Summary
Nikhil Dhanrajgir & Bas de Gaay Fortman
Amerikaanse superioriteit ingebed: multilateralisme als bijprodukt
Nikhil Dhanrajgir and Bas de Gaay Fortman continue a discussion on ‘American exceptionalism’ set of with an earlier paper by the second author, entitled ‘Bella Americana: the Need for Global Reform (in Paul van Seters, Bas de Gaay Fortman and Arie de Ruijter, Globalization and Its New Divides: Malcontents, Recipes, and Reform, Amsterdam University Press & West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 2003, pp. 225-233) which dealt with background and consequences of the American dissociation from the international legal and political order created after World War II. The current article examines this divergence in the light of US foreign policy in general, pointing out that hegemony, unilateralism and pre-emptive strike together represent a certain ‘constant’ in American foreign policy. The paper then examines the socalled ‘war on terror’, trying to understand its flaws within the context of American strategic culture. Arguably, however, what has changed after 9/11 is not just the nature of security threats as such but also the global environment in which these manifest themselves. Taking supremacy of the world’s military, technological and financial-economic superpower as a basis for further analysis, the issue becomes how to get that hegemony embedded in a multilateral setting. Here the notion of ‘policy by-products’ appears to open new venues. Continuing unilateralism, the paper argues, would constitute a serious threat to American security proper.