World Policy Journal
Volume XVII, No 2, Summer 2000

 

American Newness Revisited
By James Chace

 

Seven years ago when I became editor of World Policy Journal, the world was struggling to reconcile the push toward integration with the simultaneous tendency toward fragmentation. It still is, and the American age is fast becoming an age of anxiety.

Integration was symbolized by the upcoming debate on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the expansion of NATO into Eastern Europe, and the decision of the European Union to create a common currency. Fragmentation was already taking place in the former Yugoslavia, in Somalia, and in the former Soviet Union. The rhetorical thrust of the Clinton administration's foreign policy was an assertive internationalism, but the hesitant U.S. response in intervening militarily in former Yugoslavia-indeed America's wariness of intervening anywhere unless US vital interests were threatened-and its almost doctrinal belief against risking US casualties rendered its foreign policy uncertain. The then national security advisor Anthony Lake spoke of pragmatic neo-Wilsonianism, but this rather academic label hardly defined the rules of the game for America-the-hyperpower, as the French foreign minister soon labeled it.

In the second Clinton administration, foreign policy has been markedly more successful. The United States finally sent its troops into Bosnia, and used its air power to force an end to Serbia's ethnic cleansing of Kosovo. NATO's incorporation of Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic was accomplished without a serious break in the West's relations with Russia. And the dollar remained amazingly strong against the EU's single currency, the euro.

But after 1994 President Clinton had to govern with a hostile Congress that resisted bipartisan cooperation. The Republican Senate killed the Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty banning all nuclear testing, which was a crushing defeat for the administration. In addition, faced with a hostile Congress, the administration failed to seek ratification of the landmines treaty or the treaty establishing an international criminal court. Republican leaders, seduced by the latest Star Wars concept, have urged the administration to go beyond research and possible deployment of a limited antiballistic missile system to construct a far broader system in a vain search for invulnerability. As a result, the Clinton administration wants the Russians to agree to amend the 1972 Anti-ballistic Missile Treaty to make room for this new national missile defense. The Russians, however, are vehemently opposed to changing the treaty. And although the Russian parliament has ratified an arms reduction agreement that would eliminate approximately 3,000 Russian nuclear warheads, it will not go into effect until the United States also ratifies the treaty and abandons its proposed limited missile defense system.

It makes no sense to block such an agreement, which is clearly in America's interest, yet the Senate Republicans are nonetheless threatening to do just that. If that happens, the Russians might well decide to deploy new multiple-warhead missiles, scuttle the agreement banning medium-range missiles, and even withdraw from the accord limiting conventional arms in Europe. America's European allies, not surprisingly, are strongly opposed to a new American missile defense system at any level.

Meanwhile, the growing conflicts in Africa, which the United States understandably wants to stay out of, may require America to do more than give lip service to the efforts of the United Nations to seek solutions. The U.N. secretary general this spring castigated the United States for charging high fees to supply air transport for UN peacekeepers.

In South America, an alarming and growing American involvement in aiding the beleaguered and weak Colombian government in its struggle to end a rebellion by guerrilla groups that now control half the territory of the country threatens to embroil the United States in a counterinsurgency operation in the guise of fighting a drug war.

In Haiti, which saw an American military intervention to restore a democratically elected president in 1994, political assassinations on that tragic island continue and political stability remains an illusion.

In Mexico, though the electoral process is more democratic than it has been for three-quarters of a century, the Mexican state has nonetheless become a narco-democracy, with corruption widespread throughout the justice system.

Despite the horrors of Moscow's war against a rebellious Chechnya, the Clinton administration has repeatedly voiced its support for the Kremlin leadership. And despite NATO expansion and the quarrel with the United States over missile defense, Russia, for its part, recognizes that it needs Western economic ties, and its new president, Vladimir Putin, promises to continue on the path to economic reform while reinvigorating the Russian state.

Ironically, American relations with China have remained remarkably stable over the past seven years. This is true despite the tensions between Washington and Beijing in 1996 over the independence movement in Taiwan that caused China to test-fire missiles dangerously close to that island and Washington to send warships into the region. Despite the flip-flops that characterized its policy toward admitting China into the World Trade Organization, the Clinton administration has made it clear to the Chinese leadership that Washington does not seek to isolate China. Engagement, not exclusion, will doubtless remain the policy of the United States, in either a Gore or a Bush administration.

In even a cursory review of American foreign policy, the reality of American predominance is central. The American economy continues to astonish the world by its strength and vigor; the disparity between American power and that of its allies and antagonists has never been greater. There is no military challenge to American hegemony. The US defense budget is now 20 percent higher than the combined defense budgets of all of America's European and Asian allies put together. China remains a paper tiger; it has approximately 150 strategic warheads compared with America's more than 7,000.

The fact is that when America does not act, that in itself is a form of action. The hoary debate over whether the United States should assume the role of world policeman is simply beside the point. In the twenty-first century, the United States, through its voting power in international financial institutions, is still the lender of last resort. It is the sheriff that gathers together a posse of the willing to intervene in regions torn by disorder. And its foreign policy tradition requires a moral component even when it is grounded in a realistic assessment of its interests and the capabilities of its allies and enemies.

At this turning point in American history, the American people need to understand the implications of American power and the fundamental commitment this country must make to internationalism. This, above all, is the central task of the next president. If he does not do this, much of the world will suffer grievously. Nor will the United States be able to barricade itself within the castle keep. Other powers will arise to besiege the castle, and they will find their footsoldiers among the angry and the dispossessed.

* * *

This will be the last coda this editor shall write. After seven years, it is time for a new editor to confront the servitude and grandeur of international affairs in a new century. During my tenure, I have been happily blessed with a managing editor of exceptional qualities of intellect and commitment, Linda Wrigley, whose devotion to the excellence of World Policy Journal is fast becoming legendary. The directors of the World Policy Institute, now under the leadership of Stephen Schlesinger, have never stinted in their support and promotion of the magazine.