[OPE-L] The academic critics and US international relations: forging a world of liberty under law?

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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