There is a new force in foreign policy:
the "axis of intervention". Two allies are
official members: the United States and Israel.
With its recent invasion of Somalia, Ethiopia has
joined the grouping. A fourth nation, Japan, is
petitioning for membership.
The
administration of US President George W Bush has
not attacked any countries recently. But in Bush's
first five years in office, the United States has
established a dangerous precedent
in
international affairs.
The attack on
Afghanistan launched a war against not only a
state (the Taliban-led government) but also a
paramilitary organization (al-Qaeda). The
intervention into Iraq was the first example of a
"preventive" war - a campaign not just to preempt
an imminent attack but also to prevent any
potential conflict in the future.
And
finally, the United States has introduced the
concept of a "war without end". The US is fighting
an unknown number of terrorists. If one
organization surrenders or is destroyed, another
will inevitably take its place.
Israel has
matched these US policies. The interventions in
Lebanon and Gaza target paramilitary organizations
(Hezbollah, Hamas) and sovereign entities (the
Lebanese government, the Palestinian National
Authority). The attacks were a direct response to
the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers, but formed
part of a broader effort to prevent any future
offensives from their hostile neighbors.
Both conflicts are but the latest in a
half-century war. And just as the US invasion of
Iraq has produced more terrorists than it has
suppressed, Israel's bombing of its enemies only
generates more ill-will toward the country. If
Israel doesn't begin to take negotiations
seriously, its very own war without end will
spiral further out of control.
Ethiopia
sent its troops into Somalia on July 20 to prop up
a weak government. Ethiopia is desperate to
prevent the growing power of the Islamic Courts, a
militant Islamic movement that has its own
militias. But the intervention is also part of the
long-standing conflict with Eritrea, which
Ethiopia accuses of supporting the Islamic Courts.
The intervention, however, only further
radicalizes the Islamic Courts and boosts Somali
public opinion in their favor.
Japan
signaled its interest in joining this axis of
intervention by putting the military option on the
table in its dealings with North Korea. After
Pyongyang's launch of seven missiles on July 5,
leading Japanese government spokesman Shinzo Abe
said, "If we accept that there is no other option
to prevent a missile attack, there is an argument
that attacking the missile bases would be within
the legal right of self-defense."
Unlike
the United States, Israel or Ethiopia, Japan was
until recently the furthest thing from an
aggressive power. It enjoyed five decades of a
"peace constitution". Its military was restricted
to defense. It had very little capacity to attack
another country.
Now Japan wants to have a
"normal" military. In today's world, "normal"
unfortunately translates into a capacity to launch
ill-advised military interventions. Japan is
acquiring an in-air-refueling capacity that will
allow long-range bombing missions. It is changing
its constitution to permit a wide range of
military operations. Some Japanese officials have
even broken the taboo and discussed Japan's
potential need for nuclear weapons. And Japan has
been one of the closest supporters of recent US
military campaigns, including the endless "war on
terrorism".
It's bad enough that the
world's most prominent proponent of state pacifism
has renounced its tradition. What will happen to
global security when the world's second-richest
country joins the arms race and begins to
contemplate long-range bombing campaigns? China
and South Korea have raised the alarm about
Japan's new militarism. But the Bush
administration has a very short historical memory.
The new axis of intervention targets not
only sovereign states such as North Korea and
non-state actors such as Hezbollah. With the news
of Israeli attacks against Red Cross vehicles and
a clearly marked United Nations observation post
in Lebanon, the real target of the axis of
intervention becomes clear: the institutions of
international law. By resorting to military force
and scorning diplomacy, both Israel and the United
States have undermined the UN and key global
agreements such as the Geneva Conventions. It
remains to be seen whether Japan and Ethiopia will
sign on to this larger agenda.
The
possibilities of global cooperation opened up by
the end of the Cold War have come to a dead end.
The axis of intervention promises a future that
resembles the distant past, what the English
theorist Thomas Hobbes called the "war of all
against all". It is a world, ironically, where
both aggressive countries like the US and Israel
and aggressive non-state actors like al-Qaeda and
the Islamic courts will feel right at home.
While the events of recent weeks have been
indeed disturbing, the world hasn't slid entirely
down the slippery slope. Interventions have taken
place, but internationalism is not dead. As the
stunning front page of The
Independent graphically represented,
the world community united in favor of an
immediate ceasefire in Lebanon - the only dissent
came from the United States, Britain and Israel.
Japan's threat to launch a preemptive
attack on North Korea has generated nothing but
criticism in the region and has not found much
favor with the Bush administration either. Indeed,
all the key countries continue to scramble to find
a multilateral solution to North Korea's nuclear
problem. And if the current transitional
government in Somalia can persuade Ethiopia to
leave - with some pressure exerted from the
outside by a superpower or two - Islamic militias
will be much more disposed to participate in
UN-brokered talks.
The US government, with
John Bolton still in place as its envoy to the
United Nations, is no fan of multilateralism. The
Bush administration remains strongly on the side
of intervention. But with an international
reputation that sags ever more precipitously and a
military capability stretched well beyond
sustainability, the US might have no other choice
than to accept multilateral solutions on an ad hoc
basis.
Such ad hoc multilateralism is not
ideal. But it's better than an ever growing axis
of intervention.
John Feffer is
the co-director of Foreign Policy In Focus for the
International Relations Center.
