Foundations of the American Century
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Further to the political-ideological right, Francis Fukuyama’s championing of DPT82 had also set in train a movement among neoconservatives more militantly and aggressively to pursue DPT to its “logical” conclusion: forcible regime change. Interestingly, groups such as the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) were actively engaged with Clinton’s Pentagon by 2000, and Fukuyama became prominent in the Princeton Project on National Security, headed by John Ikenberry and Anne-Marie Slaughter, as well as Tony Lake and George Shultz, on which more below.
The evidence above shows the influence of DPT. Conceptually, from Clinton to the neoconservatives, there occurred a change in the way the purposes and justifications of American power were thought about. America’s liberal values and its national security interests were unified by DPT. Symbolically, DPT legitimized American preponderance in a world made dangerous by rogue and terrorist states that were undemocratic and brutal, harbored terrorists, and threatened the peace. Intervening against such regimes further secured America’s self-image as a good state—all while maintaining powerful armed forces and military budgets at near Cold War levels and heading off demands for a “peace dividend.” The instrumental influence of DPT is seen in the Clinton era and, perhaps, most clearly, in the post-9/11 Bush Doctrine and the war on Iraq that followed.
However, in practice, the processes by which DPT became so dominant in policy circles were neither straightforward nor predestined to succeed. DPT was initially ignored. Later, its influence ebbed and flowed. It had its triumphalists, more sophisticated supporters, and critics, especially among realists, and there were competing paradigms. Its influence relied on a combination of unforeseen events and shocks as well as powerful networks that both promoted and refined the theory. Jentleson shows it took a specific mindset—that of a former policy planner and college professor, Tony Lake, as opposed to the lawyerly secretary of state, Warren Christopher—to concretize Clinton’s espousal of “almost pure Kantianism” in his 1994 State of the Union address.83 Yet, it has continued to exert influence regardless of the party in power.84
COMBATING ANTI-AMERICANISM IN THE BUSH ERA
The militarily aggressive Bush era, rationalized as promoting democracy and freedom, witnessed a spectacular increase in levels of anti-Americanism on a worldwide scale, particularly in the wake of the 2003 Iraq war, which acted as a catalyst that brought to the surface general anxieties about American power, including U.S.-led globalization.85 American power was seen as disreputable and unjust across wide swathes of global opinion. While the Bush administration made renewed attempts to rebrand America through various initiatives, private foundations set to work to reform public diplomacy more effectively to alter global perceptions of American power. The section below examines the attitudes and activities of the German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF), a relatively new operating foundation that received funding from Ford and Carnegie to combat anti-Americanism and develop transatlantic dialogue. The point is that Ford, Carnegie, and Rockefeller foundations were willing to fund elite “firefighting” activities as well as grander plans to develop “alternatives” to the Bush doctrine.
The GMF’s86 funders include Ford and Rockefeller philanthropies, the CFR, NATO, and US AID.87 GMF’s programs are essentially focused around two complementary goals: promoting transatlantic cooperation and combating anti-Americanism in Europe, by building collaborations between U.S. and European elites, including academics, journalists, policy makers, business leaders, think tanks, and philanthropies. Its projects are designed to develop “innovative solutions” to transatlantic problems, “an opportunity for American voices to be heard in Europe and for European voices to be heard in America, and for both Americans and Europeans to be heard throughout other world regions.” GMF locates itself at the center of numerous global networks that include universities, mass media, the U.S. Congress and Senate, the European Union, industrialists’ organizations such as the Confederation of Indian Industry, and George Soros’s Open Society Institute.88
In 2003, GMF engaged in a wide range of activities to build transatlantic cooperation. GMF financed a survey of Transatlantic Trends across seven European countries and the United States. In June, GMF organized a symposium of twenty-eight American and European think tanks, shadowing the official U.S.-EU summit. The symposium analyzed diverging attitudes toward the Middle East and on global trade and examined “the prospects for resolving the tensions” between the power blocs. Presentations of the findings and recommendations were made at the U.S. Capitol by U.S. Congressman Doug Bereuter; Pat Cox, president of the European Parliament; Marc Grossman, undersecretary of state for political affairs; and George Papandreou, Greece’s foreign minister. Continuing the examination of European-American divergent-opinion consideration, GMF arranged a special “Strategic Discussion with Henry Kissinger” for emerging German leaders.89 Finally, GMF launched the Trade and Poverty Forum (TPF) in February 2003, with the aim of developing U.S.-European and Third World leaders’ dialogue on those matters. Its first report, “Restoring Trust in the WTO: The Challenge for Cancun,” was followed up by “attention to how to respond to the breakdown of trade negotiations in Cancun, and how to advance broad development goals.” The TPF consists of six delegations from the United States (headed by Robert Rubin, former secretary of the treasury),90 Japan, India, Brazil, South Africa, and Europe. The TPF wants to “focus on rebuilding the confidence of developing countries in the importance of world trade for their economic well-being” and to “educate the press and public about the importance of US-EU leadership on trade and development matters.”91
An important part of GMF’s work since 2000 has been its annual meetings of “Emerging Foreign Policy Leaders” at Lake Como, Italy. This program is conducted in partnership with the Bertelsmann Foundation and the Center for Applied Policy Research. Over thirty U.S.-EU leaders—“from a range of professions, from the private sector and media to government and think tanks”—examined the causes of transatlantic division, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, “the future of international organizations such as the UN and NATO; economic and financial interdependence; and what steps can be taken to renew and rebuild transatlantic relations.”92
The GMF has a significant research fellowships initiative. In 2003, Britisher Mark Leonard was awarded a fellowship to travel in the United States. Leonard was director of Prime Minister Tony Blair’s think tank, the Foreign Policy Centre, and the editor of a book, Re-Ordering the World, a call for a new “liberal imperialism” in the wake of 9/11. Leonard asserted that “[Osama] Bin Laden is an aftershock of the mistakes made after 1989” by presidents George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton and by Prime Minister John Major,93 an echo of the perspectives shared by the Bush administration and the neoconservative Project for the New American Century (PNAC).94 An essay in the same volume by Robert Cooper, a former Blair foreign policy adviser, serving Foreign Office diplomat, and adviser to Javier Solana, the EU’s high representative for foreign and security policy, argued that the world was divided into three kinds of state: postmodern, modern, and premodern. In Cooper’s view, the EU and United States are, more or less, in the postmodern camp and are obliged, for their own security, to cooperate in dealing with Al Qaeda and other terror bases in premodern states.95 In so doing, they need to use any means necessary, including “force, pre-emptive attack, [and] deception,” a series of strategies associated with Anglo-American aggression in Iraq in 2003.
Among its past fellows, the GMF’s Transatlantic Fellows Program cites a roster of prominent figures from academic, political, and business life, including G. John Ikenberry (Princeton), Christopher Makins (Atlantic Council), Lee Feinstein (CFR), Ellen Bork (PNAC), Barry Posen (MIT), Cindy Williams (MIT), and John Harris (Washington Post).96
GMF is actively doing, in its own way, what some Americans claim that the U.S. government is not—a long tradition in American philanthropy. The context of the GMF’s programs may be set by its president’s writings. In an important
article in The National Interest, President Craig Kennedy advanced the argument for more effective attempts by the U.S. administration to combat anti-Americanism and better promote the country’s image.97 Also in 2003, Kennedy was one of twenty-nine prominent Americans—including Lynne Cheney, William J. Bennett, James Q. Wilson, and Walter Russell Mead98—who contributed to a right-wing volume, Terrorists, Despots, and Democracy: What Our Children Need to Know. Its central argument was that the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, were sourced in the hatred of American values and freedoms and had no relation whatever to American foreign policy. Any arguments to the contrary, the volume stridently argued, were misguided and unpatriotic.99
In his article in The National Interest, Kennedy argued that anti-Americanism was being inadequately tackled by the American administration; indeed, the United States has a “public diplomacy crisis” of rising anti-Americanism in Europe, as erstwhile allies turn against the United States “in droves.” The United States needed a “serious campaign to open European minds to our positions,” drawing on how historically the CIA and Ford Foundation battled anti-Americanism during the Cold War. In particular, Kennedy focused on the anticommunist Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF), which has been unfairly portrayed as a “CIA front.”100 Its principal achievement, despite its failure completely to stem the tide of European anti-Americanism, was to “nurture a nucleus of thinkers and activists who were open to American ideas and willing to engage in serious discourse on the major issues of the day.”101
In the wake of 9/11 and the Iraq War, it is vital, according to Kennedy, to recognize the correctness of Robert Kagan’s views vis-à-vis American military strength and European weakness.102 While there are differences of opinion and worldview, there are also important areas of cooperation and convergence—especially on terrorism and globalization—upon which the United States should try to make “more palatable” U.S.-European differential capabilities, “by building a base of support for active engagement with America.” Kennedy advised the Bush administration to take four steps: first, public diplomacy to mobilize public opinion; second, more overseas travel to Europe by administration officials to debate policies and issues; third, more financial resources for public diplomacy information officers; and finally, to ensure that the kind of public diplomacy engaged in be active, explanatory, and combative and not merely an exercise to “re-brand American foreign policy, re-brand diplomacy,” as Colin Powell’s efforts had tried in vain to do.103
Recommending a strategy that resembles and complements the programs of the GMF, Kennedy urged the administration to “support those European political leaders and intellectuals who are willing to take the increasingly unpopular stand of backing America.” We need to ensure both that the “good news” gets out about American policy and also “to knock down slander of the United States in a comprehensive and timely fashion.” As an example of such “slander,” Kennedy points to “unfounded” allegations of torture and mistreatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay: in fact, they were only “shackled and blindfolded [as] reasonable precautions… while the detainees were being transported.”104 The administration’s diplomatic machinery alone, however, is too slow, inflexible, and unskilled to meet current needs.
These sorts of challenges require serious intellectual combatants. This means a critical mass of writers, thinkers and diplomats who can engage editorial boards, join the television talkshow circuits, participate in internet chatrooms, operate websites—not to mention debate Europe’s scholars, business leaders and university students alike. Above all, it means developing a broader, non-partisan network of like-minded individuals on both sides of the Atlantic who are dedicated to the cause of keeping the idea of the West and its ever expanding community of liberal democracies alive.105
PRINCETON PROJECT ON NATIONAL SECURITY (PPNS)
Hoping to emulate the impact of George Kennan’s “containment” concept, the Princeton scholars G. John Ikenberry and Anne-Marie Slaughter received Ford and Carnegie funding for their attempt comprehensively to resurrect American power in the wake of the Bush administration’s war on Iraq. Its political significance lies in the fact that the project was close to Democratic opponents of the Bush administration, including Vice President Joseph Biden. Indeed, several former Princeton Project participants and leaders were appointed in 2009 to the Obama administration, including Anne-Marie Slaughter, who heads up the State Department’s policy planning staff; James Steinberg, Kurt Campbell, and Philip Gordon in the State Department; and Michael McFaul at the National Security Council.106 Robert Cooper, the British diplomat, was also a PPNS participant.
PPNS, funded to the tune of $240,000 by the Ford Foundation, in addition to funds provided by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and GMF, developed the basis of an “alternative” national security strategy to that of President George W. Bush, as proclaimed in the latter’s 2002 national security strategy. Although not a blueprint for specific policies, the PPNS’s Final Report claims to supply the underlying principles to guide future American administrations’ national security strategies. Given its scholarly credentials and the policy-related experience of its participating individuals and organizations, the report has been of some significance in its contribution to the development of post-Bush bipartisan national security thinking.
PPNS is an example of scholarship in the service of the state (broadly conceived). Its scholarly claims of social-scientific rigor and thorough analyses of history107 were compromised by the requirement to produce a document that hoped to guide “hard-headed” policy influentials. Its critical attitude to the Bush administration underlined its own relative “centrism,” in contrast to the former’s excesses and extremism. Its more or less completely uncritical overt and covert belief in the United States as the “good,” peace-loving, freedom-promoting, “well-intentioned” but “misunderstood” or “envied” nation underlines the PPNS’s nationalistic-patriotic intellectual underpinnings. Its underlying liberalism was highlighted by the uncritical claim that “American values” were/are universally applicable and therefore ought to be spread worldwide. The underlying narrative of America as “victim” of foreign military and terrorist aggressions—from Pearl Harbor in 1941 to 9/11—as the source of America’s desire to be the world’s leader, reflects the self-image of the most unreflective U.S. foreign policy makers. The report’s characterization of all violent opposition, particularly in the Islamic world, to U.S. foreign policy as “a global insurgency with a criminal core” is further evidence of the same, as is its sidelining of scholarly research that yields evidence of the rationality rather than religiosity of such opposition.108
PPNS was a group of organic intellectuals intimately connected with an American hegemonic project to reshape the post-9/11 world. This project works by embedding American values, practices, and interests into existing and new international and regional organizations, expanding concepts of U.S. security to foreign ports and territories, penetrating other societies that constitute possible future threats, increasing American military spending in the context of building new international alliances, and institutionalizing the rules of preventive war. In short, the Princeton Project urges America to take the lead in creating a liberal global order protected by a “concert of democracies” operating outside the UN system but (apparently) upholding the latter’s values.
The Final Report bears all the hallmarks of a product of the liberal-internationalist community, reading as a reasonable, apparently nonideological analysis and set of proposals. Its constituent working groups took over two years to come to their conclusions. The document is reasonable enough to critique the idea that there is one single threat to the United States around which to construct a unified framework for national security. The “war on terror” cannot supply the rationale to counter global climate change, natural disasters, and pandemics, for example. Multiple threats require multiple strategies and tactics. The report concedes that other states and peoples might see th
ings differently than the United States and that other states ought to be consulted before American-led action. It argues against reflexive unilateralism and promotes the development of internationally agreed-upon rules for preventive wars. It argues for a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine question, for talks with Syria and Iran, and for the integration of China into the American-led global order. It argues for the greater effectiveness of U.S. power by combining soft power with its hard power. It is argued here, however, that the above merely made the PPNS’s proposals more worrying, as they were more likely to gain broader political acceptance: their very “reasonableness” being more superficially palatable than the Bush administration’s mixture of evangelism and ideology—especially given the pervasive sense of crisis in the U.S. war on Iraq.
According to the PPNS’s own rationale, “we”—the United States or the world, it is not entirely clear—exist at “a moment of critical global transitions.” The project’s aim was to “strengthen and update the intellectual underpinnings of U.S. national security strategy.”109 According to Anne-Marie Slaughter,110 the Princeton Project was based on the work of “leading U.S. academics and policy makers and informed by consultation with top thinkers around the globe” and formally launched in May 2004. In attendance, among other notables, was the former national security adviser and secretary of state Henry Kissinger.
Ambitious in vision, the project’s organizers tried to replicate the achievements of Princeton’s George F. Kennan, the scholar who headed the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff and the renowned architect of the anticommunist “containment” doctrine. The PPNS was a self-conscious attempt “to write a collective ‘X article,’” to replicate Kennan’s (then anonymous) 1947 Foreign Affairs article, which publicly launched the doctrine of containment. Of course, the world is more complex than it was in 1947, and Kennan’s intellectual power was practically unmatchable. Hence, the project became a collective endeavor that ultimately involved around four hundred scholars, policy makers, former officials, businessmen, and other influentials. Nevertheless, the aim of the report was nothing less than to “set forth agreed premises or foundational principles to guide the development of specific national security strategies by successive administrations in coming decades.”111