The Foreign Service Journal, November 2008

country abroad. Because they are on the scene, moreover, they tend to be more in touch with regional trends and realities than officials in Washington. That’s one reason so many American ambassadors are so fond of them. As the United States saw it, the establishment of an Africa Command would elevate Africa’s symbolic importance in our foreign policy. But its supposed beneficiaries have react- ed badly to the idea. They have seen it as an attempt to re-establish an out- side military presence on their newly decolonized continent and as an indi- cation that American military adven- turism might soon extend there. So for the time being, at least, US- AFRICOM remains a fixture of life in Stuttgart rather than a presence to be reckoned with in its area of opera- tional responsibility. Europe, Too Meanwhile, the Russian Federa- tion is turning out to be more Russian — less democratic and more bullying — and a good deal more insubordi- nate than its would-be patrons in Washington had imagined. Even before Moscow’s intervention in Georgia served to revive concerns about its aggressive assertion of a ver- sion of the Monroe Doctrine in its “near abroad,” not a few Americans had taken a second look into Putin’s eyes and seen him for what he is: a KGB guy playing a czar with post- Soviet characteristics. There is, to be sure, no ideological challenge from Russia, which lacks both the will and the means to com- pete with the U.S. on a global scale as the Soviet Union did. So, all the pre- dictable punditry to the contrary notwithstanding, there is no prospect of a “renewal of the Cold War.” But there is every prospect that, far from emerging as some sort of diplomatic version of Tonto to the United States’ Lone Ranger, as some had hoped, Russia will continue to be a troubling- ly assertive and independent-minded force. The United States’ strongest inter- national ties have, of course, been with Europe, where continentwide integration is in the final stages of erasing the divisions of the Cold War. The European Union is less than the sum of its parts, but it has emerged as the dominant factor in its region and adjacent areas. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization has meanwhile expanded to what most Europeans consider Europe’s natural defense perimeter. Only a minority favors fur- ther enlargement, especially to bring in nations still deeply divided about membership in NATO or with active territorial disputes with neighbors. The fact is that, as the Cold War recedes in memory, Europeans are charting their own course even on issues of great importance to the United States, like who should belong to NATO or how to deal with the return of Russia to assertive national- ism and China and India’s rise to wealth and power. They value the United States, if at all, mainly as a par- ticipant in the Eurasian balance of power rather than as the protector of Europe against a credible external security threat. Having come to ques- tion our wisdom, most Europeans seem to doubt that there are still many compelling reasons to defer to us. For the first time in the five decades since they embraced Ameri- can leadership of the Atlantic commu- nity, Europeans seem comfortable ignoring Washington’s views or reject- ing them outright. Russia’s reasser- tion of its military power on its periph- ery does not seem to have fundamen- tally altered or reversed these trends. This is in part because the extraor- dinary transatlantic solidarity of 9/11 has given way to sharp differences over international law and comity, pri- vacy and due process of law, and the desirability of multilateral approaches to transnational issues like climate change. Very few in Europe have any sympathy for claims by American politicians that 9/11 changed every- thing, justifying the suspension of individual rights and the separation of powers insisted upon by Enlighten- ment thinkers like America’s founding fathers. To a distressing extent, there- fore, the Atlantic community is no longer united by shared ideals but ominously divided by emerging dif- ferences over them. Transatlantic disagreement on core values bodes ill for the prospect that these values will prevail in a world in which the center of gravity is migrating to the Asian ends of the Eurasian landmass. A Paradoxical Presence in Asia Curiously, given the much bally- hooed shift of global wealth and power to Asia, the trend toward regional assertiveness and the decline of American influence is in some ways least obvious in the Asia-Pacific region. This reflects the realities of Chinese and Indian power in relation to the nations on their periphery. With the notable exception of Paki- stan, India’s neighbors have recon- ciled themselves to its hegemony in South Asia. The United States has recognized India’s primacy there and does not seek to undermine or thwart it. Indeed, Washington’s continuing effort to overcome both international and domestic opposition to the con- troversial U.S.-India nuclear deal evi- dences a decision to give relations with New Delhi priority over both longstanding global nonproliferation policies and the interests of an in- creasingly overwrought but equally nuclear Pakistan. In East and Central Asia, by con- trast, Chinese hegemony remains an unwelcome conjecture, not a reality. Beijing has repeatedly assured its neighbors that it does not and will not 48 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 8