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Thursday, Feb. 1, 2001

This is not the conventional way of looking at things. Hawkish, young, congressional conservative Republicans and do-gooder, human rights-championing liberal Democrats alike proclaim that if history has not ended, as Francis Fukiyama maintained in a now notorious article, with the permanent victory of democracy and free markets, it has at least reached a comfortable plateau where those ideals can reign supreme for a century or two.

But the cautious war veteran Powell knows differently. Russia is the one nation that still has sufficient nuclear arsenals and strategic rocket forces to pose a truly mortal threat to the United States. But it is rapidly evolving from a proto-democracy eagerly courting the United States into a reintegrating, authoritarian great power whose leaders blame America in large part for impoverishing their nation. Even worse, Russian leaders see the U.S.-led NATO bombing of Yugoslavia two years ago, to end ethnic cleansing activities in Kosovo, as the first act in a deliberate policy of imposing American hegemony and values on every major nation in the world, whether they like it or not.

The U.S. government, pushed hard by Powell's predecessor, Secretary of State Madeline Albright, launched and led the bombing campaign without getting any prior approval to do so from the United Nations Security Council.

Russian leaders at the time made clear they saw this as a dangerous shattering of the restraints of international relations and law that had maintained peace between the superpowers for more than half a century, since the founding of the U.N. itself at the 1945 San Francisco Conference. Albright visited Moscow rarely and was not liked or respected there when she did. Russian leaders privately – but not too privately – complained that she never listened to them but only lectured them.

Chinese leaders felt the same way and shared many of the same fears. Albright almost never visited Beijing, except when literally towed there by President Bill Clinton, who usually seemed far more aware of China's vast potential and growing power than she was.

The 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia proved disastrous to Sino-American relations too. Several Chinese journalists were killed when a U.S. Stealth fighter accidentally bombed the Chinese Embassy in the Yugoslav and Serbian capital Belgrade. To this day, many top Chinese leaders are convinced the attack was a deliberate one, intended to intimidate them. The Russians and Chinese have not simply sat on their resentments and kept them to themselves. Russian-Chinese strategic cooperation has been systematically pursued for at least two years at a greater level than at any time since the death of Josef Stalin and the end of the Korean War in 1953.

China has just taken delivery of its second Sovremenny class destroyer to threaten Taiwan and neutralize the operations of U.S. aircraft carrier battle groups in the Taiwan Strait. Russia continues to sell hundreds of ground-to-air missiles and state-of-the-art Sukhoi-27 and Sukhoi-30 aircraft to China, building up its capabilities to eventually match U.S. carrier-projected air power in any conflict over Taiwan. Even democratic India, despite President Clinton's visit last March, has moved firmly and decisively into the Russian-Chinese camp because it too fears unilateral U.S. pressures – both diplomatic and military.

India is determined to hold on to historically strategic Kashmir despite a Muslim insurgency that has cost at least 35,000 lives over the past decade. It fears that U.S. power could be used against it to force it to let go of Kashmir, just as U.S. power was used to free the similar Muslim majority province of Kosovo from Orthodox Christian Serbia two years ago. Also, India is determined to push ahead with its civilian and military nuclear programs.

The arms control enthusiasts and environmentalists who strongly influenced U.S. foreign policy in the Clinton era were fiercely opposed to these programs. By contrast, Russia has signed $6 billion worth of nuclear development deals with India and is eager to undertake many more. In the Middle East, as in Asia, Powell inherits from Albright a situation where traditional bitter enemies now make common cause to overthrow U.S.-imposed order and policies.

Syria under young President Bashar Assad has abandoned the rivalry and distrust of Iraq that directed it for the previous 30 years under Bashar's late father, President Hafez Assad. Now, with Syria as broker, Iraq and Iran are mending their differences, little more than a decade after fighting the most bloody war in modern Middle East history, in which half a million troops died on both sides.

And what now unites Syria, Iraq and Iran – just as it does Russia, China and India – is mutual opposition to the U.S.-imposed order in their part of the world.

Even America's traditional Western European allies are now divided and uneasy among themselves. Germany Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has allowed himself to be courted by Russian President Vladimir Putin. French diplomats working out of the Quai d'Orsay in Paris toil ceaselessly to derail U.S. diplomatic and military policies in Europe.

Albright was fond of describing the United States as the "indispensable" superpower of the world. But the problem with being "indispensable" everywhere is that you then find yourself in a position of strategic over-stretch, forced to confront challengers in every part of the globe who want you to be dispensable.

This was the dilemma that faced the British Empire in the 1930s, when it was challenged simultaneously in Europe by Nazi Germany, in the Mediterranean and the Middle East by Fascist Italy, and in the Far East by Imperial Japan. Britain survived. But its empire, and its world power, did not.

A quarter of a century ago, the Soviet Union appeared to be winning the Cold War against the United States. But it was tempted into strategic over-stretch as well. Soviet wealth and resources were sucked into Angola and Mozambique, Yemen and Vietnam. Finally, a long, costly, unwinnable war in Afghanistan proved the final straw. Efforts to rescue a collapsing economy at home failed and the entire system disintegrated, taking Soviet global pretensions with it.

Powell is cautious where Albright was reckless, cool where she was self-righteous, and an experienced ground combat soldier who has seen war at first hand where she lived the life of a sheltered academic. He listens where she lectured and is respected where she was not. But the foreign policies of global superpowers cannot be reversed overnight. It takes time to turn them around and rebuild goodwill and trust which were squandered for years before.

In all his years of acclaimed, decorated and heroic military service, even Powell never faced such an awesome challenge before. His fellow Americans can only wish him well.

(C) 2001 UPI All Rights Reserved.

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
Russia
Kosovo / Yugoslavia
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