AMERICAN HEGEMONY: PREVENTIVE WAR, IRAQ, AND IMPOSING DEMOCRACY Demetrios James Caraley, Editor April 2004 · $24.50 (APS Members: $19.60)

NEW BOOK EXAMINES THE POST-SEPTEMBER 11 “BUSH DOCTRINE”
AND OFFERS LESSONS FROM THE WAR AGAINST IRAQ

The editor of American Hegemony: Preventive War, Iraq, and Imposing Democracy, Demetrios James Caraley, brings within one volume essays that examine the future of American power, perspectives on preventive war, and implications for democracy. Caraley explains that whatever the meaning of the United States being the sole remaining superpower, it does not mean that the U.S. is invincible or irresistible. He writes: “The view of the United States as the world’s sole remaining superpower seemed to be confirmed by its quick and easy victory over Iraq’s organized military forces. Once again, it was also confirmed that American superpower is primarily the power to destroy and, at the extreme, to create chaos but not necessarily to assure compliance with its will, even after it proclaimed military victory.” This is one of five major points raised by Caraley in the book’s foreword.

Demetrios James Caraley is the Janet Robb Professor of the Social Sciences at Barnard College, professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University, and Editor of Political Science Quarterly. He has published numerous books and articles on national security policy, including The Politics of Military Unification, The New American Interventionism, and September 11, Terrorist Attacks, and U.S. Foreign Policy. In his recently published book, American Hegemony, Caraley writes about some troubling implications of an American doctrine of world hegemony and then draws some early lessons from the preventive war launched against Iraq in the spring of 2003.

In addition to asserting that “the Iraqi war proved only that U.S. military superiority can be guaranteed against small states that lack nuclear weapons, and even that does not guarantee that after victory over a state’s military forces, there will be compliance by the defeated state and opposition attacks will stop,” Caraley warns that the United States cannot succeed militarily when “going it alone.” The U.S. relied on using military bases and receiving overflight permissions from many of its traditional allies in NATO and on the Arab peninsula despite their strong opposition to the war. Moreover, “how responsibly the United States chooses to exercise its superpower affects the deference and respect that it will be accorded by other nations and international organizations,” requiring the careful exercise of American unilateralism.

Also according to Caraley, U.S. military interventions against rogue states and tyrannies will not necessarily result in the rise of democracies. “There is as yet no evidence,” he writes, “that even if a new democratic Iraq can be established, it will serve as a ‘beacon’ of democracy and freedom in the Middle East, resulting in the people of other nondemocracies in the region demanding democracies of their own.” Moreover, the overly optimistic approach to the Iraqi invasion, which assumed that a pro-Western democracy supportive of U.S. policies would be successfully imposed and that this new Iraqi democracy would become a pillar of security for the U.S. in the Middle East, has proven to be a mirage.

Considering the wide range of powers given to the attorney general right after the attacks of September 11 by the USA PATRIOT Act and then Congress’ hasty abdication of its constitutional rights upon transferring to the president the power to decide whether and when the U.S. would go to war against Iraq, Caraley believes that we may be weakening the constitutional democracy at home. He furthers states that “if how the U.S. went to war in 2003 against Iraq becomes accepted as a legitimate precedent…any president could find misleading and allegedly very confidential intelligence with which to frighten Congress into giving him some authority for using the military against ‘terrorism’ (or even worse, claim that he could do so on his own, as part of his inherent power as Commander in Chief).”

Lastly, Caraley questions what is ahead and affirms that “the United States cannot leave Iraq before it has a stable government that can provide good internal security and some capacity to protect itself against foreign foes.” However, even with the U.S.’s presence in Iraq, there has been a failure to squelch violence not only against coalition armed forces but also against foreign contractors, ethnic and religious factions, major Shiite mosques, hotels, and Iraqi police stations and police training facilities. He hopes that the United States might learn not to embark on war so rapidly when the threat to the U.S. is remote in time and place, the intelligence reports are murky and inconclusive, the cost of the war is substantial, and the international community fails to see the threat and thus refuses to provide support.

In addition to Professor Caraley, nine other respected scholars who are in the center of the debate over “American empire” contributed essays to American Hegemony. They explore the ongoing discussion over how the world’s only superpower should define and act out its role in the world. The following contributions comprise American Hegemony:

1. Editor’s Foreword: Some Early Lessons
    Demetrios James Caraley, Barnard College and Columbia University

“The view of the United States as the world’s sole remaining superpower seemed to be confirmed by its quick and easy victory over Iraq’s organized military forces. Once again, it was also confirmed that American superpower is primarily the power to destroy and, at the extreme, to create chaos but not necessarily to assure compliance with its will, even after it proclaimed military victory.”

“So why should this volume's essays be pessimistic? Because they go well beyond the military victories to ask the necessary next and more complex questions about Washington's plans (or lack thereof) for the reconstruction, stabilization, and even democratization of the invaded countries.”

“Bush's goals are extraordinarily ambitious, involving remaking not only international politics but recalcitrant societies as well, which is seen as an end in itself and a means to American security.”

“…Congress seemed incapable of analyzing a presidential proposal and protecting its institutional powers. The decision to go to war cast a dark shadow over the health of U.S. political institutions and the celebrated system of democratic debate and checks and balances.”

“The fact that viewers of some media outlets had far lower levels of misperceptions than did others (even when controlling for political attitudes) suggests that not all were making the maximal effort to counter the potential for misperception.”

“A greater concern is the likelihood that future Iraqi leaders will seek WMD because of the underlying regional pressures for proliferation. U.S. or international efforts to prevent a post-Saddam Iraq from seeking WMD may well prove chimeric, perhaps even impossible in the long run.”

“…if American diplomacy is unilateral and arrogant, our preponderance would not prevent other states and nonstate actors from taking actions that complicate American calculations and constrain its freedom of action.”

“The American era is alive and well, but the rise of alternative centers of power and a difficult and diffident U.S. internationalism will ensure that it comes undone as this new century progresses—with profound geopolitical consequences.”

“While external influences often were significant causes of third wave democratizations, the processes themselves were overwhelmingly indigenous. These processes can be located along a continuum in terms of the relative importance of governing and opposition groups as the sources of democratization.”

“Although it is easy to impose elections on a country, it is more difficult to push constitutional liberalism on a society. The process of genuine liberalization and democratization, in which an election is only one step, is gradual and long-term.”