POLITICS-U.S.: Suddenly Defied Everywhere, US Hegemony Looks Hollow

By Jim Lobe Reprint | | Print |

Analysis - Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, May 15 1998 (IPS) - Pax Americana – the hegemony enjoyed by Washington after the Cold War – is suddenly under siege.

Major and minor powers, including some of Washington’s closest allies, are thumbing their noses at the Yankee Colossus 100 years after it rose to global power status as a result of the Spanish- American War and almost ten years after it won the Cold War.

Just weeks after much of the world was complaining loudly about US unilateralism during the latest standoff with Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, regions considered strategically important appear to be spinning out of control in ways that make the United States extremely uncomfortable.

The situation presents a special challenge to President Bill Clinton as he prepares for this weekend’s summit in Britain of the Group of Seven (G-7) industrial powers plus Russia. If he can forge unity on key issues with the West’s top leaders and Russian President Boris Yeltsin, he could emerge in a stronger position. Disunity, on the other hand, could further erode Washington’s credibility at a time when it is being sorely tested.

Consider the past week, which opened in relative calm and is ending in tumult.

First, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defied a US ultimatum to come to Washington and approve, with Palestine President Yasir Arafat, Washington-authored plans for a long-overdue Israeli pullback from the West Bank. Instead, Netanyahu came to Washington, denounced the Oslo peace process as having “failed miserably,” and made new demands for a “territorial buffer” to protect Israel from “terrorism.”

By the end of the week, at least five Palestinians had been killed during protests by hundreds of thousands of people in Gaza and the West Bank, leaving Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who had issued the US ultimatum, to beg Netanyahu for a deal. Her spokesman, James Rubin, was left to observe lamely that the violence “reflects a deterioration in relations between Israelis and Palestinians.”

But Netanyahu was just the appetizer for the week. The main dish was Monday’s detonation – undetected by the 30-billion-dollar- a-year US intelligence establishment – of three nuclear devices by India, which, as a major “emerging market,” Clinton had been courting avidly almost since taking office in 1993.

Outraged, Clinton announced that he would slap far-reaching sanctions against the South Asian giant – a threat which was greeted by New Delhi Tuesday morning with two more tests.

Faced with this monumental defiance, Clinton quickly dispatched to Islamabad two top officials, including the commander of US forces in the Middle East and South Asia, to warn Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif not to respond by carrying out tests of Pakistan’s nuclear capability.

However, most US and independent analysts were resigned to a Pakistani test. “We are aware of the strong political pressure that now exists in Pakistan to do that, and we have reason to believe that that is a live possibility,” Rubin said Thursday.

Other senior officials warned that the Indian explosions had transformed big-power politics virtually overnight, and that a Pakistani reaction not only would move the South Asian region closer to nuclear confrontation, but also would threaten US nuclear non-proliferation efforts worldwide.

Even as those efforts came under unprecedented challenge, increasing civil disorder in Indonesia – including fatal clashes between police and protestors – raised new questions about US interests and influence in yet another vital region.

Former Secretary of State Warren Christopher first began calling for President Suharto to prepare a transition almost two years ago, but those urgings were overtaken last year when the Indonesian economy collapsed and Washington decided that restoring its health was more important than political change.

In spite of frantic efforts by the US Treasury and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to promote reform, the economic crisis has only worsened. The killing by police of protesting students in Jakarta this week has transformed the situation into an unprecedented political crisis in which Washington finds it has little or no leverage.

Albright this week called for “political reform …through dialogue between the Indonesian government and its citizens.” Washington also called on security forces to exercise restraint in dealing with protestors, a warning that seemed to be lost amid chaos all over Jakarta, where markets reportedly were set ablaze Thursday.

Washington had intended to send Adm. Joseph Prueher, commander of US Pacific forces, to the Indonesian capital Thursday to meet with senior officers of the Indonesian army – the one national institution which Washington is certain will play a key role in deciding Suharto’s fate.

But, in a demonstration of US confusion, Assistant Secretary of State Stanley Roth the same day admitted to lawmakers, “Given the deterioration today and the situation in Jakarta, there was a literal question of getting into the country and then the question of who do you meet with when you get there.” A short time later, the State Department announced the evacuation of all non-essential US embassy staff from Indonesia.

Those crises claimed the headlines but others, some of long standing, festered all week. US-mediated negotiations over Cyprus collapsed; tensions in Kosovo continued to rise; the military regime in Nigeria, which has resisted US demands to democratise for five years, jailed a prominent human rights activist who had just returned from Washington; and North Korea, complaining that the US had not honoured commitments to supply it with oil, unsealed a nuclear reactor on which it had frozen construction in 1994.

It was not a good week. Nor is it likely to be a good weekend.

G-7 leaders and Yeltsin probably will join Clinton in verbal denunciations of India, admonishments to Pakistan, and exhortations for peace in the Middle East and Indonesia. But they have their own axes to grind – beginning with the US Congress’ refusal to pay its dues to the United Nations and the IMF.

Washington’s partners have defied it on trade and investment in Iran, Libya and Cuba, and are losing patience with Washington’s reluctance to get tough with Netanyahu. France and Russia have ruled out sanctions against India. Japan also is leery of coming down too hard on New Delhi and has become increasingly angry about US pressure to reform its financial system.

It’s a tough time for the hegemon.