美国西方不是世界.docx

The West Is Not the WorldRachel TausendfreundThere is an unseen connection between the social justice debates in Western societies and the fate of the West and the liberal international order. There has been much soul searching in the West about new challenges to global order and democratic decline globally and in the West. Western dominance is waning, and what will follow is unclear. At the same time, within Western countries, old orders and habits are also being challenged. Received histories and heroes are being reconsidered in a reckoning with the racial injustices that have been a central feature of European and U.S. history.Western proponents of a rules-based, cooperative orderin order to further itneed to learn from domestic debates and better understand how history and the West's liberal rhetoric is viewed by others. The liberal order and rhetoric of freedom and equality long co-existed with blatant betrayal by the West of “Western" values. A more honest evaluation of the West's sins and failings will help policymakers find the right balance between confidence and humility. A new equilibrium should include confidence in values, humility in judgement.I I H "e German Marshal FiindCt | M | r the United StatesWashington, DC Ankara Belgrade Berlin Brussels Bucharest Paris WarsawSTRFNGTHFNINR TRANSATI ftWTIC CnnPFRATinh Ikenberry and Daniel Deudney, the robustness of the liberal order builds on its ability to improve and is grounded in commitment to the dignity and freedom of individuals and tolerance:Although the ideology emerged in the West, its values have become universal, and its champions have extended lo encompass Mahatma Gandhi, Mikhail Gorbachev, and Nelson Mandela. And even though imperialism, slavery, and racism have marred Western history, liberalism has always been at the forefront of effortsboth peaceful and militantto reform and end these practices. To the extent that the long arc of history does bend toward justice, it does so thanks to the activism and moral commitment of liberals and their allies. Daniel Dcudncy and G. John Ikenberry. ,Liberal World? Foreign Affairs, July/Augusi 2018.Their telling is, to use a quote from Dean Acheson, guilty of being “clearer than the truth?' Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela had to fight against avowed liberals in Western capitals on behalf of a more universal and less racist vision of dignity and freedom. If they today arc read as liberals, it is also because they cleverly instrumentalized their oppressors' liberal language against them. National liberation movements of the 20,h century in Asia and the Middle East were not only inspired by liberalism but also inspired by pan-Asianism, pan-Islamism, Third Worldism, and communism. See C. Raja Mohan,'八 New China and Asia Sirategy for Biden： Foreign Policy. 2021.The Westerners supporting them were, at the time, more likely to be considered radical progressives than liberals (and were often Marxists). And yet, there is truth in Ikenberry and Deudneys telling. What most deserves protecting and maintaining in the liberal cause is the abilityif usually slowly and reluctantly, and never without a fight-to accommodate dissent and stumble toward reform.According to President Biden's national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, the capacity for self-correction is what the United States brings to the liberal order it aspires to lead:This capacity for self-appraisal, sclf-corrcction, and self-renewal separates the United States from past superpowers. It is what President Obama-elected in part because of popular opposition to the Iraq War-meant when he said, on the 50th anniversary of the march to Montgomery, Alabama: "Each successive generation can look upon our imperfections and decide that it is in our power to remake this nation to more closely align with our highest ideals. Jake Sullivan. What Donald Tnimp and Dick Cheney Got Wrong About America' The Atlantic, January/February 2019.Since at least the Wisconsin School of the 1950s there has been in the United States a strong academic tradition of critical assessment of U.S. foreign policy. Authors from this school have offered a revisionist history, accusing the country of economically motivated imperialism. Starting with the publication of Edward Saids Orientalism in 1978, post-colonial theory and discourse offered a new revision lo Western history. These debates have not left recent U.S. policies and presidents untouched. See Kimmage, The Abandonment of the West, especially chapters 5 and 6. Despite often messianic language about the War on Terror following the 9/11 attacks, George W Bush consciously tried not to stigmatize Islam. Barack Obama won election in part because he had called out the folly of the Iraq war.Similar critical debates may have begun more slowly in a Europe that was still engaged in colonialism and recovering from fascism, and they were often entangled with Marxism. But in Europe's imperial capitals too prominent critics and activists challenged their governments' foreign policy in a similar manner, including left-wing philosopher and Algerian freedom activist Francis Jeanson, who supported Franz Fanonand penned the original epilogue to his seminal 1952 book Black Skin, White Faces (considered a precursor to post-colonial theory). Nonetheless, in Western Europe revisionist history has remained even further from the foreign policy mainstream than in the United States. As the policy analyst Rosa Balfour writes, activists and academics in Europe are just beginning to “timidly embark on uncovering the untold stories of migration and colonialism?' Rosa Balfour, "Aainsi a European Civilization: Narralives About ihe European L'nion：' Carnegie Europe. 2021.Part of the challenge is that Europe, and Western Europe especially, has always been at the very center of its own telling of hi story. This results in what the foreign policy analyst Hans Kundnani diagnoses as “a Eurocentric tendency to mistake Europe for the world' Hans Kundnani. "Whal docs il mean lo be '*proEuropean- today?：' New Statesman, February 4. 202 L If not sufficiency corrected by critical self-appraisal, U.S. exceptionalism and Eurocentrism together can form a heady, blinkered West. Their liberal traditions can help them correct that, but a proper appraisal of their foreign policy must also include looking into a mirror held up by others.Ceding ControlWhat then is the self-correction due today? Central is the high ideal of equality among nations. Already in 2008, the Singaporean diplomat and academic Kishore Mahbubani pointed to a problem “in the Wests stewardship of the international order' and a basic strategic error that "Western minds are reluctant to analyze or confront openly/ Kishore Mahbubani. “The Case Againsthe West：' Foreign Affairs. May/ June 2008.What then is the self-correction due today? Central is the high ideal of equality among nations. Already in 2008, the Singaporean diplomat and academic Kishore Mahbubani pointed to a problem “in the Wests stewardship of the international order' and a basic strategic error that "Western minds are reluctant to analyze or confront openly/ Kishore Mahbubani. “The Case Againsthe West：' Foreign Affairs. May/ June 2008. Ibid. Blinkcn JA Foreign Policy for the American People?' Twelve years later it is still true that in assessing global challenges “the West assumes that it is the source of the solutions to the worlds key problems. In fact, however, the West is also a major source of these problems：' This is certainly true for climate change, but also for global corruption and inequitable trading practices.After having enjoyed centuries of global domination, the West has to learn to share power and responsibility for the management of global issues with the rest of the world. . It was always unnatural for the 12 percent of the world population that lived in the West to enjoy so much global power. Understandably, the other 88 percent of the world population increasingly wants also to drive the bus of world history.a8Surely one cannot fail to understand that 89 percent of global population (the share living outside G7 countries), who in the meantime also represent about 69 percent of the global economy, want to shape the order that rules them.In the end the handwringing in the West about the liberal international order is about China. Secretary of State Blinken stated as much as he outlined the major foreign policy challenges facing the United States: “China is the only country with the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to seriously challenge the stable and open international system all the rules, values, and relationships that make the world work the way we want it to?539A genuine competitor has risen within the system一 and the West finds that the rules (and their loopholes) are no longer working to their advantage. The current crisis is about the debility of Western democracies and economiesand the competition China represents, which grows more daunting the less Europe and North America excel. But in the West it is often framed as a black-and-white contest of values, as if power and advantage were not at play. Perhaps because many do not like to admit that they arc interested in power (this may be especially true for normative power Europe). Or perhaps because too many in Europe and North America unconsciously assume that Western dominance is simply the natural and correct state of affairs and anything else is dangerous.This is not to suggest that Chinas authoritarian model does not pose a challenge to global democracy. There can be no doubt that China and others are working to undermine liberal democracy and present their authoritarian systems as a better model. Nor is this to suggest that there is any equivalency between current racial injustice in the United States and Chinas oppression of minorities and political opponents (as the Chinese Communist Party seems to be trying to insinuate by pointing to issues of racism and inequality in response to criticism over its abuses in Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and elsewhere ). Al Jazccra. Piina bashes US over racism, incqualily, pandemic response： March 24, 2021. But Western policymakers should expect China to play the public diplomacy game, just as their countries always have.Leaders and policy analysts in theWest need to learn from currentdomestic discourse, and to invite andincorporate critical perspectives oninherited narratives of global politics.Certainly, the liberal democratic model is better, as minorities and dissidents in Western countries and migrants trying to reach them would concur. And yet, the West exports weapons and bestow its favors on regimes even more repressive than the Chinese Communist Party-and citizens of those countries notice. The West industrialized and got rich at great cost to the environment, which it now belatedly seeks to protect while preserving its economic advantages.Arrogance will not aid the West in the global propaganda battle, nor will it make Western governments smarter. Only through a more honest evaluation of not only the faults, sins, and hypocrisies of Western leaders and governments, from Wilson and Lloyd George to Obama and Emanuel Macron, but also the inequalities of the order the West created, will it be able to succeed in a global competition with China. For it must be remembered that, even more than in 1919, the world is watching and vantage point can greatly affect perceptions.Leaders and policy analysts in the West need to learn from current domestic discourse, and to invite and incorporate critical perspectives on inherited narratives of global politics. In the 1950s U.S. democracy appeared vibrant and strong, and the United States met global challenges with vigor. But this was strength built on a consensus created by exclusion and disenfranchisement. The absence of dissenting voices created the appearance of cohesion and stability. This changed in the 1960s and 1970s when minorities demanded basic rights and visibility, and the system was shaken. Part of the democratic disorder in the United States today stems from a further step in this process of democratization. Minorities no longer want basic rights or tolerance. They seek true equality and representation, and others are frightened as their dominance and iheir traditional narratives are challenged. (To be fair, a good dose of political malpractice has also contributed to the polarization.)Globally, the situation is comparable. A challenge to dominant powers and narratives creates instability and angst-but sometimes it need be. The formally disenfranchised want not only acceptance, but more power to shape the rules. Western ideals demand support for more rule-making equality, but habits and some interests resist.A Humble New WorldRealists would suggest that governments retrench to a balance of power world. Western countries were wrong to assume that others wanted to become like them, so the idea that there can be rules that constrain power and govern engagement between unlike countries must also be misguided. But that is a view of those who have always placed power and interests above rules and cooperative orders. There is still space for a reformed liberal internationalist and a normative foreign policy.The early months of the Biden administration are going in the right direction. Biden cabinet will be the most diverse in U.S. history and his team's rhetoric and outreach to allies (at least in these early days) may even surpass in its conciliatory tone that of Obamas, such as in the speech delivered in Cairo in 2009 (where he admitted that the United States “sometimes makes mistakes'') or at the Summit of the Americas a few months earlier (where he conceded that uat times we sought to dictate our terms). Barack Obama. "The Presidents Speech in Cairo: A New Beginning：' The Whlouse, June 4,2009: and *'Renjarks by (he Presidesjiuhe Summit of the Americas Opening Ceremony：' The White House, April 17.2009. In his March 3 foreign policy address, Secretary of State Blinken said:We will balance humility with confidence. I have always believed they should be the flip sides of America's leadership coin. Humility because wc aren't perfect, we don't have all the answers, and a lot of the world's problems aren't mainly about us, even as they affect us. But confidence because America at its best has a greater ability than any country on Earth to mobilize others for the common good and for the good of our people.Bidens first solo press conference on March 25 offered an illustration of the fine line between confidence and arrogance. Coming shortly after the tense meeting between U.S. and Chinese officials in Anchorage, Alaska, he was asked about China. Most media outlets reported his comments this way:They have an overall goal to become th