Kolko writes: "The United States' strength, to a crucial extent, has rested on its ability to convince other nations that it is to their vital interests to see America prevail in its global role." The Bush administration's hectoring and bullying has antagonized traditional allies, thus making American global dominance more difficult to maintain. In Kolko's view Kerry's multilateralism would be more successful: "Critics of the existing foreign or domestic order will not take over Washington this November. As dangerous as it is, Bush's re-election may be a lesser evil because he is much more likely to continue the destruction of the alliance system that is so crucial to American power."
Interestingly, Kolko's analysis is similar to that of Zbigniew Brzezinski, who writes from the opposing perspective of traditional American imperialism......
http://www.thornwalker.com/ditch/snieg_kolko.htm _________________________
Gabriel Kolko
http://www.counterpunch.org/kolko03122004.html
If Bush is reelected then the international order may be very different in 2008 than it is today, much less in 1999, but there is no reason to believe that objective assessments of the costs and consequences of its actions will significantly alter his foreign policy priorities over the next four years.
If the Democrats win they will attempt in the name of internationalism to reconstruct the alliance system as it existed before the Yugoslav war of 1999, when even the Clinton Administration turned against the veto powers built into the NATO system. America's power to act on the world scene would therefore be greater. John Kerry's foreign policy adviser, Rand Beers, worked for Bush's National Security Council until a year ago. More important, Kerry himself voted for many of Bush's key foreign and domestic measures and he is, at best, an indifferent candidate. His statements and interviews over the past weeks dealing with foreign affairs have been both vague and incoherent. Kerry is neither articulate nor impressive as a candidate or as someone who is likely to formulate an alternative to Bush's foreign and defense policies, which have much more in common with Clinton's than they have differences. To be critical of Bush is scarcely justification for wishful thinking about Kerry. Since 1947, the foreign policies of the Democrats and Republicans have been essentially consensual on crucial issues--"bipartisan" as both parties phrase it--but they often utilize quite different rhetoric.