Dr. Jackson Janes from the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies spoke to the Atlantic Community's partner organization World Security Network:
The Atlantic Community editorial team summarized his main arguments from the above video interview:
Transatlantic relations are being transformed; we no longer face threats within Europe and are instead being confronted with common threats all over the world. Since these threats are now so diverse, it is even more important that we collaborate through burden sharing and power sharing, and devise effective ways to confront challenges together.
To improve transatlantic relations, the first step is to look at the immediate issues on the ground; between Afghanistan, the Middle East, Russia, and Iran, there are a number of issues calling for reaction and response. We need to pool our resources and knowledge and figure out the best way to apply them. Because of the challenges we are facing on the ground, we have to act now and cannot simply wait until we find our common vocabulary. Action is required and therefore policy formulation is required simultaneously.
We should talk about networked security in the transatlantic context. We face an interlocking set of challenges which begin in Asia with China but extend through the rest of
the world. We have the opportunity to take the success of the transatlantic community over the last 60 years and to apply the lessons we have learned to engage the entire world. It is not a zero sum game--wherever you look, in China, North Korea, or Hong Kong, we have common interests. The world should be viewed as an entire unit and not segmented it into regions which have nothing to do with one another.
Today there is a need for simultaneous diplomacy. There is, for example, a simultaneous connection between the events in the Middle East. The Israeli-Palestinian issue, Afghanistan, Iran, and Iraq are all interlocked. In the post World War period we held our own in the East-West conflict. Now we need to take those experiences and lessons and apply them to other conflicts well beyond Europe and the transatlantic community.
Dr. Jackson Janes is a member of the Atlantic Initiative's Advisory Board and director of the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies, Washington, D.C.
This video interview was conducted by the Atlantic Community's partner organization, the World Security Network.
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April 24, 2008
Amarjyoti Acharya
Quite interestingly, one finds the view elsewhere that debates whether it is the decline of US hegemony!? How and when is hegemony defined is also an important question. And - by whom? - both - the definition and the hegemony! When we juxtapose the discussions over hegemony and how the US can continue to lead with Jackson Janes' views - one is somehow drawn to the different imaginations that so colour world politics and the various discussions over it. Can there be a networked-security as envisaged by Jackson and yet harbour views that look at hegemonic theories and conclusions - in literature over world politics? The answer is provided by Dr. Jackson Janes himself over rising above the difference of vocabularies, and perhaps as one may add - different languages. NATO has been a successful example of getting over the problem of different vocabularies - even when perceived in terms of continued US hegemony in much of the second half of the twentieth century!
Could the US and the transatalntic community learn to separate the aggressor from the aggrieved, when the aggressor has learnt very well to play the aggrieved? This vulnerablity to 'studied deception' will need to be taken care of in the new scenario. Could rational common interest rise above the mistake of applying the European Second World War experience to the rest of the world - and the US domestic compulions and/or domestic views/prejudices to the rest of the humanity? I think that it is important to do so - given the sense of injured goodness many in the US show and become nearly resigned to a sense of martyrdom when faced with unkind arguments over hegemony.