After serious thought and consideration, I have to say this: the US is not exactly the ideal ally for a nation to have. After the little Japanese 'incident', no self respecting nation should actually bother meeting more than half way with the United States. When I say that, I say it with their most celebrated ally in mind, the United Kingdom. God knows what the British politicians see in their American counterparts. With the Japanese Prime Minister famously retreating with a long face, many fractures in the American sphere of influence bubble up to the surface. For starters, when they call themselves a peerless superpower, they're partly true; it is the only nation with no true friends. The only reason their allies put up with the conceit of American insular pig-headedness is because their arrogance is not baseless. They hold severe leverage against their allies and anyone caught rocking the boat face stern consequences. It is classic carrot and stick diplomacy, worse; it is practised on one's own allies. For all the world cares, they might as well send a gunboat into Japanese waters to coerce them into submission. Such hard-lined diplomacy, while it may seem 'cool' to employ, has disastrous consequences in the long run. Let's face it, American influence is rapidly waning with a rising China and a unified Europe, and the sun is bound to set on Pax Americana; and when it does, the USA will immediately find itself facing something ten times as humiliating as the Suez Crisis, something that still brings nightmares to the British policy-makers.
For those not in the know, the USA has not always been a superpower or this interfering in the past. There was another nation, something much smaller, but much more powerful when it comes to getting its way, and it was Britain. The British Empire, at its height, was the largest empire the world has ever seen, the closest our planet ever got to a single world government. Sprawling across all seven continents, it encompassed a quarter of the world's land area and a third of the world's population. The sun, literally, never set on the British Empire, it had possessions on all of the longitudes, meaning it was day, constantly, at some part of the Empire, or the other. Its navy was larger than the next two most powerful navies combined, and it ruled the seas, unchallenged, and was the global policeman for more than two centuries. Established as the most formidable colonial power by the turn of the eighteenth century, after the Spanish War of Succession, it continued to rule the world till 1945, from whence our hero of the story, the United States took over.
Why I'm delivering this eulogy for a dead superpower is that, the US can learn from its mistakes. The funny part is, the British Empire made almost no mistakes in its heyday. It chose the right alliances, made the right enemies, it never bit off more than what it could chew. Even then, it collapsed and collapse it did, rapidly. It decolonised rapidly, something it did more than willingly, for, as it turns out, in some twisted kind of way, the Disraeli school of thought was right all along, something which they themselves didn't believe, as they thought Empire was purely for profit and power projection, the flimsy reason given to civilise the world was just an eyewash, and they knew it, at least they thought they did. But by the fifties, the colonies were proving to be too burdensome to carry, and was discovered it had always been so as it got more out of free trade with the Americas than the crown colonies of Africa, India being the only exception. This meant, they could get on the high horse, and at the same time, unload some of the weight on their shoulders. Getting back to the point, even during the peak of hegemony, Britain never resorted to such outright bullying, even on its worst enemies. It relied more on its soft power, economic clout and vast currency reserves to get its way about. In fact, many allies resented the fact that Britain wasn't belligerent enough, especially during the run up of events during the First World War. If she had been more willing to fight, Germany would have thought twice before openly supporting Austria in its case against the Slavic nations, and things wouldn't have steamrolled into a state of total war. What I'm trying to convey here is that, there's much wisdom in most of what Britain did in its tenure as superpower and America would do well to emulate its parent.
The reason Britain never exactly faded into oblivion, and still holds considerable influence on the international chess-board can be attributed to the fact that it never rubbed in the fact that it could annihilate the entire continent if it wanted to, when it could. It never doled away ultimatums like free food to nations, nor did it wait with bombs on its doorstep whenever things didn't go smoothly. They appreciated the power held through negotiation. Even today, many British veterans in Afghanistan constantly brood over the fact that their American counterparts are completely alien to the concept of dialogue. It's like an adolescent with superpowers, only too eager to show it off. It was quaintly amusing when it was a new superpower, but now it is maddening to see such vulgar display of military might, overkill in most situations and used only to intimidate other nations into compliance. If we thought George Bush's incessant war-mongering was annoying, his successor's efforts at peace-mongering are even more irksome. At least Bush was only a thorn in the flesh of fundamentalists and tyrannical despots; Obama seems to be cosying up to them, annoying old allies in the process. Actually his policy of complete back flip on one's friends began even before he assumed office, with a foolish statement entailing how he considered Britain no different than America's numerous other allies and the relationship they possessed was nothing special. Whatever the stance's relation to reality, saying it was most tactless of the would be American President. I don’t know what he hoped to achieve by that statement, but I gather it was an effort on his part to look the exact opposite of Bush, anti-Bush, if you will. But he must understand that one can't please everyone simultaneously all the time, a grave mistake politicians make very frequently.
As to the little Japanese goof up, America could've been more considerate, open to their views and respectful towards their sentiments. But what they ended up doing was consulting the menu for Obama's dinner (apparently salmonella and caviar are more important in diplomacy than listening to one's ally) while the Prime Minister presented his case on the American military base in Japan, and further went to the extent of calling him 'loopy', a statement made worse by the fact that the Japanese didn't really understand how offensive the word was, and nations in these situations quickly assume the worst (In this case, however, I can't see it getting any worse). After lobbying for a one to one with the President for more than a week, a brusque twenty minute session with a man not even looking at your face when you talk is not what he'd have had in mind. Nevertheless, what's done being done; the Foreign Ministry didn't even take the trouble of entering into damage control mode, leaving the Japanese quite cool with the Americans. Another instance of such callous insensitivity was when the First Family paid a state visit to Buckingham Palace and Mrs. Obama not observing protocol by hugging the Queen, something her own husband is not supposed to do on a state affair. The Prime Minister gifted him a pen-stand, carved out of the wood from HMS Gannet, a ship that served anti-slavery operations off the coast of Africa, a very thoughtful gift, one might say, while the President returned the gesture with a collection of Star-Trek CDs, unplayable anywhere except in American players. As inappropriate as a state gift that was, the least he could do was to make sure it wasn't completely useless.
Anyway, not that a nation can be judged for distributing Star-Trek DVDs, I'm sure there are better ways to make one's allies know that they mean something to them. Even half a century ago, the way it handled the Suez crisis was most dishonourable, considering the fact that Churchill could've easily done the same to the US during the Korean War, Britain held considerable Dollar reserves at that time and flooding all its possessions would've collapsed the Dollar; and showed Eisenhower's deep Anglophobic tendencies. Its invasion of Grenada was even more disgraceful, something the entire UN condemned as a flagrant breach of international law. The same holds for the 2003 Iraq invasion, at least it had one ally to support its claim in that case. All I'm saying is that, the USA need not bow down to any 'inferior' power, but the least it can do is to not demand the sovereignty of their allies. It won't stay up there for long, and its current policies will make sure that when it falls, it will fall hard.
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