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3 chapter one American Power and Global Order Edward A. Kolodziej Chapter 1 is divided into two parts. The first presents an ideal or pure “model” of the Bush administration’s vision of its preferred global order and of the strategies rationalizing the use of American power to achieve its objectives. The second identifies four constraints that prevent the realization of its global-order preferences . Chapter 15 completes this evaluation of the limits of American power by drawing on the findings of chapters 2 through 14. The Pure or Ideal Model of Global Order and How to Achieve It: Bush II Transforming the Power Structures of Global Order The Bush administration’s vision to reform—indeed to revolutionize—global politics and order has both a material and subjective ideological/ideational dimension .1 Neither can be explained or understood without reference to the other in the actual projection and deployment of American power around the globe. The former pivots principally on American military, economic, and technological capabilities; the latter on the sweeping political and moral claims of the administration that it can legitimately use American power—unilaterally and forcefully if necessary—to get the world it wants. Quite openly, at the surface of official pronouncements of foreign and security policy, Washington under the Bush administration repeatedly asserts that the United States is uniquely positioned to shape the world to its liking and that the timing is right to do so. The administration cites three factors that advise the exploitation of this unique historic opportunity to shape global order. First, the American-led coalition of free-market states and peoples is now ascendant. Over the course of a century, it defeated all rivals for global hegemony—Fascism, Nazism and, finally, Communism . 4 American Geopolitical Strategy Second, American leadership provides indispensable public goods to other states and peoples. The Bush administration believes the United States furnishes the necessary material resources to ensure global security and sustained economic growth as well as the moral basis for an expanding system of democratic states, fostered by American power and dedicated to freedom, popular rule, and human rights.2 These public goods are stipulated as prerequisites to ensure the continued ascendancy of a coalition of liberal democracies and to underwrite its claim to legitimately rule the globe. The United States is able to furnish these public goods in its own interests and those of like-minded states as a derivative, purportedly, of its exemplary socioeconomic development, estimable political practices, and undisputed military prowess. Together these attributes simultaneously manifest and demonstrate the validity of the United States as “a single sustainable model for national success: freedom, democracy, and free enterprise” (U.S. White House, Office of the President 2002, Introduction). According to the administration, these values and the institutions through which they are expressed are the foundations of enduring peace and progressively enlarging prosperity for the states and peoples of the world, however diverse and otherwise divided they may appear to be. Third, within this ruling coalition of dominant free-market states, American power is portrayed by the Bush Doctrine as supreme—a unique power in the evolution of the state system capable of imposing its will and values on the entire global system. No opponent, real or potential, can contest American power where its writ may wish to run. In September 2002, President Bush made this clear in publishing the National Security Strategy of the United States. In his introduction the president underlined the disparity in power between the United States and other actors: “The United States enjoys a position of unparalleled military strength and great economic and political influence” (U.S. White House, Office of the President 2002, Introduction). This stipulation of where power lies in the global order is presented by the Bush Doctrine not simply as an obvious fact of international life and a formidable barrier to potential rivals who might seek to challenge American hegemony (a proposition rejected by this volume). The administration also advances its exaggerated claim to preponderant power as an historic opportunity to achieve an elusive peace that has escaped the nation-state system since its inception and to create the conditions for continuing and growing prosperity on behalf of the world’s populations.3 Where the father heralded but failed to create a new world order, the son is convinced he can succeed.4 The National Security document—hereinafter the Bush Doctrine—is a plan to exploit American power and to harness public will...

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