Pro and Contra

Two different visions of the future of the world were separately articulated
over the last few days. The first was delivered by
Jacques
Chirac, the President of France at a gathering sponsored by the London-based
International Institute for Strategic Studies.

He said the West could not impose its values on the world and confuse
democratisation and Westernisation. "Granted, it is still possible to organise
the world based on a logic of power yet experience has taught us that this
type of organisation is, by its very definition, unstable and sooner or later
leads to crisis or conflict. ... It is by recognising the new reality of a
multi-polar and interdependent world that we will succeed in building a
sounder and fairer international order. This is why we must work together to
revive multilateralism, a multilateralism based on a reformed and strengthened
United Nations."

In Chirac's view the United States had tried to impose this "logic of power"
on the world and stood condemned. The

New York Times reported on remarks the French President had delivered
earlier.

Most prominently, Mr. Chirac reiterated his view that the war in Iraq had
led to an "expansion" of terrorism in the world. Though he said that France
was willing to put its differences with Britain and the United States aside
and look to the future by helping to rebuild a stable, democratic and
sovereign Iraq, Mr. Chirac indicated that he thought the judgment of
history would go against the Iraq war and vindicate those who opposed it.
...

"We have another choice," Mr. Chirac told an audience at the International
Institute of Strategic Studies (remarks delivered later). "That of an order
based on respect for international law and the empowerment of the world's new
poles by fully and wholly involving them in the decision-making mechanisms.
"Only this path," he added, "is likely to establish a stable, legitimate and
accepted order in the long run." The new "poles" he spoke of are the emerging
regional powers of the new century, including Europe, China, India and Brazil.

A fortnight earlier, an American Undersecretary of Defense gave a quiet
interview to Radek Sikorski, at one time a deputy minister of defense himself in
Poland, on the future as he saw it. Paul Wolfowitz. The full article is in the

Prospect Magazine.

Export of democracy isn't really a good phrase. We're trying to remove the
shackles on democracy. What you would hope is that governments can be
encouraged on a path of gradual reform because that's the best way to avoid
the sort of cataclysm that will come otherwise.  ... We're not trying to
graft our system of government on to people who are different from us. We're
trying to remove shackles that keep them from having what they want. And it's
astonishing how many of them want something that's similar to what we in the
west have.

Sikorski put a rhetorical question to Wolfowitz: "The US president used to be
seen as the leader of the free world rather than just president of one country
and America used to be seen as a benign global empire. Now, after 9/11,
understandably, this is a more patriotic, perhaps even a more nationalistic
country. But won't the price of running a nationalistic American empire be much
higher than managing a co-operative one?" Wolfowitz responded with the most
astonishing assertion of the interview, the idea that a cooperative "empire" --
if empire it could be called -- could only consist of free nations.

The premise of your question is that we're out to run an empire, but there
is no American empire. Look at Japan and Korea. They were part of this
so-called empire in the cold war. After the second world war and the Korean
war, we invested heavily in the defence and economic systems of countries like
Japan and Korea - hardly an imperial undertaking. I would submit that we have
benefited enormously from their strength and their ability to stand on their
own feet. They're now contributing to the rest of the world. We're so much
better off with a Japan as a strong trading partner than a Japan as a basket
case. If people want to redefine the word "empire" to mean this as an empire,
then it's just semantics. We are not trying to control these countries so we
can exploit their resources. We're trying to enable these countries to stand
on their own feet and our experience says that when they do so, we're better
off. It's back to the absurdity of saying we're trying to impose our ideas on
other people when we want to help them become democracies. There's more
legitimacy to the question of whether we are really prepared to live with what
they produce when they become democratic. There's an uncertainty about the
democratic process and there's always a danger that bad people will get
elected. But it's a funny empire that relies on releasing basic human desires
to be free and prosperous and live in peace. One of the things about this
moment in history is that nobody really thinks they can produce an army, a
navy or an air force that can take on the US. That should channel human
competitiveness into more productive and peaceful pursuits.

History may remember Jacques Chirac as one of the most prolific institution
builders of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The European Union and the
United Nations are but some of the multilateral projects he sought to strengthen
in the belief they would serve as a prototype for the future ordering of the
world. Wolfowitz's vision seems altogether more complex. He seems unwilling to
speak of institutions outside the context of empowerment, as if to speak of
instruments of governance without freedoms was tantamount to prescribing
tyranny. Their difference of opinion may be rooted, not so much in an argument
over bureaucratic arrangements, but in their view of the nature of man himself.