From: Jurriaan Bendien (adsl675281@TISCALI.NL)
Date: Sat Sep 30 2006 - 16:56:21 EDT
An alternative way forward for the US By Jim Lobe WASHINGTON - After two years of consultations with more than 400 members of the US foreign-policy elite, a project headed by two leading international-relations academics is calling for the adoption of a new grand strategy designed to address multiple threats and strengthen Washington's commitment to a reformed and reinvigorated multilateral order. In a wide-ranging report released in Washington on Wednesday, the Princeton Project on National Security suggested that the policies pursued by President George W Bush since September 11, 2001, had been simplistic - even counter-productive - for the challenges facing the United States in the 21st century. To be effective, according to the report, US policy needed to rely less on military power and more on other tools of diplomacy; less on its own strength exercised unilaterally and more on cooperation with other democratic states; and less on rapid democratization based on popular elections and more on building what it called "popular, accountable, rights-regarding [PAR] governments". [...] The project and its 90-page report, "Forging a World of Liberty Under Law: US National Security in the 21st Century", was co-directed by the head of Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Anne-Marie Slaughter, and John Ikenberry, a prominent international-relations scholar at the school. [...] ...conspicuously missing among the institutional sponsors of the project were two key think-tanks - the neo-conservative American Enterprise Institute and the right-wing Heritage Foundation - that have been most closely associated with the Bush administration's more radical policies, including its 2002 National Security Strategy, as well as the invasion of Iraq. [...] Full text: http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=34902 The report: http://www.wws.princeton.edu/ppns/report/FinalReport.pdf (Anne-Marie Slaughter also features as author of a Trilateral Commission report http://www.trilateral.org/projwork/tfrsums/tfr58.htm; John Ikenberry has an article in Foreign Affairs, on "America's Imperial Ambition" http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20020901faessay9732/g-john-ikenberry/america-s-imperial-ambition.html I'd like to teach the world to sing In perfect harmony I'd like to hold it in my arms And keep it company... Which is the old Coca Cola song... Meanwhile, the USA is said to be slipping in the international competition charts: "One of the world's most exclusive business clubs warned the United States Tuesday that its open-ended national security and war expenditures, along with tax cuts that led to large budget deficits, could affect the country's status as a powerful economic force. The Geneva-based World Economic Forum issued its 2006-07 Global Competitiveness Index (GCI) rankings and listed the United States in sixth place, down from the top spot, behind Switzerland, Finland and Sweden and just ahead of Japan." http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=34894 http://www.weforum.org/en/initiatives/gcp/Global%20Competitiveness%20Report/index.htm Jurriaan
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