As Soviet Power Fades, What Now Challenges U.S.? : Policy: Officials debate whether regional issues are threats in the absence of a major ideological rival.

The formal dissolution of the Soviet empire this week has unleashed a fierce debate on U.S. national security and Washington’s role in the world. At the core of the controversy is a simple question: What, now, is the threat to the United States?

Simple as it is, the question reflects deep complexities facing the Bush Administration on fundamental issues, ranging from where the United States maintains military bases and aims its missiles to which countries receive American aid and just who are America’s friends and foes. The spectrum of the debate, which many expect to rage for years to come, spans from neo-isolationist to neo-globalist views.

At one end of the debate are analysts who believe that the threat to U.S. interests is now limited and that foreign policy may even become a secondary priority. “In the absence of the Cold War, we need to stop thinking that every area of the world is of strategic urgency to us,” says Mark Lowenthal, director of foreign policy at the Congressional Research Service. “A lot of changes may be irrelevant to U.S. interests. . . . A lot of these issues we can shrug off.”

Lowenthal cites Yugoslavia as an example. Although the United States opposes the disintegration of Yugoslavia, “it’s not the same crisis as it would have been in 1979 or 1981 when it would have sucked in both the major powers.” Or, if the Marxist FMLN swept to power in El Salvador, he adds, “Who cares? The Soviets won’t help them. And the Cubans can’t help themselves, much less the FMLN. We don’t want the FMLN to win, but it’s no longer the same threat.”

Many developments may prove to be displeasing or discomforting. But, in the absence of a major ideological rival with expansionist ambitions, they may not require major U.S. action, analysts on this side of the new debate argue.

A dictator’s takeover of Guatemala might represent an “ideological tragedy,” Lowenthal adds. “We think of democracy as the preferred way of life, but there’s no way you can define that as a threat, even to Mexico on its border.”

Even the threat from the volatile Middle East will diminish, analysts suggest. The United States would still perceive the cutoff of oil supplies or a challenge to Israel’s survival as threats warranting intervention, but otherwise the region no longer represents the same potential menace.

Transnational issues, from narcotics and terrorism to illegal migration, also no longer pose a threat as serious as during the 45-year Cold War. “Are they a threat? Yes, to some degree. But can they undermine us? No,” Lowenthal says. “We have to scale back our vision of what we want or need to get involved in.”

At the other end of the debate are those who argue that the once-singular threat will now become far more complex as the world, not just Eastern Europe, goes through a series of political, economic and social transformations. “We’ll face a much more diffuse sense of threat,” says John Van Oudenaren, a strategic analyst at the RAND Corp. in Santa Monica.

“What’s going to be characteristic about the threat is that it’ll be so much harder to get your hands around than it was when Marxism-Leninism was around,” says Augustus Richard Norton, an analyst with the International Peace Academy in New York. “The new threat will be like a multifaceted gem. Any way you turn it, there’s a new dimension.”

And, U.S. analysts suggest, many developments will still require some form of American involvement or leadership.

A leading new military threat will come from assertive regional powers, particularly in Asia, Africa and Latin America, vying to fill the power vacuum. The superpower rivalry will be replaced by regional rivalries initiated by countries that feel either emboldened or vulnerable without superpower presence, several analysts on this side of the debate predict.

What makes them threatening is the possible use of increasingly potent weapons, including weapons of mass destruction, that are now in Third World arsenals. At least 10 Third World countries now have or are working on nuclear capability, 20 others have or are working on chemical or biological weapons and 25 have or are working on ballistic missiles.

“If you define threats in narrow terms--protecting the lives of your people and your territory, and if you look at the proliferation of these weapons and the different nationalist aspirations around the world, then you can’t rule out some kind of threat to the United States itself,” Van Oudenaren says. “And even if they don’t hit the United States, people got excited after Chernobyl (nuclear reactor accident) about what (fallout) would do to food and milk thousands of miles away. So there’s reason to be worried.”

These analysts suggest that the ideological right may replace the left as the primary threat to democracy, both in the industrialized and the developing worlds.

Several U.S. analysts outline scenarios in which resurgent nationalist and ethnic movements originating in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union could ignite challenges to Western Europe that the United States could not ignore.

Others predict that fledgling new democracies, particularly in the Third World, could deteriorate into fascist or authoritarian rule, as happened in Europe in the 1930s, because they simply cannot afford to sustain democracy.

“We don’t have the resources to ensure that any of these countries have a smooth ride to prosperity,” Van Oudenaren explains. “Their deterioration could end up being a threat--both in the direct sense and the indirect sense of refugees, violence and new ideological movements” incompatible with democracy.

And not all the rightist movements may be secular. As the world’s political map is redrawn, several U.S. analysts predict the emergence of a new Central Asian bloc that would include Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and some of the southern Soviet republics that have heavily Muslim populations. The common political idiom would be conservative or fundamentalist Islam. And that may be just one of many redefined regional blocs.

“Will we look back on 1991 and 1992 as the high point for democracy and that it was all downhill from there?” Van Oudenaren asks. “It’s a key question.”

A top economic threat is simple instability. “The global crisis is the growing inability of governments in the developing world, which includes the Soviet Union and China, to meet the increasing demands of their citizens,” says Norton. “People want to be fed, they want their children to go to school, they want health care. And governments are not performing the services. People are saying, ‘Where’s the beef?’ ”

Instability would, in turn, generate massive political and social traumas spilling over into the global arena, with ever greater impact because of the world’s growing interdependence--and from which the United States will not be exempt--analysts on this side of the debate contend.

“Instability is not as sexy as saying that there are 30,000 nuclear weapons facing us, and it’s much more amorphous,” says Madeline Albright, president of the Center for National Policy. “But it’s just as threatening. That’s the way world wars start. Also, since we are now so interdependent and because we have so many trading partners, we need a world which has some kind of stability so markets can operate.”

Instability tied to economic crises also threatens violence or terrorism, old tactics with a different twist: individuals from communities facing staggering poverty, famine or drought strike out at wealthier nations just to draw attention to their destitution in the way traditionally used by extremists to generate publicity for political causes.

Despite the wide differences over what will constitute a threat to U.S. national security, all sides welcome attention to the issue and warn against policy paralysis.

“The real danger is that we will focus mainly on how great is the triumph of freedom and the market and lose sight, because of benign neglect or ignorance, of what comes after political, economic and military changes,” says Francisco Sagasti, the World Bank’s leading Soviet strategist. “We have to remember that these enormous transformations have the potential both for good and for evil.”

Adds Van Oudenaren: “All through the Cold War, there was no need for real debate over what the threat was. It was only a question of how big our involvement was or what was needed to counter the Communist threat. Now is the time for debate.”

Analysts on both sides of the debate also generally agree that, while the Soviet Union has lost its superpower status, the United States is not going to be a singular global power for very long--a fact that may, in turn, have a major impact on defining just what is a threat.

“The world isn’t going to be unipolar,” Oudenaren said. “It’s not clear at all that the United States is going to dominate the world. If that’s what people are assuming, they’re wrong.”

Pressing domestic economic needs and scheduled cuts in the defense budget, which may be further affected by the breakup of the Soviet Union, are almost certain to put new limits on either U.S. ability or interest in unilaterally policing the world.

Some analysts suggest that, with fewer perceived threats, the United States will feel less obliged to intervene around the world. Others suggest that the profusion of threats will lead to more collaborative involvement, as demonstrated during the Persian Gulf War, including roles in crises that represent a greater threat to allies than to the United States.