Bullfighter! An Idea Whose Time Has Come!

[x NYTimes]

August 3, 2003

Initiating Mission-Critical Jargon Reduction

By GEOFFREY NUNBERG

Asking a business consulting firm to repair the damage business itself has done to the English language may feel a bit like entrusting the school nutrition program to a fried chicken chain. Nonetheless, since last month almost 100,000 people have downloaded a free program from Deloitte Consulting that plugs into Microsoft Word and PowerPoint and flags jargon like "best of breed," and "synergies" and proposes ordinary English alternatives. The freeware program can be downloaded at BullFighter.

Over the past 20 years, business has replaced the bureaucracy in the public mind as the chief perpetrator of doublespeak. On the Web, references to corporate or business jargon outnumber references to bureaucratic or government jargon by 3 to 1. It's a remarkable shift in attitudes, particularly since government hasn't exactly been sleeping on the job.

True, complaints about the language of business aren't new. Critics have long griped about the use of "contact" as a verb. Back in 1931, a Western Union vice president called the verb "a hideous vulgarism" and banned it from company documents, and H. L. Mencken described it in 1936 as one of the "counter words" of "the heyday of Babbittry." (The condemnation is repeated in the most recent edition of "The Elements of Style," by William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White, which is apparently still holding out for "write, phone, fax, wire, e-mail or click on us.") And mid-20th-century businessmen were ridiculed for inventions like "performancewise," and "depreciationwise" — a vogue promoted by Fortune magazine, which Archibald McLeish once described as "understaffed good-writer-wise."

Still, it's hard to get over the impression that where there's smoke, there's downsizing. Business jargon may not be new, but it is more visible and more pervasive in corporate life than it used to be. Strategists and consultants bandy clichés like "coopetition," "low-hanging fruit" and "mission-critical," which repackage old concepts in shiny new shrinkwrap.

Human resources departments (Mencken would have loved that name) have appropriated the language of the human potential movement to smooth the edges of hierarchy and conflict — "Let's revisit that issue to align our end-state visions."

Naming consultants churn out high-tech portmanteau names, with an eye to how they will play on Wall Street rather than on the factory floor. When a chemical company spins off its decorative building products division as Omnova Solutions, they're thinking of how the name will look on a stock offering, not a softball jersey.

And then there's the stiff-gaited swagger of managerial slang. I recall a line from a memo I received on the day I started work at a corporate research lab: "Cascade this to your people and see what the push-back is." If that sentence were a person, it would walk like George W. Bush.

It's tempting to see all this as the sign of an increase in managerial pretension and fatuity. That's the view according to Dilbert, which depicts the modern office as something like the England of Walter Scott's Ivanhoe, where hard-working English-speaking serfs are oppressed by supercilious overlords who speak a foreign tongue.

That picture appeals not just to the grunts in the cube-farms, but to their corporate superiors, who find Dilbert's dimwitted boss as risible as everybody else does.

In fact Dilbert's creator, Scott Adams, has made a lucrative sideline out of helping management to get its message across. In his consulting capacity, Dilbert has enabled Honda of America to "develop the key message [that] quality is a core value" and helped Xerox to invest employees with the "sense of ownership" that comes from an "empowering work environment."

That's the curious thing about corporate jargon — everyone deplores it, but nobody can resist it.

The Deloitte division that developed BullFighter promises "thought-leading research" that "empowers global enterprises." A promotional brochure from a large British law firm that offers its clients "tax compliance advice which is effective, clear and jargon-free" continues: "Our approach is proactive. We also believe that tax rules can play a positive role in incentivizing investors."

Reading that, you're struck less by its pretension than by its ingenuousness — it reminds you of Molière's M. Jordain, who was astonished to learn he had been speaking prose all his life.

But blaming the proliferation of business cant on an increase in phoniness is like blaming the recent corporate scandals on a sudden increase in greed. Both are the outgrowths of the changing nature of the corporation itself. If there's an invisible hand that moves the market, there sometimes seems to be an invisible mouth that speaks for it.

Consultants like to talk about "building high-performance corporate cultures," but as with a lot of the things we distinguish as cultures nowadays, the differences between corporations are actually pretty superficial — if they weren't, people wouldn't all be using the same jargon and papering their cubicle walls with the same comic strips, nor would top managers find it so easy to move from soft-drink companies to computer firms.

But America does have a culture of the corporation, and it is increasingly detached from the values that are touchstones in our personal dealings. Few people nowadays perceive the historical connection between "private sector" and "private life."

The corporation was created as a legal fiction to reduce personal responsibility. The new language merely acknowledges that function. Reducing your work force to cut costs doesn't carry the same moral stigma as dismissing an old family retainer. It's understandable that managers would want to find other words for the process — it's nothing personal, after all.

And in its way, the language also serves to insulate employees from the implications that everyday words would have. In ordinary life it's enough to recognize problems, goals and watersheds, but when we get to the office we're obliged to talk about issues, missions and inflection points. It isn't just that those words are grander; they are also reassuringly removed from the things we really care about.

When people talk about wanting to make happy lives for their children, they don't call it a "mission" — it's too important for that. Yet some companies do manage to talk more plainly than others — Deloitte points to the Home Depot and Apple Computer — and in fact the evidence suggests that that's a good indicator of a company's financial well-being.

Not that curbing jargon is likely to do much for a company's bottom line all by itself. But it can't do any harm to call people on the buzzwords they use. It's like requiring gang members to leave their colors at home and wear blazers and ties to school — it may not subdue their obstreperous natures, but it makes those cocky poses a little harder to strike.

Copyright © 2003 The New York Times Company

Rees Is Right And Wrong

Just today, a student in HIST 1302-004 with me this term was speaking disparagingly of the history he was taught in grades K-12. I replied that the right wing in Texas attacked textbooks that didn't uphold traditional values and heroes. School districts in Texas are predictably gunshy about the teaching of controversial content in the State's classrooms. On top of that, Texas history teachers in the public schools are usually the poorest of the lot. (Anybody can teach history?) Coaches — universally assigned to a teaching area where the least damage can be done — are placed in Texas history classrooms. I describe them for my students: male, overweight, doubleknit clothing (usually with the team mascot imprinted), a huge ring of keys, and a general lack of knowledge of the subject. Now, Lamar Alexander wants to fund the teaching of patriotism! I take issue with Professor Rees denigration of Richard Hofstadter as a consensus historian. I reject that categorization as inaccurate and untrue. Rees is right about Lamar Alexander (stalking horse for Lynn Chaney?) and wrong about Richard Hofstadter.

The Troubling Assumptions Behind Lamar Alexander's History Project

by

Jonathan Rees

Mr. Rees is Associate Professor of History, Colorado State University – Pueblo.

On March 4th, Republican Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee introduced the American History and Civics Education Act of 2003. If this bill becomes law, it will allow for the creation of summer residential academies to instruct both teachers and high school students about "key events," "key ideas" and "key persons" in American history. It would also create a national alliance of school teachers "to facilitate the sharing of ideas" and "encourage best practices in the teaching of American history and civics."

According to Alexander, good history teaching helps students understand the core values at the center of our government system. "From the founding of America," he declared on the Senate floor when he introduced this legislation, "we have always understood how important it is for citizens to understand the principles that unite us as a country. . . . To become an American citizen, you subscribe to those principles."

He continued: "[I]f most of our politics and government is about applying to our most urgent problems the principles and characteristics that make us the exceptional United States of America, then we had better get about the teaching and learning of those principles and characteristics."

At a time when the news is littered with stories of basic facts about American history that students do not know, this bill has received broad bipartisan support. In the Senate, it garnered 37 co-sponsors and passed 90-0 on June 20th. The act now awaits approval in the House of Representatives. [Editor's Note: On July 18 the National Coalition for History reported that the bill may not be funded.]

Unfortunately, the Alexander bill has not received the close scrutiny it deserves. The educational philosophy behind it is a relic of the Cold War and even though support for the bill is bipartisan, its passage would facilitate the passage of many partisan policies.

To those of us who teach the history of the study of American history (also known as historiography), the idea that Americans are united by a set of common beliefs is known as "consensus history." Consensus history developed in the 1950s as a way to demonstrate the superiority of democratic ideals in the United States over the communist doctrines of the Soviet Union.

It is no coincidence that Alexander cited perhaps the preeminent consensus historian of the 1950s, Richard Hofstadter, to support his legislation. "It has been our fate as a nation," Hofstadter wrote, "not to have ideologies but to be one." In her book History's Memory, Ellen Fitzpatrick reminds us that consensus history was never the preeminent school of historiography in America, yet presumably Lamar Alexander would make it the guiding philosophy behind all public history and civics instruction.

To Alexander, the years immediately preceding 1960 were a kind of golden age for history and civics education in the United States. Then the educational reforms of the 1960s and 1970s led American students astray by celebrating "multiculturalism and bilingualism and diversity at a time when there should have been more emphasis on a common culture and learning English and unity."

For historians, the 1960s marked the beginning of the so-called "New Social History." Around this time, scholars began to take scholarship in new directions, examining the history of largely overlooked groups like African Americans, women and working-class people with a new sense of urgency. The insights gained from this research have contributed to greater understanding of how these groups affected many aspects of American history in general.

Therefore, Democrats in the House who are considering voting for this legislation should understand that it is an attack on the legitimacy (and therefore the power) of some of their most important constituencies. For example, the resurgence of consensus history would de-emphasize the importance of American labor history. If students do not understand the reasons that workers struggled to gain collective bargaining rights, it will be easier for conservatives to chip away at them, like the Bush administration did last year by eliminating these rights for Department of Homeland Security employees.

By emphasizing consensus over the teaching of African American history, students will not recognize the depth of struggle that people like Martin Luther King, Jr. faced in getting the government to enforce constitutional provisions guaranteeing civil rights for all races. This will make it easier to argue that racism is a thing of the past and affirmative action is unnecessary.

As important as the stories of these groups are to the overall narrative of American history, the problems with the Alexander bill are more than just sins of omission. Even if American students should know more about the founding fathers, the Civil War and other such topics, the kind of patriotic boasting that this bill encourages helps perpetuate an environment of continuous war.

As George Packer writes in the most recent issue of Mother Jones, "Morality, in the form of the universal principals articulated in the Declaration of Independence" is the foundation of the neo-conservative foreign policy that led to the current conflict in Iraq and threatens to cause future wars. "Conservative idealism sees America and goodness as identical. Its logic proclaims, We are righteous; therefore what we do is right. This is a functional definition of zealotry, and it is not given to second thoughts or moral complexity. It leads to hubris and self-blindness; it lacks what idealism most needs, a check on its own tendency to overreach and detach itself from human reality."

It should be the job of historians to provide material to help prevent America from making these kinds of mistakes. Instead, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld has offered a controversial take of post-Revolutionary America to argue that Iraq is now doing fine. As Mary Beth Norton explained in the New York Times recently, "the basic interpretation of American history [Rumsfeld] advances is so ancient it creaks." Indeed, "it has essentially been dead for at least 50 years."

No wonder President Bush is so down on revisionists. Recent historical scholarship undermines the consensus he is trying to build for many of his policies. And if the Alexander bill passes, fewer students will be able to use history as a means to question the President's conservative agenda.

© 2003 The History News Network

Iraq & Vietnam: Nice Comparison Here

This is my current BIG nightmare. W denigrates revisionist historians. He wouldn't know history if he read it! If this be treason, make the most of it!

Vietnam Echoes Are Getting Louder and Louder

by Christian G. Appy

Mr. Appy holds a Ph.D. in American civilization and has taught at both Harvard University and MIT, where he was an associate professor of history. He is the author of Patriots: The Vietnam War Remembered From All Sides.

An "invisible enemy" strikes U.S. soldiers in a faraway land we claim to be saving; overwhelming American firepower kills thousands before many citizens realize their president used phony pretexts to justify military action; policy makers insist that while progress is steady we must be patient; anti-American guerrillas attack their own countrymen, whom they deem U.S. "puppets"; only a few nations send troops to support the United States' cause; talk of a "quagmire" fills the air.

Sound familiar? The specter of the Vietnam War so haunts the American soul there is no keeping it repressed, try as we might. Even events bearing only superficial similarity to that two-decade disaster can trigger its memory. So for many the ongoing guerrilla war in Iraq has become a Vietnam War Rorschach test, in which troubling images of the present evoke nightmares of the past.

In Vietnam, the more troops we inserted, the more anger our policies produced.


No wonder Donald Rumsfeld clinches his jaw whenever he hears the Q-word. In many ways, of course, the Iraq-Vietnam analogy is strained, even absurd. We're comparing four months to two decades; linking a beleaguered occupation of Iraq after the speedy overthrow of a despised dictator to a protracted war on behalf of an unpopular South Vietnamese government against a nationwide Communist movement led by the widely revered Ho Chi Minh (who was supported by China and the Soviet Union); 240 American deaths in Iraq to 58,000 in Vietnam; perhaps 15,000 Iraqi deaths to three million Vietnamese.

However, there are also real similarities between the two wars that should be of great concern, the most important of which is that in Iraq, as in South Vietnam, massive numbers of American troops are being asked not just to fight a war, but to achieve an extremely difficult, perhaps impossible, political goal. In both wars the United States publicly defined its ultimate objective as the establishment of political self-rule and independence on foreign ground, of a local government that could survive without a large and permanent American occupation force.

On April 7, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson said, "We want nothing for ourselves -- only that the people of South Vietnam be allowed to guide their own country in their own way." President Bush makes precisely the same claim about Iraq. In truth, the selflessness is as fraudulent now as it was then. Just as four American presidents refused to consider a South Vietnamese government that would include Communist participation, the Bush administration is not about to tolerate a radical Islamist government unfriendly to a significant U.S. political, economic and military presence. In Iraq, perhaps even more than in Vietnam, the United States wants to determine the outcome of "self-determination."


American troops in Iraq are likely to prove incapable of building local support for any government.


But just as in Vietnam, American troops in Iraq are likely to prove incapable of building local support for any government -- pro-American, truly self-determining or otherwise. In fact, if we can predict one thing from history, it's that their armed presence is almost guaranteed to generate opposition to any government associated with U.S. interests. In Vietnam, the more troops we inserted and the more Vietnamese we killed, the more anger and resentment our policies produced, thus giving ever more legitimacy to the forces opposing U.S. intervention.

We can't expect soldiers to win "hearts and minds," least of all when they're being fired on. What we can expect is that our increasingly frustrated, homesick and demoralized troops may become ever more cynical about "nation-building" and fall back on the line infamously uttered by an American officer in Vietnam, "Grab 'em by the balls and their hearts and minds will follow."

We should have learned from Vietnam that military dominance is not the same thing as political legitimacy. Of course, we have the power to occupy Iraq indefinitely. But, as in Vietnam, it may be that no foreign power can install a government that will gain the widespread support of its own people. And the American people may eventually decide it is no longer worth trying.

© 2003 TomPaine.com

What? The National Association of Scholars in Sapper's Rants & Raves?

Here I go. Including a piece from the National Association of Scholars in my Rants & Raves. What grabbed me was Reeves' assessment of Ann Coulter's Treason in his fourth paragraph. Reeves' attack on the Coulter nonsense has brought the rightwing academic nuts out of the woodwork. I have read a defense of Coulter's garbage within an attack on Reeves' polemic. The old stereotype of liberal/left professors is as nonsensical as Coulter's praise of McCarthy as a patriot. A lot of the professors at major public and private universities are paid in the six-figures for teaching 2 or 3 courses per year. Most would be more at home at a meeting of the U. S. Chamber of Commerce than at a faculty meeting. I know a guy (a closet racist) who teaches in a black studies department in a major state university. The stuff this guy spouts is closer to something said by Josef Goebbels than by Thomas Reeves. I am certain that this guy — if he's read Coulter's nonsense — would endorse her book as a great read.

Shouldn't We Be Talking About What Colleges Teach Rather than Just Who Gets into College?

by

Thomas Reeves

Mr. Reeves is the author of A Question of Character: A Life of John F. Kennedy. His latest book is America's Bishop: The Life and Times of Fulton J. Sheen (Encounter, 2001).

The U.S. Supreme Court's verdict in the University of Michigan case, upholding Affirmative Action in admissions to institutions of higher education, has received extensive analysis, much of it critical. The most formidable critiques I have read were by Carol Iannone, Stanley Rothman, Shelby Steele, and by officials of the National Association of Scholars (NAS) in their formal statement. These commentaries call attention to the myth of the magic of diversity in the classroom, to the unconstitutional and immoral nature of reverse discrimination, and to the fuzzy thinking backing up the Court's narrow decision. What we need now, I think, is a careful study of the Affirmative Action bureaucracy that pervades American business, government, and industry. My guess is that such a study would discover much cynicism and blackmail.

But what struck me during the recent uproar was the complete lack of attention in the major media to the deeper problem in higher education. The vital issue facing us today is not who gets in but what goes on once they're there. That is to say, why do we fuss endlessly about admissions (especially when the great majority of colleges and universities in America let almost anyone in) when we seem to care little or nothing about what is taught and what graduates come away with? The great triumph, it seems, is to be admitted to a prestigious college or university. After that, silence.

The story of the debasement of higher education in recent decades is familiar to NAS members: the "life-experience" credits, courses (and majors) without intellectual content, leftist propaganda masquerading as scholarship, lowered expectations and inflated grading, and the failure to require the basics of a traditional, rigorous, and meaningful education.

Being a historian, I am especially sensitive to the lack of required history courses. I recently lunched with a young graduate of a prestigious university who majored in marketing and had not had a history course since his second year of high school. Such innocence is dangerous. It leads otherwise thoughtful people, for example, to accept all sorts of nonsense, such as the recent dismissal of the whole concept of McCarthyism by right-wing ideologue Ann Coulter in her book Treason. Anti-Catholicism, thick in the intellectual air of our time, is based in great part on historical ignorance.

Very few seem to pay any attention to the contents of higher education any more. College and university administrators, of course, are not eager to rock the boat. A contented faculty and student body can translate into salary increases and personal promotion. Whatever people want, they can have, say many chancellors and presidents. Unless, of course, the request infringes upon an assortment of widely-held assumptions about racial, ethnic, and sexual diversity. Or is conservative.

Why should administrators argue for tougher courses or higher requirements when they can simply contend, ad nauseum, that "academic excellence" reigns on campus and never be required to define or explain what they mean? Why propose the elimination of the Mass Communications major or the Film Studies program when that will only result in outcry, especially from the cash-producing Athletics Department?

Faculty members are primarily interested in their careers, as well, and like to keep students happy. High grades and low requirements very often lead to high teaching ratings, which can be converted into higher pay and promotions. Why assign three books when the students complain about one? In time, this approach often leads to take-home exams. Only a professor's conscience demands academic rigor, and it takes little to stifle that inner voice.

Students, of course, do not seek higher requirements. They want to have fun, graduate by any means, get a good job, and buy a Lexus and a McMansion. Polls show consistently that financial prosperity is the major student goal, not education. "Easy is better than hard." That should be printed on campus sweatshirts. Or perhaps, "Loot not Latin."

Business doesn't seem to care what graduates are taught, beyond the basics of business itself. When was the last time you saw a business leader on a board of regents suggest higher educational standards? One might think business would want people to take graduation, not just entrance, examinations. This lack of concern requires further study. Is anti-intellectualism wed to American business? Then how do you account for the consistent excellence of the Wall Street Journal and the assortment of first-rate think tanks, magazines, and cultural institutions supported by business people?

Alumni seem interested primarily in the success of campus athletic teams. Where is the grad who promotes the return of required foreign languages, lab sciences, history, political science, literature, and philosophy? The people receiving the loudest cheers from alumni are seven feet tall.

Politicians seem to care mostly, if not solely, about the costs, rather than the content, of higher education. Name a governor, for example, who goes beyond the cant of "excellence" when discussing his state's colleges and universities.

So, if few care about what goes on, anything will go on. And so it does. And we spend our energy fussing exclusively about who gets into the few "great" institutions. Why not concentrate on what students will learn once they are enrolled…in every accredited college and university in this country?

© 2003 National Association of Scholars

Some Good News

[x The Tennessean]
Saturday, 08/02/03

Support for 1st Amendment rising after 9/11

By LEON ALLIGOOD

Staff Writer


Americans recovering from fear after attacks

Two years after terrorists made America blink about personal freedoms secured by the First Amendment, Americans appear to be reconsidering the issue.

In a study issued yesterday by the First Amendment Center in collaboration with American Journalism Review magazine, Americans' support for their First Amendment freedoms are returning to pre-9/11 levels.

''While reaction to fear is largely reflexive, the passage of time allows us to be reflective,'' said Ken Paulson, executive director of the First Amendment Center in Nashville.

Among the key findings of this year's survey:

• About 60% of those surveyed indicated overall support for First Amendment freedoms. This is up from 47% in 2002. The support was 58% in 2001.

• A total of 48% of the respondents said they believe Americans have too little access to information about the federal government's efforts to combat terrorism, up from 40% in 2002.

• Almost 75% of those surveyed said people should be allowed to express unpopular opinions, the same level as 2001. Last year, 67% said people should have this right.

In addition, the survey asked about a variety of media issues.

• Almost 80% of respondents said media owners exert substantial influence over news organizations' newsgathering and reporting decisions.

• 65% favored the policy of ''embedding'' U.S. journalists into individual combat units and 68% judged the media's coverage in Iraq as excellent or good.

• 52% said media ownership by fewer corporations has meant a decreased number of viewpoints available to the public.

The Center for Survey Research and Analysis at the University of Connecticut conducts the national survey of 1,000 people. The survey, which has a sampling error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points, was conducted from June 3 to June 15.

The survey is available on the First Amendment Center's Web site.

Leon Alligood covers Tennessee for The Tennessean. Contact him at 615-259-8279 or by e-mail at lalligood@tennessean.com.

© Copyright 2003 The Tennessean

Über Gulliver

The role of becoming a world power — let alone the sole world power — is akin to riding on the tiger's back. It is easier to get on, far easier to ride along, and the harder than anything else to dismount. If any nation should know the hazards of world power, it is Germany. Read an analysis of U.S. power today by a German journalist. It is a sobering message. Unfortunately, W's neocon advisers are ignorant of history. There is some good historical thinking here.

The Twentieth Annual John Bonython Lecture

Tuesday 5 August, 2003

"Gulliver Unbound: Can America Rule the World?"

Josef Joffe

I. Hegemony in the 21st Century

My title is 'Gulliver Unbound', and to make the point in all its baldness: There has never been a Gulliver as Gulliveresque as 21st century America. It dwarfs anybody in the present as well as in the past. Of all the former greats, only Rome fits the description although, for precision's sake, it should be classified as an empire. For at the height of its power, after it had subjugated the lands between the British Isles, Carthage and the Levant, Rome was virtually identical with the then-international system itself. Its successors-the Papacy or the Empire, Habsburg-Spain or the France of Louis XIV, 19th century Britain or 20th century Germany-were only would-be hegemons.

True, the sun never set on Charles V's empire, Britain ruled the waves in the 19th century, and Nazi Germany went all the way to the gates of Moscow and Cairo. But they were vulnerable to combinations of other powers which prevailed over them in the end. Nor was Britain a real exception. To uphold its exalted position, it depended on allies-all the way to World War II when it was almost done in by a single foe, Nazi Germany.

America is unique in time and space. Others might be able to defy the US, but they can neither compel nor vanquish it-except in the meaningless sense of nuclear devastation that will be mutual. The sweep of its interests, the weight of its resources and the margin of its usable power are unprecedented. None other than Hubert Védrine, the French foreign minister, has made the point in all its glory--though grudgingly, one must assume. 'The United States of America', he proclaimed, 'today predominates on the economic, monetary [and] technological level, and in the cultural area . . . In terms of power and influence, it is not comparable to anything known in modern history.' In short, the U.S. is a hyper-puissance, a 'hyper-power'.

Indeed, just to mention two numbers. When in the spring of 2002, George W. Bush asked the Congress for a supplemental defense appropriation, the sum requested-$48 billion-represented twice the annual defense outlays of Germany or Italy. If US defence spending proceeds as planned, this 'hyperpower' by 2007 will invest more in defence than all other countries combined.

This giant, a kind of Über-Gulliver, is different from its predecessors in a number of other ways.

First, unlike Rome et al., he can intervene-without the help of allies-anywhere in the world, and almost in real-time, as those B-52 bombers demonstrated that rose in Missouri, dropped their bomb load over Afghanistan and then returned home, all in one fell swoop. Bases, as during the Second Iraq War, are useful and important, but not vital, as the closure of Turkey to the passage of American troops demonstrated earlier this year. No other power could ever project so much might so far so fast and so devastatingly.

Second, the US economy is the world's largest, but in a fundamentally different way than, say, Habsburg's. The Habsburg Empire was like Saudi-Arabia-essentially an extraction economy, a one-horse hegemon. When the silver from Latin America dried up, so did Habsburg's power. For all of its failings-from the Enron scandal to rising current account deficit-the American economy seems better positioned to conquer the future than any of its current rivals, for at least two reasons.

One, it is more flexibly organised, hence better prepared to respond to ever more rapid shifts in demand and technology. Two, it enjoys an enormous competitive advantage in the acquisition of today's most important factor of production-which is knowledge. It is not just the global predominance of Harvard and Stanford, Caltech and MIT, but something more profound and less obvious. This is a culture that keeps drawing the best and the brightest to its shores-which, by the way, is true for the English-speaking nations in general. No longer is it Metternich, Hitler or Stalin who are driving talent across the Atlantic. It comes entirely unpropelled, attracted by the wealth of opportunity and the speed of advancement. How this most precious resource will be able to clear the barriers of the Patriot Act is an issue America has not yet begun to tackle.

A third mainstay of American preponderance is cultural. This is another significant contrast with past hegemons. Whereas the cultural sway of Rome, Britain and Soviet Russia ended at its military borders, American culture needs no gun to travel. If there is a global civilisation, it is American. Nor is it just McDonald's and Hollywood, it is also Microsoft and Harvard. Wealthy Romans used to send their children to Greek universities; today's Greeks, that is, the Europeans, send their kids to Roman, that is, American universities-and to British boarding schools. Why this peculiar twist? Maybe, it is the fact that America is the 'first universal nation', one whose cultural products appeal to so large an audience because they transcend narrow national borders. It all began a hundred years ago when Russian Jews from the Pale started making movies in Hollywood that interpreted the 'American Dream' to the rest of the world.

To recapitulate: This Über-Gulliver packs a threefold set of uniquely big muscles-military, economic and cultural, and there is nothing on the horizon of political reality that suggests the speedy demise of his hegemony. Certainly, it will not be the kind of over-extension that felled Rome, Habsburg et al. In the last hundred years, average military spending as proportion of GDP has been four percent-with the Second World War and the Vietnam War as significant exception. Four percent is a far cry from the estimated 25 percent spent by the Soviet Union in the 1980s, the decade before its collapse.

II. After Bipolarity: Must Go Down What Comes Up?

Nonetheless, history and theory suggest that this cannot last. In the international system, power will always beget counter-power, usually by way of coalitions and alliances among the lesser players, and ultimately war, as in the cases of Napoleon, Wilhelm II. and Adolf I. Has this game already begun? The answer is 'no, but…'.

It is 'no' for two reasons. First, America irks and domineers, but it does not conquer. It tries to call the shots and bend the rules, but it does not go to war for land and glory. Maybe, America was simply lucky. Its 'empire' was at home, between the Appalachians and the Pacific, and its enemies-Indians and Mexicans-easily bested. The last time the US actually did conquer was in the Philippines and Cuba a hundred years ago. This is a critical departure from traditional great power behaviour. For the balance-of-power machinery to crank up, it makes a difference whether the others face a usually placid elephant or an aggressive T. rex. Rapacious powers are more likely to trigger hostile coalitions than nations that contain themselves, so to speak. And when the U.S. attacked Afghanistan and Iraq, it was not exactly invading an innocent like Belgium.

Nonetheless, Mr. Big is no pussycat, and he does throw his weight around. Why is it so hard to balance against him?

My answer: Counter-aggregations do not deal very well with the postmodern nature of power. Let's make no mistake about it. 'Hard' power-men and missiles, guns and ships-still counts. It remains the ultimate, because existential, currency of power. But on the day-to-day transaction level, 'soft power' is the more interesting coinage. It is 'less coercive and less tangible'. It grows out of 'the attraction of one's ideas. It has to do with 'agenda setting', with 'ideology' and 'institutions', and with holding out big prizes for cooperation, such as the vastness and sophistication of one's market.

'Soft power' is cultural-economic power, and very different from its military kin. The US has the most sophisticated army in the world. But it is in a class of its own in the soft-power game. On that table, none of the others can match America's pile of chips; it is American books and movies, universities and research labs, American tastes high and low that predominate in the global market. This type of power-a culture that radiates outward and a market that draws inward-rests on pull, not on push; on acceptance, not on imposition. Nor do the many outweigh the one. In this arena, Europe, Japan, China and Russia cannot meaningfully 'gang up' on the US like in an alliance of yore. All of their movie studios together could not break Hollywood's hold because if size mattered, India, with the largest movie output in the world, would rule the roost. Nor could all their universities together dethrone Harvard and Stanford. For sheer numbers do not lure the best and the brightest from abroad who keep adding to the competitive advantage of America's top universities.

Against soft power, aggregation does not work. How does one contain power that flows not from coercion but seduction? Might it work in the economic sphere? There is always the option of trading blocs-cum-protectionism. But would Europe (or China or Japan) forego the American market for the Russian one? Or would Europe seek solace in its vast internal market alone? If so, it would forgo the competitive pressures and the diffusion of technology that global markets provide. The future is mapped out by DaimlerChrysler, not by a latter-day 'European Co-Prosperity Sphere'. This is where the game has changed most profoundly. Its rivals would rather deal with America's 'soft power' by competition and imitation because the costs of economic warfare are too high-provided, of course, that strategic threats do not re-emerge. To best Gulliver, Europe et. al. must do their work-out at home.

III. 'Soft' Balancing

These two reasons help to explain why 'hard' balancing-alliances and war-has not set in against the American Über-Gulliver. But remember the 'no, but…'. The 'but' is a shorthand for saying that 'soft balancing' against Mr. Big has already set in. Is there a date? Yes, it is Christmas Day 1991 when the hammer-and-sickle flag over the Kremlin was hauled down for the last time, when the Soviet Union committed suicide by dissolution. From this point onward, the structure of international changed from bipolarity to unipolarity. Gulliver's power was no longer neutralised and stalemated by another player of equivalent weight. The ropes were off, so to speak, and that had political consequences.

What is 'soft balancing?' The best example is the run-up to the Second Iraq War when a trio of lesser power-France, Germany and Russia-all 'ganged up' on No. 1 diplomatically in their effort to stop the Anglo-American move against Saddam Hussein. What was their purpose? To save Saddam Hussein? No, of course not. It was to contain and constrain American power, now liberated from the ropes of bipolarity.

And why not? Assume this American victory, swift as it turned out to be, is also sustainable-that it intimidates rather than inflames Arabs and Iranians, relieves dependence on dangerous clients such as Saudi-Arabia and Egypt, and finally loosens up the dysfunctionalities of Arab political culture that spawned Al Qaida. Such an outcome will finally consecrate the US as arbiter over the Middle East, over its oil and politics. This prospect can hardly enthuse the lesser players, for it would certify what is already the case de facto: the global primacy of the United States. So it should not come as a surprise that America's rivals and quondam allies would try to balance against No. 1 by enmeshing him in the ropes of institutional dependence, that is, the UN Security Council.

This was a classic instance of 'soft balancing' against No. 1-spawned by the profound shock to the international equilibrium caused by the demise of No. 2, the Soviet Union. Another kind of balancing, let's call it 'surreptitious balancing', had begun much earlier, in the mid-1990s, when the US regularly found itself alone and on the other side of such issues as the ABM Treaty or the International Criminal Court.

Au fond, all of these duels were not about principle, but power. If the United States wanted to scratch the ABM Treaty in favor of Missile Defense, Europe, China and Russia sought to uphold it on the sound assumption that a better defense makes for a better offense, hence for richer US military options than under conditions of vulnerability. And so with the International Criminal Court (ICC). In the end, even the Clinton team correctly understood the underlying thrust of the ICC. Claiming the right to pass judgment on military interventions by prosecuting malfeasants ex post facto, the Court might deter and thus constrain America's forays abroad. All the Liliputians would gain a kind of droit de regard over American actions

Europe and others cherished this expansion of multilateral oversight precisely for the reason why the United States opposed it. Great powers loathe international institutions they cannot dominate; lesser nations like them the way the Lilliputians liked their ropes on Gulliver. The name of the game was balancing-on-the-sly, and both sides knew it, though it was conducted in the name international law, not of raw power.

IV. Can Gulliver Go It Alone?

To recapitulate. One, Gulliver is an Über-Gulliver. Unique in time and space, he has the largest pile of chips on all significant gaming tables: military-technological, economic and cultural. Second, hard balancing, the anti-hegemonial tool of choice in history, has not set in because this Gulliver, for the time being, is more of an elephant than a T. rex. Third, as the last decade has shown, the international system will exact its revenge, and so, 'soft balancing' and 'balancing-on-the-sly' has already set in, as international relations theory correctly predicted once bipolarity-the mutual stalemating of nos. 1 and 2-was dead. Now, to my fourth and final point: Can Gulliver go it alone?

The answer is no. Given No. 1's exalted position in the international hierarchy of power, one must assume that he would want to remain what he is-Gulliver forever. If so, he has two, and only, two choices. One would seek to undercut or outmaneuver countervailing coalitions, a latter-day British grand strategy, so to speak. The other is a strategy that would emphasise cooperation over competition, a kind of retake of the Golden Age of American diplomacy of the early postwar decades.

Strategy I is the 'Rumsfeld Strategy' en vogue right now, one that follows the Secretary of Defence's famous injunction: 'The mission determines the coalition, and not the other way round.' This is the logical counter to the attempts on the part of nos. 2, 3, 4, 5 etc. to tie down Gulliver with the ropes of institutional dependence, where it is 'one nation, one vote'. The essence of the game is to pick ever changing coalitions of the willing within which the word of No. 1 is the writ of the whole. This strategy actually antedates Don Rumsfeld; George Bush the Elder enacted it in the First Iraq War, and Bill Clinton assembled a NATO posse for the Kosovo intervention. The rule here is: Act only with those you can dominate.

A complementary strategy is 'counter-counter-balancing' to neutralise the kind of anti-American coalition France, Germany and Russia tried to organise in the run-up to the Second Iraq War. Against this 'Neo-Triple Entente', the Bushies engineered the 'Wall Street Eight and the 'Vilnius Ten'. And so, on January 30, Messrs. Chirac and Schröder woke up to an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal/Europe where the leaders of Britain, Spain, Italy, Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Denmark and Portugal told Paris and Berlin in so many words: 'We are not amused that you are trying to gang up on the United States. Saddam must be disarmed, by force if need be'. Repeated more harshly by the 'Vilnius-10' on February 5 ('we are prepared to contribute to an international coalition to enforce'), the message was that 18 European countries (from A like Albania to S like Slovenia) were not ready to take on the 'hyperpower'-and even less ready to submit to the French and Germans as would-be gang leaders.

A clever counter-move, but such a strategy-balancing à la Britain-has not been America's greatest forte. Nor will it take care of the underlying dynamics of the post-bipolar world. Great power will keep generating counter-power sooner or later. Better, and probably more economical in the long run is a strategy that undercuts the incentives for ganging up-to soften he hard edge of America's overwhelming power with the soothing balm of trust. In his State of the Union Address of 2003, George W. Bush did not hold out such relief when he asserted that, in the end, 'the course of this nation does not depend on the decisions of others'.

Hence, Grand Strategy II-updating the Golden Age of American diplomacy. America's core role then was institution-building, as illustrated by a whole alphabet soup of acronyms: UN, IMF, GATT, OEEC/OECD, NATO, World Bank, WTO, PfP, plus a host of subsidiary Cold War alliances like ANZUS, SEATO and CENTO. Think of these not just as international institutions , but as international public goods, and the point is that these institutions took care of American interests while serving those of others. This was an extraordinary break with centuries of power politics. For previous hegemons were in business for themselves only.

What is the advantage of such a strategy? I would argue that nos. 2, 3, 4... will prefer cooperation with no. 1 to anti-American coalitions as long as the US remains the foremost provider of such international public goods-call them security, free trade, financial stability and an orderly procedure for conflict resolutions. The essence of public goods is that anybody can profit from them once they exist-like a park in the neighbourhood or an unpolluted river. That gives the lesser players a powerful incentive to maintain the existing order and to accord at least grudging acceptance to the producer of those benefits. At the same time, it diminishes their incentives to gang up on him.

While the others surely resent America's clout, they have also found it useful to have a player like the United States in the game. Europe and Japan regularly suffer from America's commercial hauteur, but they also suspect that the US is the ultimate guarantor of the global trade system. Britain and France were only too happy to let American cruise missiles bludgeon the Serbs to the negotiating table in 1995 and 1999. The Arabs hardly love the US, but they did cooperate when George Bush mobilised an international posse against Saddam Hussein in 1990 because they could not contain him on their own. And so again in 2001 when Bush the Younger harnessed a worldwide coalition against terrorism.

When lesser powers cannot deter China in the Straits of Taiwan, or persuade North Korea to denuclearise, it is nice to have one special actor in the system who has the will and the wherewithal to do what others wish, but cannot achieve on their own. Indeed, he is indispensable. In the language of public goods theory: There must always be somebody who will recruit individual producers, organise the startup and generally assume a disproportionate burden in the enterprise. That is as true in international affairs as it is in grassroots politics.

But now you will ask: Why continue to pay a disproportionate share of the bill? Here are some answers: By providing security for others-in Europe, the Middle East and the Pacific-the US has also bought security for itself. Stability is its own reward because it prevents worse: arms races, nuclear proliferation, conflicts that spread. Enlarging NATO, though costly to the American taxpayer, brings profits to both Poland and the United States because anything that secures the realm of liberal democracy benefits its leading representative. Shoring up the World Trade Organisation (WTO), even when it pronounces against Washington, is still good for America because, as the world's largest exporter, it has the greatest interest in freer trade.

Are the costs of 'public goods' production intolerable? The problem is that the bulk of the world's great institutions were built during the Cold War when it was clearly in the interest of no. 1 to shoulder the burden and sign the checks. Since then, it is no longer so clear that the United States puts more resources into international institutions than it seeks to draw from them. America's old penchant for free trade is now diluted by preferences for 'managed trade', which is a euphemism for regulated trade. Having regularly castigated the EU for its protectionist agricultural policy, the US has now handed out billions in largesse to its own farmers, adding a nice dollop for steel producers, too. And if it cannot achieve consensus, the US will act unilaterally-or bilaterally, as most recently in the Second Iraq War.

The costs of a 'communitarian' grand strategy are clearly high. First, Gulliver has to pay a disproportionate share of the institutional maintenance fee. Second, he will have to resist those domestic forces-steel, farmers-who would maximise their welfare at the expense of global welfare. Third, he will have to expend an inordinate diplomatic effort to persuade and cajole. Finally, he may sometimes find himself immobilised by the Lilliputians.

On the other hand, the costs of a 'Rumsfeld Strategy' may be worse. As the US diminishes its investment in global public goods, others will feel the sting of American power more strongly. And the incentive to discipline Mr. Big will grow. Short of that, the aftermath of the Second Iraq War seems to suggest that it is easier to go in by yourself than to leave by yourself. There are just too many players in this game who would love to see the US and Britain fail, starting with the remnants of the Baathist regime and continuing with Iran, the Arab dictatorships and the Palestinians. Presumably the Neo-Triple-Entente that tried to stop the war would not mind either if the US had its nose bloodied in the Middle East. The long and the short of this is: The most sophisticated military panoply in history cannot quite substitute for international legitimacy.

But let's look beyond Iraq and generalise the point. The most interesting issues in world politics cannot be solved even by an Über-Gulliver acting alone. How shall we count the ways? Nuclear proliferation in Iran and North Korea, international terrorism, free trade, global financial stability, mayhem in places like Liberia, the Congo or the Sudan, climate control, the AIDS epidemic in Africa, China's transition from totalitarianism to the rule of law and perhaps even democracy, the political pathologies of the Arab Middle East that gave us Al-Qaida. These are all issues that, almost by definition, require collective responses.

So Gulliver's choices seem all to clear. Primacy does not come cheap, and the price is measured not just in dollars and cents, but above all in the currency of obligation. Conductors manage to mold 80 solo players into a symphony orchestra because they have fine sense for everybody else's quirks and qualities-because they act in the interest of all; their labour is the source of their authority. And so a truly great power must do more than merely deny others the reason and opportunity for 'ganging up'. It must also provide essential services. Those who do for others engage in systemic supply-side economics: They create a demand for their services, and that translates into political profits also known as 'leadership'.

Power exacts responsibility, and responsibility requires the transcendence of narrow self-interest. As long as the United States continues to provide such public goods, envy and resentment will not escalate into fear and loathing that spawn hostile coalitions. But let's put this in less lofty terms.

Real empires routinely crush their rivals. But America is only an 'imperial republic', as Raymond Aron mused decades ago. Presumably, democracies pay 'decent respect to the opinions of mankind' because they cherish that respect for themselves. They are better off leading by heeding because they cannot sustain the brutish ways of Rome for any length of time. Unwilling to conquer, this 'empire' still needs order beyond borders. The objective is the right 'milieu'. To achieve it, America must sometimes use force; to sustain it, the sword is not enough-and too costly, to boot. But to build the right coalitions for peace, the United States must not forsake the 'co' in 'coalition'-as in 'consensus' and 'cooperation'. As Gulliver learned, it is hard enough to live even as friendly giant among the pigmies. It is even harder to escape their slings and arrows when strength is untempered by self-restraint. For power shall be balanced.

Dr. Josef Joffe is the Publisher-Editor of Die Zeit and Contributing Editor to Time magazine. His most recent book was The Future of International Relations: The Great Powers.

© The Centre for Independent Studies, 2003