Smoke and Mirrors: Globalized Terrorism and the Illusion of Multilateral Security

Graeme S. Mount is a professor of history at Laurentian University. He
is the author of Canada’s Enemies: Spies and Spying in the Peaceable
Kingdom, Chile and the Nazis, and The Diplomacy of War: The Case of
Korea.

Harvey believes that the events of 9/11 were as decisive in changing
U.S. diplomacy as the revolutions of 1989 in Eastern Europe, and that
Pakistan and Afghanistan have become more valuable U.S. allies than
France and Germany. To him, U.S. unilateralism is inevitable and
desirable, and he predicts that unilateralism will outlast the George W.
Bush administration. Harvey calls on Canada to abandon multilateralism
and support the United States.

Harvey approves of the Bush administration’s abrogation of the ABM
Treaty and the 2003 invasion of Iraq. So what if Russia and China
develop more ballistic missiles in response? Many more weapons in
Russian or Chinese hands, he reasons, will be less dangerous than a
single nuclear weapon “deployed by Iraq, Iran [or] North Korea.”
What Harvey fails to allow for is a madman or an ideologue as head of
the government in either country. He also ignores the possibility that a
nuclear buildup in China could prompt one in India, which could
stimulate one in Pakistan, where an ideologue could replace President
Musharraf.

Concern for the sentiments of U.S. allies delayed Iraq’s liberation
by more than a decade, Harvey says, and France and Russia had selfish
reasons for opposing the 2003 war. That the U.S. government undoubtedly
had selfish reasons (relating to oil) for invading Iraq is ignored.
Harvey charges that the UN is flawed and slow to act. While that may be
true, the law of the jungle may prove a dangerous alternative.

Unilateralism has unforeseen costs. In 1903, Theodore Roosevelt’s
government detached Panama from Colombia. Twenty years later, after
geologists discovered oil in Colombia, that country’s government
refused to deal with U.S. companies. In 1881, Secretary of State James
G. Blaine sympathized with Peru and Bolivia, countries at war with
Chile. A decade later, Blaine—again Secretary of State—threatened
military action against Valparaiso, Chile. In 1930, the Hawley-Smoot
Tariff excluded Chilean goods from the U.S. market. In 1942, Franklin
Roosevelt’s government discovered that winning Chilean co-operation in
the war against Germany was difficult. What price will America pay for
its invasion of Iraq?

Predictions, including Harvey’s, are risky. Fifty years ago, who
foresaw the Asian Tigers (countries that pursue high growth through
export-driven trade strategies)? On November 8, 1989, who anticipated
the opening of the Berlin Wall the next day, the disappearance of East
Germany not quite a year later, and the disintegration of the USSR
barely a year after that? How many expected the relatively peaceful end
of apartheid in South Africa? Harvey’s information on Iraq is already
dated.