The world wants U.S. might to be right, says former French premier

Lionel Jospin, former prime minister of France, speaks to an overflow audience, April 8, in 200 Baker Laboratory. Barry Delibero/University Photography

By Franklin Crawford

Lionel Jospin put the French back into "freedom fries" at Cornell, April 8, with a tactful address titled "The United States: Empire or Mega Nation-State?" As keynote speaker for a three-day conference titled "Critical Anatomy of the New American Empire," the former premier of France skillfully managed to play both good-will ambassador, educator and astute critic-at-large.

Jospin's talk and the conference were co-sponsored at Cornell by the Center for the Study of Economy and Society (CSES) and the Society for the Humanities.

Speaking to an overflow audience in Baker Lab 200, many of whom leaned over gallery walls or stood through the hour-long address, Jospin's first order of business was semantic and educative. He refuted the idea of America as an empire in the traditional sense of the term, describing the United States instead as a "world-sized mega-nation-state."

Not that there's anything wrong with that, in itself, he pointed out.

"We can see well enough that the issue is not about American might, it is about what the United States does with it," Jospin said. "Intimidating one's enemies is necessary. Disconcerting one's friends is not."

Jospin defined "the classical notion of empire" as being "a group of states and peoples under the conquering sway of a sovereign authority that gathers all powers around itself."

"The United States is not and does not possess an empire," he concluded.

However, while sympathetic to America's newfound sense of vulnerability in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Jospin said the international community is justifiably nervous about "the change in mentality and behavior of America's leading elite. ... There is a perceived sense of the absolute superiority of their country."

"We could even say that the United States thinks up its policies in reaction to threats rather than in relation to problems," Jospin said. "Its enemy, however, has changed. The day before yesterday, it was fascism; yesterday communism; today, it is terrorism."

But to deal with the new enemy, the Bush administration " in a renewed mingling of politics and religion" has backed away from multilateralism, creating instead "a kind of planetary Monroe Doctrine in which the whole world is henceforth its region," he argued.

The international community -- and Jospin included, he said -- supported the 1991 Persian Gulf War, the Kosovo intervention of 1999 and even the retaliatory attacks on Al Queda and Taliban strongholds in Afghanistan in 2001. But the Bush administration's "military intervention in Iraq was a shock for the international system, due to the debatable character of its justifications and the random nature of its consequences," Jospin said.

No weapons of mass destruction have been found, he pointed out, the dubious link between Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden remains unproven and the perilous precedent of using pre-emptive war in order to oust a hostile dictatorship and replace it with a friendly democracy has met with near disaster.

"Building a democracy is not like manufacturing products," Jospin said. "For the Iraqi people to make [democracy] their own ... they would have to consider the coalition soldiers as liberators, not as occupiers. Today, that is far from the case."

It is only logical for the international community to question American leadership, even though that clearly frustrates U.S. leaders, Jospin said.

"We expect nothing from our enemies -- we fight them. On the other hand, we hope for much from a friend, particularly one whose force gives it the power to influence the fate of the world."

The United States may be exhibiting unilateral hegemonic tendencies, but it cannot exist without the rest of the world for long, Jospin told the audience. Politics and economics have a way of catching up with a nation in a globalized world. He reminded the audience that the "United States is no longer the world's creditor, but its debtor."

But he later added, "We should be grateful that history has offered us a great democracy as a dominant power, rather one of the 20th century's totalitarian regimes. I mention this for the benefit of anti-Americans of every stripe."

Jospin's summation had the oratorical ring of a seasoned statesman addressing the United Nations.

"There can be no true international community if the most powerful country in the world sidesteps international rules. I am, however, convinced that it is in the interest of the United States, and of the world, to keep on building an international community with mutually shared and respected values."