Occasional paper

WHAT AMERICA SHOULD DO

The question, “What should America do?” or “What else could America do?” has frequently been asked in recent months, commonly as a rhetorical device suggesting that there is no alternative to bombing Afghanistan, sending US troops to all the trouble spots of the world that threaten US interests, interning foreigners, and reducing civil liberties. The public view is one of acquienscence in what are seen as inevitable evils. Buddhism, however, suggests that human acts are chosen and that we do have freedom if we will but realise it. The idea that America has no alternative is really the true observation that America is acting in rather the fashion that most ordinary people act when their vested interests are threatened, their identity is undermined or ridiculed, or they are hurt: lash out and tighten up. This reaction is extremely common, but it only exacerbates the problem.

So what alternative does America have? Far from being non-existent, the alternatives are obvious enoough. Put simply, America could stop acting like a superpower and start acting like an ordinary country. What would this imply? Firstly, America could reduce its military to what is necessary to defend its own borders, both of which are friendly, and to fulfil its obligations to the United Nations. The fact that the US, unlike almost every other country, made only slight military reductions at the end of the cold war has produced the present situation where the US (one of 200 countries in the world) currently accounts for 40% of the world's military spending. This imbalance is bound to make the US a target. If it persists it is also bound to lead to a new arms race, which, covertly, is already beginning. Such an arms race will eventually reduce the US differential as Europe, Russia, China, India and perhaps some Arab states increasingly turn their attention to “defence” and this process will mean that by 2014 the world will be in a very dangerous position indeed, not unlike the position it was in precisely 100 years earlier.

America could stop acting like an imperial power and give up pretentions to being the world's owner. Other countries have as much right to control their own resources and they do not want American troops stationed on their borders or American planes on carriers just over their horizon threatening them and making them sell their raw materials on the cheap to people who are already the richest in the world. This kind of economic cheating creates an awful lot of bad karma on both sides of such shoddy transactions.

Allied to this, America should act in a way that is consistent with its avowed principles. Take demoncracy, for instance. Why is there no democracy in Saudi Arabia? Because the US has for fifty years supported the non-democratic government there. The same is true in quite a number of other countries. The new government of Afghanistan that is so lauded in the West has no democratic credentials at all. In Chile and in Iran the US over-threw democratic governments when they tried to do things that threatened US economic interests. It is clear that the US does not really believe in democracy.

Then there is freedom and civil rights. The US shows itself unwilling to follow the Geneva Convention, unwilling to give people a fair trial - even if we could work out what basis in law they think they are operating on. It also has scant regard for the laws of other countries. A couple of weeks ago five citizens of Bosnia were brought before a court in Sarajevo and the court found there was no case for them to answer. This did not suit the Americans so they kidnapped them and flew them out of the country. This is not the way to inspire the world with respect for the rule of law.

Although Mr Milosovic seems to have been a pretty terrible tyrant, he does have a point when he says that NATO attacked his country without a declaration of war and therefore illegally killed thousands of Serbian citizens, many of them civilians, and not a few of them even belonging to the ethnic Albanian population NATO was supposedly protecting. NATO used weapons of mass destruction dropped or fired from such a distance that inaccuracy was assured. Now Kossovo, like Iraq, is thoroughly polluted with depleted uranium dust that will remain radioactive for millions of years, and neither the US nor the UK who put the stuff there seems to have any intention of doing anything about it even if they knew how to. As a British person, I recognise that Britain has been complicit in all of these developments in America that I deplore.

It is understandable that America should try to dominate the world, given that it has many of the means to do so. It is equally understandable that others will attack and try to destroy whoever tries to dominate. And it is understandable again that whatever example is given by the most powerful country will be imitated and so remilitarisation of the planet is now highly likely. Russian military expenditure is currently expanding at a rate of 40% increase year on year. That things are understandable does not make them inevitable, however. The Buddhist message is that most of what most people do is done in delusion. There are alternatives. A more enlightened world is possible even if it is not likely in the immediate future. Also we need to learn the lessons of history. Some of the present perils arises from the fact that many people have managed to convince themselves that the world is now in an unprecedented situation. Perhaps this time a world hegemony will actually be achieved. The likelihood is, however, that it will end as it always has done in war and collapse. Britain, after all, got quite a long way with the make-the-whole-world-England project before the whole thing collapsed in two world wars.

The challenge to us all is to be on the side of enlightenment rather than on the side of delusion even when delusion seems to have the upper hand. More wars are not going to make the world safer and more guns, rockets and bombs are not really going to make America more secure. They just make more enemies and more dishonesty. This can go on for so long, as it did in Russia, until, one day, the supportive conditions having been stretched just that bit too far, the whole thing collapses. Rome fell to the barbarians. Unthinkable things do happen.

Let us put ourselves on the side of humane values, not on the side of oppression. The present process, falsely called globalisation, where by one country is pushing for world domination, is really little different from all the previous attempts that powerful nations have made for domination. A peaceful world is, however, something else and requires a quite different approach. What should America do? America should learn to be an ordinary country obeying the ordinary conventions of international relations. If it cannot do so, then it will bring disaster upon us all.

Dh.D.J. Brazier
2002