals it "served as the linchpin...

...Now that the Bush Administration shows new signs of meaning what it has been saying for a year about regime change in Iraq-which officially was also the policy of the Clinton Administration-the clamor has again become deafening...

...Echoing European commentators, Kupchan asserts that the Bush Administration's "unilateralism"-that word again -has alienated our natural allies, aggravating a trend already evident before 2001...

...Simultaneously, large-scale wars came to seem both too dangerous for any prudent power to contemplate and superfluous in a world where everyone who counts-that is, the governments of important sovereign states-agrees on the most important geopolitical issues...

...The prototype and most powerful example of such a superstate is the EU...

...Hardly a fair comment if one is refusing to be an ally...

...America's international position is actually declining-irresistibly so-and American policy-makers fail to recognize the concurrent decline of the sovereign state as an institution...

...Usually intended as a recipe for doing nothing...

...Mandelbaum traces the "liberal theory of history" along familiar lines...

...This has little to do with September 11 or its consequences...

...By practicing an assertive foreign policy that uses military force judiciously when diplomacy fails, a succession of recent administrations has preserved that independence in ways calculated to make many European and some American intellectuals unhappy...

...For the past six months our own quality press has been filled with explanations of European motives for ritualistically disapproving of American power...

...After all, their kennel is made of glass...

...Mullah Omar and his Saudi guests would still be living it up in Kabul instead of hiding in caves...

...On the other hand, Mandelbaum may be equally unrealistic in assuming that the triumph of liberal ideas, along with the unique power and status of the United States, is essentially irreversible in the next century...

...Two new books, both by members of the American foreign-policy elite, come to opposite conclusions about that question...

...As if writing in direct response to The Ideas That Conquered the World, he declares that "most of America's strategists remain convinced not only that U.S...

...As a federation of cooperating democratic nations, it represents the triumph of the liberal values the book celebrates and constitutes yet another sign of America's success in the world...

...Whether, when and how the United States should take out Saddam is a complicated question with many parts...

...As the U.S...

...Nobody can say, of course, how successfully those values will overcome the dangers that persist in the 21st century, but Mandelbaum's interpretation of recent history is about as optimistic as anyone could wish: "In the wake of the Cold War, although not every one of the 6 billion human inhabitants of the planet was happy, there was, for the first time in the modern era, a rough consensus on the political, economic and international conditions best suited for them to be happy...

...Most of this happy circumstance developed because of American leadership over the past 60 years, and Mandelbaum sees no reason to make basic changes in what has worked so well...

...The real question is about the direction of history...

...But since the collapse of the Soviet Union, socialism even in more humane forms has lost practically all its standing in the real world...

...For this purpose liberalism was the sole surviving standard...

...It's about time something did...

...Even so, if one hopes to see liberal ideas and American influence continue to prevail, one can hardly afford to take the dogs of Europe with all the seriousness they demand...

...Imperial powers expand their empires until they meet with overwhelming resistance...

...Our closest friends in the region are opposed...

...Mandelbaum considers the European Union a model for troubled regions...

...All these conclusions he considers wrong...

...Michael Mandelbaum, author of The Ideas That Conquered the World (Public Affairs, 496 pp., $30.00), is a well-known professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies...

...Too bad...

...On occasion, though, they may be quite deep...

...Debatable...

...If we go to Baghdad, they're going to be unhappier than ever, evenor especially-if Saddam vanishes as quickly as the Taliban...

...Their economies keep them relatively poor...

...What does "aggression" mean when the target is a threatening dictator who has already killed hundreds of thousands of his own and neighboring peoples...

...Overthrowing Saddam Hussein would be an act of aggression...

...Those who oppose individualism, capitalism, or democracy are naturally rooting for an alternative...

...there would be no Muslims left in Kosovo...

...Military action would "destabilize" the whole Arab world...

...Not all of them can be so easily dismissed...

...government discovers that it can threaten and attack other nations with impunity, it will surely begin to threaten countries that have numbered [sic] among its allies...

...Most of the claims offered by European opponents of deposing Saddam Hussein have been made repeatedly in other crises and sound a little like the reasons Marshall Will Kane's fellow citizens gave for not helping him fight Frank Miller in High Noon...

...While the attacks of September 11 aimed at the heart of the international order of the 21 st century, their effect was more like that of a badly stubbed toe...

...They're not, and those who say this usually oppose the sanctions anyway on the grounds that they harm Iraqi civilians...

...The George Monbiots of this world never liked the idea of a war on terrorism in the first place...

...If you agree with the world according to Kupchan, you ratify all those discarded treaties, take the United Nations more seriously, invest in European companies, and prepare for decline...

...Many of them imply their own answers...

...The future is anyone's guess...

...Instead, they illuminated the main features of the world that already existed, a world that had emerged in its full form a decade earlier but had been two centuries in the making...

...Remember the 100,000 Iraqis killed in Desert Storm, or the equally imaginary 500 Palestinians massacred by the Israelis at Jenin...

...CHARLES KUPCHAN looks at the same post-Cold War world and totally disagrees...

...And few of America's critics outside the Middle East would relish the spread of Islamic fundamentalism...

...Iraq will turn into a quagmire like Vietnam...

...primacy is here to stay, but also that a lasting era of great-power peace has finally arrived...

...One often gets the impression that even for many European critics who are less extreme and more responsible than Monbiot, success is the most unforgivable part of American military interventions...

...Where Mandelbaum finds essential consensus, Kupchan points to "the return of rivalry among the world's main centers of power...

...Sanctions are effectively containing Saddam...

...administrations have faced wholesale charges of ignoring our allies, throwing our imperial weight around, and (especially when a Republican administration is doing it) acting like cowboys...

...As his book's title implies, Mandelbaum believes that certain ideas have recently triumphed in the world: the Wilsonian principles of peace, liberal democracy, and the free market...

...Although dictatorships and managed economies continue to exist from Baghdad to Beijing, Hanoi to Havana, they find themselves constantly on the defensive...

...Both books were clearly written before that series of events and gesture briefly toward Islamic terrorism as an issue...

...Pronouncing America "our foremost enemy," Monbiot urged resistance by Britain and the European Union (EU) to the limits of their ability...

...We would end up slaughtering innocent civilians and prove ourselves no better than our enemy...

...The United States waged its own revolutionary war in order to be independent of Europe...

...The United Nations should be involved...

...People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones unless they feel pretty sure the glass is bulletproof...

...Kuwait would be the 19th province of Iraq...

...He served as a member of the National Security Council staff during the Clinton Administration...

...The relative success of all these ventures has never made any difference the next time...

...Following the demise of the Soviet Union, no other credible political or economic ideals have emerged...

...If we had paid much attention to European elite opinion, the Cold War would still be going on...

...This chorus of haughty disapproval comes mostly from the Left, but not entirely-the British Conservative press, for example, is often as hostile to the United States as the Left-wing Observer...

...As for Islamic fundamentalism in the Arab nations, despite September 11 it amounts to little more than a noisy, bloody sideshow...

...hyperpower...

...Even the mullahs of Iran, leaders of what not long ago was billed as a new revolutionary force, know that their own people would dispense with them in a heartbeat if free elections were held for the most powerful positions...

...These range from a genuine sense of diplomatic caution through transparent envy of the world's only superpower all the way-when the Middle East is involved-to the still unresolved feelings of many Europeans toward their continent's former Jewish population...

...In the nightmare of the dark," wrote the poet W.H...

...After months of diplomatic seesawing, the most realistic conclusion seems to be that if we go, we will go with the active cooperation of the British (though perhaps not of their major media), the tacit cooperation of Turkey and several small Persian Gulf states, a wait-andsee attitude from other Arab countries, and grumbles from much of Europe...

...The U.S., in other words, behaves like any other imperial power...

...Third, the fact that two such erudite students of foreign policy tried desperately hard to write in a popular style for a mass audience reflects not only the laudable desire of every intellectual to reach more readers, but also the sense that the future is up for grabs in a way that it did not seem to be just a few years ago...

...As anyone knows who occasionally follows the Guardian or Independent or Paris' Le Monde, or watches the BBC or reads European magazines, for more than 20 years now the preponderance of intellectual and journalistic opinion in that part of the world has been rut-tutting the United States every time we think about using military force...

...their major concerns lie elsewhere-above all, in Europe...

...As [President George W.] Bush found in Afghanistan, whacking foreigners wins votes...

...should we wait to find out...

...needs more allies before it acts...

...Does America-both the country itself and the ideal of individualist, capitalist democracy that it has so long symbolized-represent an irresistible future, or are there other forces in the world that could and perhaps should prevail over it...

...So we are left with the core question: Is there visible anywhere on the horizon a more attractive competitor to what a recent French foreign minister memorably denounced as U.S...

...The fact that the EU's long-planned "rapid-reaction force" is still on the drawing board as a result of declining European military budgets has led other observers to show more skepticism...

...It is now the task of those convinced by [the book's] warnings to get on with the difficult, but essential, duty of preparing for the end of the American era...

...Henceforth the rising powers will be regional federations, superstates that manage their affairs through multilateral organizations like the United Nations...

...First, the study of American foreign policy at this exalted level is carried on by a fairly limited guild of people who tend to have known each other for a long time, teach at a small number of institutions, attend the same conferences, publish in the same journals, often serve in the same administrations, and share many of the same assumptions...

...The only alternative is even worse conflict with our natural allies and, once the Far East starts to unite on the model of the EU, with China and its neighbors...

...Kupchan emphasizes that he writes in the "realist" tradition of foreign policy study, yet one could plausibly criticize him for taking the European Union at its own inflated valuation and showing a certain gullibility toward international organizations in general...

...Citing the usual litany of complaints about the Kyoto accord on global warming, the Antiballistic Missile Treaty, and the International Criminal Court, he argues that America needs to become far more multilateral-more European, in effect-in order to manage its own decline effectively...

...In fact," Mandelbaum maintains, "the attacks did not usher in a new world...

...Some are echoed by American commentators in such venues as the Nation and the New York Times -even by a few prominent Republicans...

...Instead, his worry is that it consumes what little energy Americans are willing to devote to foreign relations and encourages "unilateralism," which makes the rest of the world increasingly hostile to us...

...Europe, Kupchan believes, "is emerging as America's only competitor...

...Managing the rise of China, the recovery of Russia or radical psychotherapy for the Middle East will require uncommon diplomatic skill-East Asia in particular is now "the most dangerous place on the planet"but none of these situations seriously threatens either the United States or the frinity of liberal values...

...Since 1986 he has been a senior fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations, and he was an adviser to the Clinton Administration...

...But the obsessiveness shown by European critics of American power lately suggests that specific facts about any potential use of that power are of secondary importance...

...competitor in his view, mostly because "there is no higher power than the sovereign state," and the EU will never be the equivalent of a sovereign state...

...If you like Mandelbaum's diagnosis better, you make minor adjustments here and there but basically stick to the policies that brought about the post-Cold War world in the first place...

...The sovereign state is obsolete, warns Kupchan, the cycles of history are inexorable-and the sooner we recognize these facts, the less painful the post-American century should prove: "American primacy will wane as Europe, and eventually Asia, rise...

...With the euro having replaced most (though not all) national currencies in the EU, the euro zone can plausibly be considered a single economy that is larger than that of the United States...

...The point of view he represents is similar to that of European critics who have had such a field day with the Bush Administration...

...The common experiences of these two authors prompts several observations...

...Bin Ladenism is merely the last violent gasp of an almost powerless set of obsolete illiberal notions...

...It was victory in the Cold War, though, that wiped out the last serious challenge to democracy as the only reputable form of government and free-market economies as the only realistic route to prosperity...

...their politics create only dissatisfaction...