True Global Leadership

Also posted at Radical Spirit

In the turbulence of UN resolutions and last-minute diplomacy and anti-war protests, it is easy to forget the wider context of the pending war with Iraq. As danger mounts, opinions tend to polarize and the rhetoric becomes increasingly bombastic on all sides. Time compresses and decisions hinge on horizons of days rather than decades.

Even at this final hour, though, I think that by stepping back from the arguments for and against military involvement in Iraq, we can gain greater clarity about how the situation can become an evolutionary step forward rather than a lateral maneuver for the United States and for the world. Right now, I believe that a non-UN-sanctioned, preemptive war with Iraq would be a lateral and possibly regressive step. It is only through an evolutionary step, one that catapults America beyond superpower bluster into legitimate global leadership, that we can begin to build a healthy future for the planet and rightfully address the Iraq situation.

As in all fights, the tendency is to focus entirely on the perceived enemy, in this case Saddam Hussein. While Saddam is certainly an unsavory dictator, one for whom it is easy to make the case that he should be removed from power for the good of his country and the world, I think the real question is deeper than whether or not he is a dangerous man. The real question is, “How can we begin to move beyond nation-centered politics into world-centered politics – beyond national self-interest to collective-interest?”

To address this question deeply and honestly, we first need to withdraw our attention from Iraq and consider ourselves. America is very conservatively 100 times more powerful than Iraq in terms of raw military, economic, and political might. Our actions, by virtue of that gross discrepancy in worldly power, have far greater impact on the health of the whole than virtually anything Saddam can do. Terrorist or nuclear activities could tip that balance slightly, at least in terms of fear, but, on the whole, America is by far the dominant force in the world and thus capable of the most good as well as the most destruction. Our power, if unchecked by law, moral discipline, or international constraint, is thus a more legitimate threat to world safety than Saddam can muster. We need to accept this simple fact: we are both the most powerful country in the world and the most potentially dangerous because no country, of its own accord, can very easily prevent us from doing as we wish.

It is thus important to see the pending war with Iraq as a secondary issue. The primary issue concerns America’s power relationship with the rest of the world. Does our superpower status give us the right to invade other countries and depose dictators? Ignore treaties and accords? Can we appoint ourselves enforcer for the planet and what disciplines must we abide by in order to play that role? Where are the checks and balances on our power? To what degree are we acting in service to all human beings and to what degree are we exploiting power imbalances for the sake of an economic elite?

Without handling these questions with rigorous self-honesty, America is already making blunders in the Iraq situation, sabotaging decades of diplomatic progress. Even George Bush Sr. has said as much. Our Saddam-colored glasses are blinding us to the problems of our stance inasmuch as it affects the larger, and much more fundamental issue of America’s relationship with global power.

The growing coalition of dissent by other countries, I believe, has less to do with Iraq and more to do with whether America is left unquestioned and unchecked. Iraq provides a test-case for whether America is willing to subject itself to international regulation and commit itself to international good via international governance. To the extent that we are not willing to do so, other countries are morally, politically, and strategically justified in forging alliances that can counterbalance our unchecked power. To do otherwise is simply irresponsible, regardless of whether or not it is desirable to get rid of Saddam Hussein.

Our founding fathers were clear that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. When they framed the Constitution, they had no rosy illusions about human nature. They assumed the worst and thus created a governance system that has proved remarkably resilient and generally quite fair.

Right now, though, America has no such checks and balances for its actions on the world stage. There is not a unifying code that we voluntarily submit ourselves to. We can break treaties, act unilaterally, and punish others with relative impunity. We can create double standards and exploit them. We can meddle on both sides of a conflict, depending on our interests of the day. We can generally get what we want through bullying. We can use our military in the service of economic interests abroad. The U.N. may exercise some controls on our behavior, but we tend to obey its mandates only when it serves our expressed national self-interest. International trade and monetary bodies can force us to bow down occasionally but they remain tilted in favor of American interests.

We thus find ourselves in an increasingly global world with a young and relatively powerless world government and a sole superpower that answers only to itself and is mainly committed to “national self-interest.”

The planet is, to put it mildly, in a dangerous situation.

Wherever power has been unchecked historically, there has been a strong tendency towards centralization, corruption, and an increase in suffering. The world with a unilateralist America is not a secure place, regardless of how many Saddams there are devising diabolic schemes.

There is absolutely a need for appropriate and decisive international military action, just as we need a strong and just police force to keep citizen’s behaviors in check within countries. However, only clouded thinking would lead the global community to appoint an already unchecked superpower to the role of global police force.

To act as a global policing force, as America aspires to do, many foundations must be laid, especially regarding the move from wielding power derived from our superpower status to legitimate global leadership. There are at least seven characteristics that are prerequisite for legitimate leadership:

1. Legitimate leadership is built upon trust. Those who are led must largely believe that the leader is committed to integrity, honesty, and transparent inquiry into problems. The leader’s actions must align with his words
2. Legitimate leadership rests upon checks and balances, which are necessary to ensure power is not corrupted.
3. Legitimate leadership is an act of service. Those in power must show a primary interest in the good of the collective ahead of their self-interest. In this way, true leaders are mission-centered rather than self-centered.
4. Legitimate leadership empowers others appropriately rather than concentrating power disproportionately. In other words, true leaders produce more leaders and empower them as situations demand.
5. Legitimate leadership is visionary, carrying the torch of a possible future.
6. Legitimate leadership is willing to lead by example, including following a foundation of ethics, performing more than one’s share of work, and making sacrifices where appropriate.
7. Legitimate leadership is compassionately fierce when something undermines the good of the whole. In a company this might mean the CEO fires a slacking employee. In a city, the police may jail a murderer. On a global level, this might even mean enacting a war. The defense function of a leader requires that he safeguard the good of the whole by whatever the most skillful means are to accomplish that defense.

While that is not a comprehensive catalog of leadership prerequisites, I do think those seven are foundational and relatively unquestionable. Without at least a solid foundation of those seven, America’s actions among nation-states will remain those of a unilateralist superpower rather than a global leader. We will not be, and should not be, legitimated in the role of global leader among nation-states much less validated as police enforcer. Other countries should band together to counterbalance our excesses, counter our extremes, and resist our moments of delusionary grandeur. That is actually the best favor they can do us: to buffer the world from the fallout of our own hubris and to do whatever they can to bind us to international law, treaties, accords, and governance.

America can either be forced by circumstances and international leverage to grow into a humbler, more service-centered leadership role in the world. Or we can actually choose to do so, a route that will build trust more quickly and with less egregious international tragedy. The repercussions of our mistakes are now writ large. Far better to experience them in virtual form than in gruesome detail.

While the length of this article only permits me to be suggestive about strategies for moving forward, I can offer a few recommendations for actions that would strengthen and legitimate America’s role as a true global leader by gradually creating an international structure that better safeguards the whole than we can ever do now as a unilateralist superpower. To the extent that we can enact these strategies, using the means we have at our disposal, brings us that much closer to ushering in a new era when war between nation states becomes as unthinkable as war between California and Arizona.

My recommendations:

1. Postpone military action in Iraq until we have more adequately addressed America’s power dynamics in the world.
2. Commit an increasing percentage of our national military budget to the United Nations police force, answerable only to the United Nations. This could start with 5% of our current budget and increase by 2% each year until the point at which the United Nations police force could take over the functional need for a global policing force while we retain whatever size military we feel is necessary to protect ourselves within our borders.
3. Lead the way in creating legitimate power for the U.N. General Assembly, subjecting ourselves and multinational corporations to taxation that generates money for programs that are focused on world betterment and world problems. As a mark of our global leadership, we should commit a greater percentage of our national resources to this effort than any other nation-state.
4. Hold ourselves to a high standard of compliance around global treaties that aim for collective benefit and the redress of economic, environmental, military, and political problems. Our adherence should be exemplary. Or, if we truly question the merit of an international accord, we should lead the way in creating agreements that even better serve the global interest rather than simply ignoring or undermining the existing attempts.
5. Take a more neutral stance on Israel, one that calls Israel to task for its human rights abuses in Palestine. Extend this more impartial stance to all allies, addressing their abuses with as much truthtelling as we can muster, just as we do with our professed enemies.
6. Phase out all funding of military activities in foreign countries, redirecting that money to the appropriate global enforcer, the United Nations. Most of our meddling has come back to bite us eventually, including Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. We need to unload future guns now.
7. Set a strong leadership example in foreign aid. We currently are near the bottom of the list in terms of percentage GNP spent on foreign aid. We should aspire to be the most generous nation on the planet given our status as wealthiest.
8. Exert strong international leadership on multinational solutions to pressing health, environmental, and other problems. We should propose innovative new solutions and show leadership in carrying them out, especially in areas such as clean energy development.
9. Take seriously the process of coming clean by exposing corporate interests in politics, our history of involvement in coups, our subsidies of fringe military groups, etc. The leadership in our land should be the most forthright in the process of self-examination and exposure of misdeeds, lies, or whitewashing in our past so that we can enter the future with more integrity. When our government officials commit to becoming more honest and transparent, a much deeper foundation of international trust will be built.
10. Publicly apologize to those people and countries that we have harmed and begin discussions about how we can begin to collaborate together on a better future.

While these steps might seem to weaken America, they only do so inasmuch as we cling to our dominant superpower status as the mark of strength. As we enact them, we will begin to take on a much deeper kind of global leadership, one that earns more respect than envy and more gratitude than hatred, one that can catapult the whole planet forward into a future where war is no longer thinkable between nation-states and a legitimate and beneficial world government is able to cope with global problems.

I believe that there is no greater task in the world today than for America to proceed through the maturation of its leadership, emerging from a more self-interested adolescence as a state into a nobler adulthood. We have the potential to act as a torchbearer for a better tomorrow. Do we heed the call? I hope this article has convinced at least a few people that the question of how to proceed with that maturation is of far deeper significance than Saddam’s cache of chemical weapons. The most lasting results of the Iraq situation will hinge upon whether we heed the call to use the challenges of the moment to evolve still further as a country. I thus pray that we move with wisdom, grace, clarity, and love in the days, years, and even decades ahead.