USA mit Koalitionen der "Wichtigen" weiterhin die Nummer Eins in der Welt / "The US-administration is evidently seeking to build what we call 'coalitions of the relevant'"
Das der NATO nahe stehende Londoner Institut IISS legt seinen Jahresbericht vor - Mit Pakistan gegen Taliban, mit arabischen Staaten gegen Iran / IISS: Strategic Survey 2009 - Press Statement
Studie: USA behalten ihren Weltmachtstatus
IISS-Jahresbericht in London vorgestellt *
Im Kampf gegen internationale Krisen müssen die politischen Akteure aus
Expertensicht neue
diplomatische Wege gehen. Um die Lasten beim Ringen um Sicherheit besser
zu verteilen und
bessere Ergebnisse bei Verhandlungen zu erzielen, sollten auch neue
Akteure eingebunden
werden, rät das Internationale Institut für Strategische Studien.
Die weltweite Finanzkrise hat den USA einen heftigen Schlag versetzt - das
Land bleibt jedoch die Weltmacht. Das ist das Ergebnis einer am Dienstag
vorgestellten Studie des
Internationalen Instituts für Strategische Studien (IISS) in London. Das
Land habe gerade durch die
Bewältigung der Wirtschaftskrise seine Stärke beweisen können und werde
von anderen Staaten als
wichtige Macht angesehen, heißt es im diesjährigen Strategiebericht der
britischen Denkfabrik.
Zwar sei die ökonomische Vormachtstellung der USA durch die heftigste
Wirtschaftskrise seit den
30er Jahren gedämpft worden. Das US-Bankensystem sei gelähmt gewesen und
beinahe bankrott
gegangen. Doch habe der Zusammenbruch auch die »enormen Ressourcen« des
Landes gezeigt,
sich erfolgreich gegen diese Ausnahmesituation zu stemmen, schreiben die
Autoren.
Die Tatsache, dass die USA ihre Position in der Welt behalten hätten,
werde auch durch die
Bemühungen von US-Präsident Barack Obama um einen Dialog mit Ländern wie
Iran und Russland
verstärkt. Auch Obamas Versuch, eine Brücke zur muslimischen Welt zu
schlagen, trage dazu bei.
Nahezu alle Länder hätten gewollt, dass sich Washington »weniger
halbherzig« um die
internationalen Beziehungen kümmert als dies in den Jahren unter
US-Präsident George W. Bush
der Fall gewesen sei, heißt es in dem Bericht.
Das IISS wies zudem die Annahme zurück, dass China unaufhaltsam zum
Rivalen der USA
aufsteigt. Die Krise habe offenbart, wie exportabhängig die
Volksrepublik und wie eng die
chinesische mit der US-Wirtschaft verbunden sei. Peking hege
»beträchtliche« militärische,
politische und wirtschaftliche Ambitionen, im asiatisch-pazifischen Raum
dominierten jedoch von den
USA geführte Partnerschaften. »Für die meisten internationalen Probleme
haben die USA bessere
Möglichkeiten, Koalitionen zu finden als China.« Trotzdem habe Obama die
Grenzen der USA
erkannt, anderen Nationen den eigenen Willen aufzuzwingen, lautet die
Bewertung der
Wissenschaftler.
* Aus: Neues Deutschland, 16. September 2009
The International Institute for Strategic Studies-IISS: Strategic Survey
2009
The Annual Review of World Affairs - Press Statement
Introduction
Welcome to the launch of the IISS Strategic Survey: The Annual Review of
World Affairs for 2009. Following this statement, we look forward to
your questions. Among those providing IISS answers will be Alex Nicoll,
Editor of Strategic Survey, Adam Ward, Nigel Inkster, Dana Allin,
Christopher Langton, Rahul Roy-Chaudhury, Mark Fitzpatrick, Tim Huxley
and Toby Dodge.
This year we have special essays on countering modern terrorist threats,
Europe's energy security, and progress towards a new Asian security
architecture. As usual, all regions of the world are carefully and
comprehensively covered, our strategic geography section includes many
maps that are useful to the press and to analysts, and a chronology of
the year's key events is provided.
This year, the international strategic picture was clouded by the
international financial and economic crisis and confused by the
uncertainty as to how a weakened US - whose competence was in doubt -
might, under a new president, navigate the international challenges that
it confronted.
Following President Obama's historic election and the onset of the
world's gravest economic crisis for generations, the questions on many
peoples' minds were of a dramatic character. Will the world move to a
more egalitarian political order where the US is less apparently
supreme? Will there be lasting geopolitical change as a result of shifts
in the financial balance of power? Might the economic crisis further
weaken fragile states and make the challenge of conflict-resolution even
more daunting?
In addition to these sweeping questions of the geopolitical order, more
specific questions were asked about how effective the US and its allies
might be in addressing major crises of the day, including the Iranian
nuclear problem, Arab-Israeli peace, North Korea's challenge, and the
war in Afghanistan.
Strategic Survey argues this year that if the US is both to limit the
challenges to its authority and address key security challenges, it must
do so through artfully constructed bundles of co-operation with the
powers that are central to resolving any particular issue of concern.
There will be limits to the ability of the US to lead an ambitious
foreign-policy agenda, and meeting its current challenges will involve
cultivating like-minded attitudes among key regional players.
The Limits to International Strategic Charity
Moving into 2010, many of the ambitious foreign-policy agendas and
practices established by Western powers in the previous decade and a
half appear in retreat. What appetite will there be for the
'nation-building' projects that were thought at once strategically
necessary and morally desirable? The efforts in Iraq are bound to become
modest. Those in Afghanistan, especially as the economic crisis
continues and the magnitude of the challenge becomes ever more evident,
will naturally become minimalist, at least in comparison to the original
design. New projects seem unlikely to be undertaken and would have
trouble garnering public support except in the most exceptional of
circumstances. What appeals for humanitarian intervention will be
answered? The so-called 'responsibility to protect' has been advanced as
an international imperative, though often with Western impetus, in the
face of acts of genocide or equivalent natural tragedies. A sense of
natural human charity persists even in times of grave economic crisis.
But tragedies in Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and
elsewhere have not resulted in the concerted international action for
which so many campaigners have pleaded. The static or declining military
budgets of European powers place limits on expeditionary capacities
already stretched by operations thought to be of strategic vital
national interest. Rising powers in Asia, and elsewhere, are still more
reluctant to 'interfere in the internal affairs' of others. The
survivability of doctrines like the responsibility to protect and
humanitarian intervention will depend on countries outside the West
adopting them more fully than has heretofore been evident.
The intellectual habit in the West has recently become to align national
or alliance strategic interests with the delivery of a global public
good. It may be that budgetary constraints and the disillusions of
recent experience will inspire more political leaders to move from the
poetic towards the more prosaic end of the strategic spectrum: defining
goals more crisply in terms of clear national interest rather than acts
of wider strategic charity. Emerging countries may need to move in the
other direction and find some way to define the advance of a wider
public good as in their national interest. Rising powers, if they are
truly to rise, will only achieve genuine prominence if they are to shape
the wider order in which they live. This rebalancing will take time, and
may not have wholly beneficial effects. In some areas, like climate
change, it may be that Western powers will continue to provide the
impetus for an effective global regime, though one will not emerge
without key participation from the bigger rising powers. But other
causes will need champions from emerging power centres. As time passes,
the limitations on Western and US foreign and security policy may become
more evident. Domestically Obama may have campaigned on the theme 'yes
we can'; internationally he may increasingly have to argue 'no we can't'.
Building Coalitions of the Relevant
In areas where US strategic interests are intense and challenged, the
administration is evidently seeking to build what we call 'coalitions of
the relevant', to advance shared interests. What some have styled
'mini-lateralism', the tactic of composing the best number of relevant
states to address a particular issue, is now being pursued on various
themes and in different theatres. The meetings of the G20 thus have
assumed more importance, even if they have not yet achieved significant
outcomes. Ad hoc meetings of countries key to solving climate change are
being convened. The US has called for a nuclear summit, which would
involve the relevant powers who have something direct to contribute to
this dossier. Increasingly, the US is pulling together regional states
central to the management of a regional problem with the hope of
alleviating conflict-management burdens. Involving key local powers is
essential to ensure that solutions have the necessary regional accent to
allow them to be accepted. Over the course of the next year, to succeed,
it will be important for the US to build those regional constituencies.
So, if the creation of effective regional contact groups and like-minded
action is the best way for the US to accelerate the resolution of
regional issues, how might the US create coalitions of the relevant in
three of the most strategically challenging issues: Iran/Arab-Israel;
North Korea; and Afghanistan?
Iran and Arab/Israel
Most Arab states share with Israel the assessment that the Iranian
regime acts frequently as a potentially destabilising force. But that
congruence of strategic interest cannot easily find public expression
because the unsettled Israeli-Palestinian issue leaves Arab states
unable to ally themselves with Israel. An argument that in private moves
certain Israelis is that the main strategic purpose of arriving at a
two-state solution would be to legitimise Israel in the eyes of moderate
Arab public opinion. That is turn would permit Arab states, in
normalising diplomatic relations with Israel, to work alongside Israel
against such continuing threats from Iranian-supported regional groups
or even Iran itself that might persist.
A two-state solution may not lead to immediate peace; there would still
be radicalised groups wanting to punish Israel, but settlement with
Palestinians would create the political legitimacy for Israel that would
allow certain Arab states to support Israel against radical groups that
also threatened those same Arab states. The structural flaw in the long
discussions about Arab-Israeli peace has been to argue, unrealistically,
that peace would be the immediate result of a two-state solution.
Israeli legitimacy and wider regional acceptance would be the immediate
result of a settlement, which in turn would provide Israel with allies
in the region to counter residual threats until a comprehensive, true
peace could be achieved.
Given that most Arab states and Israel share strategic concerns about
Iran, that Israel has argued that concessions on a two-state solution
are hard to make in light of the prevailing Iranian threat against the
state, and that the common threat perceptions between some Arab states
and Israel are in need of being proven, more active Arab involvement on
the Iranian dossier should be diplomatically attractive.
In dealing with the Iranian nuclear challenge, it would therefore make
sense to find some mechanism for involving key Arab states in the
engagement with Iran to achieve a modus vivendi. For the time being,
that diplomacy, which was long suspended and has now been revived with
US acceptance to engage Iran following the five-page letter sent from
Tehran, will involve principally the so-called E3 plus 3: the UK, France
and Germany plus the US, China and Russia. In contrast to the Six-Party
Talks with North Korea, no regional states are involved. In the very
short term, it will be too diplomatically burdensome formally to add a
group of regional states to any diplomatic negotiation, but some
linkage would be strategically advantageous and sensible.
Firstly, regional states would have the most immediately to lose if Iran
were to acquire nuclear weapons. They have an incentive to prevent an
Iranian 'break-out' capacity. Secondly, many regional states fear that
being excluded from the negotiations, they could become 'part of the
package' in some grand bargain, under which Iran would renounce its
interests in nuclear matters but somehow be given a greater role in
regional security. However unlikely such a result, it is a regional
perception that needs to be managed. Thirdly, some regional states, like
Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, are cited as potential proliferators if
Iran were to have a confirmed nuclear military capacity. It would be
best to involve them in the diplomacy to tie them into a
non-proliferation outlook. Fourthly, if diplomacy were to fail, these
and other states would be key elements of a regional policy to contain
Iran's power. They would be more amenable to joining the West in a
containment policy if their overtures to Iran had also been rebuffed.
Fifthly, and to return to the earlier argument, by involving regional
states more on the Iran file, it would demonstrate to Israel that Arab
states were engaged in their strategic interests. This might permit
outsiders to be more forceful in their encouragement of Israel to
accelerate towardsa two-state solution that would allow for more
full-blooded regional security co-operation.
As the Obama administration weaves its diplomatic web in the Middle
East, its special envoys and others should find clever ways to connect
diplomatically these complex Middle East strategic questions and find
ways, in particular, to engage Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Egypt more
openly in developing a regional security architecture that reduces any
Iranian incentive to go nuclear. If I may be permitted an advertisement:
the IISS offers up our annual Manama Dialogue in Bahrain this year to
discuss these regional arrangements among the relevant powers.
North Korea
Certainly more attention needs also to be given to the general regional
environment if there is to remain any chance of a satisfactory
resolution to the North Korean nuclear issue. The US is resolute that it
will not acknowledge North Korea's nuclear status. It equally does not
wish to resurrect the Six-Party Talks only to see the North Koreans seek
further incentives to promise again to roll back their programme, a
promise for which 'payment' has already been made. China has become
genuinely of the view that North Korea's nuclear programme is a danger
to it and to the region. In the past,China has been concerned that
putting too much pressure on North Korea could lead to such regime
instability that refugees would flow over the Yalu River and the regime
would fail, resulting in a human and security tragedy that would fall
primarily in China's lap. A North Korean collapse, the conventional
wisdom said, would deprive China of a strategic buffer state. The
failure of another one-party state, outsiders have presumed, might have
an uncomfortable 'demonstration effect' for Beijing and potentially give
rise to domestic pressures. But these historic and classic fears are
perhaps now being diminished by the stark prospect of North Korea
becoming a de facto nuclear state, and therefore inspiring nuclear
revisionism in South Korea and possibly even Japan as well as
strengthening the US arguments for regional missile defence against
which China has strongly fought.
In this context, China's emerging strategic calculus may be that North
Korea's value to China is questionable. What is needed to strengthen
this calculation is more direct, if discreet, talks between the US,
Japan, South Korea, Russia and China on regional security outlooks in
the event of Korean unification. Such five-party talks would be aimed at
defining measures to be taken were there to be a sudden collapse of the
North Korean regime.
These might include a plan to handle refugees, and assurances to China
that a unified Korea would mean a reduced US presence, but a
continuation of the US alliance that could help to keep a unified Korea
non-nuclear. In the past, China has feared that placing too much
pressure on the regime in the North could lead to its collapse. If the
consequences of a collapsed North Korea and a unified peninsula appeared
less worrying to China, Beijing might be persuaded to impose the sort of
sanctions or pressure on the North that could persuade it to concede its
nuclear position. If a divided peninsula in the nuclear context is a
recipe for continued tensions, but a unified peninsula productive of
East Asian calm, China might view collapse with less alarm.
China should be invited in private to declare itself on what political
and security architecture in East Asia with a unified Korea it could
support. The fact that China-Taiwan relations are now stable offers a
further opportunity. Progress on meeting China's concerns might inspire
a policy towards the North that forces Pyongyang to make a more
determined calculation of where its interests in regime survival
actually lie and lead it to conclude that the nuclear option actually
reduces, rather than enhances, its shelf life.
Afghanistan
A more cunning regional strategy is also necessary to address the one
conflict, Afghanistan, in which the US president has invested most
effort. Public support for the Afghan mission is weakening among states
contributing to the political-military effort there. Sustaining a
minimum level of that support is dependent not just on progress, but on
defining the mission as ensuring that Afghanistan is not a safe haven
for those who would conduct external terrorist activity. While that has
always been the core purpose, the understandable efforts to create the
'good governance' necessary to embed security successes has created the
impression that the mission is too sweeping to succeed. It is therefore
important to be reminded that NATO has no desire to garrison Afghanistan
and that devolving power, responsibility and capacity to provincial and
municipal leaders is the aim. In fact, eventually reducing the ground
combat presence in Afghanistan is important to give the political oxygen
to the government of Pakistan it needs to continue its operations
against neo-Taliban and al-Qaeda elements, both indigenous and displaced
from Afghanistan.
Strategic recognition of the link with Pakistan, and the growing
appreciation in Pakistan that the neo-Taliban constitute a direct threat
also to Pakistan, have resulted in genuine intelligence co-operation in
Kabul among Afghans, Pakistanis and others on how to address this
security dilemma. Further co-operation with other regional states will
continue to be important to sustain regional consent for the mission.
Measuring the balance between the continued application of military
force and the negotiation of political compromises, the latter at some
point entailing discussions with 'reconcilable Taliban', will be one of
many complex tasks confronting the coalition in Afghanistan. But even
that task can only be performed if Russia, Central Asia, India, Iran and
China are brought into the debates and policymaking in a stronger
fashion. NATO relations with the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation
might invite co-ordinated discussion on Afghanistan, but the revival of
a form of regional contact-group diplomacy that goes beyond the
set-piece conferences thus far proposed is vital to give the internal
Afghan reconciliation process an international cushion.
There is now a need to move with resolve over the next two years towards
a situation where there is a wider development footprint, with aid
distributed through local leaders, and a more precise military
footprint, with force applied specifically towards remaining al-Qaeda
and key insurgent threats.
Conclusion
In sum, a view running through the 2009 issue of Strategic Survey is
that the creation of coalitions of the relevant is necessary both to
address the political elements of key security challenges and to share
the burden of security management more equitably and therefore more
effectively.
IISS-Website, 15 September 2009; www.iiss.org
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