Troop contributions to the Afghan imbroglio help define what is meant by the ‘West’:-

• The core group are those countries which have 1,000 or more troops in the country (UK, Germany, Canada, Italy, Netherlands, France, Poland, Australia – all in order of contribution) led by the US providing a full 55% of the troops.
• A secondary group are those providing between 100 and 999 who might be regarded as fellow travellers – in no particular order: Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, Portugal, Macedonia, Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, Finland, Hungary, Latvia, Norway, Romania, Sweden, Lithuania, Spain, Estonia, the Czech Republic, New Zealand and Turkey.
• There is a tertiary group of those just making a gesture under UN auspices with 99 or less – Austria, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Iceland, Ireland, Jordan, Luxembourg, Singapore, Slovakia, Ukraine, Slovenia.

What is noticeable about this list is not the dominance of the US (which may be taken for granted) nor the presence of the big NATO and ‘white’ Commonwealth players.

These latter have long helped to define the West as a support system for US leadership because of their Cold War and imperial histories.

Similarly, the fellow traveller role of all the small nations of Europe, but most noticeably Turkey and those entering the EU orbit in the Balkans, is also no surprise. 

Nor is the tentative presence of three former Soviet Republics who together may bring NATO to the very border of the new Russian Empire. What is most noticeable now are the absences and anomalies.

The West Defined By Its Absences

Considering this is a fully UN-sanctioned Mission backed by the most powerful military nation on earth, involvement in the Afghan Project is, in fact, limited to just one network of nations that descends from one ethnic community (the British) and from the anti-Soviet European project.

Outside this zone, which now brings the ‘West’ right up to very edge of the Moscovite sphere of influence and no further, the lack of engagement by former imperial possessions that are not ethnically British in origin is very noticeable.

This does not mean that such states are anti-Western. And, of course, some of the world's oldest independent entities (Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, Japan) are well embedded in Western strategic planning. Yet none of these are prepared to engage directly in this West Asian flagship project.

There is no involvement by Latin America, from the Muslim World (other than Turkey and Jordan, the latter a de facto Western subsidiary) or Asia (other than the tiny city-state of Singapore). Japan is supportive but dare not show it too openly for domestic political reasons.

Even within the West, there are nuances – Spain in terms of scale should be working at the same level as the other major European nations and yet, under its socialist government, it remains resistant to doing so.

Despite broadly centre-right governments in the UK, Germany, Italy and France and centre-right political cultures, in global relations terms, in Poland, the Netherlands, Canada and Australia, there is still a large minority of Europeans who are unenthused by American policies.

Such dissent is associated with the real rather than with the ‘ersatz’ centre-left. Similarly, the very quiescence of governments allied to the US but outside the core group indicates a concern that their peoples do not fully share the enthusiasms and analyses of their elites.

A cynic might say that the arrival of true democracy across the world at this time would shrink rather than increase liberal and Western strategic influence and that all we are seeing is a new form of imperial management.

Is the democratic West working the global system through undemocratic viceregal allies? Yes, although that would be a gross oversimplification.

The realist-liberal tension in Western foreign policy lies partly in the recognition that this post-imperial system of management does exist and that it does undercut the West's universalist claims by even accepting that there is a centre and a periphery.

Tensions Within The System

The relative lack of enthusiasm of Austria, Ireland, Iceland, Luxembourg, Slovakia and Slovenia for an Afghan engagement also suggests that some very small states are inclined to maintain their neutralism and to free ride off the others in 'global security' terms.

Perhaps it would be kinder to say that many states within the West have not necessarily bought into the idea that their prosperity and security depends on sustaining the creaky post-Soviet Western quasi-imperial structures that seems to oblige Europeans to fight in Asia and Africa.

These are nuances that might be hidden if the EU developed its own independent defence force much as liberal California might be less likely to send troops to Iraq than, say, Colorado or South Carolina if the US had remained a truly State-driven polity.

Of course, Israel is not providing troops for obvious political reasons. It might reasonably be included as a troublesome outpost but one that is definitely of and in the West – not quite the Crusader State of the Islamists but also not so very different in the long run of history.

If you were to translate all this into map terms and colour it, say, blue – whilst noting that other forms of assistance are given by Japan (and by others such as Pakistan) – then the US zone of 'hard' influence is quite definitely not extending itself much beyond its heartlands.

The West is North America, Australasia and Europe and that’s about it.

Liberals may whinge about the lack of Western values underpinning regimes such as those in Zimbabwe and Burma or of China ‘oppressing’ Tibet but there is no reason why these targets of Western outrage should care too much.

Pivotal states like Mexico, Brazil, Nigeria, South Africa, Egypt, India, Indonesia and China (and, of course Russia which would be a tactless intervention in any case) are noticeable by their absence in Afghanistan.

Such states only very reluctantly support Western universalism if at all when 'failed states' pop up near their borders. The West claims ‘universalism’ with less and less cause to do so in reality rather than ideology.

The ‘West’ is now what remains from the colonial settlement strategies of the three previous centuries and from the detritus of historic resistance (in Europe) to the encroachments of Islam and of the stubbornly irrepressible Russian Empire.

To non-Westerners, the West is either made up of the same old colonialists and imperialists (aka hypocrites) or it is concerned with defences of territory or of economic and cultural dominance that are of no fundamental interest to their twenty-first century developmental targets.

On Universalism

It is commonly accepted that, outside the core zone, many elite groups remain attached to the West for reasons of collective security and economic interest without accepting its ‘universal’ values.

They may even provide very substantial resources for the ‘West’ in its struggles against insurgency – but domestic conditions make it extremely difficult for them to offer the overt help that their security patrons demand.

Frustrations with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan (and others) have often disrupted regional diplomacy in recent years for just this reason.

There are now severe limitations to US influence. These are only going to get more difficult to remove as global inflation cuts into the ‘understandings’ that keep governments from having to deal with mass discontent and uprisings.

A test case recently was the attempt by the US to send an envoy, associated with the Guantanamo operation in the past, to Pakistan. Perhaps this was an attempt to test the boundaries of the acceptable.

The choice seemed crass for a Muslim country with an ambiguous attitude to both the US and the insurgency. The Pakistan Government pointed this out – diplomatically.

The Next President and American Power

How is the next US President is going to handle this situation? The US as an effective force is now restricted to a ‘civilisation’ with boundaries in the Huntington sense. It is Orwell’s Oceania.

The US and its most natural allies are reaching the limits of their expansion as they pacify the Balkans and extend NATO into the Ukraine and Caucasus (if they can). 

Or rather, geostrategically, they can extend power only into zones similar to Afghanistan, reproducing the model of the national socialists whereby the expectation was of permanent guerrilla war to keep the barbarians at bay beyond Europe's 'natural' frontiers.

The West is moving forward because it is on the defensive. It has to halt any rise of the 'real' centre-left within itself, defend boundaries as they settle [Ukraine, Caucasus, Levant] and smash or reform the heartlands of insurgency [effectively, the Muslim poorer classes in Asia and Africa].

It also has to hold allied non-Western elites to the Western economic way to stop them slipping under the protection of others - and, above all, keep the flow of energy and food resources heading in the right direction securely and safely.

These are massive tasks. Placing Hilary Clinton to one side for the moment, Obama and McCain offer radically different potential solutions.

McCain

We might call McCain’s position ‘deep conservatism’. For him and for his western conservative supporters, the answer is not internationalist but Huntingtonian – to strengthen and deepen what holds the West together as a distinctive liberal democratic culture.

From this point, it can then go on the offensive in defence of its values and powers. In short, he would make it in the interest of allies to cleave fast to America through self interest and, if necessary, fear. And yes, this is the precursor to a new Cold War.

It is directed at Russian influence in the context of Europe and Chinese influence in the context of global resource access.

It is also directed at Iran in the context of the defence of those Western frontiers formally and informally set in the Levant, in Iraq and in the palaces of the dictators and dynasts of the Arab world.

It will mean soft power moves against the European and Democrat centre-left, yet more resources poured into counter-insurgent operations. more diplomatic brinkmanship and more chances of direct military clashes between proxies and even principals.

However, it could also mean that the US returns to its position as respected Great Power in precisely the sense understood in the Nixon-Kissinger years. By definition, this means that we might see McCain in Tehran talking turkey with Khatami (not Ahmedinejad) one day.

Obama

We are waiting for Obama to articulate his alternative. Part of his problem is that this alternative is likely to be one that might lose him the US Election if articulated too clearly.

Another paradox of democracy is that the wisdom of crowds is all very well but not when the crowds are getting their information from half-educated journalists and manipulative editors.

Conservatives can, as in China, Iran and Russia or Italy, always rely on national-populism and simplicities to drive less educated or informed centre-ground voters into their camp.

Obama’s team have to talk in generalities and then accept that, in office, they will be faced by brutal reality and depress their more idealistic supporters – much as Kennedy proved to be far less progressive in foreign policy practice than we like to remember.

Some truths remain – the US has to struggle for resources, is the main target of insurgency (often for good reason from an historical perspective), will not abandon Europe to Russia or let Israel be pushed into the sea.

It also has a powerful military and corporate interest committed to the free global market and Obama is no socialist. He is also a lot less radical than we are being led to believe. All these truths limit the ‘change’ we can expect from an Obama Presidency.

However, there is a hard and a soft way of achieving national ends. An Obama Presidency is likely to look at the current state of Oceania and ask why it has to be a fortress instead of a base and why everything has to be done through the threat of blood and mayhem.

And so, while we will still see a lot of blood and mayhem and great power competition, the Obama way may seek to draw a line under the perceived hypocrisies of American democracy operating overseas that have undercut its ability to build support amongst global liberals. 

Extraordinary rendition, the Guantanamo system, the use of torture, the air attacks on civilians and so on are not just 'crimes', they are blunders. A statement that we suspect McCain would agree with even if he drew different conclusions on the balance of hard and soft power.

Obama may try tactics designed to bring the European centre-left into the American tent and negotiate boundaries with other empires so that political competition does not result in military confrontation.

He may drive allies to pay more for their security and economic arrangements with liberal if not democratic reforms.

The Hindsight of History

To historians, the Bush-Cheney administration is going to look like an anomaly but one that sped up an adjustment to changed post-Soviet conditions that might otherwise have taken twenty or thirty rather than six to eight years to effect.

A lot of the pain of an inevitable correction is being suffered in a short sharp burst.

The next President may either be the last gasp of the old ways or the President who sets America on an adjustment to a new phase in its Great Power status, one that might well keep it as ‘top dog’ for at least the first half of this century.

So, two big choices for the American electorate ... assuming Hilary Clinton is eventually knocked out of the race. We have neglected her because we see a Clinton II Administration as representing the triumph of the machine over revitalisation and just more of the same.

A woman who has acted ambiguously over the Iraq engagement, who twists and turns and places the acquisition of power wholly ahead of any fixed sense of principle, is less credible in international relations than the two men who oppose her.

It is nothing to do with gender - it is sad that people still will vote along gender or colour lines without asking whether the person is fit for the office.

America does not need an opportunist. America could certainly do without another four to eight years of drift amongst a squabbling bunch of Washington insiders. But that is a matter for Americans and the rest of us will just have to adjust to their final decision.

Most of the world is probably just happy that the Bush-Cheney Administration is finally exiting after eight years of getting everything wrong that could possibly have been done wrong – whether looked at from a liberal or a conservative realist perspective.

There are political markets within the West and even beyond its boundaries who are ready to support either Obama (from the centre-left but also from the centre-right) or McCain (from the right). All we outside America want is clarity and competence.

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