The new US foreign policy of “transformational diplomacy” is not merely about just reporting the world as it is but about replicating nation-states into US clones. Post conflict multinational reconstruction and stability teams consisting of lawyers, engineers, economists will be deployed. It is more about access diplomacy.
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Arab analysts point out that US embassy officials began to tour the corridors of government buildings in the countries to which they were posted on grounds to monitor the progress of irrigation, healthcare and other development projects sponsored and funded by US aid agencies. Soon there were whispers that American directives to local government agencies on purely sovereign concerns were being received.
The debate in the last two decades of the 20th century provided the real foundation of the Bush Doctrine of pre-emptive action which means an America driven forward by unrivalled military power aided by religion and the growing profits of the worlds largest multinational corporations.
America’s neo-cons have consistently professed that America had a global mission that military power was the indispensable foundation of American foreign policy, and stressed the importance of the use of military superiority to help introduce democracy. The debate in the last two decades of the 20th century provided the real foundation of the Bush Doctrine of pre-emptive action which means an America driven forward by unrivalled military power aided by religion and the growing profits of the world’s largest multinational corporations. Iraq may have been an unmitigated disaster according to most but for US oil corporations it has been a glorious war. Exxon, Chevron and Conocophilips earned US $ 64 billion between them in 2005.
The US may today have a bureau of deconstruction in the Department of Defence that would deconstruct 26 regimes and a Bureau of Reconstruction in the State Department that would reconstruct these countries into democratic American clones. Others like Seymour Hersh have talked of ten countries that are up for facelifts while Ralph Peters has redesigned maps of the region. The global war on terror is not about defeating terrorism, but is a handy means for re-ordering the world and retaining US pre-eminence.
It is, however, becoming increasingly costly and difficult to retain this position. It is axiomatic that without access to assured cheap and abundant energy supplies, the US cannot maintain its way of life and its full spectrum global dominance. A Russia that was supposed to have been finally defeated after the Afghan jehad and the fall of the Berlin Wall is resurgent under President Putin. The rise of China, as a global power, is another phenomenon that Washington must deal with. There is competition for resources and markets; Putin has used energy as a weapon of influence. Neither threatens the US militarily but its economic interests and those of its allies as well as political influence are being challenged. Equally, without access to similar energy resources China will not be able sustain its scorching rate of growth required to keep its economy growing and prevent an internal political upheaval.
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As a vital supplier of gas and oil to Europe and Japan, Russia exhibited its newfound strength in early 2006. When it shut off gas supplied to Ukraine as part of a bargain for a higher price. Possibly, the Russian president had learnt these tactics of using energy reserves for geo-strategic advantage at the St Petersburg mining institute where he did a dissertation on “toward a Russian transnational energy company” soon after making a career change post-KGB. Russia-China relations have been on the upswing with mutually beneficial military and technology deals. They are also working some deals with Saudi Arabia. Russia may have lost the Cold War but is not going to lose the energy war.
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