Is America the Indispensable Nation? Posted by Ilan Goldenberg

I am at the big Center for American Progress Center for American Progress / Century Foundation security conference today.  So, I’ll be blogging a bit about it.  What I will not be doing is “live blogging.”  I just hate that term.  With all due respect to some of my fellow bloggers, isn’t all blogging live blogging?   Anyway, I’ll stop being a sarcastic jerk now.

Madeleine Albright gets a lot of flack for her description of the “indispensable nation.”  But according to her statements today, that just means that most of the hard international problems can’t be solved without American engagement.  That doesn’t seem so controversial.  Albright also pointed out that this has started to change.  On Darfur – we are stuck in the muck without China.  On global warming we can’t do it without China and India.  In the Middle East we are so radioactive that when we do get involved fewer things happen.  So are we the indispensable nation?  I’m inclined to say yes, but it doesn't mean we can achieve our objectives alone.  I’d like to hear what our readers have to say on this question.

Comments

[Dan Kervick]

An awful lot of US foreign policy discourse seems to devoted to unproductive obsessing about our own national self-conception or self-image: Are we or are we not indispensible? Are we or are we not exceptional? Are we or are we not a city on a hill, the greatest country the world has ever known, the last best hope for man, etc. etc.

Honestly, of what use is all this interminable, hyper-reflexive navel gazing? Think about the most morally admirable people you know. I suspect you will recognize that most of them are rather practical and action oriented, and don't spend a lot of time crafting and anatomizing their own self-definition. That doesn't mean they are unreflective. They think about the hows and whys of things, since answering such questions is often a necessary preamble to rational action. They are reflective about the relations of causes and effects, because that is necessary for matching means to ends. They may even be reflective about examining their own motives, so they can improve themselves by knowing themselves better.

But they don't stop for frequent, narcissistic looks in the mirror, and vain self-assessments and self-interrogations on questions like "How important am I?" "How good am I?", "How special am I?" and "Am I the mostest, specialist person in the world, or just sorta special?" They ask, "What is the right thing to do?" a lot, but not "Am I an unusually right-doing person?" or "How will history view me?"

What is it about the foreign policy professions that produces this tendency toward narcissistic grandiosity? This spoiled brattiness? This constant craving for reassurance of greatness?

[Ben Bartlett]

I suppose I'd argue that in most cases, America is necessary, but not sufficient. That is, many problems cannot be solved without America's involvement---either because we have the most potential influence, or because we're a part of the problem---but we need the cooperation of other nations in order to solve these problems. Global warming is a good example: there cannot be a solution without America---we're the cause of a lot of it, and if we don't go along with a solution many other countries will wonder why they should---but America alone isn't enough; we need China and India to cooperate as well.

[Ilan Goldenberg]

Dan,

My whole post was about how the "indispensible nation" is taken out of context as a profession of American exceptionalism. It's not. All Albright was saying was that because we are so big and strong we are necessary to get things done. All, I was asking is whether or not that is still the case. It's just a simple strategic question.

I'd suggest reading the post more carefully before you write something that harsh.

[Cal]

My whole post was about how the "indispensible nation" is taken out of context as a profession of American exceptionalism. It's not. All Albright was saying was that because we are so big and strong we are necessary to get things done.

I think it's clear that Dan is right, Ilan, and that Albright was lying to you about what she really meant. The "indispensable nation" talk is unpopular right now, and she doesn't want to admit that she held neoconish views at one time.

But you be the judge:

"It is the threat of the use of force [against Iraq] and our line-up there that is going to put force behind the diplomacy. But if we have to use force, it is because we are America; we are the indispensable nation. We stand tall and we see further than other countries into the future, and we see the danger here to all of us."

That statement is from 1998. In the same interview, she says she thinks air strikes would force Saddam to let the inspectors back in. So she couldn't even see the present, let alone the future.

[Dan Kervick]

Ilan, I actually did read your full post.

Albright may wish now to dampen the force of her original statements. After four years of declining US prestige and power, with the wages of the sin of pride laid bare for all to see, it is hard to find leaders willing to toot the old triumphalist horn with the same gusto of 5 or 10 years ago. But I don't think the exceptionalist reading of Albright's 1998 remark is a case of taking that remark "out of context". Here is the fuller quote:

"If we have to use force, it is because we are America. We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall. We see farther into the future."

It is hard not to read this as a claim that the United States is both exceptionally righteous and exceptionally far-seeing, and thereby entitled to special prerogatives. Recall this remark was given as part of the defense of a bombing campaign. If France had launched an assault in North Africa, and in response to a request for justification had responded, "because we're France and we're special," could anyone have doubted the exceptionalist intent?

In your discussion you sensibly suggest that the United States might be indispensable for some purposes, but not for others, even rasising the possibility that the US might even be negatively indidpensible for some purposes, in the sense that progress in those areas will require US disengagement.

But then you conclude by asking, not whether US engagement is indispensable for progress on this or that problem, but by asking, "Are we still the indispensible nation?" I don't see how putting the question in this broad, imprecise and grandiose way, which does hearken back to the exceptionalist, hegemonic rhetoric of the past decade advances discussion.

However, my post was not directed mainly at your short piece, but at a large body of "US foreign policy discourse", of which the closing sentences in your post reminded me, and are only one small part. And I stand by the claim that much of that discourse displays the narcissistic nationalist obsessions about which I complained.

[Dan Kervick]

Ah, I see Cal beat me to it.

[Ilan Goldenberg]

Dan,

Fair point. Apologies for reacting harshly. Just to be clear (as I hope you can see from my other posts). I am very much not in the exceptionalist school of thought and thought your comment was driving at that.

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