U.S. often overbearing in international matters

By Tom Plate

The United States is undoubtedly more virtuous than the average hegemony through history — but will that carry the day?

It's one thing to be the big muscle in your neighborhood. It's another to be the local bully.

What we all have to accept is the geopolitical reality of our current "unipolar world," asserts the lead essay in the summer issue of Foreign Affairs, the pre-eminent U.S. establishment journal. The political world these days has but a north pole. And this dramatically unidimensional structure of the global magnetic field is not going to be altered any time soon.

Dartmouth University government professors Stephen G. Brooks and William C. Wohlforth conclude: "If today's American primacy does not constitute unipolarity, then nothing ever will. The only things left for dispute are how long it will last and what the implications are for American foreign policy."

So how is Washington doing, from the perspective of the rest of the world?

Let's look at the recent record.

Last week, the Bush administration in effect suggested that the Palestinians dump Yasser Arafat if they desire U.S. backing for an independent state. That went over in the Arab world like the proverbial lead balloon. Who likes being told by outsiders whom to vote for? Even those critical of the chairman of the Palestinian Liberation Organization felt compelled, against better instincts, to come to his support.

Similarly last week, the U.S. Consulate in Hong Hong chastised the special administrative region government for refusing to permit anti-Beijing exile Harry Wu to enter. In 1997, Hong Kong became a semi-autonomous subdivision of China in Britain's historic handover; July 1 of this year is the fifth anniversary of that event.

Some anniversary: Many Asians may well agree with the U.S. view, albeit with the savvy realization that Wu is useful to the United States as an anti-communist icon and that his nonprofit, U.S.-based China Information Centre benefits from U.S. State Department financing.

At the same time, though, Asians might agree that the Hong Kong government should be able to make an extremely sensitive decision without a public scolding from America. Even some Wu backers in Hong Kong had to shudder over the U.S. tactic. It's easy for Washington to say what Hong Kong should do — a convenient 6,000 miles away from Beijing.

Recall a comparably infamous, putatively high-minded scolding — the one by Al Gore while in Malaysia in 1998. The vice president, addressing an APEC summit, delivered some choice negative words about Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who had recently jailed his main political challenger on what seemed like trumped-up charges.

Before that public Gore-ing, many Asian leaders had been upset with Mahathir, too. But to criticize the Malaysian prime minister in Kuala Lumpur struck many as unseemly and arrogant.

As Malaysia's parliamentary opposition leader put it at the time, "There is a feeling of national embarrassment that a foreign leader should be talking about the need for democratic change in Malaysia on our own soil, although he may be stating the truth."

So we must forgive Asia today if it is amused by the current near-love-in between Washington and Mahathir, who last week announced his impending retirement even as the Bush administration has been praising his tough anti-terrorist stance.

Pappa don't preach, croons the well-known Madonna song. But do we ever!

So where is the proper balance between a responsible global leadership and a loose-lipped arrogance of power? As Brooks and Wohlforth put it, "Some unease among other countries is inevitable, no matter what Washington does." And, of course, nothing elicits envy more than success.

At the same time, America wields such a big stick that it not only must talk softly but at times must display enough statesmanship to remain speechless. How to calibrate that fine line?

It's not easy. Indeed, no recent U.S. government has ever found exactly the right line to take.

But that difficult journey — of many thousands of miles — can begin with the first diplomatic baby steps. Telling a foreign people who should be their leader and criticizing a foreign government for a politically sensitive decision are steps in the wrong direction.

Watch out, Washington, because before too long, the manifestly unipolar can, alas, transform into the manifestly uni-unpopular. When you are as powerful as the United States, it is not that hard to go wrong even when you are essentially right.

Tom Plate, whose column appears regularly with The Honolulu Advertiser, is a professor at UCLA.