The case for David

THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION PURSUES the "Goliath" agenda without restraint. It is changing the nature of the U.S. from a nation that aspires to be evenly prosperous, from top to bottom, to one where the elite have far more money than they need and the poor increasingly are short on medical care.

The "trickle down" theory is called upon to cover the acts of Congress, without the slightest evidence that any of it actually works. Facts are hidden from the public and even members of the legislature on the grounds that they are lost or forbidden on the basis of national security. "Truthiness" is the best we can get from our government: whatever they say is therefore the truth, the facts be damned and they're all classified anyway.

Our government has chosen the warrior path in international politics, utilizing threat first, battle second, negotiations last. The face of America is its body-armored soldier. The Peace Corps is a receding memory. Our country has fallen on desperate times. It is being led in to the valley of death by its own sometimes-elected leaders. As the Republican-led government pursues national security before Social Security, we alienate allies and friends and exacerbate already caustic relations with enemies.

Michael Mandelbaum recently published his argument for U.S. global power in The Case for Goliath. He posits an America acting as a global policeman, bringing political and economic security to the world. He maintains that this is not just for the benefits of the American empire but is a matter of systemic security and development. His contention is that the international system is inherently hierarchical, and there is no substitute for the U.S. at the top of that hierarchy. There is no role for cooperative management at the global level.

Mandelbaum's case for Goliath is well put. It contains, however, a fatal flaw: Mandelbaum has presented a state-centric scenario as the only possibility for order in the system. He shifts from the central Goliath-David analogy to a solar system configuration, with the U.S. playing the sun. The only other players are the individual planets. The problem with the solar system is that it has no human intention and deviation, social system, or morality. Gravity and centrifugal force have no learning ability, angst, terror, or hunger to motivate planets to change position, crash into the sun, or break away. There are no suicide bombers in the solar system.

Let's imagine that David is not a country or an organization or a planet, rather a social force--a social force in America. Simple population dynamics are having their impact on the U.S. As the baby boom population has moved not into retirement but into the health care age, there are more Americans than ever before who are demanding that government better manage health care.

Moreover, life in the land directly governed by Goliath is degrading. Where once the life expectancy data showed the U.S. as the place simply to have life, now Asian and Latin American--as well as almost all Western European--countries offer a more hospitable climate. UN data show the U.S. sustaining 6.9 infant deaths per 100,000 population. Singapore checks in at 2.2; Japan, 3.0; Sweden, 3.1; Spain, 3.9; Canada, 5.4: and Cuba, 6.3. Life expectancy in the U.S. is 80 years for women and 75 for men. Virtually all Western European countries are doing better. So are Martinique (82 and 75), Canada (82 and 77), Israel (82 and 78), Japan (85 and 78), Hong Kong (85 and 79), and Costa Rica (81 and 76). The list goes on and on.

In the land of Goliath, pollution of air and water is increasing rapidly; congestion on the highways is up; most people are overweight, with all of the associated health problems that arise from that fact; the prison population is high and rising; educational output is degrading; health care is on an emergency basis only for tens of millions; the poverty rate is increasing; and government is intruding into private lives with greater frequency and more muscle.

The U.S. population easily could be David for this Goliath. Mandelbaum only gives recognition to this possibility in his section on "Costs." The costs of being the world's policeman may "be unacceptable to the American public because they entail a greater measure of austerity than [it] will tolerate." Mandelbaum implies, though, that more social costs--including reduced benefits in Social Security and a greater tax burden--are a function of global social order and have to be borne.

Mandlebaum's thesis is filled with potential challenges. Perhaps most critical is that it assumes the international system not only is hierarchical and patriarchal, but that it always will be. It completely ignores what Joseph Nye of Harvard University has termed "soft power," the power of the American ideal and the ideal America. Mandlebaum's thesis ignores the possibility that there would be efforts by Goliath to keep the hierarchy intact simply because it benefits him, not because it's good for most of the players in the social network or the network itself. It ignores the fact that, historically, all similar structures have dissolved violently, sooner or later, in the ages before weapons of mass destruction.

"We had to destroy the village to save it." This phrase has been attributed to an unidentified soldier during the Vietnam War and has been reproduced in many contexts that have to do with fighting wars, including Iraq. We now need to apply it to the human enterprise we call America. Will we have to dilute a socially responsible U.S.--evolve it, dissolve it, or even destroy it to save a global system that we have created and shaped?

Llewellyn D. Howell, International Affairs Editor of USA Today, is director and senior research fellow, Asia Pacific Risk Institute, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu.

COPYRIGHT 2006 Society for the Advancement of Education
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning