Eliot Sherman: A belligerent bully on the international scene

So I've been thinking about national security lately because, quite frankly, these days you can't really worry enough. In doing so, I've also attempted to leave politics at the door because, after all, I'm a uniter, not a divider.

Being curious about the shaping of America's new foreign policy in a post-Sept. 11 world, I went looking for what some of our leaders have said on the matter. I found the following quote by our honorable secretary of defense regarding potential threats: "There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know.... Each year, we discover a few more of these unknown unknowns."

Got that? Well I didn't, really, so I went to my International Relations class in search of clarity and peace of mind.

Instead, I became rather disturbed about the way things are going and I'm beginning to think that this period of history -- right now, in the wake of Sept. 11, -- is a defining moment in history where the rules of the game change.

If we go ahead and pretend that everything's simple, we are met with two competing schools of thought: realism and liberalism. In this age of asymmetrical threats, one cannot simply ensure security with theories of balancing and deterrence; independent groups with their own agendas are certainly not unitary rational actors, and therefore their moves are exceedingly difficult to predict at the systemic level. So realism is out the window.

Likewise, liberalism, contending that order comes through trade, international regimes and the promotion of democratic institutions, doesn't really address the immediacy of the problem. So that's no good either.

Recognizing that I've just done away with years of educated thought on this matter, I should feel bad, except for my nagging belief that Rumsfeld, Rice, et. al, have essentially done the same thing.

So what are we left with? Why, a little thing called "hot pre-emption," which is like regular pre-emption except it's on fire, I guess. Actually, I have no idea why it's called this, but it sounds pretty cool so I'm sticking to it.

This theory of foreign policy is like something out of a D-12 track: some dude looked at me the wrong way so I shot him five times and then ran over his body with a monster truck.

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that this isn't such a good idea.

Sure, it's great to act tough. Bush has proved that he is ready to rattle the proverbial sabre at anyone who he thinks is out of line; he's rattled the damn thing so much it's practically broken. But this fiercely pre-emptive doctrine, if it is fully developed and employed (read: if we invade Iraq) could be the beginning of the end.

First of all, it's no secret that we're the world's big brother; once we start doing something, all the other kids wanna play. And if we start pre-empting left and right, how can we turn around and tell India that it would probably be best for them not to erase Pakistan? Or tell China that it would be really mean to total Taiwan?

Another problem with this mentality is that it directly interferes with Bush's aversion to nation-building. When you go around devastating regions that you feel threaten your position, you have to commit to some type of peacekeeping effort, otherwise you'd single handedly double the third world and I'm sure we don't want that, right? Right?

But more than anything, the problem with this potential war of pre-emption is that Bush has yet to declare any sort of vision of a post-conflict international order. So you devastate a few threatening states in the name of democracy. What next? Eradicating every potential threat, morals aside, does not seem viable economically when we can't cough without everyone else catching a cold, and, to a certain extent, vice-versa.

So the rules of the game are changing, and for the worse. Any time you get nostalgic for "the good old days of the Soviets and nuclear deterrence," you know it's bad. I understand the asymmetrical nature of the game as it is played today, but I question what's behind it.

Leveling every threat may make us feel safer in the short run, but contributing to mass global disorder will gravely exacerbate the problem in the long run.

Eliot Sherman is a sophomore from Philadelphia, Pa.

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