Present at the Destruction

REF to Libertarian Internationalism at:
http://www.cepiaclub.com/Stratgaz/Gazette1a4.htm

The U.S. Secretary of State in the
first years of the Cold War, Dean Acheson, titled his memoirs Present
at the Creation. As a key
architect of US foreign policy in reaction to aggressive Soviet
actions in Eastern Europe (such as the Czeck coup of 1947 and the
Berlin Blockade of 148-49), Acheson helped devise a grand strategy
building on a policy of containing Soviet power within its own sphere
of influence, designed to stop its spread into other areas of the
world vital to US political and economic survival.

Using
the United States' position or dominance in international
organizations created at the end of World War II, primarily the
United Nations, the World Bank, the General Agreement on Trade and
Tariffs, and the International Monetary Fund, the Truman
Administration used goodwill among friendly nations with the hedge of
the supreme US dollar to create and promote common political-economic
interests with other nations in Europe, Asia , and the Americas.

These
natural and manufactured interests in “the common good” of
non-communist nations insured a massive measure of global security
and stability. It was remarkable that one of the key elements of
this stability—Western Europe—shed its millenia long tendencies
for great power wars, even world wars, in the interests of continued
independence, greater prosperity, common security, and the prevention
of the “communal civil wars” that characterized the balance of
power diplomacy of European history. While outside of Western Europe
US security policy mostly relied on bilateral (nation-to-nation)
alliances, the anchor of US foreign policy in Europe, the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), was formally established in
April 1949 on the initiative of European countries.

Men
(there were, unfortunately, few women involved) like President Harry
Truman, Secretary of State and later Secretary of Defense Gen. George
C. Marshall, political appointees such as Acheson, diplomats like
George Kennan and Chip Bohlen, and Establishment insiders, namely
John J. McCloy and Robert Lovett, were shrewd and capable thinkers,
visionaries in fact, of long-range foresight and long-term solutions.
Their life-times of public service, in the military and government
(Truman was a grass-roots political organizer and county administror
in Missouri before becoming a senator), and in private business
(McCloy was chief executive of the largest bank in the US) gave all
of these and other less well-known individuals the experience, the
skill, the talent, and the effectiveness to manage huge global
endeavors (McCloy and Lovett ran the War Department as assistants and
Marshall was Army chief of staff throughout World War II).

The
international system that these leaders created, implemented and
managed, sometimes as private individuals, governed US foreign
affairs from 1945 until 2001. Yes, 2001: From the last year of
World War II, throughout the Cold War and 10 years beyond the
self-termination of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. From
1991 through the very moment when the first airliner crashed into
the World Trade Center on the morning of September 11, 2001, US
foreign policy, including the Era of Globalization, remained
consistently based on using a multi-lateral (many nations) approach
of soveignty, development, security, and stability. This practice of
diplomacy applied to democratic nations as well as “friendly”
dictatorships, monarchies, and despotisms.

The
constant maintenance of the international system had one primary
goal: Maintaining the United States as the dominant
political-economic center of power. As the center of power, US
foreign relations reserves to itself more political, diplomatic,
economic, and if necessary, military choices than any real or
potential competitor or enemy. In foreign policy, more options
between the conditions of peace and war provide far more security and
stability than getting trapped and cornered in unpleasant or
disastrous policies (Korea, Vietnam, Lebanon, and Iraq are more
prominent examples). The US pursued these means of foreign policy
for one ultimate end, and the right one: For the direct national
secuirty interest of the United States of America and all the safety
of all its citizens.

It
might not be too premature six years after 9/11/2001 and five years
since the clouds of war in Iraq began hovering over the American
people, to make some sort of preliminary conclusion about US foreign
policy. It is my opinion that we have been witnessing the end of a
successful 60 years of US foreign policy. We could be all witnesses
of the destruction of an international system that had far more
restraint and interest in avoiding war, instability, and human
destruction. As a reference, US involvement in Vietnam severely
damaged America's security and position.

Even
though the United States under some brilliant foreign policy of
Richard Nixon and his key advisor Henry Kissinger staved off total
disaster for US security, significant things did change with which we
still suffer. For examples, the US became embroiled as a central
player in the conflict between Arabs and Israelis, and assumed an
entirely negative role in Africa, in response to Soviet policies made
more bold and confident by US failure in Vietnam. Massive wage and
price inflation in the early 1970s from the financial cost of the
war, and in the form of an oil embargo, began a 35-year shift into
massive government intervention into the US economy. Those events
also ended the international financial system based on the
gold-standard US dollar and the world then entered the mythical
world of “fiat” phoney money. Concerning the oil embargo
mentioned above, US policy in the Middle East allowed the
oil-producing nations in the world to “discover” their weapon of
high-priced oil. That trend toward the oil-producers manipulating
whole national economic structures has only grown.

Still,
the world created by Truman, Acheson et. al. survived the Vietnam
War, but only barely. With US policies in the world concerning
nuclear proliferation in Iran, ballistic missile defenses in Eastern
Europe (challenging post-Soviet Russian interests), the domestic
turmoil in the US over the Iraq War, the financial cost of the war
and the hoped-for post-war, but even more, the moral costs and
consquences of the loss of American and Iraqi lives is going to
present penalties to US national security.

Whether
based on ignorance on any side (it is still quite possible that the
Bush Administration has or believes it has information governing its
actions unknown to the public; possible and not improbable), or
malicious greed and fear of US and world leaders, these policieswill
inevitably impact the entire future of the world, no matter what
happens form here-on or at the conclusion of these policies. It DID
happen following Vietnam, and in ways that may not be easily
recognized or acknowledged.

The
question for the present generation of world leaders, and the present
generation that will grow up to replacement, is will the
international system correct itself into a stabilizing form, with or
without US supremacy? If we are witnessing the intermission or
finale of a relatively successful system and on the whole a peaceful
world, we need to anticipate on what comes now as soon as possible,
and then decide what to do about it.

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