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World Policy Journal
Volume XIV, No 3, Fall 1997
During the coming months, the world will watch closely as the U.S. Senate debates the most important foreign policy step America has taken in decadesÑexpanding NATO to the countries of eastern Europe. To help lead that debate, the World Policy Journal has dedicated a large part of its fall issue to an essential essay by Mark Danner, "Marooned in the Cold War: America, the Alliance, and the Quest for a Vanished World." In this essay, DannerÑa long-time staff writer at the New YorkerÑtakes up the NATO controversy in the broader context of the Bosnian war and the history of American foreign policy. He explores how the enlargement proposal came about and analyzes what its strategic significance might truly be. And he offers an extended argument about the post-Cold War mood of the American people and an analysis of whether the requirements of the proposed treaty have anything to do with their attitudes toward their country's present-day role in the world. "Looking at the current policies of America's leaders," Danner asserts, "one suspects that, rather than plunging ahead to embrace a new, post-Cold War world, they find themselves marooned in the Cold War, pursuing an uncertain and empty hegemony, struggling to expand and justify a predominance the United States already possesses."
Not since ancient Rome has a single power so towered over the international order with such a decisive margin of superiority. But now that it has amassed all this power, asks Eurasia Foundation president Charles William Maynes, "can America impose a kind of political and economic order on the worldÑand can this order include an ethical dimension?" In "'Principled' Hegemony," Maynes shows why he believes the answer to be no. "I do not believe that the United States itself is willing to live up to the standard that human rights activists would set." Moreover, Maynes asks, "is the average American prepared to spend more tax dollars to enable his government to police the world? Is that fact that America is capable of acting a sufficient reason for doing so?"
The United Nations must be reformed, argues World Policy Institute director Stephen Schlesinger. In "Can the United Nations Reform?," Schlesinger points out that the vision of even the most intelligent and sophisticated observers of the organization is blurred by ignorance, or at best a distorted sense, of the basic elements that went into shaping the United Nations at the San Francisco Conference of 1945. Born in controversy, the United Nations "is an organization that was born of and remains subject to politics."
Henry Stimson, the wise old colonel and cabinet secretary, understood the organic relationship between domestic society and foreign policy; he may have been right, writes Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs president Joel Rosenthal, in his belief that "domestic society would prove to be as much an engine of American internationalism as perceived external threats." In "Henry Stimson's Clue: Is Progressive Internationalism on the Wane," Rosenthal traces the domestic roots of internationalism and finds that "whatever motivations underlie President Clinton's 'New Covenant' domestic policy and 'commercial' foreign policy, ...this latest effort to combine domestic and foreign policy goals follows a well-established path of presidential leadership." But, he cautions, the Clinton administration must be vigilant if it is to avoid becoming known as an administration that promoted the nation's material interests over its moral values.
Russia gave in to NATO's decision to admit Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. But what will happen ifÑor whenÑthe alliance tries to expand to include the Baltic states? "The answer," writes USA TODAY European correspondent Fred Coleman, "could well determine whether the twenty-first century starts with war or peace." Expanding the alliance to the Baltics would put NATO weapons on Russia's own frontier, and the Kremlin is adamant that it will not permit that, Coleman asserts. A clash with Russia over the Baltics is no fanciful flight of the imaginationÑyet the United States continues to encourage the Baltic States that the alliance's door is open, and provides funding and training for NATO compatibility programs. Still, there is no guarantee that the Baltic states will ever join NATO. "America can and should do better," he argues. "If Washington continues to waffle, the initiative could well pass to the hard-liners in Moscow with an interest in suppressing a small, poorly armed neighbor as a step toward reconstituting a Soviet superpower."
American thinking about China breaks down into two competing viewpoints, argues Naval Postgraduate School visiting associate professor Christopher Layne in "A House of Cards: American Strategy toward China." In this clearly written and informative essay, Layne explores these two schools of thoughtÑthe "contain" China view and the "engage" China viewÑ and finds one common thread: both agree that China is emerging as a great power. "From a realist perspective, one must conclude that a U.S.-China great power competition is highly likely in the future," Layne writes. "But if rivalry is certain, war is not.... Whether the United States and China find themselves on the brink of war in the future will be determined as much by Washington's policies as by Beijing's."