The Case for Goliath: How America Acts as the
World’s Government in the Twenty-First Century
by Michael Mandelbaum
(Public Affairs, 283 pages, $26)
One of the more valuable lessons history teaches is that the world
— and not just individual nations — requires a strong leader.
Traditionally that’s been the role of empire. The Romans were there
to relieve the Ancient Greeks, and as the sun went down on
Britannia the Americans — to exhaust the sports metaphor—stepped
up to the plate. Nature, the saying goes, abhors a vacuum and the
void left by the fall of 5th century Rome resulted in a thousand
years of darkness and chaos.
Never has the role of world leader been more vital than in this
transformational period of porous borders, nuclear proliferation
and globalization, suggests Michael Mandelbaum in his new book
The Case for Goliath: How America Acts as the World’s
Government in the Twenty-First Century.
Mandelbaum, professor of American Foreign Policy at the Johns
Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies,
argues that the U.S. has become by default the world’s government,
and a good deal of that government’s responsibility is to maintain
order, provide security, dispense aid, and offer humanitarian
relief, both financially and militarily. The American people,
however, wear the cap of world leader uneasily. Largely because it
is not a role that America auditioned for, but one destiny thrust
upon it. There has always been a segment of its population —
isolationists, libertarians, liberals — that has resisted this
role. And because America is a humanitarian, and not a traditional
controlling, looting empire, it is particularly susceptible to the
gibes and criticisms of its allies. Americans, says Mandelbaum, are
always mindful of the world’s “conviction that the United States
misuses its enormous power in ways that threaten the stability of
the international system.” Some Americans would no doubt agree.
Unlike the modus operandi of traditional imperial powers, the
U.S. tends to intervene in countries (most recently Somalia, Haiti,
Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan) that possess no strategic or economic
value. (The exception being Iraq.) And the intervention is almost
always for humanitarian reasons and often to assist Muslim
peoples.
The gist of Mandelbaum — if I read him correctly — is that our
allies are a bunch of phonies and freeloaders, who delight in
criticizing the U.S., yet have no interest in counterbalancing
American power. Of course they don’t, since the EU, China, and
Russia understand that the U.S. is not wielding its power in ways
that threaten anyone but the bad guys. “Widespread complaints about
the United States’ international role are met with an absence of
concrete, effective measures to challenge, change, or restrict it,”
the author notes.
Nor can Mandelbaum avoid the inevitable, enigmatic question:
“Why do they hate us?” Some hate America because it is a convenient
scapegoat for their inept and thieving governing. Some blame the
U.S. for the changing global economy and its resultant
dislocations. While others — were they to acknowledge America’s
global role and everything they benefit from it — fear they will
be seen as the deadbeats they are and might be asked to fit some of
the bill.
The world may resent Goliath, Mandelbaum argues, but it has no
desire to bring him down, for “[t]he consequences of less [U.S.]
governance are not likely to be pleasant.” Besides, without the
U.S. who will keep world order? Who will provide security and
economic stability? Who will supply aid to feed starving
Zimbabweans and keep Haiti afloat? Who will check the proliferation
of nuclear weapons? The UN Security Counsel with its members’
conflicting interests? (Recall how Russian intransigence helped its
allies the Bosnian Serbs continue their acts of genocide and ethnic
cleansing.) Imagine the shock to world money markets if tomorrow
there were no U.S. dollar. Or the trauma to oil markets if the U.S.
Navy stopped policing Atlantic and Pacific shipping routes. Without
the American consumer the economies of Japan, China, South Korea
would tank instantly. International loans, and loan forgiveness?
Forgetaboutit!
OCCASIONALLY MANDELBAUM makes the U.S. sound like the kid who
threatens to take his ball and go home if the rest of the world
keeps making fun of it:
“The alternative to the role the United States plays in the
world is not better global governance, but less of it — and that
would make the world a far more dangerous and less prosperous
place. Never in human history has one country done so much for so
many others, and received so little appreciation for its
efforts.”
Due to the troubles in Iraq (or the media’s portrayal of them
anyway) and recent Palestinian elections, democracy-promotion has
become less and less popular with Americans. Nor has the U.S. had a
great record at nation-building or humanitarian intervention (think
Somalia, Haiti). As a result more and more Americans are growing
weary of playing global governor and being mocked and despised for
their pains. Ultimately the American masses will be the arbiter of
the United States’ foreign policy, and with the looming retirement
crisis Mandelbaum predicts the public will demand its money remain
at home. “Social Security and Medicare, not the rise of China, pose
the greatest threat to America’s role as the world’s government.”
It is this attitude, not some barbarian invasion or interior
decadence, that will cause America to withdraw from the world
stage. And once that happens America’s foreign critics will long
for the good old days of the “American Empire.”
Mandelbaum sums up the prospect of a reduced international
presence succinctly: “They will not pay for it; they will continue
to criticize it; and they will miss it when it is gone.” On the
other hand, a few terrorist attacks could find the American people
restructuring their priorities yet again.
