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Join Date: 08-20-03
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Samuel R. Berger and Eric P. Schwartz
US must reassert global leadership
By Samuel R. Berger and Eric P. Schwartz | September 5, 2007
IN THE CAPITOL of East Timor, a gleaming Presidential Palace is rising, near a sparkling new seaside compound for the Foreign Ministry. How can a struggling, newly independent East Timor afford such impressive projects? They are gifts from the government of China, along with army barracks, new uniforms for Timor's soldiers, and a range of technical assistance and exchange programs.
Of course, China has every right to extend its influence in East Timor through the fulsome use of its accumulating resources. But this application of Chinese "soft power" is ironic, as it was the United States that helped to midwife the birth of Timor's democracy in 1999 by deploying thousands of troops in support of a peacekeeping force that helped guarantee Timorese independence. Six years later, consumed by the economic and military pressures of our grinding engagement in Iraq, the United States led the charge to remove a follow-up UN force that ensured stability in Timor, while cutting bilateral aid by nearly 40 percent between 2001 and 2006.
Certainly, Timor is not a national security priority for the United States. But the story of East Timor is being played out around the world by China and other powers, as the United States scales back its engagements in Asia, Latin America, and Africa under the weight of our preoccupation with Iraq. These developments have serious and perhaps irreversible strategic consequences.
While we have burned in Iraq, others have fiddled. China's diplomacy goes far beyond East Timor. The Chinese are providing several billions of dollars in aid for roads, ports, and bridges from Laos to Cambodia to the Philippines, far outstripping US aid and engagement in the region, and rivaling World Bank and Asian Development Bank aid programs. China also has advanced its interests in Africa; the prospect of trade and aid brought more than 40 African heads of state to a Beijing summit last year. The result was $5 billion in new loans and credit, nearly $2 billion in immediate trade and investment deals, and the prospect of increased cooperation on oil, gas, and mineral resources to help fuel China's rapid economic expansion.
Similarly, President Vladimir Putin is using muscle and money to lay the groundwork for Russian dominance over former Soviet neighbors, as well as European energy resources. Though the United States was making inroads a decade ago among Central Asian nations as we sought to encourage their economic and political alignment with the West, more recently Putin has concluded regional energy deals that drastically strengthen Russian influence - including an agreement with Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan for a gas pipeline along the Caspian coast to Russia. Russia's diplomatic gains put in peril US and European-supported energy pipeline projects that would promote diversification of supplies. The agreements have belatedly caught the attention of senior US officials, but the horse is out of the barn.
Iraq was Secretary Robert Gates's rationale for postponing a long-planned visit to Latin America, another region where the United States is ceding power and influence. Last March, in a graphic demonstration of changing US fortunes there, tens of thousands of citizens of Argentina - not so long ago one of America's closest allies in the region - cheered Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez as he denounced the United States at a Buenos Aires rally timed to coincide with President Bush's trip to the region. To be sure, most Latin Americans are skeptical about Chavez's pretensions to regional leadership and his authoritarianism. But stagnant US aid flows, neglect of issues such as immigration and trade reform, and diplomatic back-of-the-hand have generated broad distrust of US policy throughout the region, which has made it easier for Chavez to pursue his populist and anti-American vision.
The sad fact is that the United States is bogged down on the wrong playing field, leaving a vacuum in the rest of the world. Others are moving in to fill that void, to the long-term geopolitical disadvantage of the United States. The time has come to disentangle ourselves from the misadventure in Iraq and reassert America's leadership and global engagement.
Samuel R. Berger was national security adviser from 1997 to 2000. Eric P. Schwartz was senior director for multilateral and humanitarian affairs at the National Security Council during this period.
© Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company.
US must reassert global leadership - The Boston Globe
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China is strengthening her influence in her neighbourhood as she is doing in the rest of the world where the 'guard' is down!
Single minded distraction of Iraq is prove costly for the US in every aspect!
This Chinese attempt to woo Timor will surely put Australia into a tizzy!
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"Some have learnt many Tricks of sly Evasion, Instead of Truth they use Equivocation, And eke it out with mental Reservation, Which is to good Men an Abomination."
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Last edited by Ray : 09-06-2007 at 00:42 AM.
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