Text 2968, 104 rader
Skriven 2006-10-24 14:45:18 av Alan Hess
Ärende: problems with U.S. power?
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Is this writer overreacting to what he sees, or is he making some accurate
points?

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washingtonpost.com

A Nadir of U.S. Power

By Sebastian Mallaby
Monday, October 23, 2006; A21

It's not exactly morning in America.

In Iraq, things get ever uglier, and the old remedy of extra troops now seems
tragically futile. The Bush team has recently tried putting thousands of
additional soldiers into Baghdad, and the result after two months is that
violence there has increased.

Iraq is often seen as a special Rumsfeldian screw-up. But in Afghanistan, the
Bush team quickly handed off to a model pro-Western leader backed by a broad
NATO coalition. And what are the results there? The government is wobbling,
warlords run drugs and the pro-al-Qaeda Taliban have 4,000 to 5,000 active
fighters in the country.

It's not just military efforts that are faltering. Five years ago, President
Bush launched an experiment in tough-talk diplomacy, warning foreign leaders
that they must be with us or against us in the war on terrorism. At first this
yielded at least one achievement: Pakistan sent troops for the first time into
its wild border regions to root out Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters. But that
success has now gone into reverse. Pakistan recently withdrew its soldiers, in
effect ceding the border territory to the radicals.

It would be nice if this merely proved that tough talk can backfire. But
traditional diplomacy is faring no better. In North Korea and Iran, the United
States has tried every diplomatic trick to prevent nuclear proliferation,
making common cause with Western Europe, Russia, China and Japan, and wielding
both sticks and carrots. The result is failure: North Korea has tested a nuke
and Iran still presses on with its enrichment program.

A few years ago, the collapse of Russia's currency triggered a furious debate
in Washington over who lost Russia. Now Russia's pro-Western voices are being
snuffed out, and Americans are so inured to the limits of their power that they
don't even pose that question. A crusading journalist has been killed, and on
Thursday Vladimir Putin silenced Human Rights, Amnesty International and more
than 90 other foreign organizations. Everyone accepts that there's not much the
West can do about this.

In Somalia, a Taliban-style group of Islamic militants has seized part of the
country. One of its commanders is said to be sheltering terrorists who blew up
the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania: A brand-new terrorist haven may be
emerging. Again, it is assumed that the world's sole superpower can't do much
but watch.

Three long years ago, the Bush administration described the killing in Darfur
as genocide. You might think that an impoverished African state that can't
control its own territory would be a pushover. But the Bush administration has
tried sanctions, peace talks and United Nations resolutions. Sudan's tin-pot
dictator thumbs his nose at Uncle Sam and dispatches more death squads.

When historians analyze the decline of empires, they tend to point to economic
frailties that undercut military vigor. Well, the United States has several
economic frailties and can't seem to address any of them.

Every honest politician knows that entitlement spending on retirees is going to
bust the budget. But since the failure of Bush's proposed Social Security
overhaul last year, nobody is doing anything about it.

Every honest politician knows that we need to quit gobbling carbon. But higher
gas taxes are seen as a political non-starter on both sides of the political
spectrum.

Every honest politician knows that support for globalization is fraying because
of rising inequality at home. But how many of them stand up for policies that
could reduce inequality without harming growth -- most obviously, tax reform?
You don't hear anybody on the left or right denouncing the absurdity that more
than half the tax breaks for homeownership flow to the richest 12 percent of
households.

In fact, it's hard to name a single creative policy that has political legs in
Washington. Is anyone serious about tackling the crazy tort system, which
consumes more than a dollar in administrative and legal costs for every dollar
it transfers to the victims of malpractice? Nope. Is there any prospect of
allowing the millions of immigrants who come here to do so legally? To be
honest, not much.

Instead, the right and left are pushing policies that are marginal to the
country's problems. The right wants to make its tax cuts "permanent," even
though the boomers' retirement ensures that taxes will have to go up. The left
wants to raise the minimum wage, even though this can only help a minority of
workers.

I'm not predicting the end of the American era, not by a long shot. The U.S.
business culture is as pragmatic and effective as its political culture is
dysfunctional. But has there been a worse moment for American power since
Ronald Reagan celebrated morning in America almost a quarter of a century ago?
I can't think of one.

smallaby@washpost.com

+ 2006 The Washington Post Company

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