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Unilateral-ism Won't Work: Analysis
Recently, a very influential article entitled "Bush-ism" was published in the Flag Weekly, a quite popular magazine in the elite circle of Washington. In the opinion of the article, the world has become single-polar, not multi-polar, the United States should pursue a policy of unilateral-ism necessary for recognizing and maintaining single-polarity.
With regard to what is single-polarity, the article takes the new Bush administration's foreign actions, particularly challenging the ABM Treaty and burying the Kyoto Protocol as the best annotations, saying these actions have fundamentally renewed the expositions on the orientation of the American foreign policy; rejected the multilateral restraint and restored the freedom of action. The article said bluntly that the United States does want to be the only one overlord in today's world, and rule the world "kindly".
However, in the face of realities, such logic is hardly workable.
The United States is the No.1 country in terms of strength in today's world, but the world is not a single-polar world of the United States, and a single-polar world under the rule of the United States will not appear in the future. A basic fact is a unified Europe is economically stronger than the United States, Japan remains a big economic power in the world. Militarily, Russia is a strong opponent which the United States has to face. Russia's rejuvenation centered on the Europe-Asia continent and Japan's resolved reform, and the rapid development of China and India-all are the realities of the distribution of strength in today's world. Even in the aspects of culture, conception, technology and other "soft strengths", the United States does not necessarily hold the absolute upper hand. In addition, the rise in the international community's anti-US forces and emotion should also be taken into consideration, because this will inevitably pin down the United States.
Realities are far more complicated than the above-mentioned conservativeness and delusion. In the face of the United States' hegemonic attempt, Russia does not make any substantive concession, Europe is even more worried about the consequences of unilateral-ism. So, the United States has to resort to both hard and soft diplomatic stratagem, by convincing, ingratiating and inducing them. The United States repeatedly "explains" to the countries concerned the hardly tenable reasons for the missile defense system, and has to carry out dialogs with Russia. All these serve to show that today's world can hardly be a single-polar world of the United States as asserted by the article "Bush-ism".
The article "Bush-ism" professes that unilateral-ism can bring about genuine security for the United States, advocates that militarily the United States should keep a monopoly of the outer space and solve once and for all the problem regarding nuclear proliferation which is to the concern of the United States. In fact, when America has the intention to monopolize the outer space, other big countries do not lack the ability to get involved in the scramble for outer space. Such being the case, it is bound to trigger an arms race targeted at the outer space. It can be said with certainty that unilateral-ism not only cannot fundamentally solve the problem concerning nuclear proliferation, but also will not enable the United States to get real security.
As a matter of fact, such an attempt of dominating the world cannot be countenanced in the United States itself. Many Americans are aware that a unilateral United States is bound to be an isolated United States, such a United States is inconsistent with the fundamental security and interests of the general public of the United States. A French political commentator's article published recently in the International Herald Tribune pointed out, most Americans dismiss with a laugh Washington elite's outmoded fond dream of dominating the world.
Judged from the global and US domestic passive reaction, the Bush administration's foreign policy can hardly be based fully on the pipe dream of unilateral-ism. Realistic compromise may have to be made to the existing US foreign policy in the course of its implementation.
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