A year after Barack Obama relaunched America's relations with the world's rogue states, the verdict is in: from Burma to North Korea, Venezuela to Iran, the outstretched hand has been met with the clenched fist. Aung San Suu Kyi remains under house arrest in Rangoon, Pyongyang is testing missiles, Caracas rails against gringo imperialism, and Tehran has dismissed a year-end deadline to do a deal on its nuclear program. Engagement has failed and Obama is now poised to deliver on threats of tougher sanctions, as surely he must. Right? Well, not necessarily.
What Washington has failed to fully recognize is that the world that created "rogue states" is gone. The term became popular in the 1980s, mainly in the United States, to describe minor dictatorships threatening to the Cold War order. Then, after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the main challenge to American dominance came from those states unwilling to accommodate themselves to the "end of history" and conform to U.S. values. The idea of "the rogue state" assumed the existence of an international community, united behind supposedly universal Western values and interests, that could agree on who the renegades are and how to deal with them. By the late 1990s this community was already dissolving, with the rise of China, the revival of Russia, and the emergence of India, Brazil, and Turkey as real powers, all with their own interests and values. Today it's clear that the "international community" defined by Western values is a fiction, and that for many states the term "rogue" might just as well apply to the United States as to the renegades it seeks to isolate.
The answer to those states challenging the established global order will not come in the form of carrots or sticks from Washington alone. Confronting the threats of nuclear proliferation, terror, and regional instability posed by state and nonstate actors alike will require coalitions that are genuinely willing"”not forged under U.S. pressure. It is no longer possible for the U.S."”even with Obama as president"”to rally international support for an American, or even a Western, agenda. What the world seeks from America is more engagement, not less, but based on partnership, not U.S. primacy. Conventional American leadership, it is now evident, is as unwelcome in the person of Barack Obama as in George W. Bush.
In the absence of a newly forged international community, a U.S.-led crackdown on the old rogues is bound to backfire. Already Western efforts have driven rogue states into each other's arms"”Burma is trading military hardware and perhaps nuclear secrets with North Korea; Iran is forging closer ties to Syria; Venezuela is supporting Cuba more lavishly. Worse than these warming relations among relatively weak troublemakers is their growing support from legitimate rising powers. Brazil, Turkey, Russia, China"”all are making no secret of their resistance to America's anti-rogue diplomacy.
Obama came into office thinking that a more responsive diplomacy could rally global support for the old Western agenda, but that's not enough. What's needed, more than a change in tone or a U.S. policy review, is a new set of baseline global interests"”neither purely Western nor Eastern"”defined in concert with rising powers who have real influence in capitals like Rangoon, Pyongyang, and Tehran. This requires a painful reconsideration of America's place in the world. But it promises real help from rising powers in shouldering the financial and military burden of addressing global threats.
Today countries large and small, well behaved and not, are looking for partners, not patrons. Where Washington looks to punish rogues, seeking immediate changes in behavior, rival powers are stepping in with investment and defense contracts, and offering a relationship based on dignity and respect. This is the story of China in Burma, Russia in Iran, Brazil in Cuba, and so on down the line. And given that the core institutions of global governance"”the U.N. Security Council, the World Bank, and the IMF"”are unwilling to grant the new powers a seat at the decision-making table, it's not surprising that they feel no obligation to back sanctions they've had no say in formulating.
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This is an insightful article which should be required reading in the White House.However, it does not deal directly with the most glaring example of a failed US policy, our relations with Cuba.The Obama Administration has taken some positive steps, but is still bogged down in the rhetoric and mind-set of conditionality. They refuse to allow unrestricted travel for educational, cultural, religious and humanitarian purposes, which they could do tomorrow. And they offer no support to legislation which will allow all Americans to regain their freedom to travel for tourism, investigating business possibilities, etc.Even their primary condition, the release of political prisoners, could be easily accomplished by responding to Cuba's call for the release of its five agents who came to spy on their adversaries in Miami.Until the US undertakes a rational relationship with Cuba, any hope of regaining its standing in Latin America and the Caribbean is a sad joke. It would also help our reputation in the rest of the world which votes against our embargo in virtual unanimity every year at the UN.John McAuliffFund for Reconciliation and Development
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