简体中文
Русский
Polski
Free Essays - International Relations Essays
How have threatsto U.S. security changed since the end of the Cold War?
The entirety ofthe U.S. defense apparatus during the Cold War was designed to provide anuclear and conventional weapons counterbalance to the forces of Communism,embodied primarily by the interests and actions of the Soviet Union. Arguably,the United States won the Cold War; the Berlin Wall fell on August 9, 1989, andwithin two years, the Soviet Union itself had collapsed into a loose federationof democratic republics, the largest of which - Russia - was comparablyfriendly to the United States given the near-toxic tensions between Soviets andAmericans of the previous 40 years.
The U.S. had spentliterally trillions of dollars to check the influence of Communism, real orimagined, over those 40 years, and fought two proxy wars, in Korea and Vietnam,with successively dubious results. In the wake of the Soviet Union's collapse,U.S. president George H.W. Bush declared a 'New World Order' in which the ColdWar was declared dead, and the threat of mutually assured nuclear destructionan extinct apparatus of foreign policy. Understated in this declaration,though certainly understood, was the ascendancy of the United States to aposition of pre-eminence. With the Soviet Union evaporated, the questionbecame how the U.S. government should (re-) organize its military anddiplomatic policies to deduce both current and future threats to its security.
The threats to theU.S. in the past fifteen years have been threefold: domestic threats due tothe U.S. economy being heavily weakened by deficit spending to win the Cold Warand the accompanying lack of infrastructure and social spending; the potentialthreat of Communist China should the U.S. not find a relatively peacefulequilibrium with a nation of over one billion people; and the threat fromradical Islamic fundamentalism, manifested generally via terrorist acts againstmilitary and civilian targets of both America and its allies.
With the electionof President Ronald Reagan in 1980, the American people sent a clear message totheir elected leaders that they wanted tough talk, backed with measurableaction, against the perceived threat of Soviet Communism. The American economywas limping along with annual inflation rates near 14%, anemic growth, and hightaxes. Its reputation abroad as a potent force was in tatters, particularlygiven the impotence demonstrated by the United States in allowing hundreds ofits citizens to be held hostage for over a year and a half by Iranianfundamentalists. (This event was one of the earliest signs of the clash betweenthe U.S. and Islamic fundamentalists that metastasized into the current globalconflict.) President Reagan immediately cut taxes on businesses and wealthyindividuals, while simultaneously increasing the U.S. defense budget (militaryspending during Reagan's eight years in office averaged out to 8% per year).He also espoused an aggressive, tough public stance towards the Soviet Union,famously calling it an evil empire in a March 1983 speech. The combinationof tough talk and increased military spending, combined with the fortuitousascendancy of reform-minded Mikhail Gorbachev to the presidency of the SovietUnion in 1985, helped accelerate the demise of the Soviet Union. However, by1990, the U.S. government was running staggering annual budget deficits -- ofnearly $300 billion a year, threatening to bring the American economy to itsknees and imperiling the safety net of social programs built into the Americangovernment. So while the U.S. eliminated the threat of Soviet Communism, itcreated another threat in the process of doing so: The price was much morethan the trillions spent on the national defense. The ultimate cost has beenthe destruction of this nation's social contract with its citizens, especiallyits promise of a rising standard of living in a secure domestic environment.(Giacolone, 1996) Thus, when President Bill Clinton was elected in 1992, thefirst order of business was to turn American attention inward to domesticaffairs, most notably getting control of the economy, and leave foreign affairslargely on autopilot since the world had largely been made safe for democracy.It is not to say that the Clinton administration played no role in worldaffairs; noteworthy were its efforts to broker peace in the Middle East betweenIsrael and Palestine, as well as efforts to stop ethnic cleansing in the formerYugoslavia. However, from 1993 to 2001, Clinton's years in office, the UnitedStates was overwhelmingly - and contentedly - more focused on internalaffairs. So as Clinton was solving the domestic crisis created by eliminatingthe Cold War threat, the threat of Islamic fundamentalism was developing offthe radar screen of most in the American government. More on this later.
During this time,and in the decades leading up to it, China had quietly become one of the mostpowerful economies on the planet, implementing a variety of free-market reformsinto its Communist systems in order to stoke the fires of the Chinese economicengine. The more aggressive, ideologically-driven Chinese leaders of theKorean and Vietnam War areas gave way to leadership that was more interested inasserting Chinese influence through economic means. This is not to say thatthere were not tensions between China and the United States; in fact, while Communismwas disintegrating in Eastern Europe, China cracked down harshly on its ownstudents who, emboldened by the apparent winds of democratic change around theworld, had gathered by the tens of thousands in the ancient Tiananmen Square inthe Chinese capital of Beijing to demand democratic reforms. On June 4, aftertwo months of tolerating the protests, the Chinese government cracked down andmurdered thousands of protesters, sending a clear message to its population andengendering vociferous global condemnation, particularly from the United Statesand European Union. Both entities imposed an arms embargo on China and were itnot for the eventual internal governmental triumph of pro-free-marketbureaucrats, who continued with economic reforms to liberalize China, an evenicier state of relations with China may have been reached, perhaps even with athreat of war between the U.S. and China.
China's militaryresources in the 1990s and today are not inconsiderable. The Chinese possessover 400 nuclear warheads, and conventional forces consisting of upwards of 2.5million active-duty troops and over 4,300 combat aircraft. While the Chinesemilitary equipment and technology is nowhere near the level of that of theUnited States, a sustained non-nuclear conflict with China would be immenselyexpensive and bloody for both countries; China is the only country on earththat could field a comparable amount of military forces as the United States.Perhaps in recognition of this, and acknowledging the war-weariness of theplanet as a whole, U.S. President Bill Clinton passionately argued that thebest way to encourage China to evolve beyond its totalitarian ways,particularly with respect to human rights, was to encourage the West to fullyengage China both economically and culturally. To 'open' China to the West,the Clinton Administration believed, would have the same long-term effect asanother Cold War, with far more salutary effects. To this end, Clinton lobbiedheavily, against considerable domestic pressure, for the United States toformally extend Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) with China and tosponsor China's membership into the World Trade Organization (WTO). Bothefforts were ultimately successful; the United States Senate ratified the U.S.-ChinaPNTR treaty on September 19, 2000 and China officially entered the WTO in May2001 after concluding agreements with the U.S. and the European Union in 1999and 2000, respectively. In doing so, the U.S. had neutralized a potentiallygrave threat in a new fashion - through economic partnership. U.S. Secretaryof State Madeline Albright summed up the American position thusly: China'saccession to the WTO and the extension of PNTR to China will serve thelong-term interest of all Americans and a China that is more fully part of theinternational system. (Albright, 1999).
The final threatpost-Cold War threat to U.S. security is one whose history is still unfoldingand whose outcome is far from certain - the U.S. clash with forces of Islamicfundamentalism around the world. The epic attacks of September 11, 2001 onAmerican soil in New York City and Washington D.C., as well as theirmastermind, Al Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, are well-known, but the factorswhich galvanized bin Laden and Al Qaida, and which continue to pose a gravethreat to the United States, are perhaps not so well-known.
The roots ofIslamic fundamentalist hatred for the United States is four-fold: one, theU.S. represents in many ways a decadent, secular humanist culture which isrepugnant to the mores of the deeply conservative fundamentalist sects ofIslam, who view the United States as a 'great Satan' for reasons of spiritualcorruption as much as anything else. Two, there is deep resentment within theMuslim world - beyond fundamentalist circles - for the United States' obvioushistorical favoritism for Israel in its territorial dispute with Palestine.Three, many Islamic fundamentalists were deeply offended that the United Statesplaced troops within Muslim holy areas in Saudi Arabia during the 1991 Gulf Waragainst Iraq; despite being invited by the Saudis to do so. Lastly, the Muslimworld - again, beyond fundamentalist circles - was deeply opposed to the 2003U.S. invasion of Iraq without United Nations Security Council approval, and tothe continuing U.S. occupation of Iraq.
Bin Laden, who asa figurehead is the one person most closely associated with the decentralized,unconventional global terrorist organization Al Qaida, is a Saudi native whoironically enjoyed the benefits of U.S. military support while he was servingas a freedom fighter (mujahedeen) in Afghanistan during the Sovietoccupation of that country during the 1980s. Bin Laden was clearly aware thatafter the demise of the Soviet Empire, no conventional military force couldsuccessfully oppose the United States or its allies, so he utilized the lessonslearned in the conflict with the Soviets and employed unconventional guerillatactics in a succession of terrorist attacks on U.S. and Western military andcivilian targets worldwide. Either emboldened or frustrated by the somewhatindifferent U.S. response to these attacks, Bin Laden and his minionsmasterminded the stunning 9/11 attacks on U.S. soil. This awoke the sleepinggiant, which promptly obliterated Al Qaida's operational power in Afghanistanand its partnership with the fundamentalist Islamic ruling Taliban.
Had the UnitedStates concentrated its military efforts on focusing on eradicating thevestiges of Al Qaida in Afghanistan and elsewhere, it might have been able todeclare at least a temporary victory in the so-called war on terror. However,the U.S. embarked upon a somewhat inexplicable invasion of Iraq in March 2003,ostensibly to stop Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein from using weapons of massdestruction which, it turned out, he had not possessed in many years. Thisinvasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq has severely taxed U.S. military andintelligence resources, not only hampering its ability to fight terror inAfghanistan and globally, but it has also inadvertently created a new nexus ofterrorist activity and the perfect recruiting tool for Al Qaida, i.e., yetanother American occupation of ancient holy lands. With the Iraqi insurgencystronger than ever, and the U.S. death toll standing at over 2,100 and mountingdaily, the U.S military is stretched thinner and stands less capable than everof dealing with the sole remaining legitimate threat to its interest andstability, Islamic fundamentalism.
The number ofMuslims in the world is estimated to be near 1.5 billion, according to theCouncil on American-Islamic Relations. The more the United States does toinflame the passions of those Muslims who are moderate in ideology, the more AlQaida will succeed in transforming itself from a fringe terrorist group andinto a powerful, mainstream political force. The U.S. cannot combat thisthreat by continuing to attack countries with no connection to Al Qaida andthereby inflaming Islamic passions. As former U.S. counterterrorism czarRichard Clarke notes, We and our values needed to be more appealing to Muslimsthan al Qaida is. Far from addressing the popular appeal of the enemy thatattacked us, Bush handed that enemy precisely what it wanted and needed, proofthat America was at war with Islam, that we were the new Crusaders come tooccupy Muslim land. (Clarke, 2004, p. 256)
Perhaps, then, themost significant threat to U.S. security since the end of the Cold War is theU.S. itself.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Cosgrove, Michael. The Cost of Winning:Global Development Policies and Broken Social Contacts. Rutgers UniversityPress, 1996.
Giacolone, Joseph. Review of The Costof Winning, April 1996. Available from:
http://www.econoclast.com/comments.htm
Moore, Frank. China's MilitaryCapabilities, Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies, June 2000.
Albright, Madeline. STATEMENT BYSECRETARY OF STATE MADELEINE K. ALBRIGHT: CHINA -- SENATE VOTE ON PERMANENTNORMAL TRADE RELATIONS, U.S. Department of State, September 19, 2000.Available from:
http://www.usconsulate.org.hk/uscn/state/2000/091901.htm
Clarke, Richard A. Against All Enemies.Free Press Publishers/Simon & Schuster, 2004.
Find out how a custom written essay can help you
Click hereAll of the essays in this section were written by students and then submitted to us to publish and help others. Thanks to all of the students who have submitted their essays to us. You should not hand in our essays as your own. We do not condone plagiarism! If you need custom essays on your exact essay questions, then have a look at our essay writing service.
