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The National Interest
Fall 1998—Number 53
Schlesinger, the former secretary of defense, exposes the emerging mismatch between lofty U.S. foreign policy ambitions and the decreasing funds allocated to the military. He argues for a larger military budget — as opposed to a reigning in of U.S. goals — to correct this imbalance and thereby avoid military setbacks from our inevitable future rivals.
The former national security advisor, maintaining that “European security is the basis for European reconciliation”, advocates a cautious yet determined expansion of NATO based on practical and moral considerations. He calls for two new members: Slovenia and Lithuania.
The director of the Helen Suzman Foundation in Johannesburg reveals how U.S. organizations working in South Africa to further democracy are actually reinforcing the ruling ANC’s tendencies toward illiberalism and one-partyism. Johnson shows how the Ford Foundation, USAID, and the National Democratic Institute are helping to subvert true multi-party democracy in South Africa.
Want to brush up on your knowledge of international regime studies? Thinking about a course in structural realism? Don’t bother, says Swarthmore political scientist James Kurth: the splintered and inwardly-focused field of IR has rendered itself irrelevant to the policymakers who might have benefited from its prescriptions.
MacIntyre reminds Americans of Indonesia’s great potential as a stabilizing force in its region. With social and political upheaval looming, he encourages America to take Indonesia as a serious concern and play its part in enabling a return to political and economic normalcy.
The former ambassador to Kenya argues against renewed efforts in the wake of the terrorist bombings in Africa to make our foreign embassies “terror proof.” To move in this direction, Hempstone argues, is to make America less a symbol of openness and freedom and more the picture of a “garrison state.”
Demographer Nicholas Eberstadt shows that, barring a drastic change in population trends, East Asia in the upcoming generation will become increasingly aged and short of women. This will have dire consequences for the economic and social health of these countries.
Economic sanctions are neither as useless or as useful as advocates suggest. When seen against the light of the data, Drezner shows, it turns out that sanctions tend to work best not against adversaries but against neutrals and friends. It also turns out that at times unilateral U.S. sanctions are more effective than certain kinds of multilateral sanctions.
The 23rd Earl of Salisbury and 19th century prime minister of Britain as a model for modern day U.S. statesmen? Just the man, argues Anatol Lieven, to provide American diplomats and politicians, so prone to overreach and overpromise, with a dose of much-needed skepticism, steadfastness, and above all, prudence.
Robert Elegant confirms the fears of many about Hong Kong: Chinese rule is slowly but surely eroding the intellectual and political freedom that the people of Hong Kong have become accustomed to, and subverting the laissez-faire economy to the detriment of the former Colony’s prosperity.
A leading China scholar gives his account of the state of Chinese studies during the era of McCarthy — when he himself was branded a McCarthyite by his detractors. Walker contends that the extremely polarized atmosphere of the day led many China scholars, in particular the powerful John King Fairbank of Harvard, to turn a blind eye to the horrors inflicted by Mao on the Chinese people.
The National Interest’s editor argues that the attempt by the European Union to advance political integration through monetary union is an enormous gamble, one that is likely either to succeed big or fail big. For the United States, however, either outcome could be problematic. Success would render Europe a potential competitor and rival; and its failure would saddle the United States with a geopolitical burden.
Book Reviews:
Wolfowitz gives Richard Holbrooke a great deal of credit for negotiating the Dayton Accords, but considers those accords flawed, for they do not provide a means for Bosnia to defend itself against future predations. While Holbrooke’s account reveals how little support he got from his President, it leaves several mysteries unresolved: in particular, why did Holbrooke want the fighting stopped when the Bosnian Serbs were finally on the run?
The commentators on Codevilla’s new translation argue that Machivelli’s influence on Western political thought was basically negative. Machiavelli’s “new science” was not really value-free, as is often supposed, but set itself against both classical and Christian values, slyly using the church’s own forms of argumentation to press the case. Where Machiavelli’s philosophy truly met its match, however, was with the American Founders, for they showed that political realism and core moral values are not necessarily antithetical.
It has long been a matter of curiosity why America as a great nation took as long as it did to emerge as a great international power. Zakaria’s argument is that the crucial variable is not raw power or a sense of challenge, but the extent to which the state, as opposed to the nation, can marshal resources to assert itself. The thesis is intriguing, says Beisner, but it cannot explain as much as it purports to explain, and does not give sufficient weight to political culture and individual leadership.
There is much to the contention that the death of distance is the preeminent phenomenon of our times, as Cairncross argues. But she underestimates the friction involved in getting from the present to the future. That future, argues Eric Jones, is being made in America, which is the only universal culture today, and resistance to it and to the death of distance can therefore not be separated.