More than six years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, two administrations have tried and failed to construct a post - Cold War foreign policy that enjoys intellectual support among specialists and political acceptance within the country at large. Neither the "new world order" of the Bush administration nor the Clinton administration's doctrine of democratic and free market "enlargement" has endured as an organizing concept. As a result, both administrations have repeatedly been driven to a pattern of reactive diplomacy. Pronouncements have been made or actions have been taken on an ad hoc basis. The aim has been to deflect public pressure or protect the image of the president.
In the Bush administration this pattern was evident in the development of policy toward Russia. The collapse of communism in Eastern Europe offered America the most plastic moment in international relations since 1917, but America was without an appropriate doctrine to help it respond to the new opportunity. As a result, the Bush administration seemed essentially a spectator to events in Moscow. That approach changed only when the Democratic challenger, Bill Clinton, was poised to announce his own plan for responding to events in Russia. Suddenly, the White House organized an emergency press conference so the president could announce his plan - a few minutes before the Democratic challenger was to speak. The purpose appeared less to aid the new republics in the former communist states than to preempt the Democratic nominee.
There were other examples of reactive diplomacy in the Bush administration. Throughout 1992, it watched chaos develop in Somalia. Its assistant secretary for African affairs warned his superiors that without preventive diplomacy Somalia would blow apart within the year. He was ordered to stay out of the affair. At the United Nations, the Bush administration blocked all efforts to provide help, because it wanted to avoid paying the American share (31 per cent) of United Nations peacekeeping expenditures. Then media coverage of the trauma in Somalia became too heart-wrenching to bear; the administration abruptly reversed course and accepted sole responsibility for attempting to restore order in that country at a cost of more than $1 billion. Again, the absence of a post - Cold War vision left the United States without an appropriate policy guide.
The Clinton administration has followed a similar reactive pattern. Events - and not doctrine - have driven diplomatic responses. Most of the key decisions have been made not in fulfillment of some carefully developed post-Cold War strategy but rather as last-minute efforts to head off criticism of the president. Lacking a clear Somalia strategy, for example, the Clinton team allowed the mission there to acquire a logic of its own. Soon disaster struck: 18 U.S. soldiers were killed in a firefight, and the administration had no compelling explanation for the deaths. The political storm at home forced the administration to withdraw from Somalia in humiliation.
In Haiti, months of fruitless diplomacy closed off all options except invasion if the president's credibility was to be salvaged. Only Jimmy Carter's last-minute intervention spared the administration the embarrassment of invading this hemisphere's poorest country.
In Bosnia, the United States assumed leadership to bring about peace only when the alternative became unpalatable: fulfillment of a pledge to help extract British and French peacekeepers from Bosnia, perhaps under combat conditions. As of mid-1996, the military side of the American-led NATO effort in Bosnia was proceeding well - ironically, only because the U.S.-led force was adopting a neutral stance toward the parties, a stance that the United States had earlier denounced the U.N. for favoring. And although the administration contends that Dayton represents the first chapter in a comprehensive new vision of America's post-Cold War role in Europe, that seems unlikely. Even the administration must doubt that it could attract political support at home to take up comparable defense responsibilities elsewhere in ethnically troubled Central or Eastern Europe. Few expect to see American peacekeepers in Transylvania or Moldova, whether under NATO command or not. In this respect, the Dayton success must be seen as America's attempt to hold onto its old Cold War role in NATO rather than defining a new role for itself in Europe.
FOUR PURPOSES OF FOREIGN POLICY
If both the "new world order" and the doctrine of "enlargement" have been found wanting, is there an alternative vision of foreign policy that the country might consider? How would it compare with the course we have been following?
An attempt to answer those questions must begin with an examination of the fundamental purposes of American foreign policy. They are four:
* to defend the heartland from attack,
* to conserve or create an environment in which U.S. democracy can thrive,
* to protect and, if possible, improve the welfare of the American people, and
* to maintain America's postwar role as steward of the international system without incurring disproportionate costs.
How do we measure current policy against this template?
Defending the Heartland
Today the heartland faces no traditional military threat but rather the impact of outside influences against which military power is largely irrelevant - drugs, crime, terrorism, and economic competition. Valiant efforts made by some former Cold War strategists and Pentagon supporters to prove the relevance of the military for dealing with some or all of these issues are not convincing. Diplomats, spies, and police - and not the military - are the nation's first line of defense against these contemporary threats.
What about future threats? China is the power that over the long run appears to pose the most serious challenge. It has demographic mass, economic dynamism, critical geographic placement, and growing military might. It is the one great power still trapped in the mind-set of the Cold War, maintaining a communist ideology that, while weak among the masses, justifies the elite's hold on power. China's economic modernization will transform it into the world's greatest export power, dwarfing even Japan's influence in the world economy.
There are historical reasons to be concerned about China's rise that have nothing to do with ideology. Every major country, including the United States, that arrived at a stage when it was able to project its military power internationally has done so, usually with unfortunate consequences for its neighbors. It was at such a point in their development that Britain, France, and the United States established colonial empires, both formal and informal, and Germany and Japan made bids for regional or world mastery. The Soviet Union at the apogee of its power promoted mischief worldwide. Will China also conform to this unsettling pattern?
Another reason to follow events in China carefully is that it is the only great power that does not appear to be exhausted demographically. Old men may declare wars, but young men and now women fight them. Today, all of the major states except China face serious demographic problems. Russia is in a demographic free fall, its birthrate plummeting. Western Europe, Japan, and the United States are witnessing a progressive aging of their populations as young people have fewer children and older people enjoy longer lives. The wealth of these societies is steadily being transferred to their older members, leaving less available for other activities, including international commitments. In 1995, for example, 45 per cent of China's population was under 25 compared with 36 per cent in the United States. Only 6 per cent of China's population was over 65, compared with 13 per cent in the United States, where, in 1995, Social Security and Medicare together consumed 40 per cent of noninterest outlays. By its very size, its demographic mass, and its growing wealth, China confronts an entirely different set of pressures.
India is another state that could pose special problems in the coming decades. Its surging population, economic potential, regional aspirations, and military might suggest a power that will increasingly exert its influence in the region. That is not necessarily a problem for the United States, but it may be for India's neighbors, some of which have been close friends of the United States.
Today no great power, actual or potential, is hostile to the United States, though U.S.-Chinese relations are increasingly strained. Nor is there any reason why relations with current or future great powers must inexorably develop in an antagonistic direction. But the rise of new powers like China and India poses a strategic challenge to the current international system. As these states become more powerful, they will seek their place in the sun, and unless they are accorded a role that is also in the interests of other major powers, conflict could develop. Regrettably, the record of the international system in accommodating new powers is terrible: Challengers like pre-World War II Germany and Japan invariably overreach, and established powers like the United States and Great Britain respond inadequately. The principal challenge for the international system in the coming decades is the peaceful inclusion of rising states like China and India.
A plausible criticism of current policy is the degree to which relations with the rising or excluded powers have deteriorated. The United States regularly and publicly calls for the integration of Russia and China into the international system, but there is no practical substance to its calls. No U.S. proposal has ever offered Russia early or realistic membership in a European organization that counts, and America's approach to China is basically to ask it to accept rules drawn up by others - as in the fields of trade and nonproliferation. It should not be a surprise that Beijing and Moscow find this approach unsatisfactory, even insulting. Of course, by their actions, officials in Moscow and Beijing have seriously complicated the process of integration. A strategic approach to U.S. foreign policy would require that American policymakers devote more time to developing international arrangements that offer Russia and China a place at the decision table without challenging the interests of other powers.
What about other current or future threats to the United States? U.S. officials have occasionally suggested that rogue states or anarchy are conceivable replacements for the Soviet menace as America's principal international concern. The rogue states are Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, and North Korea. A review of the list suggests how insignificant that threat really is. All have basket-case economies. All are bordered by states possessing great military potential. All are diplomatically isolated. Such states are not threats, but problems. Even if they were to acquire weapons of mass destruction, these states could not pose, in the foreseeable future, an existential threat to the United States. They might over the course of several years acquire the power to strike back at the U.S. heartland in a limited way, but it would be at the price of their own extinction.
It is certainly a high priority for the West to retard the development of weapons of mass destruction within such states, but even that threat must be put in perspective. The leaders of these states are not suicidal. Saddam Hussein was armed with chemical weapons during the Persian Gulf war. He did not use them, because he feared an American response that might doom his regime. We can expect similar restraint from the others. These states are not crazy. They are cornered, and Americans should remember that each one of them has suffered from U.S. efforts to overthrow or attack them. Their cornered conditions may occasionally render them dangerous. Regrettably, American policy continues to confirm their paranoia and make them even more dangerous. For example, a "covert" American program to overthrow the Iranian government was proposed by Congress and discussed publicly. With the possible exception of Iraq, each of the rogue states is ripe for integration with the outside world.
America should be working to expose these states to greater outside influence and pressure. In the current international climate, rogue regimes, lacking plausible great-power patrons, are trapped in a political cul-de-sac from which they can emerge only by taking steps of accommodation toward international norms. Political analyst Jude Wanniski has compared such states to the stranded Japanese soldiers after World War II who struggled on in the jungles of Asia for years after Tokyo's defeat. Finally, they were lured to surrender. Sooner or later, the rogue states - the stranded survivors of the Cold War - must also surrender. That is, they must join the international system from which they are now shunned. American policy should aim to make that transition as peaceful as possible. Current policy perversely works to make the transition extremely difficult.
Is anarchy a strategic threat? The collapse of several states in Africa and the unrest in the former Soviet Union have caused some to embrace anarchy as the new strategic threat. Senior officials in both the Bush and Clinton administrations have suggested that chaos could replace Moscow as the "enemy." Certainly, it is possible to imagine scenarios where anarchy could pose a danger to American security. If Russian society collapsed and various groups seized parts of the nuclear weapons stock, perhaps to sell to the highest bidder, or if China failed to pass through its coming leadership change without a crippling civil war, the foundations of the current international system might totter. For the moment, however, the main pillars of the international system are remarkably stable.
To be seriously threatened, the international system must be challenged by one of the great powers in a bid for hegemony, or the collapse of a great state must set off a bid for advantage among the remaining powers. The only power with the military capability today to make a bid for world hegemony is the United States; yet it has no such aspirations and is entering a period of financial stringency. What happens in Liberia or even Bosnia cannot affect the underlying stability of the international system so long as the great powers refuse, as they have to date, to intervene in these crises for diplomatic advantage, which would renew the kind of struggle for supremacy that unsettled Europe prior to 1914. It is to the great credit of the Clinton administration that Russia was brought into the Bosnian settlement, thus minimizing this danger.
New crises may develop. If the United States were to support independence for Taiwan or the return of Kaliningrad to Germany, a new great-power confrontation could develop. China, which is the most isolated of the great powers, may also mismanage its entry on the world scene. But none of these possibilities is inevitable.
Cultivating Democracy
What can we say about the success of U.S. foreign policy in conserving or creating an environment in which American democracy can thrive? Here the signals are mixed. The United States accords the promotion of democracy pride of place in its rhetoric, but the key to this goal is the future of Russia - and it appears that two administrations have missed the opportunity to exert a positive influence on the development of Russian democracy. Instead of opening their markets and developing a new security structure in Europe that could include Russia and the other republics of the former Soviet Union, the United States and its allies offered aid under conditions that undermined the political stability of the recipient states - and in amounts always unequal to the tasks. When the radical democrats were in power in Moscow in 1992 and 1993, for example, the West found it difficult to come up with an aid package of $1 billion. By 1996, after the political situation had deteriorated significantly, the West encouraged the International Monetary Fund to provide aid in the amount of $10 billion. Lacking vision when the moment was plastic, the West responded in fear after the opportunity for true partnership had receded.
A possible alternative to a significant aid program would have been a decision to accept Russia as a full partner politically and economically the way that Germany and Japan were embraced after World War II. The United States would then have opened its markets to Russian goods and invited Russia (and China) to participate as equals in the tasks of global management. Instead, the West, led by the United States, demanded that Russia pass a number of severe political and economic tests before it could attain the status of full partner. During the early years of the Cold War, the United States was ready to rehabilitate the fascists in Germany and Japan. Later the United States was willing to make China, in the midst of the bloody Cultural Revolution, its strategic partner. Yet in the post-Cold War era it could not accept Russia, which no longer poses a threat to European security, as a political equal. History will record this bipartisan decision as a massive failure of American statecraft. American politicians, locked in Cold War attitudes, were terrified of paying the domestic cost of perceived sympathy toward Moscow long after the Warsaw Pact had disappeared and the Soviet Union had collapsed.
Yet the current international order is uniquely favorable to the United States and other major powers, including Russia and China. None of these powers is threatening the others and all have need for a period of external calm in order to attend to domestic deficiencies. Thus the common goal should be the defense of that benign order, not the preservation of Cold War alliances. The West should, therefore, even at this late date, search for ways to offer all major powers access to the globe's decision tables. The Group of Seven (G-7) has timidly reached out to Russia by inviting President Boris Yeltsin to a brief discussion at the end of their meetings. China is excluded. A forum is needed that accords these two powers, and others, an international voice equal to their importance. It could be either a reformed G-7 or a totally new forum.
Some in the administration have argued that China, even more than Russia, is not ready for such a role, because it is not democratic and violates international standards of human rights. On these points, Americans must develop a sense of perspective. During the Cold War, the United States was willing to offer trade and even military support to a China that was drenched in blood and whose citizens lived in terror and misery. The abandonment of the Cultural Revolution and the reforms that the current regime in China has undertaken have immensely improved the lives of China's 1.2 billion people. Indeed, no single step has done more to improve the human rights of more people than this set of reforms. Many countries in the international system can be crudely pressured to conform to international standards; because of its size and history, China cannot. It can be nudged. It can be encouraged. And through its own development, it can change. But the United States will thwart the cause of democracy and human rights in the world if it proceeds on the assumption that China is another state like Nicaragua that can be compelled rather than persuaded to accept international standards. The United States must judge China primarily in terms of its external policy and press it domestically to accept international standards of law and practice. In this regard, we should judge our policy toward the mainland by the same standard we once applied to Taiwan, whose external policy mattered more to us than its internal order, which was far from democratic but was improving.
Advancing the Welfare of Americans
What about the welfare of the American people? Is current policy, which might be described as continued Cold War military vigilance combined with unregulated markets, designed to improve that welfare? The economic difficulties of the bottom 50 per cent of the population do not allow an affirmative answer.
In fact, America's current course seems ill chosen to promote the general welfare unless some way can be found to achieve important changes in the country's internal policies. Both political parties have placed their bets on the invisible hand internationally and an increasingly unfettered capitalist system domestically. They have continued to open the American market to international competition while hamstringing organized labor and setting the country on a course that will steadily increase pressure on the American worker, particularly anyone without a graduate degree. There is growing evidence to suggest that this combination of policies is crushing those without exceptional skills.
The 1994 Economic Report of the President, for example, points out that between 1979 and 1990 all levels of the American male work force lost ground except for those with a graduate degree. Those with a high school diploma lost a shocking 21 per cent in real income. Those without a high school degree lost even more. (Those with a bachelor's degree lost 1 per cent.) According to the report, one important cause of this decline was the growing internationalization of the American economy: The open economy cows labor unions, which have become hesitant to press wage demands for fear that the owners will simply move operations abroad or at least find less costly foreign workers who can perform some of the same work overseas. Business executives have become fiercely antilabor; they know that in the new global economy they cannot grant wage increases to workers or they will invite a flood of more competitively priced imports. The restraint on wages leads to higher corporate profits and to growing income disparities. In 1995, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development published a study titled Income Distribution in OECD Countries. The results showed that the gap between rich and poor was greater in the United States than in any of the other 16 member states included in the study. Census studies indicate that, in the United States, only the top quintile of U.S. households has experienced increases in income since 1974.
The social tensions resulting from these wage trends are beginning to influence American politics. In the 1992 election, the candidacy of Ross Perot advanced a blend of America First sentiments and protectionism that might well have swept him into the White House had he not committed a few avoidable gaffes. In the 1996 campaign, Pat Buchanan picked up and darkened the same rhetoric and, though he lost the nomination, profoundly changed the country's political agenda. American society is increasingly separating into two classes - those hammered by the globalized economy and those profiting from it. The resultant resentments threaten to polarize political debate and to deepen anger in the country. When a country has part of its urban population constantly threatening to riot and part of its rural population undergoing combat training through a spreading militia movement, it is fair to say that social conditions in that country are troubled.
Stewarding the International System
What about American stewardship of the international system? Here, paradoxically, the United States suffers from a bipartisan consensus that overextends the country militarily and underextends it diplomatically. With no serious threat, the United States in fiscal year 1995 maintained a defense budget of $263.8 billion. In real terms, this figure is greater than that of 1980, after the late Carter buildup and while the Cold War raged. The United States acts as if the Warsaw Pact still existed and the Soviet Union were still in place. The U.S. military effort remains vastly larger than that of any other major power. The United States has accepted responsibility for the ground defense of South Korea, if necessary, although North Korea is one-tenth as rich and only one-half as populous as its neighbor to the south. America is the lone gendarme of the Persian Gulf, even though the oil flows primarily to Europe and Japan. Meanwhile, the United States, the U.N.'s largest deadbeat, is slashing its contributions to international development organizations, is forced to shut off the air conditioning in some of its tropical embassies in order to save money, and is engaged in a severe downsizing of its foreign policy establishment owing to budget pressures.
In late 1995, Secretary of State Warren Christopher contended that 1995 was one of the best years in American diplomacy since the end of the Cold War. He had in mind the administration's registered gains - the Dayton accord, the ceasefire in Northern Ireland, and the successful presidential election in Haiti. Yet the historical record of this administration and its Republican opposition will rest less on what happens in these areas, important as they are, than on America's declining ability to serve as the responsible steward of the post-Cold War international system.
AN EMBOLDENED FOREIGN POLICY
If Americans were to abandon their bipartisan post-Cold War conceptual timidity, what might an alternative foreign policy look like? It could rest on the following elements:
* The United States could rhetorically abandon its hegemonic pretension (as the world's only superpower), which creates a subconscious barrier to greater efforts at cooperation with other major powers. It is psychologically satisfying for American politicians to speak constantly about the United States as the world's only remaining superpower, but the urgent goal of American foreign policy should be to find a balance between commitments, which are expanding in places like Bosnia, Eastern Europe, Haiti, and South Korea, and resources, which are shrinking. In Europe, this would mean that, following the Bosnia mission, the principal military goal of the United States would again be to prevent the rise of another hegemonic power on the continent. Washington would make it clear that the Dayton accord does not mean that the United States intends to become involved in internal European conflicts. The United States would contribute to the resolution of these conflicts primarily through diplomatic efforts to calm, cajole, and control the spread of ethnic conflict in Europe, but it would not attempt to police Europe internally. In Asia, the United States would progressively move away from its current posture as a land power. It would offer air and sea protection in support of its Asian allies, who have the resources and population to carry out their own land defense. (Some might object that this is a recipe for an arms race in Asia, since no one wants to see Japan again pose a major military threat to its neighbors. But what Asian states fear is Japan's ability to project military power, which requires a blue-water navy and a long-range air force. America can provide regional balance by remaining the preeminent air and naval power there.)
* The United States would center its foreign policy on the countries that determine the overall character of the international system - China, Japan, Russia, members of the European Union, and some of the emerging powers, such as India and Indonesia. Only states of this size and power can mount or prevent the kind of regional or global struggle that could jeopardize world peace. So long as such states are at peace, surface turmoil in the international system can continue without shaking its foundations. It is only when such states engage in the type of "great game" that was played before World War I or when some great power seeks a hegemonic role that regional or global peace is endangered. America's goal should be to work for a concert of powers, involving Russia and China at the decision table. The United States should be more patient with these states as they make their transitions to modernity. The United States need not drop its concerns about democracy and human rights, but it can apply the same standard to Russia and China that it applies to American allies or friends like Turkey or Egypt. Today, for example, Turkey, with a population of 63 million, has imprisoned more than twice as many journalists as China (20), with a population of 1.2 billion, yet one would not know this from official U.S. statements. Egypt's elections are less fair than those in Russia. This is not a call for the United States to hammer Turkey or Egypt, but for a single standard of judgment, one that reflects the new reality that China and Russia are no longer enemies.
* The United States would nudge Europe and Japan to assume larger military responsibilities, but it would do this in the context of renewed efforts to further reduce the levels of armaments in both regions. Despite the impressive reductions in conventional armaments that have taken place, there are still more tanks in Europe now than there were when Adolf Hitler launched his assault on the Soviet Union. Although it is inevitable that Japan's military responsibilities will grow - it is already edging into U.N. peacekeeping - this new role need not be threatening to others, provided an effort can be made to establish balance among the major powers at the lowest possible level of forces. That is not possible without a strategic understanding with China, which will likewise be impossible without an effort to create a peacetime structure in the region that accords China a place of real influence.
* The United States would work for commitments to principles and multilateral structures that constrain imperialistic behavior and contain dangerous great-power rivalry. In their immediate neighborhood, great powers inevitably assume disproportionate responsibilities and influence. The task is to prevent this fact of life from justifying either imperialism or conflicts among the great powers as they perhaps attempt to act in disputed spheres of influence. The Nixon administration's much ridiculed attempt to negotiate an international code of conduct that would have disciplined U.S. and Soviet behavior in the Third World was in fact an initial step in this direction. It failed because international conditions were not yet ripe. Now they may be.
Is an effort to work for a concert of powers realistic? The German foreign policy commentator Josef Joffe has assumed that the nature of states cannot change and that, in the end, U.S. options in Europe (and presumably in Asia) will turn out to be, to use his shorthand, either Britain or Bismarck, i.e., either bloodless balancing a la Britain or a complicated security structure controlled by the preeminent international power - then Germany, now the United States.(1) In fact, the current U.S. proposals for NATO expansion seem to be following the path of Bismarck: They call for expansion to the east with some kind of unspecified special relationship with Russia. Bismarck's system of simultaneous alliances with Austria and Russia was another effort to square the circle. It required a political genius to manage, and it broke down soon after Bismarck retired, paving the way for World War I. An unexamined question is whether any of the powers today possess the quality of political leadership necessary to manage the kind of Bismarckian structure that American leaders, both Republican and Democratic, are willy-nilly pursuing.
In fact, Joffe is wrong in his assumption - that the behavior of states can never change. Were he right, Soviet troops would have crushed the East Germans when they tore down the Berlin Wall. Or Germany would be as great a threat today as it was in 1914. Japan would not be a civilian power. And the goal of most states would again be to seize territory rather than to acquire wealth through internal development.
* The United States would work with the major European powers to create a pan-European security organization to carry out the kinds of functions now being performed by the U.N. and NATO in the former Yugoslavia. NATO'S stated purpose would be reformulated to be one of providing stability to Europe, in particular to reassure Germany that it is protected against nuclear blackmail. If NATO is to be expanded, it must develop formal mechanisms to ensure that non-member states like Russia and Ukraine will have a policy voice equal to NATO members on European security issues that do not involve the protection of member states against physical attack. Under such arrangements, for example, it would be understood that NATO alone could not make a decision to send a peacekeeping force to a European state that was not a member. It would be understood that NATO would move military assets into a new member's territory only in response to an explicit threat from a nonmember. Finally, any effort toward NATO expansion should be in the context of further efforts to reduce the still excessive conventional armaments of Europe. Current plans for NATO expansion call for massive increases in the defense expenditures of the new member states. Needed, instead, is an effort to reduce further the conventional burden they are carrying.
* The United States would announce as a long-term policy objective the progressive denuclearization of the world, because the spread of nuclear weapons is the greatest threat to America's current position of almost total security. It would open talks with the other nuclear powers for the creation of a minimum deterrent of a few hundred weapons for each state. Because other states will not indefinitely tolerate a privileged position for the nuclear states, it would begin a study on the long-run - in all likelihood very long-run - steps required to rid the world of nuclear weapons. To begin the process of delegitimizing nuclear weapons and in recognition of the fact that Russia no longer enjoys conventional superiority in Europe, it would announce a no-first-use doctrine for weapons of mass destruction. The administration's reluctance to address the relevance of Cold War nuclear strategy to America's current international challenges is an example of the conceptual timidity of the American foreign policy elite in both parties. As Fred Ikle, former under secretary of defense for policy in the Reagan administration, has pointed out, no state has a greater interest in delegitimizing the use of nuclear weapons than the United States in the post-Cold War era, for the most serious threat to U.S. security is the possibility that some smaller power will break the taboo against the use of nuclear weapons and expose the United States to attack. Ikle therefore urges that the United States press for a consensus among the nuclear powers in favor of a no-first-use doctrine, except in response to an attack by another weapon of mass destruction.
One step that would stimulate debate on this subject would be a more honest discussion of the dangers of America's current nuclear policy. In his call for a no-first-use consensus, Ikle notes, for example, that during the Cold War there were "several accidents and mistakes that could have sparked a large-scale nuclear war," but those "horrid details are still largely shrouded in secrecy."(2) Congress should press the administration to release these "horrid details" so that we can finally have a frank debate about the risks of our current posture.
* America would contribute more to fostering the development of international institutions. If America's goal is to create a system that reduces the current propensity of others to look to it to assume a disproportionate burden, then the United States must reverse its current policy of paring back contributions to international institutions and adopt the more realistic policy of giving them the resources needed to accomplish the new tasks they are being asked to carry out. The past four years have demonstrated both that the permanent members of the Security Council are not willing to shoulder this responsibility at the global level and that, if only because of media attention, they also cannot adopt an official position of indifference. The United States should press for the strengthening of regional organizations in Africa, Europe, and Latin America so that they can respond to the Bosnias and Rwandas of the world at the regional level. In this regard, the United States would favor the earmarking of national units for peacekeeping operations at either the global or the regional level. The U.S. goal would be to create greater respect at all levels of the international system for international law and processes. Finally, the United States would support efforts to identify new sources of revenue for the international system, because the current system of financing the U.N. and other international activities is no longer reliable. Any new source of income must still be subject to strict control by the member states. There can be no question of granting international bureaucrats control of the new funding sources, but it is also true that traditional means of funding international activities are proving inadequate.
* An alternative foreign policy would also involve a strategy to improve the welfare of the average American. The main crisis the United States faces today is internal, not external, but that reality does not mean that America can turn its back on the world. The solution to America's internal crisis must be a combination of internal reform and external engagement. America cannot turn its back on foreign markets, because, overall, jobs directly related to exports generate wages nearly one-fifth higher than jobs that are domestically based. Export-related jobs are also the fastest growing sector of our economy.
Nevertheless, the country cannot continue on the current course, which involves growing income disparities, without adverse effects on the social fabric. Some theorists believe that reversing these internal trends is almost impossible. Economist James Heckman of the University of Chicago has developed complicated estimates(3) that, when extrapolated, suggest that a national training program sweeping enough to return the earnings differential between skilled and unskilled workers to the level of 1979 would cost roughly $170 billion a year. That appears to be an impossible goal. It would be impossible even if training were the only answer, but a multipart program is needed. America's goal need not be a restoration of 1979 levels but a reversal of current trends and a series of steps that can rebuild labor's place in American life, as much for social as economic reasons.
If the United States were at war, it would try to use the talents of every young man and woman in the country. They would be inducted and educated to carry out the tasks required for national survival. In the global economy, the national goal must also be "not a talent wasted." This approach should be viewed as a requirement for national survival as a leading civilian power. The United States should make the long-overdue post-Cold War cuts in its military budget and channel most of the money into a national training program, perhaps run by American industry, which may understand better than the government the skills that must be promoted. The goal would be to equip American workers to compete in the twenty-first century economy.
But there must also be an effort to strengthen labor, and the president's economic advisers have identified the reason for this reality: Industries with a strong labor movement have a more equitable wage structure than those without such a movement. Consequently, unless we can find other ways to reduce the income disparities that are developing, it is in everyone's political interest to see a revival of the American labor movement. Senator Jesse Helms (R-North Carolina), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, recently stated his belief that the age of unions is over and that the United States should therefore get out of the International Labor Organization, a U.N. agency that brings labor, business, and government together. No one of significance in either party denounced this statement. This kind of bashing of American labor must stop. The stability of the country may well depend on a revival of American unionism.
Great powers can fall from mistakes at home just as easily as from setbacks abroad. The international positions of Britain and Russia declined more because of internal policy failures than foreign policy mistakes. The dominance that America has enjoyed since 1945 has rested fundamentally on its economic system, which has delivered a steadily improving standard of living for a majority of its citizens. That sense of progress created confidence among the American people and tolerance for their leaders' international ambitions. Thus empowered, those leaders were able to accomplish remarkable policy feats. Restoring that faith in the American system and its ability to deliver for every citizen is now the highest priority of American statecraft, but the path of reform must proceed in a way that does not close America off from the world. Such an approach is possible, but only if both parties abandon the Cold War blinders that still block real consideration of alternative policies.
1 See Josef Joffe, "'Bismarck' or 'Britain'? Toward an American Grand Strategy after Bipolarity," International Security 19 (Spring 1995): 94-117.
2 Fred Charles Ikle, "The Second Coming of the Nuclear Age," Foreign Affairs 75 (January/February 1996): pp. 119-128.
3 See James J. Heckman, "Is job training oversold?" The Public Interest 115 (Spring 1994): 91-115.
CHARLES WILLIAM MAYNES is the editor of FOREIGN POLICY.
COPYRIGHT 1996 Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
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