Imperial sunset?

Imperial sunset?
Daniel Dombey

FINANCIAL TIMES

The world that was born with the end of the cold war is dead and
buried. Today, America's sole superpower status, which steeled the
Bush administration in its determination to go to war in Iraq, is
losing relevance. Instead, the US has an ungovernable new world on
its hands.

THE UNITED STATES HAS LOST POWER AND INFLUENCE.

This, at least, is the outlook of some of the world's most seasoned
officials and international affairs experts, who believe that the US
has lost power and influence and that an uncertain era is about to
begin. The age they describe is one dominated neither by Washington's
matchless military strength nor the old international -institutions.

"We are going through systemic change," Madeleine Albright, the
former US secretary of state, says in an interview. "What has
happened in the past six years has been a lessening of respect for
American power . . . The world is going to be multipolar," she adds,
referring to the growing influence of countries such as China and
India and the likelihood that they will have greater roles in
deciding the world's affairs.

Already, the US is finding both diplomacy and military action
increasingly difficult. Tensions over Iran and North Korea's nuclear
programmes, the crisis in Darfur, Kosovo and climate change all cry
out for urgent attention. But none can be solved by a single power or
even a select group of allies - and progress has been haltingly slow
at the United Nations.

Even more worryingly for Washington, the Bush administration is
finding it increasingly difficult to find allies to help fight its
battles - whether in the shrinking "coalition of the willing" in Iraq
or the Nato-led mission in Afghanistan.

No longer does the US inhabit the lop-sided world created by the
collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Instead, the growing diffusion
of international power makes this an era in which a profusion of
deals has to be done.

Yet multilateralism - the use of international treaties, institutions
and consultation to achieve diplomatic goals - is harder than it has
been for at least half a generation.

This point is hammered home by Moscow, the great loser of the cold
war. Three days ago Vladimir Putin, Russia's president, derided what
he said was the US's attempt to create a "unipolar" world - a world
with "one centre of authority, one centre of force, one centre of
decision-making" . In a speech that signaled a new post-cold war low
in Moscow-Washington relations, he said such a world was both
unacceptable and impossible. Referring to the war in Iraq, he added:
"Unilateral and frequently illegitimate actions have not resolved any
problems… No one feels safe."

China and India are also thrusting on to the world stage, confident
that the future is on their side. China already has the world's
fourth-biggest economy, ahead of the UK, and is rapidly closing in on
Germany. Even Russia, whose hydrocarbon wealth may not last long into
the century, is infinitely more confident than it was when it begged
for western aid in the 1990s - as Mr Putin's speech attested.

"The US has had its unipolar moment for about 15 years but is
beginning to realise that it isn't getting the things done it wants,"
says Paul Kennedy, the author of The Rise and Fall of the Great
Powers. "But just as the US could be moving back to a more
multilateralist position, Russia and China may be less interested in
agreeing with the west."

While Moscow and Beijing insist on their attachment to international
law - hence Mr Putin's denunciation of the US's decision to go to war
without UN backing - they also have a hard-headed view of national
interests that limits their appetite for deal-making with Washington.
On Iran, Russia has watered down proposed UN sanctions to protect
billion-dollar defence and nuclear deals. On Darfur, China seeks to
prevent disruption to Sudan, in whose oil sector it invests.

Photo: The problem of climatic change cannot be resolved by one
power.

Even when agreement was easier to reach, the difficulties and
indignities of such dealmaking produced plenty of critics. Charles
Krauthammer, an influential American rightwing columnist, decried the
Clinton administration for its "fetish for consultation" and its
"mania for treaties" on issues ranging from nuclear proliferation to
climate change. The net effect, he believed, was to temper American
power.

But the Clinton era also contained signs of resurgent unilateralism.
The US Senate refused to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty for
nuclear weapons and made clear its opposition to the Kyoto protocol
on climate change. President Bill Clinton himself decided to go to
war over Kosovo without UN backing.

The election of President George W. Bush and his response to the
attacks of September 11 2001 took things much further. No longer did
the US use its unipolar power for multilateral ends.

"We used to say things such as: 'Multilaterally if you can,
unilaterally if you must'," says Ms Albright. "But the Bush
administration walking away from a bunch of multilateral arrangements
gave people a reason to say: 'Why work with the US?' - and then that
was compounded by the behavior in Iraq."

As Washington grew more assertive, Russia and China improved
relations to the warmest since the 1950s, while a ragtag group of
countries such as Venezuela, Belarus and Iran deepened ties.

"Right now, China is multilateralist because it is weaker than the US
. . . but no one can stop China," says Shen Dingli, a professor at
Shanghai's Fudan University. "The US should be sophisticated enough
to use international institutions so that when China becomes a
superpower it too is educated to act that way."

Traditional European allies have also distanced themselves from
Washington, leaving the US to fight an ever lonelier battle in Iraq.
Spain and Italy have both pulled out their troops and this month Tony
Blair, UK prime minister, is expected to announce a reduction in UK
forces. Mr Bush holds out hope that he can win in Baghdad by
dispatching more American troops. But outside the confines of the
Oval Office few share his optimism.

Meanwhile, the US and the UK are anxiously seeking allies for the
bitter struggle against the Taliban in the south of Afghanistan.
Volunteers have been hard to come by.

Another theatre of conflict may yet bring tensions to new heights -
Iran, whose nuclear programme could be the target of a US or Israeli
air strike. Although such a move would be risky, in the extreme, the
US and Israel could eventually conclude that no other course would
prevent Iran from acquiring the bomb.

Western officials protest that no such action is imminent. "We have
no intention of attacking Iran," said Robert Gates, US defense
secretary, last week. But, equally, no one discounts the possibility
that an attack may take place during Mr Bush's presidency. A strike
would be almost certain to drive the US further apart from Europe,
Russia, China and the developing world, further tearing at the
tattered fabric of multilateralism.

In such a world, what hope is there of addressing the risks of
nuclear conflict, ethnic cleansing and environmental disaster?

With the US so militarily stretched, an imperfect kind of
multilateralism may prove the only answer. "There is limited spare
capacity for major military operations," says Sir Lawrence Freedman,
professor of war studies at King's College London. "The implication
of that is that you are going to have to work with regional powers
and accept regimes for what they are," he says, in a reference to
countries such as Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Indeed, at present, the US is pursuing a variety of à la carte
multilateralism that uses both UN and bilateral measures to achieve
its goals. It championed a UN Security Council resolution in December
that imposed sanctions on Tehran, but is now seeking to persuade the
European Union to go further than the UN mandate and introduce
additional financial sanctions.

The US and the UK have chosen a similar path on Kosovo, endorsing
plans for a UN resolution that would give the province many of the
attributes of independence without using the actual word. Both London
and Washington expect that, once the resolution is passed, Kosovo
will declare independence in any case - and that they, at least, will
recognise it. On Darfur, too, Mr Bush and Mr Blair drop hints of a
unilaterally imposed no-fly zone, hints they hope will push Sudan and
its backers towards acceptance of a UN force.

Other deals need to be done outside the UN. Last night, US
negotiators were trying to reach agreement over North Korea's nuclear
program in six-party talks that at times seemed at the point of
collapse. Expectations are low for a US-brokered summit between
Israeli and Palestinian leaders later this month, even though Bush
administration officials describe it as the highest level of
engagement between the two sides since Bill Clinton's -presidency.

Beyond the US administration, however, there is little agreement on
what else can be done to get the world back into shape. Lord Hurd, a
former British foreign secretary, argues that the west should relax
its conditions on talking to Iran or the militant group Hamas. "We
should get out of the idea, which is an imperial one and not fitting
for Europe or even the US, that you are doing people a great favor if
you talk to them," he says in an interview. "Listening to people is
not doing them a favour; it is good sense."

Mr Kennedy says that the world's great powers may ape the Concert of
Europe - which reshaped affairs after the fall of Napoleon - and find
common ground on issues of overwhelming international concern such as
climate change. Similarly, George Shultz and Henry Kissinger, both
former US secretaries of state, called last month for Washington and
Moscow to take steps against nuclear proliferation, including
ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty to prevent the
world from entering a dangerous new atomic era.

Lalit Mansingh, a former Indian foreign secretary, argues that the
best solution for the world's ills is a revived UN with an expanded
Security Council, including Delhi. "It can't remain a closed shop
forever, with all the massive powers given to it by the UN Charter,"
he says. But every aspirant for a Security Council seat faces
opposition. Many observers conclude that the future of
multilateralism rests not with overarching world organizations, but
with matching policy to ever more divergent facts on the ground.

In today's fragmented world, says Lord Hurd, there are different
rules for the great power rivalry in Asia, the law-based approach of
the EU and the near-anarchy of the Middle East. One unifying theme is
that the US's role as the protector of Asia and Western Europe and
the powerbroker of the Middle East is a diminished one.

"We must simply do the best we can in the circumstances of each
case," he says. "Our best will not always be brilliant." The dilemma
for the US and the world is that the prospects for multilateralism -
for diplomacy - are distinctly unpromising. The still more daunting
problem is that all other courses may very well be worse.

Taken from The Financial Times