The U.S. Ends Cowboy Diplomacy

Just as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton flew in to Beijing from Shanghai to engage in the Sino-U.S. Strategic and Economic Dialogue with Chinese Vice-Premier Wang Qishan, U.S. President Barack Obama delivered an important speech at the famous West Point Military Academy, revealing more of Washington’s new thinking toward foreign diplomacy: the U.S. will maintain its world leader status, but it wants to achieve this through international cooperation and domestic technological innovation—not through unilateral military force.

Obama stated clearly in his speech that, “The burdens of this century cannot fall on our soldiers alone. It also cannot fall on American shoulders alone. Our adversaries would like to see America sap its strength by overextending our power. And in the past, we’ve always had the foresight to avoid acting alone.”

The White House will be announcing the National Security Strategy next week, and not only did Obama’s speech lay the foundation for its content, it also publicly refuted George W. Bush administration’s cowboy diplomacy. Since coming into office, Obama has been trying to make changes; his determination in severing the unpopular foreign diplomatic strategies of the former administration was fully evident in his speech.

In the same situation eight years ago, former President George W. Bush announced the Bush Doctrine at the West Point Military Academy graduation ceremony, promoting a unilateral militaristic policy on being the first to strike on military matters. The year following the declaration of the Bush Doctrine, the U.S. started the second Gulf War without having sufficient evidence and the authorization of the United Nations, overthrowing Saddam Hussein’s hegemony in Iraq.

Not only has the U.S. military gotten itself into a quagmire up until now, putting itself in a passive and isolated position internationally, it has also further stoked anti-American sentiments in the Muslim world. Obama had also declared during the speech that the U.S. will be withdrawing its troops from Iraq beginning this summer.

Though America is still the world’s only military overlord, the failure to resolve the Iraq War has caused it great damage. In a book titled “The Three Trillion Dollar War,” published by two professors from Columbia University and Harvard University in 2008, they point out that military expenses expedited in the five years of the Iraq War had exceeded the $670 billion used in the 12 years of the Vietnam War. The U.S. military budget in 2010 was as high as $535 billion, far exceeding the total military expenses of other nations in the world. This did not include USD $136 billion used for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates admitted candidly this month that the U.S. is not capable of bearing another Afghanistan or Iraq war.

Cowboy diplomacy squandered the international community’s sentiment of having a common enemy since the U.S. suffered the 9/11 terrorist attack, weakening America’s international influence and the foundation of its moral propriety. It has also caused its foreign diplomacy to lose focus, scattering its attention to the War on Terror over the years, allowing emerging economies that could challenge America’s international leadership power, such as China, India and Brazil, etc., to quietly emerge during this period. This has finally made America accept a new reality, allowing new superpowers like China to have a say in international events.

Giving up unilateralism means that the U.S. must rely on the cooperation of its international partners, as well as respect international laws and orders.

It is just what Obama said in his speech, “America has not succeeded by stepping out of the currents of cooperation … ” Under the simultaneous effects of multiple factors like the global financial crisis that caused the American economy to decline, the emergence of new influential nations, and America’s continual depletion of its resources in overseas military operations, not only is multilateral cooperation in line with America’s national interests, it also has its unavoidable cold realities.

On the Iran nuclear issue, the U.S. is carrying out Obama’s new spirit of foreign diplomacy, actively garnering the cooperation of world partners — China included — using the United Nations as a platform. Gates has also hinted in the speech mentioned earlier that if there were the option of foreign diplomacy, he would not support the use of force to resolve the Iranian nuclear issue.

The height of the level, enormity of scale, and the breadth of the agenda’s contents of the Sino-U.S. Strategic and Economic Dialogue all demonstrate how seriously the U.S. took the session. When we examine this against the backdrop of the new thinking behind Obama’s foreign diplomacy, we can see that — be it the objective reality of growth and decline in international powers or Washington’s subjective taking advantage of opportunities — it all makes clear America’s efforts to create a new atmosphere of international cooperation.

As a world superpower, such an effort should be welcomed by the international community. Whether it is on the issue of nuclear non-proliferation, addressing climate change, sustaining global economic growth, resolving world poverty, or countering the threats of extremism, many of these issues still require the cooperation of the international community in order to address them. All of these require U.S. involvement and leadership. The end of cowboy diplomacy promotes the birth of a more harmonious international environment.