Uncharted Waters Ahead: U.S. Needs a New Compass

America won two great victories earlier in this century over the forces of aggression and totalitarianism. But on each occasion, we neglected to look very far beyond the struggle at hand and the prospect of victory, and to address the fact that our victories themselves would change the world and present us with a new set of problems, challenges and responsibilities.

We did learn one important lesson following the bitter experience of the period between World Wars I and II--the need for an active American role and the acceptance of American responsibility in the preservation of international peace and stability. But now, for the third time in this century, we risk becoming victims of our own success. For we are hearing it said that the remorseless political, ideological and military competition between the United States and the Soviet Union known as the Cold War is now coming to an end . We are also hearing that it is ending largely on our terms.

While much of the debate on this subject is premature, it is indisputable that we are entering a new era in international relations, an era that is largely the product of our successful postwar policies. Now is not the time, however, for us to be patting ourselves on the back. Complacency over our success is no substitute for hard-nosed thinking about the new order of foreign-policy challenges that await us. We are entering uncharted waters, and we are going to require a compass different from the one that has thus far guided us.

History will record that the United States, while not anticipating the Cold War fully, met its challenges. Our success speaks for itself. The West today is stronger collectively than at any time since World War II. We are prosperous and secure. We are confident of our purpose and of the validity--and universality--of our democratic ideals.

On the other side, communism as a philosophy of government and as a guide to economics is in disarray. Today, communism is the refuge of despots and oligarchs who cling desperately to power but who know they are condemned by history. From Eastern Europe to Nicaragua, and from Ethiopia to Cuba, communist economies are recognized failures. The last 10 years is an almost unblemished record of movement toward market-oriented reforms the world over, and of the victory of democratic forces over dictatorships of the left and the right.

The United States is going to face a different set of international challenges as we move into the next century. The bipolar world of the postwar era, where the United States and the Soviet Union dominated and set the agenda for their respective alliances, is over. We are now moving into--or back into--a world in which power and influence is diffused among a multiplicity of states.

Obviously, this development has been welcomed in the West, insofar as it reflects a decline in Soviet economic power and the process of political decay that now seems endemic to Eastern Europe. But let us not fool ourselves. If it is true that we have emerged victorious from the Cold War, then we, like the Soviets behind us, have crossed the finish line out of breath. We are both faced with a diminished capacity to influence events and promote our respective interests throughout the world on the scale we have become accustomed to.

This is not to say that the United States and the Soviet Union will cease to be the world’s only true superpowers, or that the Soviets will not represent the principal threat to Western security interests for the foreseeable future. Nor is the multipolar world into which we are moving necessarily going to be a safer place, given the existence and indeed proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

For all its risks and uncertainties, the Cold War was characterized by a remarkably stable and predictable set of relations among the great powers.

We live, then, in a time of transition, one of risks and opportunities. There is the prospect before us that the East Bloc countries will at last join the family of democratic nations, and that the developing countries will enjoy the fruits of progress by emerging market-oriented reforms. But there is also the danger that change in the East will prove too destabilizing to be sustained, and that the nations of the Third World will be crushed by the weight of debt and decay.

Our ability to meet the challenges in East-West and North-South relations will depend on how well the major Western industrial nations manage the transition to a new set of relations and a new distribution of responsibilities.

Clearly, the balance of power among the United States, Western Europe and Japan has shifted over the last decade. We can do something about our trade and budget deficits, but we can do nothing to alter the fundamental fact that we are no longer going to be able to get our way in international affairs as we once did.

How we adjust to this, and how our Western partners adjust to their new-found independence and responsibilities, will determine whether the stable international framework the United States did so much to foster in the postwar period will continue to function for the benefit of all, or whether we will slip back toward the dark days of autarky, unilateralism and protectionism that proved so damaging to the West in the 1920s and ‘30s.

The shift in the balance of power does not mean that the United States must abandon its leadership role. On the contrary, the United States will remain for long into the next century as the only power able--or at least willing--to think on global terms and fashion policies in the overall interests of the West. Our capacity to play this role may have been diminished, but the need for us to do so has not.

For the United States to continue to play this role, however, will require a recognition by our Western democratic partners that, with increased wealth and influence, come increased responsibilities. For example, the West Europeans, as they move toward a single internal market in January, 1993, will have to ensure a continued open trade relationship with the United States if we are to avoid a protectionist spiral and a deterioration in the transatlantic relationship.

Similarly, the Japanese are going to have to accept the fact that they cannot afford to pursue unilateral advantage to the detriment of the overall stability of the international system.

The problems of adjustment for the West pale in comparison to those facing the Soviets. The Soviet Union is going through a crisis of massive proportions. Mikhail S. Gorbachev has had the wisdom to understand that radical change is necessary to save his country from permanent decline. This is not the first time, however, that the Kremlin has engineered an ideological retreat in order to stimulate national recovery. Lenin first did so with his market-oriented New Economic Plan in the 1920s, and Stalin submerged ideology in favor of Russian nationalism during the Great Patriotic War against Nazi Germany. We need to keep this history in mind, as well as the fact that Gorbachev is no anti-Communist, and that he intends to make the Soviet Union as strong as he can.

Nevertheless, it is true that the changes introduced by Gorbachev offer the first realistic hope for a transformation in the Soviet system and for a qualitative improvement in East-West relations.

As President Bush has argued, we have a historic opportunity now to end the postwar division of Europe on terms that reflect our democratic principles. Gorbachev has apparently understood that his country will not be able to compete economically unless resources are shifted away from the military, and that the Soviet Union will not be able to enter the post-industrial age unless it opens its society and establishes normal relations with the West.

It is for these reasons that Gorbachev has made hopeful pronouncements on arms reductions, and has slowed the overseas adventurism that did so much to galvanize Western solidarity in the early 1980s.

And herein lies a danger to Western interests: With a perception among the Western public that the Soviet threat has diminished, there will be a tendency for the member states of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to compete in expanding their relations with the East.

Already we hear that we need to take measures to ensure the success of Gorbachev’s reforms. This, however, is not the task of American foreign policy, or that of our Western partners. Our task is to devise policies that will serve our interests whether Gorbachev succeeds or fails. And our common goal--until the process of democratic reform in the East has truly become irreversible--ought to be the maintenance of the security consensus that has served the West so well over the past 40 years.

This will be easier said than done. If the Western tendency towards unilateralism on trade matters is matched in the field of security relations with the East Bloc, the Soviets may play NATO members off against one another, and obtain trade and arms-control concessions without undertaking the systemic reforms that alone can make for a stable relationship between East and West.

Obviously it is in the Europeans’ interest as much our own to avoid bankrolling cosmetic Soviet reforms, or to reach arms-control agreements that undermine NATO. While the U.S. commitment to NATO will remain secure, it is incumbent upon our European allies--particularly as they unify their economies--to assume greater responsibility for their own defense and to establish a more equitable division of labor within the alliance.

The United States will also face a new set of challenges over the next decade in its relations with the developing world. Here, too, the postwar struggle between liberal democracy and communist or statist ideologies for the hearts and minds of the people appears to be moving in ways favorable to the West. But we should be realistic about the underlying meaning of the trend toward democracy and the movement toward free-market reforms. The fact is that the trend is against incumbent governments everywhere, of all political stripes--governments overwhelmed by the problems of overpopulation, unemployment and stagnant economic growth.

Clearly, many of the problems of the developing nations are of their own making. But if they are willing to undertake the necessary reforms, the West must respond with creative approaches to the debt problem. If not, we may find the trend toward democracy to be short-lived.

Finally, there is a further host of problems facing us as we move into the next century that will exceed the ability of the United States or any single nation to resolve. These include the problems of weapons proliferation, international drug-trafficking, terrorism and the imperilled environment.

If Gorbachev is sincere when he says that we have to set aside our ideological differences and military competition in order to address the fundamental threats to the survival of the planet, he will find the United States a ready partner. But most of these problems do not lend themselves to solution in a strictly East-West framework.

For example, take pollution and weapons proliferation. We in the industrialized world now find ourselves asking the developing nations to eschew methods of economic development that we ourselves practiced in the not-too-distant past, and that account in part for our current prosperity. Similarly, we are asking many of these same nations to forgo the production of weapons that we ourselves possess, and which contribute to our security in a dangerous world.

The challenge of eradicating drug-trafficking and eliminating the threat to the world environment, in particular, are international in scope and will require the cooperative efforts of those nations wealthy enough to mobilize the necessary resources.

The period of transition we are passing through can be managed successfully if we understand that we face a different set of challenges than have confronted us over the past 40 years. We are militarily strong; we are strong economically. And we are on the verge of seeing our democratic values triumph in places hardly imaginable only a few years ago.

But the positive and indeed revolutionary changes sweeping the world today are reversible, and they cannot be sustained by the efforts of the United States alone. They can be sustained, however, and dangers can be turned into opportunities, if the Western democracies renew their commitment to a cooperative approach to the major issues confronting them.

This will require American leadership of the highest order.