THE NATURE OF THE POST-COLD WAR WORLD

Charles William Maynes

THE WORLD IN THE YEAR 2000: PROSPECTS FOR ORDER OR DISORDER

William G. Hyland

REEXAMINING NATIONAL STRATEGY

FOREWORD

The editors of the nation’s two leading journals on foreign policy were asked to examine the nature of the post-cold war world and America’s transitional role. These essays represent the views of Charles William Maynes, editor of Foreign Policy, and William G. Hyland, former editor of Foreign Affairs.

Charles Maynes reviews the major transitions that marked 45 years of Soviet-American strategic confrontation. Predictably, the U.S. global role and defense resources are declining as old threats decrease and domestic problems move higher up on the policy agenda. Less predictably, the relative defense spending of small powers is likely to increase, adding to the potential for regional instability. These trends and the proliferation of weapons technology, including weapons of mass destruction, will drive the major powers toward their third attempt in this century to deal with global instability through collective security. Power will become more evenly distributed as America’s military dominance recedes and others’ economic power increases. Such trends, Mr. Maynes believes, should not be disturbing so long as prudent retrenchment does not become a foolish retreat from an American global role.

William Hyland believes that no president since Calvin Coolidge has inherited an easier foreign policy agenda. Presidents from Truman through Bush did the cold war “heavy lifting,” and the Clinton transitional era should mark the ascendancy of domestic over foreign policy issues.

Economic power is essential to America’s future and the country faces the difficult task of economic recovery while avoiding the political expedience of protectionism or other forms of belligerence toward our trading partners. This would accelerate international fragmentation, undermining the political trends toward a collective security regime that is vital to the new world order and is the best alternative to the extremes of U.S. isolationism or global policeman.

Mr. Hyland advises against grand strategic visions. Instead, selectivity based on national interests should be a guiding principle while we put our economic house in order.

The Strategic Studies Institute is pleased to publish these essays as a contribution to the debate on U.S. national security strategy.

JOHN W. MOUNTCASTLE

Colonel, U.S. Army

Director, Strategic Studies Institute

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES OF THE AUTHORS

CHARLES WILLIAM MAYNES has served as Editor of Foreign Policy magazine since April 1980. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Harvard University, he was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford where he earned First Class Honors in Politics, Philosophy, and Economics. Over the course of his career, Mr. Maynes has held significant positions in the Department of State, U.S. Congress, and the foundation world.

WILLIAM G. HYLAND was Editor of Foreign Affairs from 1984 until 1993. A graduate of Washington University, St. Louis, he also earned an M.A. from the University of Missouri. Mr. Hyland served on the National Security Council Staff and was Director of Intelligence at the State Department. After government service he joined the Georgetown Center for Strategic Studies and subsequently became a Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

THE WORLD IN THE YEAR 2000: PROSPECTS FOR ORDER OR DISORDER

Charles William Maynes

Introduction.

Are we in a new era in world affairs? It has become commonplace to assert this. But the best way to peer into the future—perhaps the only way—is to examine the past and to look for trends that appear to be shaping the present. If we understand clearly the contours of the international system after 1945, it will probably be easier for us to determine the extent to which we are now truly in a revolutionary era, one which will give us, whether we wish it or not, a New World Order.

In 1945 all thoughtful observers realized that the world was indeed at a turning point. Both domestically and internationally strategists understood that the world could not return to the policies of the interwar period.

The development of the atomic bomb guaranteed that. The existence of a weapon qualitatively different from all that had proceeded it convinced policymakers that the world was entering a new age. Strategists began to assert that the very nature of war had changed. Before the goal was to win wars. Now the goal was to avert war.

Also convincing statesmen that a page had been turned was the position of Europe after the war. In contrast to the First World War, which despite its destruction still left Britain, France and Germany as major international actors, the Second World War brought Soviet and American troops to the heart of Europe. The periphery of Europe, broadly considered, was now in charge of the center. The world had not seen such a development since 1815 when Russian troops marched in Paris and there was a comparable sense that a new page in history was being turned.

In the domestic realm there was also a sense of dramatic departure. Governments associated with the West announced their determination to avoid the mistakes of the interwar period, racked with social and class conflict. All parties agreed that there had to be a new social contract, which we know as the postwar welfare state. Even conservatives accepted that government would have a new role to play in the economies of their countries. All major parties recognized that society could not permit the kind of domestic conflict that had spawned the twin evils of fascism and communism. The major issue was not whether to draw up a new social contract but what its provisions should be and who should pay for the new state obligations.

Internationally the creation of the United Nations and the development of the Marshall Plan reflected a feeling that a new security and social contract were needed abroad as well as at home. The consequences of unbridled nationalism were everywhere to be seen. With the establishment of the United Nations and its various affiliated organizations, the immediate postwar world saw the second attempt in this century at collective security. The international equivalent of the welfare state at home was attempted in the creation of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank as the notion emerged that economically powerful states had an obligation to promote growth and welfare not only in their own countries but throughout the globe.

Americans like to think that such attitudes reflect a special vein of American generosity or altruism and that only their country could have come up with the Marshall Plan. The new course did represent an impressive policy departure, particularly for the United States, but in retrospect it should be seen as part of a more general international phenomenon. America stood out, not because it was so much more generous than others in terms of its national character, but because it was so much richer than others in terms of its large treasury. Had other victorious nations had the resources of America, it seems likely that we would now be talking about the de Gaulle plan or the Attlee plan or even the Chiang Kai-shek plan. For indeed, once other nations recovered, they also began to display the same pattern of generosity that many Americans like to believe is restricted to themselves. Today other members of the OECD contribute more to ODA than the United States by the standard measure of per capita effort. Indeed, America is at the bottom of the list of donors in per capita terms. If the American people were inherently more generous than the people of other states, such a transformation would never have taken place. It did take place because of the general postwar tendency to believe that governments had an obligation to promote an improvement in economic and social conditions both at home and abroad that could reduce the likelihood of civil strife and war.

Other characteristics of the postwar era are worth noting. After 1945 the world witnessed the outbreak of two global wars that literally touched every country in the international system. The first was between white and non-white, European and non-European and the issue was liberation. The result was foreordained. Liberation prevailed. Colonialism ended.

The other global war was ideological. Indeed, the cold war was our first truly world war. In the first and second world wars, fighting did take place in several different regions. But there were major areas of the globe that remained relatively untouched, most of Africa, Latin America or South Asia for example. Because of the cold war’s ideological character, the struggle was everywhere. All regions were touched. Every single country or dependency became involved and the superpowers found reason to intervene virtually everywhere.

With the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union, this global civil war is effectively over. The future of communism is in the hands of aging leaders in China, Cuba, North Korea and North Vietnam. Their days are numbered and so is the future of the movements they lead. This fact appears to many of us to alter radically the course of history, leading to the kind of turning point we faced in 1945. It certainly seems to be the case that the future of international relations will henceforth be different if only because the foreign policies of the Soviet Union and the United States are going to be so different. The primary organizing principle of postwar relations—the ideological struggle between the United States and the USSR—will no longer exist. That seems to be almost as significant a change as the arrival of American and Soviet troops in the heart of Europe.

No major new weapon has appeared on the international scene to rival the atomic bomb in its impact on international relations but other new features of the international system convince many that we are at a turning point: the rise of the trading state whose international power derives from its economic strength rather than its military might, the transformation of America from the globe’s leading creditor into its leading debtor, the evolution of Japan into the world’s most successful economy, the reunification of Germany, the globalization of world capital markets, and the rise of environmental dangers that affect the security of all countries regardless of political orientation. Yet of all the factors, the one that seems to have had the most immediate and profound effect is the end to the cold war.

Whither the Cold War?

But if this war has ended, why did it end? Who was responsible? Was it Mikhail Gorbachev, obviously a major figure in modern history? Was it Ronald Reagan with his defense buildup, the most massive peacetime arms effort in history? Or was something more profound at work that will help us to understand the world that is unfolding before us? The answer is not merely academic. If we attribute the end of the cold war to the actions of a few leaders whose appearance on the world stage can be seen as an accident, then we can fear that the arrival on the scene of a new leader might turn back the clock. Conversely, if more fundamental factors were involved, then we have less reason to fear the return of the cold war. A new leader would find it hard to reverse a process that is deeply entrenched internationally and had been set in motion not months before, but decades before.

In trying to assess the role of individuals as opposed to larger trends, we start out with a dilemma. Machiavelli once wrote that history’s record is written half by statesmen and half by fortune or fate. Statesmen, of course, claim all the credit for themselves while fortune by definition keeps her council. Hence the opportunity is created for self-serving memoirs by retired statesmen who claim all the credit for themselves or the opportunity is presented to analysts trying without full confidence or knowledge to see beneath the surface.

I am in the second category and my proposition is that the cold war, to remain cold, required a totalitarian enemy, one constitutionally incapable of evolving into a more normal international partner. By this definition, the cold war ceased with the historic address of Nikita Khrushchev before the 20th Party Congress, in which he unmasked Stalin before the elite of the Soviet Union. There was a reason that the Communist movement made strenuous efforts to keep this address secret. Knowledge of what Khrushchev said, we can now see, was explosive. As news spread of that speech, revolts broke out all over Eastern Europe. They were suppressed but thereafter the Communist world and especially the Soviet Union entered into an uneven process of becoming normal participants in the international system. And as the Soviet Union evolved so did the system that it led. The progress was fitful and the process is not yet complete, particularly in Asia, but the trend has been constant as we can see by looking at the postwar period in 10 year segments.

The high point of the cold war was 1945-55. Joseph Stalin, history’s most accomplished totalitarian, died only in 1953. While he lived, the Soviet Union was locked in fear as were those states that copied the Soviet system. Children denounced their parents, individuals were responsible for the imprisonment or death of their neighbors. The control of the state over the individual seemed almost total. But Stalin’s methods and the fear they engendered did not only affect the politics of the Communist world. It is no accident that during this decade the United States entered the self-destructive period of McCarthyism as working colleagues denounced one another and the civil liberties of all Americans were significantly curbed. The struggle between Communists and non- Communists in other countries was often conducted by war to the knife with hundreds of thousands of innocents harmed or even killed and whole communities destroyed as a result.

During this period the superpower relationship was largely marked by the signs of intense confrontation. In retrospect we can see that the two sides were involved in a struggle to establish the boundaries of the new postwar order. Major events were the Communist conquest of China, the Berlin Blockade, the Korean War, the creation of the two great alliance systems, the consolidation of Soviet power in Eastern Europe and the consolidation of American influence in Europe and off-shore Asia.

Efforts by each side to test the boundaries of the postwar division marked 1955-65. The Soviet Union encouraged militant Communist parties everywhere and the Communist movement made gains in such different areas as Latin America and Southeast Asia. Communists succeeded in gaining total control in Cuba and war broke out in South Vietnam. Meanwhile, the United States was engaged in similar efforts to test the postwar boundaries, primarily through the activities of the CIA. NSC directive 5412/1 of March 12, 1955, for example, authorized the CIA to enter into a covert war with communism. According to the directive, operations approved were to include “propaganda, political action, economic warfare, preventive direct action, including sabotage, antisabotage, demolition, escape and evasion and evacuation measures; subversion against hostile states or groups including assistance to underground resistance movements, guerrilla and refugee liberation groups.” The United States began to train armies for the day of liberation in Eastern Europe and China. Training camps were established on U.S. soil. On occasion Americans found out about this activity inadvertently. On December 7, 1961, a group of American civilians at Peterson Field in Colorado Springs, which serves both as a municipal airport and a U.S. Air Force base, found themselves ordered at gunpoint to lock themselves inside a hangar. When they looked through the window, they saw a group of oriental solders who turned out to be Tibetan guerrillas being trained in a remote part of Colorado. At government request the major papers in the United States suppressed any news of this sensational encounter.

Most of these efforts collapsed with the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956 to crush the Hungarian revolution. The man in charge of the U.S. effort committed suicide a few years later. The failure of the Communist side in the Korean War and of the Western side during the Hungarian revolution made clear that the boundary lines between East and West were being solidified. In Europe the line between East and West soon became so clear that no one could doubt where it was or dare to cross it. In Asia the situation was a little less clear because of the continuing struggle in Vietnam. But the United States interposed its fleet in the Taiwan straits, signed a security pact with Japan and stationed tens of thousands of troops semipermanently in Korea. The end of the decade witnessed a devastating setback for the Communist movement as a failed coup in Indonesia brought a savage response. Perhaps 1/2 million people were slaughtered, and the Communist party in the fifth most populous state in the world was no more. The lines in Asia were also solidifying. Only the continuing struggle in Vietnam blinded us to what was really happening.

As the lines of division hardened and each side gained more confidence that its core area of concern was not threatened, the two superpowers cautiously began to explore, at first very tentatively, the possibilities for a more normal relationship. The Cuban Missile Crisis reminded them of the consequences of not attempting to develop such a relationship. During this period the two sides signed the Limited Test Ban treaty, they began to expand trade and exchanges, and they started to institutionalize arms control negotiations.

The years 1965-75 marked a period in which normalization was pushed much harder. The two superpowers began to understand that their special status depended on limiting the power of others as well as preventing their own arms race from getting out of control. The nonproliferation treaty was designed to accomplish the former, and the ABM treaty and the SALT I treaties were designed to accomplish the latter by putting a cap on the superpower arms race. The two sides also began to cooperate when they saw that wars at the periphery might disrupt their own relationship at the center. So the United States and the Soviet Union, after arming the parties to the conflict, worked together to contain the spread of wars in the Middle East in 1967 and 1973 and in South Asia in 1967 and 1971. Although with less success, the two sides even tried to cooperate to some extent to end the war in Vietnam.

The rules of the game for superpower involvement in the Third World were clarified from 1975 to 1985. A comparison of Soviet behavior in Afghanistan with U.S. behavior in Korea and Vietnam helps explain this point. The Soviet Union in Afghanistan acted according to a certain code of conduct, brutal though it was. Like the United States in Korea and Vietnam, the Soviet Union used enormous power in Afghanistan but it stopped short of using its full power. Like the United States in these two earlier crises, the Soviet Union also did not allow its distress in Afghanistan and its anger over the actions of its great rival in feeding the rebellion to end its relationship with the United States. Like the United States in Korea and Vietnam, the Soviet Union drew back from decisive military action against neighboring states supplying the force it was opposing in Afghanistan.

During this same period the United States made clear in Central America that it was willing to use both legal and illegal means to prevent a pro-Communist beachhead on the mainland in the Western Hemisphere. So by the mid-1980s with the lines of demarcation drawn in Europe and Asia, with attempts to cross those lines largely defeated, and with the rules of the game generally established in other parts of the world, the two powers were in a position to treat one another like normal powers and to make major gains.

Indeed the U.S. accommodation with China was an indication that normal diplomacy was returning. The United States treated China—despite its harsh Communist regime, which was, in fact, much worse than that of Brezhnev’s Soviet Union—no longer like an ideological rival but as an important player on the diplomatic chess board. Washington was beginning the process of moving beyond cold war thinking. It was returning to an earlier or more traditional geopolitical game. Facilitating this tendency of ideological opponents treating one another as normal countries rather than as unapproachable rivals was another important development. By the early 1970s the Soviet Union had achieved essential nuclear parity. Each side could destroy the other with a second strike. It was becoming too dangerous to maintain the cold war. The ground was prepared for a grand compromise, even a grand bargain.

At this point someone may assert that the real reason the ground was prepared is not that a 30-year process was at work but that Ronald Reagan spent the Soviet Union into the ground with his massive defense buildup. According to this point of view, we have to keep our guard up because if we relax our effort, a new leadership in Moscow will simply reassert Russia as a dominant global rival. But an examination of the record does not support such an explanation of the change in Moscow. Long before Gorbachev came to power, the Reagan administration found that its initial policy of frenzied anti-communism could not be sustained. In other words, if the Soviets blinked, it was after it was clear that the United States was also blinking. By December 1983 Ronald Reagan was explaining to the editors of Time that he would never again use terms like “the evil empire” to describe the Soviet Union. In January 1984 he delivered a seminal address on U.S.-Soviet relations that redirected his administration’s Soviet policy toward greater cooperation and laid the basis for the rapproachment with Moscow, soon to be under the leadership of Gorbachev.

Defense spending also slowed before the Gorbachev revolution took hold. It reached its peak in 1985 at $351 billion in 1991 dollars but this figure represented plans made as early as 1983. As defense and foreign policy analyst Earl Ravenal has pointed out, the momentum of American restoration “had crested well before the end of Ronald Reagan’s first term” or before Gorbachev became General Secretary.

So it was that, against a background of four decades of a discernable process of normalization, Mikhail Gorbachev had the great fortune of becoming the head of the Soviet Union when his country needed a change in its relationship with the United States and when the groundwork for such a change had been completed. Gorbachev needed stability abroad in order to pursue reform at home. He moved quickly to gain it. Soon the world saw such astonishing developments as the INF treaty, which eliminated one whole class of weapons; the destruction of the Berlin Wall, which had divided East and West in Europe for decades; and cooperation between Moscow and Washington, which began to work to resolve a variety of regional disputes from Southern Africa to Central America to Cambodia.

Extraordinary progress was being made in converting the image of the other side in both countries to that of a normal country. Polls began to show a fundamental transformation in the American image of the Soviet Union, which was soon more favorable than that of France, Israel, Japan and Taiwan, and in the Soviet image of the United States, which was transformed from that of enemy into that of model. Then the Soviet Union simply imploded-the result more of internal contradictions than external pressure. But a radical improvement in Washington’s relations with Moscow would have taken place even if this destruction of America’s great enemy had never taken place.

The New World.

Of course, while all this was happening to the superpower relationship, other major developments were taking place that were also helping to lay the groundwork for the New World we are entering. All of the major European powers regained the place in the international economy they had enjoyed before World War II. In this respect the end of the cold war did not bring a new world but the return to an old one. The share of world trade represented by the European Community has shot from 22 percent in 1960 to roughly 40 percent today. Although France and Britain lost their political place in the world because of the process of decolonialization, Western Europe as a whole has become the greatest trading area in the world.

But even greater changes were taking place in Asia. Few could have predicted, or at least few did, that Japan, Korea, Taiwan and now most of Southeast Asia would take off economically in the way that they have. Their example is having a profound effect on the way the world is configured and on the way that it is managed. In the past a nation might employ military might to acquire economic advantages—fertile land, oil fields, or water rights. But because of the Asian miracle, it is possible that much of the post-cold-war world may be different. The success of Asian states suggests that few of the resources that are vital to economic success in the modern world can be seized. Rather, they must be created, for they are largely human and institutional in nature. An effort to seize them will destroy them. For a sullen, subjugated people is not the work force that will bring a modern nation greatness. Indeed, this is the great dilemma that Beijing faces as it prepares to assume control of Hong Kong.

It may be that the Middle East is one of the last areas of the world where the wars of the past still make sense. Obviously, it would pay a state in the Middle East to seize a major oil field if the aggression were to stand. States in the Middle East also lack water. One can imagine water wars there. More might be lost than would be gained but there is a sort of traditional logic to the struggle. Indeed, there is some evidence that the root cause of the 1967 war was water.

In much of the rest of the world, however, except perhaps in a few contested areas—the Spratly Islands might be one—states are not trying to seize resources from others. Aggression no longer pays in the way that it did in the past. That is a major change in world history and Asian states can take much of the credit for shifting mass and elite views.

Meanwhile, another form of traditional warfare has reemerged—wars of national consolidation. As brutal as the struggle in Yugoslavia is—and the pictures on television remind us of the brutality every day—it is not too different from the wars of national consolidation that took place through Western Europe from the 15th century forward or from the wars in this century between Greece and Turkey or between Israel and the Palestinians. Throughout Central and Eastern Europe new nations are being born and it would be a miracle if the process were completed without violence.

The dilemma the outside world faces in dealing with such conflicts is that there appears to be no easy way to exert constructive influence. Wars of national consolidation involve passions that are not easily controlled by foreign pressure or diplomacy. Unless one takes the position that no borders should be changed regardless of how illogical they may be, it is hard to know what constitutes aggression in many of these struggles, which are often triggered by unexpected developments.

Without question, continuing violence in the former Soviet Union will trigger Western fears of a revived Russian threat. The ethnic tensions dividing Russia and its neighbors could explode at any moment, perhaps bringing to power authorities in Moscow determined to rebuild Russia’s military strength. Even in that event, however, the West would not face the return of the traditional security threat from Moscow that the world has known since 1945. Moscow has lost its forward military position in central Europe, its ideological allies in Eastern Europe have been totally discredited, and the task of maintaining internal unity will drain Russian energies for years to come. What is of immediate concern to the West is the final disposition of the Soviet nuclear arsenal. Civic disorder in Russia could create opportunities for renegade military units to steal or sell nuclear weapons. The Clinton administration should accord the highest priority to efforts to reach agreement with Moscow for the accelerated destruction of as many nuclear warheads as possible under START and subsequent agreements.

Great Power Equalizers.

In the years ahead several factors are helping steadily to erode the advantage the great powers have traditionally enjoyed over their smaller rivals. The first is the spread of weapons throughout the world. It is too often neglected that the era of Western political dominance in world affairs was also a period when it was heavily armed and the rest of the world was almost completely disarmed. In such circumstances, it is not hard to dominate others. Thus, by controlling the machine gun, the West could inflict enormous casualties without suffering very many in return. The model for war was the British conquest of the Sudan. The British with superior weapons killed 11,000 Sudanese and suffered 48 dead, of whom 3 were British officers and 25 were British enlisted men. During the many wars the British fought in Africa, even though the bulk of the troops were always African, British officers controlled the machine gun and were under orders under no circumstances to let one fall into the hands of the enemy.

The wars in Afghanistan and Vietnam demonstrated that although it is within the capability of Western states to win a war—the Soviets or the Americans could always have won had they used the full measure of their power—they could no longer win at a cost they or their allies were willing to pay because the enemy was so well armed. Of course, the Soviets or the Americans could have used weapons that would have obliterated the other side but these same weapons would have also destroyed their reputation worldwide. Had the Soviets or the United States used such weapons in either Afghanistan or Vietnam, one might have said that the cost of victory was loss of the cold war in Asia and Europe.

The Gulf War was a modern Sudan. The United States and its allies completely destroyed the opposing army while suffering only a few hundred casualties. But before we are too celebratory, we should consider this paradox about the war: Because Saddam Hussein was so heavily armed, he dared to take on the largest military power in the world and in the end, although he grossly underestimated U.S. men, women, and equipment, he was correct in his belief that his military power was sufficient to deter the United States from conquering his entire country because of fear of casualties. Given that fear, once again proven and quite understandable in a democracy, one must question whether any future target for the West’s massive power will follow a strategy as self-defeating as the one adopted by Saddam Hussein. Iraq allowed the United States to maximize the effect of its military power by refusing to attack when U.S. forces were at their weakest. It took on a coalition that included three of the largest and most efficient armies in the world. It committed an act of aggression so egregious that not a single nation in the world publicly approved of what Iraq had done.

There are other reasons that explain the decline in the use of force besides the fact that the spread of weapons has served as an international equalizer. In large parts of the world, but primarily in the countries that are militarily and technologically the most sophisticated, there has been a decline in chauvinism even if there is at the same time often a rise in nationalism. By this distinction I mean that even if many are more proud of their country than ever before, there has been a decline in a popular belief that one’s own culture is so superior to that of another that it justifies killing someone who does not participate in it. The shift in positions on such matters is astonishing. In World War II the U.S. Government and the American news media worked hand-in-glove, as documented by John Dower in his book on racial attitudes in World War II, War Without Mercy, to demonize the Japanese, who were often portrayed as some form of subhuman. The most elite organs of the American press participated willingly in this crude propaganda, which was mirrored in a reverse fashion in the Japanese press, which, however, was totalitarian. By the time of the Persian Gulf War, the U.S. news media, like most Americans, may have been cheering for an American victory, but it was also on the scene to make sure that civilians were not being unnecessarily targeted. Indeed, the Pentagon’s most important ally in its effort to prove that U.S. forces were not targeting civilians was CNN, whose correspondents were on the scene.

In Russia the popular revulsion against war has become so great that Gorbachev promised that Russian troops would never be used again outside the country without the permission of the legislature. This is a pledge that no American president has been willing to make although I, for one, believe he should.

Regrettably, while there has been a decline in chauvinism in some parts of the world, it is definitely on the rise in Central and Eastern Europe. This is likely to trigger repeated conflict, but unless the great powers become involved, it should not cause a conflagration. Conflicts there will trouble the world’s conscience but if the great powers intervene, they are likely to do this rarely, preferring to sequester conflicts and to allow local hatreds to burn themselves out. One reason for this impulse toward nonintervention will be that the old geopolitical calculus will no longer hold. A shift of authority in Slovakia may trouble Hungary but it will not greatly concern the major powers, which understand that their place in the new international order will be affected more by economic developments at home and internationally than by diplomatic shifts in the Balkans.

Affecting this reluctance to intervene is a rise in the level of political consciousness around the world. Something very profound is happening in the political culture of both democracies and nondemocracies. Ordinary people are progressively being brought into the decision-making circle on foreign issues. Modern communications have given them a tool that greatly enhances their power. Indeed, television empowers people who might never have chosen on their own to become involved. Visual coverage of wars or famines spills into the living rooms of average Americans, creating interest and concern where decades earlier there would have only been policy silence. Our leaders hate this intrusion into the privileged realm of policy, but there is little they can do about it.

We are not simply talking about television. We are also talking about the cassette recorder, the computer, the fax and the camcorder, which permit ordinary citizens to contest the state’s monopoly of information and its ability to determine an official version of events. Evidence of the importance of these new tools is present everywhere. In Los Angeles, Afro-Americans have been able to document long-standing charges of police brutality by using a camcorder to film a group of policemen brutally beating a hapless black man. In Mexico, grass roots groups used computers to prove after the earthquake that the government had large numbers of uninhabited apartments it could provide to the homeless. In Brazil, protesters used the fax and computer to alert the world to the assassination of environmental activist Chico Mendes.

So long as illiteracy or control of communications allowed those in power to keep the majority of the population politically inert, leaders could decide independently the issues of peace and war with little political cost to themselves. They did not fight the wars and if the decision to go to war was wrong, they did not suffer unless the defeat was total. Kings or presidents in victory or defeat usually returned to their castles or mansions.

Once knowledge is available, an element of accountability is introduced. The head of state may be weakened or even driven from power if he makes the wrong decision. Both Lyndon Baines Johnson and Richard Milhouse Nixon can attest to that democratic reality. Of course, even in democracies, for some time people have accepted the undemocratic idea that foreign affairs is an area of public policy where the ordinary rules of democratic rule and accountability should not apply. Secrecy and executive branch control are deemed so essential to the conduct of a successful foreign policy that democratic principles and practice are often pushed aside. But that mood is also changing. The line between domestic and foreign policy is being erased and ordinary people are insisting that they have a voice in the foreign affairs of state.

In this regard the end of the cold war will deprive governments of another tool that they have used to control political debate. This is the sense of permanent crisis that has controlled and distorted our politics for much of the postwar period. Fear of a surprise nuclear attack and of Communist subversion persuaded people in the United States that the executive branch should be accorded extraordinary powers: a tight circle of secrecy, which made it difficult to determine who was accountable for decisions taken; covert tools, which were not exposed to criticism or the restraints of law; and the right of the executive to act alone in using military force, which limited democratic debate. With the end of the cold war, there should be a steady decline in this sense of permanent crisis. The need for secrecy and covert action should continue to decline. In short, there should be more opportunity for greater democratic control of foreign policy.

Of course, greater popular participation in foreign policy can also drive governments to take actions they might otherwise avoid. It is difficult to believe that the United States would have sent troops to Somalia during the cold war. Now public opinion or at least pundit opinion has driven policymakers to select a military option. Nonetheless, the congressional debate over U.S. entry into the Gulf War was a harbinger of the future.

Of course, the security situation of each country is different. But even in nondemocratic states, similar forces are having some impact on policy. How else do we explain the challenge to authority in both the Soviet Union and China in recent years? As Fred Starr, an American scholar of the Soviet Union, has pointed out about the Soviet Union, when Stalin was conducting the purges, only 10 percent of the Soviet population had a 10th grade education or more. By the time Khrushchev was dominating the world stage and instituting important reforms, that percentage had risen to 32 percent. By the time that Gorbachev had gained power, the figure was close to 90 percent.

Or we can look at the Chinese population which is much less educated than the Soviet one. Yet the degree of outside penetration has increased enormously and urbanization has increased significantly. As John Fincher, an American scholar of China, has pointed out, in 1982 the Chinese census estimated that the urban population was 20 percent. By 1987 the state statistical services, reexamining the data, placed the figure at 40 percent, and it is growing. The change has profound implications for the people in power. Urban populations are more difficult to control ideologically. Information moves more easily than in the countryside. There is more contact with foreigners. And groups of opposition can mobilize quickly against the people in power. In short, governments have to be more concerned about the opinions of urban populations.

We must be clearheaded about these changes. There is nothing that guarantees that every society will become a model democracy. Nor is there anything that guarantees that the democracies that exist will not regress diplomatically, economically, or politically. History is not fixed in its course. But all over the world the nature of the relationship between governor and governed is changing because of the developments mentioned. It will be harder and harder for the old methods to work. People will resist leaders who try to use them.

Nor does the declining utility of force mean that force will never be used. Passions can always dominant reason. People will find reasons to fight even when they should not. The current situation in Yugoslavia is an example. One can easily imagine wars between India and Pakistan or in the Middle East or between the two Koreas. But much less than in the past will the outside powers play the great game of history in which the unwritten requirement of being a great power is that one must take advantage of opportunities whenever they arise even if the only apparent advantage is to irritate or embarrass another great power.

What About Tomorrow?

Against this backdrop, what can we say about the shape of the future?

In the field of defense, we are likely to see a decline in spending by the great powers and an increase in spending by the small powers. The former will be attempting to lighten the burden they have been carrying throughout the cold war. The latter will be striving to increase the tendency of the larger states to pause before threatening the smaller powers. The great powers will not like the pattern of defense spending by the smaller states but, except in the field of weapons of mass destruction, their own national interest will not be sufficiently affected for them to take decisive action. In particular, they will want the export orders. Many smaller states will seek enhanced defense capabilities for internal reasons.

The United States and Russia are likely to move cautiously toward the concept of a minimum deterrent and no first use of nuclear weapons. Long before the START agreement, expert studies in the United States were concluding that in the new circumstances there is no reason for the United States to have more than approximately 3000 warheads, even allowing a very large measure of insurance needed for defective rockets. Three thousand warheads would permit coverage of all reasonable targets and would permit a credible second strike. Now it seems inevitable that pressure will develop to cut even further. U.S. Government studies have suggested a force as small as a few hundred warheads would be adequate; some arms control experts now believe even a nonnuclear world is possible as precision weapons increasingly give military planners options they never had.

As the superpowers begin to reduce their arsenals, pressure will mount on the other major nuclear powers to join the arms control negotiations. It may become possible to put a cap on the nuclear arms race, and once it is there, it may be more likely that the world will be able to limit the number of nuclear powers.

As this process continues, the nuclear powers will have a much stronger interest in cooperating with one another to prevent nuclear proliferation. One can expect to see, therefore, much more coordinated effort by the nuclear powers to pressure the nonnuclear powers to remain so. In this regard, there will be a third attempt at collective security in this century with the focus on weapons of mass destruction.

We can expect the role of the United Nations in world affairs to grow. International law has been employed in the past more as a justification for policies already decided for other reasons rather than as a guide to policy while it is being shaped. But this approach will change and international law will grow in importance.

In international affairs geoeconomics will begin to vie with geopolitics for importance. This will also increase the role of international institutions and will have profound implications for the role of the various regions of the world. In theory, Europe should become the world’s powerhouse, with Germany united and the European Community breaking down trade barriers. But unless Europe can find a way to integrate Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union into the European system politically and economically, Europe will find its political energies diverted and its finances drained. It will suffer in the competition with the United States or Asia. And in this competition because the United States seems to have so much trouble addressing its domestic affairs, it is a safe prediction that Asia will continue to make gains over other regions in the world.

I am talking about the next 20 years. It is possible that China could disrupt this optimistic outlook for Asia by developing into a major international military power over the next quarter century. Its demographic size permits this. If its economy continues to grow at the current rapid pace and the rest of the world does not succeed in integrating China into the world system successfully and peacefully, China is more likely than any other major state to pose a challenge to international stability. This is one reason why the principal task of the international community in the coming years is to find ways to include China in the international system that is developing. It must not be allowed to isolate itself.

If the role of economics continues to grow, then the importance of Asia in world affairs can be expected to increase steadily. This area already has several of the world’s most successful economies. China, North Korea, and Vietnam seem poised to join and to give a fillip to the region’s economy that most other areas of the world will lack. Ironically, the European Communist states are disadvantaged compared to the Asian Communist states precisely because the former are more advanced and have a large, antiquated industrial infrastructure that is hard to discard quickly. Paradoxically, Asian Communist states may be in a position to industrialize more quickly because they are further behind.

If security concerns continue to decline in importance, the bargaining power of the United States in Asia will steadily decrease. The United States will need the area as a source of capital, yet its main trading currency, its role in the region’s defense, will be depreciated. Throughout the world we are likely to see a struggle between finance and trade. The former is increasingly globalized, and the latter is becoming regionalized. Despite trends of a universal trading system, it seems likely that the world will move increasingly into trading blocks. The United States is moving to put into place the possibility of such a system in its hemisphere. Europe will be driven by political concerns to create such a bloc in Europe. Otherwise it will fear social disorder in Eastern Europe and a flood of refugees westward. Meanwhile, this year, for the first time since the end of World War II, Japan’s trade with Asia will be greater than its trade with the United States. In other words, national interest and natural forces are dividing the world up into major trading blocs. These trends will be difficult to reverse. They can be managed, and in this regard the globalization of finance should soften somewhat the effects of creating trading blocs. The United States, for example, will need Asian capital too much to take too many counterproductive measures in the field of trade. Asia needs the U.S. market too much to place too many onerous conditions on U.S. access to Asian capital.

Politically, the trend of the coming 20 years will be for power to flow away from the central government both down and up. For the last 150 years technology and economic development favored the nation state. Rail lines and air nets pulled countries together. Radio stations propagated a single form of the dominant language. The costs of communication were so high that there were limited radio and television channels so that only the dominant political forces could make use of them. The prevailing patterns of economic development also favored centralization. Economies of scale favored large firms, which created national networks of suppliers and distributors. Demands for protection from natural or economic disaster also favored the creation of the nation state.

But now technology has moved to the point where it is weakening the nation state. Communications are an example. The real cost of hardware has decreased steadily over four decades by an average of 20 percent, according to a study recently completed by Sheldon Annis, a senior research associate at the Overseas Development Council. A meter of optic fiber cable cost $3.50 in 1972 but only $.25 today. Instead of a few limited TV channels, which the central government can easily control, cable TV opens up hundreds of channels.

International travel and trade are breaking down barriers. The international elite is still only a small portion of any national population, but it is extremely important and growing in size.

Knowledge industries appear to be the wave of the future, and they are less prone to centralization. Indeed, the model of the new form of economic development is Silicon Valley, where individual entrepreneurs proliferate firms like mushrooms, each attempting to provide an innovation the other has not yet mastered. Recent news articles about the rise of a new technological center in India, Bangalore, suggest the future. The center of the Indian atomic energy industry, Bangalore has engineers who provide at $500 a month services that cost $15,000 a month in Silicon Valley. American firms are pouring investment into Bangalore, and it is now easier to call New York from an office in Bangalore than it is to telephone a colleague across town. The global net there has become tighter than the local net.

In such a world the ability of the state to control economic activity at the national level seems to be steadily declining. When Francois Mitterrand won the presidency of France the first time, he ran on a platform of reducing unemployment. He soon found that the state of France lacked the tools to carry out such a program because of its membership in the Common Market. Two years into his term he was forced to choose between his promises to the French people and French membership in the Common Market. He fired several members of his cabinet and chose the Common Market.

Even a dominant economic power like the United States finds that its fate is increasingly in the hands of others. Western Europe, Japan, and Canada now account for 60 percent of U.S. exports. During the period 1987-91 roughly 50 percent of U.S. real growth reflected the expansion of exports. Export growth equaled virtually all of real GDP growth in 1990 and cut the 1991 decline in growth by one third.

The Clinton program cannot succeed unless Europe, Japan, and Canada continue to import U.S. products at high rates. For that reason the much lower growth rates the OECD projects for Western Europe, Japan, and Canada in the coming 2 years are therefore very bad news for the Clinton administration. It is unlikely that the new president can carry out his campaign promises in the economic field unless he has cooperation from Western Europe and Japan.

What will be the role of Asia in this new world? The question is critical because so many of the world’s most dynamic economies can be found there. At this point we can only advance possibilities. We probably will move much more decisively from the Eurocentric world we have known for the last 100 years. European civilization is not spent. Indeed, what we call world civilization is in large measure the globalization of European civilization. But Europe now has competitors, and these are likely to become stronger rather than weaker. Most of these new competitors are in Asia.

But for Asia to play a larger geopolitical role it must take a number of key steps. It must develop a security order that includes the United States but is not so dependent on it. Asia must build on elements within the region. The United States has been very resistant to any talk of changes in the security status quo in Asia. But this seems a very shortsighted view. It is important that Asian states begin talking to one another more openly, in more detail about the security issues that trouble them. Although the future of Asia in the coming decades looks bright, security disputes could derail economic and social progress in the region. An eruption of conflict in Korea or skirmishes over the Spratly Islands or an arms race triggered by misunderstandings—any or all are possibilities. Indeed, between 1980 and 1988 Japan increased its defense spending by 46 percent, India and South Korea by 63 percent, and Taiwan by 42 percent in 1988 prices and exchange rates. Asia needs a forum in which structured dialogue can take place among the major players—the United States, Russia, China, including Taiwan, ASEAN, ANZUS and Korea. Whether it would deserve the label CSCA is immaterial. The forum is needed so that Asia can begin to develop common understandings on how the current status quo, which is too dependent on the U.S. presence, can begin to evolve in a way that does not threaten the security of anyone. In this regard, Asian states must thicken the patterns of regional cooperation and involve all governments in the region, including the Communist countries. It must heed American notes of caution, but it must not allow its policy to be dictated from Washington.

The region will not be stable or able to play the role that is naturally its own if there is not growing respect for democracy and human rights. Progress has been made, but if Asia is to have the vitality that is so necessary for the next stage of economic development, it must convince individuals that their rights will be protected within Asian states.

Finally, as the task for the coming 20 years, the Pacific region has three priorities: It must find ways to harness constructively Japanese dynamism, fulfill Chinese potential, and limit American retrenchment. If these tasks can be handled successfully, the people of this part of the world can look forward to many years of peace and prosperity along with global leadership.

In every region of the world the United States will be present but decreasingly dominant. America’s “unipolar moment,” which some saw at the end of the Gulf War, will prove to be extremely brief. Power will continue to become more evenly distributed as America’s military dominance recedes and as others’ economic performance improves. Such trends need not disturb us too much as long as America remains an important world power, and prudent retrenchment does not become foolish retreat. The test of leadership in Washington will be to manage one without calling forth the other.

REEXAMINING NATIONAL STRATEGY

William G. Hyland

Introduction.

America is redefining itself. A new generation is taking over the White House, and the national focus has shifted from foreign policy to domestic issues. At the same time, the end of cold war has also liberated foreign policy. New issues and new priorities are inevitable, but a new consensus on foreign affairs has yet to take shape.

The United States has no broad international strategy. Rather it pursues a collection of policies; some are left over from the cold war, and some are relatively new.

The foreign policy agenda is far less dangerous and in most respects easier to deal with than the agenda that confronted Mr. Clinton’s predecessors. Nowhere are American vital interests under attack, or even seriously threatened. The United States in 1993 is able to deter any conceivable attack, and to deal with any conceivable threat to its national security. Its international position is probably better now than at any time since 1920. Of course, attaining this unique position has been quite costly, and has contributed to America’s burgeoning economic and social problems. This, of course, is one reason why Governor Clinton was elected: not to solve the world’s ills, but to apply his laser-like concentration on America’s ills.

One of the virtues of the end of the cold war is that the new president, unlike his predecessors, is free to reexamine the long-term interests of the United States in more propitious circumstances than at any time since Pearl Harbor. The new administration, if it chooses, can even reexamine a series of major security issues that heretofore have been sacrosanct.

America’s role in the so-called new world order is still not clearly defined. Many observers believe the new world order is primarily an American responsibility. In the summer of 1991, President Bush said that “Our responsibility remains not only to protect our citizens and our interests but also to help create a new world in which our fundamental ideals not only survive but flourish.” This comes fairly close to remaking the world in our own image.

It is not enough simply to invoke or rely on slogans about America’s responsibilities. It would be a tragedy if the first post-cold war president sought refuge in reshaping the past. The best service President Clinton can provide the nation is to force an examination of the longer term national interest of the United States, measured against the new international landscape. Why the United States should want to bear the primary burden for creating a new world order is not clear in light of its internal problems.

In any case, the first term for President Clinton is likely to be a transitional period, if only because it is clearly a transitional era in the history of international politics. After 50 years of war and cold war, it will take at least 4 years, and probably more, to work out the so-called new world order.

The New Agenda.

Economics. There is much talk about the changes brought by the end of the cold war. The change most remarked on is the “new” primacy of economics. The current conventional wisdom is that economics will replace geopolitics. The dreary litany of American economic ills is familiar: deficits, underinvestment, lack of competitiveness, etc. During the election campaign, candidate Clinton went so far as to proclaim: “In this new era our first foreign priority and our domestic priority are one and the same: reviving our economy.”

In a broad sense this is a truism: a country cannot conduct a strong foreign policy based on a weak economy or a weak society. And a misguided foreign policy can indeed weaken a nation’s economy and its social fabric. This nexus led some in the past decade to speculate that America had entered a period of strategic decline, brought on by “imperial overstretch.” Others stoutly refuted this notion, insisting that America was still “bound to lead.” The unexpected collapse of the Communist structures in the USSR and Eastern Europe left this debate suspended, but unresolved.

It will have to be revisited; perhaps not in the stark terms of “imperial decline,” but in the more practical terms of what a nation with limited resources needs to do, and what it can do. In the past the American national interest was supported by a massive dose of resources from the Marshall plan through the Reagan military buildup. Those days are past: a national security crisis of cold war magnitude is not likely, at least for a decade. But if by chance a serious security crisis were to arise, the means available to deal with it will, for same period, be sharply constrained. We are back to Walter Lippmann’s admonition that a nation’s ambitions must match it resources, including some reserve.

In the Iraq crisis, for example, the United States undertook a major military campaign, as the leader of an international coalition. The effort was quite costly; so costly, in fact, that we proceeded to “beg” for assistance, to such a degree that in the end the operation even turned a “profit.” This was a disgraceful display for a superpower, but nevertheless symptomatic.

In plain terms, America can no longer do whatever if wants; even if it is the only superpower. This is a major strategic change, and its implications pervade all other issues. Specifically it requires a rethinking of America’s foreign commitments, setting more precise priorities among them, a reformulation of military strategy and on that basis restructuring the shape and size of our armed forces.

Beyond the basic question of resource allocation, the most immediate economic security issues involve trade and competitiveness. America has never had free trade. This pristine doctrine exists only in theory. America’s real policy has been managed trade. The new dimension is whether even a rough international system can be maintained in the face of pressures for regionalization and protectionism.

The decline of America’s trading position has led to a new growing belligerence toward our trading partners, and to a revival of protectionism. The Bush and early Clinton administrations have displayed an unusual aggressiveness. Indeed, the Clinton officials sound even more bombastic on trade issues. The new trade negotiator in the Clinton administration said recently, “The days when we could subordinate our economic interests to foreign policy or defense concerns are long past. ” This may be cheap tactics to create negotiating leverage, but the frustrations with America’s declining position may be leading to a growing insularity.

A significant portent is the North American Free Trade Association (NAFTA). This is surely not free trade, nor is it international in its design. Indeed, it is based on a regional discrimination, as is the European Economic Community (EC). It is even justified as a counterweight to the EC, and the EC’s response has been to reinforce its own insularity. This conflict occurs at a time when the prospects for the GATT are not particularly bright.

In a world in which the overriding common security interests of the cold war have dissipated, the emergence of large trading blocs can only accelerate international fragmentation. NAFTA thus runs counter to geopolitical efforts at the U.N. and elsewhere to create new broader international coalition and a new international consensus. Is the development of regional economic blocs a trend this country wishes to strengthen?

A case can be made for moving toward a Western Hemisphere political-economic zone, a sort of modern version of the Monroe Doctrine. If the United States itself is evolving toward a society with a strong Latin element, then such a foreign policy might seem more rational than more Eurocentrism. But if so, it has yet to be articulated or thought through. Meanwhile, our trade policies contribute to international fragmentation.

Democracy. The end of the cold war is frequently portrayed as a golden opportunity to provide stronger support for democracies. Candidate Clinton called for a “pro-democracy foreign policy,” charging that Bush embraced stability at the expense of democracy. This reflects an age-old debate in America, starting with Jefferson and Hamilton: whether the United States should conduct its foreign policy to advance certain liberal goals abroad, or be content, as John Quincy Adams advised, not to go abroad searching for monsters to slay. The current issue, however, is not realpolitik versus idealism. There has always been a broad consensus in the United States that America should use its influence and weight to promote democratic practices. The core issues have always been how, when and where.

At this practical level the consensus breaks down. For example, should the United States intervene in Haiti? It is a prime challenge in an area in close proximity. The elected government was overthrown. The United States has applied economic sanctions, but there the matter has rested. What message can be derived from this record?

Or, to take a different example, what is the democratic rationale for supporting Saudi Arabia or Kuwait? The answer, of course, is the national interest defined in terms of security. Our intervention in DESERT STORM was aimed at preventing Iraqi domination of the Arabian peninsula, the Persian Gulf and the international oil market. In other words power politics, not idealism.

Ironically, despite the obvious but cold-blooded rationale for DESERT STORM, the sweeping military victory has led to a revival of old liberal internationalism, i.e., it was a victory over aggression and an example of the new collective security. Thus, some overtones of Wilsonianism are creeping back into American policy. Recently, a group of American notables, assembled by the Carnegie Endowment for Peace, offered advice to the new administration; its report concluded: “we are free to move” away from a peace that rests on a balance of terror between two armed camps toward a peace based on trust and shared interests.” (emphasis added). As was the case for Wilson, the practical result of such a revitalization of liberal doctrines, such as international “trust,” will be that the gap between rhetoric and action will increase, thus creating a new crisis of credibility. This has been already evident in the reluctance to intervene with force in Bosnia. Clearly, “shared interests” have not been found. Unless a more realistic attitude is adopted in Washington, the United States will find itself embarked on endless crusades to make the world safe for democracy.

This focus on democracy also ignores, or conflicts with what is probably the strongest new trend—nationalism, both in its old- fashioned European version as evident in the Balkans, and in its religious manifestation, evident in Muslim fundamentalism. Those who argue that the purpose of American policy is to safeguard democracies and democratic practices, also have to confront its handmaiden—self determination.

This principle immediately complicates the effort to support democracy. Do the Serbs in Bosnia have any right to an independent existence? If so, do they have the right to fight for their independence? Is the United States obligated to support, with military means if necessary, self-determination? Or does it have an obligation to support the territorial integrity of a state such as Bosnia? How would such principles be applied in the former Soviet Union?

One ominous by-product of the Bosnian debate is the emergence of a “nascent” doctrine that claims America has an obligation to protect ethnic minorities. Thus William Safire in The New York Times argued that: “Collective security is no longer limited to defending national borders; a nascent understanding grows that ethnic minorities are entitled to international protection.” Rather than adopting such broad principles of Wilsonianism, the United States would be better served by a pragmatic approach: examining the issues created by the resurgence of nationalism on a case-by-case basis.

A related issue arises from the Iraq crisis. What is the American interest in this region? While there is no reason to conciliate Saddam, Iraq does illustrate the kind of problem that the new administration will have to deal with. What are the longer term power relationships in the Gulf? Since the overthrow of the Shah, this has been an area in extreme turmoil. Iraq was a threat, but it has been reduced to more of an irritant. At the same time, the United States and the U.N. are virtually partitioning Iraq. Moreover, the coalition that opposed Iraq in DESERT STORM is breaking up, as do all coalitions when the common enemy is weakened. And more important, it is a good bet that 4 years from now the problem will be Iran—a potentially far stronger, more aggressive country. Iraq is manageable, a nuclear-armed Iran would be another story. In short, America needs to put the Iraqi crisis into a broader perspective: how to maintain a balance of power in the Gulf region.

Nonproliferation. The Iraq crisis bears on the third “new” issue that is in fact an old one: nonproliferation of nuclear weapons and longer range delivery systems. The shocking lesson of Iraq is how easy it was to obtain technology and to hide the various nuclear processes. Both the United States and the world community are in disarray on the issues related to nonproliferation. It cuts across many American departments, and many competing U.S. economic and strategic interests, including the much maligned Star Wars defense against third country attacks. It must be straightened out. The issue is how to stop proliferation? By closer monitoring and more intrusive inspection regimes. How would they be enforced? By economic sanctions or military intervention?

The U.N.’s involvement in the inspection of Iraq is a valuable precedent, but such collectivity could turn into a limiting factor as well. As the DESERT STORM coalition breaks up, will the United States have to act alone? Will the United States be prepared to act against the wishes of the Security Council?

Nonproliferation concerns also impact specifically on geopolitics, namely our alignment with Pakistan. The deterioration in relations with Pakistan over nonproliferation has reached the point where America ought to consider switching our alignment to India. Supporting Pakistan in the name of regional balance no longer seems necessary with the Soviets out of Afghanistan; and the price of Pakistani support in the Muslim world is becoming too high if it means tolerating the proliferation of nuclear powers.

Other New Issues. Finally, a number of other “new” but important issues have been treated haphazardly, as far as their international dimension is concerned: refugees, population, and the environment. Many argue that the environment is the primary threat to the world. Others see the environment, as well as the other such issues, as simply another round in the conflict between the wealthy north and the impoverished south. Drugs are an example: there is no international consensus, mainly because the United States is affected far more than other countries. The United States finds itself virtually paying bribery for international cooperation. At the same time Washington is expected to make concessions in the name of the new environmentalism. The United States has thus far been more reluctant than other countries to act in support of a radical regime to control the international environment. The Clinton-Gore administration supposedly will lead to a change. But at what cost? Within this agenda there ought to be some trade-offs that serve American interest and not just sacrifices in the name of a new internationalism.

Underlying these newly emerging issues are the changes in the broad international structure. The U.N. has enjoyed a surprising revival. It is now closer to Roosevelt’s original visions—world policemen formed by the Great Powers in the Security Council. But the Security Council does not reflect international reality. It does not reflect the real power structure, because it excludes key countries. Should the Security Council be expanded to include Japan and Germany? If so, why retain Britain and France as permanent members: why not a European and an Asian seat?

The next question is should there be a permanent peacekeeping force? If so would American troops serve under a non-American U.N. commander in combat? Would this be constitutional?

Is the current revival of the U.N. an aberration? It is likely, indeed almost certain, that the interests of the Great Powers will once again diverge? Sooner or later the United States will have to act against the desires of the U.N.

In short, much of what appears to be new, in the aftermath of the cold war, has not been thoroughly examined. Clearly there are conflicts between a national and an international approach to both specific issues and broad concepts. For America, the problem may be one of balance: the “new” agenda seems to call for an activist policy, at a time when other indicators suggest that the nation wishes to turn inward.

The Old Agenda.

Turning now to the “old” agenda: during the cold war some of the major underlying geopolitical premises of American policy were (1) that the United States had global interests and responsibilities; (2) that to carry them out the alliance with Europe was necessary; the United States would provide the required military protection and Europe for its part should continue to unite; (3) that an alliance with Japan could be created based on common interests that would transcend the common threat; and (4) that Washington could and should maintain friendly relations with China, in the name of the balance of power, regardless of that country’s internal organization.

These premises are questionable. True, the United States remains a global power, perhaps the only one. But most of its global responsibilities were a function of the cold war. The claim that these interests still require certain commitments abroad is questionable. It has been drastically undercut by the ease with which the United States withdrew from the Philippines. If there ever was a symbol of America’s rise to global power it was the naval base at Subic Bay.

Thus far, however, there has been a reluctance to undertake a fundamental examination of the residual of requirements still necessary to protect our global interests as opposed to those situations that can be left to regional or local forces. Clearly, with the end of the cold war, such a reappraisal is in order. Surely some disengagement will be both possible and desirable.

The U.S. role as the world’s leader or as a catalyst for international action is becoming a tired cliche. It is not persuasive to argue that because only the United States can accomplish certain missions, we should therefore undertake them. This line of reasoning is something of a fraud. Obviously, American leadership in practice is exercised selectively: thus, it has not been exercised in Burma or Cambodia, for obvious reasons; it was invoked assertively in the Gulf, but only after great hesitation in Somalia.

American leadership cannot be an end in itself, as it is currently portrayed. It was a result of several factors: the Communist challenge was perceived to be global, and the United States was the only global power; our allies were weak, their resources limited; our own resources were seemingly endless. And, above all, our vital interests were threatened. All of that is all changed.

Europe. American interests are clearest in Europe. There is no reason to abandon the alliance with Western Europe. But it is far less important than it was, and the United States should not make concessions, political or otherwise in the name of the alliance as such. The Europeans will have to do more for themselves, without American leadership or participation. The number of American ground troops ought to be reduced to a minimum.

Three stunning geopolitical changes in Europe overshadow all others at the end of the cold war: the emergence of Germany, the liberation of Eastern Europe (and breakup), and the severe weakening of the former Soviet Union. Few changes of such importance have occurred so quickly in peacetime.

The impact of the end of the cold war, however, is quite different from what we may have imagined. The rise of Germany and the decline of Russia has changed the balance of power, and as a consequence ended the dream of Monett’s Europe. The old European Community was designed as a counterweight to the USSR; but it was not only based on the continuing division of Germany, some measure to limit German influence and power.

Now one of Europe’s oldest issues is back: how to cope with German power? This question permeates any reexamination of the future of Europe or its military alliance with the United States. There is already some apprehension— probably unjustified—over internal events in Germany. But after an interim period of consolidation after unification, the new Germany will inevitably assert its own interests: German unilateral action in recognizing Croatia and pressuring its European partners is a disconcerting example. It illustrates the potential geopolitical power of Germany in Central and Eastern Europe.

In any case, it seems clear that American influence in Europe is declining, whether we like it or not, and German influence is rising. American involvement in Europe will be thinner and weaker. Selective disengagement by both sides of the Atlantic has already begun.

Europe itself is in decline. The revival of nationalism threatens the concept of Europe. Maastricht is almost dead as a strategic plan. Indeed, it is no longer clear what is meant by Europe.

This creates a new dilemma for the United States. For 3 decades, Washington has supported the Europeans though the Europeans have often been irritating to America. After 30 years Europe has turned out to be weak and self-centered, the beneficiary of American protection, unable to act on its own even on the continent itself. Now that a fundamental weakening is at hand, the failure of Europe threatens to create a power vacuum that only Germany can fill. America must be careful not to be used by Britain and France as a counterweight to Germany.

The weakening of Western Europe aggravates another real danger—the isolation of Eastern Europe. Instability there is already spreading in the breakdown of two post-Versailles states, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia. Further east in such areas as Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Moldova there is a similar disintegration. The new rump states are not likely to be viable units, either economically or politically. Further disintegration is thus probable, and therefore new conflicts. Even in those states where territorial integrity has been maintained, there is a danger that they will eventually be dominated by Germany, and thus become a potential source of conflict with Russia.

Russia. The future of Russia is still the most fundamental issue for this country; Russia still the only country capable of destroying the United States. Thus far, American policy has been improvised because the situation has been so volatile. The new president ought to devise a basic political strategy and stick to it, whatever the ups and downs of economic reform.

The new states of the former Soviet Union are in an evolutionary stage for which there is no historical precedent. After 70 years of Stalinist rule in which a strong central government maintained control, the region is divided into 15 separate entities of varying degrees of viability. Many areas are undergoing tremendous upheaval. It is likely that there will be turmoil in Russia as well as in the other new states throughout the next decade. The role of outside powers in this situation will be limited; they may have some influence, but barring military intervention it will not be decisive.

Given the disparate nature of the new states, it is difficult to define the effects on U.S. interests posed by the current situation. We need a more coherent analytical framework. Without such a policy framework, there is a danger of going from one fad to another.

Some insist, for example, that economic assistance should be the cutting edge of U.S. diplomacy toward the former Soviet Union. This is based in part on the fear that, if the West fails to help Yeltsin, Russia will face a threat from either the radical right or the radical left. For its part, America then will be subjected to another divisive debate over who lost Russia. There is a gap, however, between this rationale and what is actually happening in Russia. Nationalist forces are becoming stronger, and Yeltsin has accommodated them. If Yeltsin survives politically, it will be as a Russian nationalist. This ought to be a cause for caution.

Yeltsin’s foreign policy in its pro-Western orientation is already under attack. The United States will have to be tolerant of tactical posturing to accommodate these political forces inside Russia. It is already evident in the Russian government’s caution over further intervention in Iraq and especially in Bosnia. Yet it seems inevitable that traditional Russian security concerns will reassert themselves, if not now, then over the long term. These concerns are bound to conflict with American interests in some important areas.

Political and long-term security considerations should therefore be given priority over short-term economic issues. U.S. policy should focus on political realities—not on such abstract objectives as creation of a free-market system; the prospects for the emergence of a capitalist market are dubious in any case, and the emphasis on economic reform gives influence to the wrong institutions—specifically, the World Bank and IMF. These are not the institutions that should be setting conditions on assistance; conditions should be political, not economic.

U.S. policy should be to tie Russia (and Ukraine) into Europe. This might require creation of a new European organization because the existing institutions are ungainly and inadequate. The United States should take the lead in drawing Russia and Ukraine into Europe. The objective is to attain Russian agreement to the territorial status quo and to reassure the smaller states of the region that they will have support for their independence. The argument for a new institution rests ultimately on the need for the European process to receive a psychological boost.

The new administration should reexamine existing institutions in Europe to determine what institutional framework would best serve this purpose. CSCE has failed, and NATO is not relevant because the problems in Europe are no longer primarily military in nature.

The most persuasive argument for a new institution is that Russia should be surrounded by viable states. Russia is a powerful nation state, possessing nuclear weapons. The United States will have to deal with it, and should anticipate a resurgence of a strong Russia. When Russia does revive, it may well pose a real threat to its neighbors. The 25 million Russians living outside Russia are a time bomb and will be the source of a great disaster if there is a nationalist revival in Russia. The territorial status quo can not be ensured without some guarantees for protection of minority rights.

It is probably naive to expect that what will emerge on the Eurasian land mass will be a collection of democratic, market oriented and benign states, or that out of chaos and crisis will come a well-ordered market. One can hope that Russia will break with over 1,000 years of its history, but more likely is the eventual revival of an autocratic state, probably well-armed and potentially hostile toward its neighbors.

European security has hitherto been a question of cushioning the East-West confrontation. Now it will have to be redefined to cushion the inevitable conflicts within Europe itself.

Asia. The revolutionary changes in Europe are, on the whole, positive. The changes that will take place in Asia are more worrisome. America’s proper role is still elusive. The problems are the same—our uneasy relations with Japan and China. Usually, we have managed to have good relations with one or the other, and recently with both. Now the opposite seems more likely: that our relations with both Japan and China will deteriorate.

Japan has achieved its World War II aims of preeminence in Asia, except for a free hand in China. But the price has been to antagonize its principal protector, the United States. What role will Japan now play, when there is no common threat? What is the nature of our relationship if and when Japan becomes more active in Asia and internationally?

Many advocate a more equal partnership. The idea is based on a probably erroneous estimate of Japan. Despite its economic gains, Japan is a weaker country than it appears. Moreover, there is an underlying racism in Japan that will be a formidable barrier to a deeper relationship with the United States. While a more mature partnership is a desirable goal, its attainment may be impossible. It seems likely that American and Japanese interests will become more and more antagonistic.

The United States, therefore, should not press Japan to take on a larger global role. On the other hand, Washington should stop supporting Japan’s insistence that its aid to Russia be conditioned on return of the Northern Territories. This is an irresponsible position given the dangers in the region. The United States should be more supportive of the Russian position, since it was the United States that gave the islands to Russia at Yalta.

There are more variables in relations with China. It is now far less valuable as an ally against Russia. In an era of democratization China remains an anomaly, and it is also the country where a change in top leadership is likely to have a profound impact over time.

What is American policy, and how are our interests defined? It is high time to put aside the obsession with Tiananmen. We should not isolate China. If one American purpose is to revive its own economy, why jeopardize trade over an incident 5 years ago? More relevant, perhaps, is that China will continue to play a role in Cambodia, in North Korea, and in the U.N. Security Council. Our interests in the manner in which that role is executed will have to outweigh our revulsion over Tiananmen.

The American interest is not to permit either Japan or China to dominate our Asian policy. We need a balance between China and Japan, and a balance among China, Japan, and the United States. One way to achieve this is to support Russia in the Far East.

The Middle East. The United States has now become the only outside power of any consequence in this area. In the wake of the Gulf War, President Bush and Secretary Baker saw a great strategic opening. The radicals had been defeated. The United States had demonstrated its willingness to intervene, and Israel was more willing to heed American advice during the Gulf War, and especially since the elections in Israel.

With elections in Israel and America now completed, a strategic dialogue with Israel is needed, a dialogue that should finally confront the basic issues of a settlement. Sooner or later the United States must develop its own plan, and then insist on it. Unlike in Europe and Asia, in the Middle East some aggressive American diplomacy will be needed as well. There is no other way, except a war sometime in the future.

Military Security.

It is surprising how little attention has been paid to military security in the wake of the cold war. The conventional wisdom is that the military establishment ought to be reduced, and substantially so. This reduction has begun. The debate, however, has degenerated into quarrels about “redundancy” themes that were echoed in the election campaign. To make “redundancy” (roles and missions) the major issue is not worthy of a superpower. The real issues are difficult enough without becoming bogged down in interservice quarrels, or conflicts between the armchair strategists in the Congress and the Service Chiefs.

What threats are likely in the near term, and over the longer term? There is a tendency to answer this question in terms of the past. Thus, DESERT STORM is widely cited as an example of the kind of operation that the United States should be ready to execute in the future. The new Secretary of Defense, when he was still in the Congress, advocated adding to the DESERT STORM model an air and naval combat force capable of supporting the defense of Korea, new lift capabilities, a capability for humanitarian aid, and the capability to execute a Panama-sized operation. (Statement of Les Aspin, August 3, 1992). This seems very close to the forces in the current structure. But even this thinner program is questionable in light of Bosnia. Intervention there would be close to the kind of wars that were planned for central Europe against the Russians; a subsequent occupation phase in Yugoslavia might be like Vietnam. It is clear that the strategic analysis required for this debate is still in its infancy.

The Gulf War was nonnuclear. If it is a model for future conflicts, what is the role for nuclear forces? Pure deterrence? Of whom? In the event both START agreements are realized, the United States will find itself heavily dependent on sea-based strategic forces, with all of the complications of command and control and antisubmarine warfare that entails.

Finally, there is the question of strategic defense. With the threat of new nuclear powers growing, and the probable proliferation of long range delivery systems, how long should America tolerate a strategic vulnerability with no defense whatsoever? The entire complex of issues surrounding SDI ought to be reexamined. Many of the objections related to deterrence equations against a Russian threat that is disappearing; most of the argument are now obsolete or no longer applicable. The concept of cooperation on a worldwide warning system is highly attractive. The SCUD attacks against Israel by Saddam ought to be a lesson.

In the Gulf War, and then in the Bosnia crisis, an old issue has resurfaced: What interests require a resort to the use of force? President Bush attempted in his last days to define the causes for American intervention. But the issue remains, and in many respects it is too amorphous. It must be part of any reexamination of the national interest. There can be no gap between what we are willing to fight for, and the forces available for conflict. How much is enough, is now replaced with how much is too little?

The Outlook.

The character and structure of world politics has been radically altered. Nationalism is rising everywhere; it manifests itself as regionalism, as economic protectionism, in ethnic conflict and revolutionary upheavals. But the forces of international integration are also gathering force. It will take years for the consequences of these changes to be absorbed.

No overriding principle will be sufficient to handle the conflicts during this phase which could easily last for a decade. The new world order will probably not be the result of a grand design; more likely it will emerge by trial and error.

For some years to come, therefore, the guiding force of American policy will have to be a far greater pragmatism. America will have to resist the temptation to embark on crusades to impose democracy, to enforce market principles, assist poor countries, or settle every dispute. Such a policy would allow ample room for humanitarianism. Moreover, when its interests are challenged, America will have to resist, of course, as in DESERT STORM. And it will need a rapidly deployable, potent striking force, armed with high technology to support its interests. For the most part, however, the United States can afford to treat much of the world with benign neglect, while it puts its own house in order. The operative concept abroad ought to be selectivity.

During the presidential campaign, opinion polls revealed a rather startling trend: a majority of those polled believed that the country was heading in the wrong direction. Until this crisis of confidence is overcome and the domestic sources of the crisis are dealt with, foreign policy must necessarily be subordinated. The rescue mission in Somalia, however laudable, does nothing for poverty in America.

In sum, the national interest should be redefined. A project along the lines of NSC 68 ought to be undertaken for the post-cold war world. It could include a survey of options in political strategy, defense requirements, and economic resource allocation, analyzed against various world trends and threats to American interests. It might take one year, but its results could well be worth it. During the interim, American policy will have to be circumspect and careful. Prudence, the late Hans Morgenthau wrote, is the “supreme virtue in politics.” Not a bad recipe for American foreign policy.

Copyright

March 1993

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The views expressed in this report are those of the authors and do not reflect the official policy or position or the Department of the Army, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government. This report is approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.

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Comments pertaining to this report are invited and should be forwarded to: Director, Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, Carlisle, PA 17013-5050. Comments also may be conveyed directly by calling the Conference Organizer, Dr. Gary L. Guertner, commercial (717) 245-3234 or DSN 242-3234.

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These papers were originally presented at the U.S. Army War College Fourth Annual Strategy Conference held February 24-25, 1993, with the assistance of the Office of Net Assessment. The Strategic Studies Institute is pleased to publish them as part of its Conference Series.

U.S. ARMY WAR COLLEGE

Major General William A. Stofft

Commandant

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STRATEGIC STUDIES INSTITUTE

Director

Colonel John W. Mountcastle

Conference Organizer

Dr. Gary L. Guertner

Authors

Mr. Charles William Maynes

Mr. William G. Hyland

Director of Publications and Production

Ms. Marianne P. Cowling

Secretaries

Mrs. Shirley E. Martin

Ms. Rita A. Rummel

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Composition

Mrs. Mary Jane Semple

Cover Artist

Mr. Lawrence C. Miller

Content

THE NATURE OF THE POST-COLD WAR WORLD
Charles William Maynes
THE WORLD IN THE YEAR 2000: PROSPECTS FOR ORDER OR DISORDER
William G. Hyland
REEXAMINING NATIONAL STRATEGY

FOREWORD

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES OF THE AUTHORS

THE WORLD IN THE YEAR 2000: PROSPECTS FOR ORDER OR DISORDER Charles William Maynes

REEXAMINING NATIONAL STRATEGY William G. Hyland

Copyright