U.S. Casts About for Anchor in Waters of Post-Cold War World

Fifty-three years ago, in a long telegram from his embassy post in Moscow, U.S. diplomat George F. Kennan proposed a strategy to meet the foreign-policy challenge of his time. The United States could stop communist expansion, Kennan wrote, by patiently “containing” the Soviet Union until it changed from within.

Kennan’s doctrine became the lodestar of American foreign policy for nearly half a century. And, over time, it worked: Hemmed in by the United States and its allies, Soviet communism crumbled of its own weaknesses.

Now, a decade after the Cold War’s end, the world seems safer--but more complicated. The United States faces not one large threat but many medium-sized ones: “rogue” nations, ethnic wars, outbreaks of terrorism, a steady proliferation of ballistic missiles, and nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.

In this unexpectedly thorny time, the nation has not found another Kennan to chart its foreign policy, nor a new doctrine compelling enough to win respect across the political spectrum. Instead, as the nation prepares to elect a successor to President Clinton, today’s would-be Kennans are wrestling in one of the first great debates of the coming century: What is U.S. foreign policy about?

At one pole are optimists who believe that democracy and capitalism have triumphed almost everywhere. At the other are pessimists who foresee nothing but conflict among the diverse civilizations in a shrinking world.

“We’re all competing for the Kennan Prize,” said Michael Mandelbaum, a foreign policy scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations. “And nobody’s really won it yet.”

Without an established doctrine to guide them, U.S. political leaders have been experimenting with new approaches.

Clinton has set out a foreign policy focused on free trade, plus a sweeping “Clinton Doctrine” that declares the United States ready to undertake humanitarian intervention all over the world. Some Republicans are promoting a “new nationalism” that calls for tougher, sometimes unilateral, U.S. action in defense of American interests. Others tout a “new minimalism” that calls for fewer obligations abroad.

Overseas, thoughtful observers complain that all these schools of thought seem to focus on the United States, in what some foreigners chide as “me-firstism.”

Lack of Consensus on U.S. Role Abroad

More is at stake than intellectual reputations. Without consensus at home, it’s harder for any president to defend U.S. interests abroad. Politicians in both parties feel freer to use international issues for partisan advantage. And other nations, friendly and unfriendly, are left uncertain what the United States wants, which creates a potentially dangerous state of affairs.

“It’s more than division; it’s division and confusion. . . ,” said former Defense Secretary William J. Perry. “It makes [other countries] exceedingly nervous not to understand what we’re up to. Two of the big wars we’ve fought since the end of World War II occurred because the other side miscalculated our reaction--the Korean War and the Gulf War. In both cases, the other side thought we would not have the will to respond.”

Or, as Richard N. Haass, a leading Republican foreign policy thinker, put it: “Case-by-caseism, even if done competently, is simply inadequate. . . . You pay a real price for not having a grand strategy.”

Several core questions frame the debate:

* When should the United States use its military power? Clinton has argued that Americans should intervene wherever U.S. power could protect ethnic minorities from genocide, but most Republican leaders disagree.

* How should the United States deal with two potentially hostile great powers, China and Russia? Clinton has sought “strategic partnership” with both countries; some Republicans call for more confrontational tactics.

* What’s the biggest threat to the nation’s security, and how should the U.S. respond? Traditional strategists focus on ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction. Clinton has added terrorism, poverty, disease and disorder to the list.

* When the United States acts, should it wait for the approval of the United Nations, seek the cooperation of key allies--or strike out on its own? Clinton, while championing “multilateralism” in principle, has often resorted to solo action--and Republicans have urged the use of a unilateral approach even more often.

Clinton came to office in 1993 focused on the economy and other domestic issues, with little evident taste for foreign affairs. But events around the world--in Russia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, in Somalia and Haiti--compelled him to pay attention to international issues; in time, he notched up diplomatic achievements in Bosnia, the Middle East and Northern Ireland.

Still, in the realm of “grand strategy,” the overall framework that guides a nation’s policies, his efforts have borne little fruit.

Anthony Lake, who was national security advisor during Clinton’s first term, suggested moving from containment to “enlargement,” meaning a global expansion of democracy and economic freedom, but the prescription didn’t catch on. Warren Christopher, then secretary of State, said the post-Cold War era simply didn’t lend itself to “a single overarching concept.”

Clinton himself has proposed several different doctrines. Initially, he put free trade and prosperity at the core of his foreign policy. Later, he focused on making peace in conflict zones and on countering terrorism and international crime.

Last year, he proposed an ambitious new doctrine of humanitarian intervention, telling U.S. troops in Macedonia: “If somebody comes after innocent civilians and tries to kill them en masse because of their race, their ethnic background or their religion, and it’s within our power to stop it, we will stop it.”

Leading Republicans have rejected the “Clinton Doctrine” and offered competing--but not much more comprehensive--visions. Texas Gov. George W. Bush, who has the Republican presidential nomination sewn up, has said that he would avoid “missions without end,” take a tougher line toward China and Russia and, if necessary, act without agreement from U.S. allies.

“We should not send our troops to stop ethnic cleansing and genocide outside of our national strategic interests,” Bush said. “. . . I would not send United States troops into Rwanda.”

Bush called China “a competitor, not a strategic partner,” and said he would seek to stop almost all aid to Russia from the United States and U.S.-influenced international institutions if Russian forces continued killing civilians in the separatist republic of Chechnya.

The difference between the two parties is significant. “Republicans tend to see international affairs as an old-fashioned contest for power and wealth,” said Terry L. Deibel, a professor at the Defense Department’s National War College. “Democrats tend to see their main mission as redressing inequality and relieving human suffering.”

Candidates Shun Isolationist Approach

But both Bush and Vice President Al Gore, the Republican’s likely opponent in the November presidential election, are relative centrists on foreign policy. Neither is proposing to take the nation in a wholly new direction.

“The spectrum of difference . . . is not that great,” a senior Clinton aide said, asking for anonymity as he mildly praised several Republicans. “The essence of the Bush position is not that we’ll do it different, but that we’ll do it better--and that’s the essence of what Clinton did in ‘92” when he defeated Bush’s father.

Indeed, one school of thought has been notably missing from this year’s presidential debates: isolationism.

Despite strong public sentiment against military action abroad and public doubts about the benefits of foreign trade, former Republican activist Patrick J. Buchanan has been unsuccessful in rallying Americans behind the idea of a national withdrawal from the world. No major presidential candidate has followed Buchanan’s lead.

“The problem with the American public isn’t isolationism, it’s inattention,” said Haass, a former aide to President Bush who is now at the Brookings Institution.

During the decade since the end of the Cold War, the United States has not withdrawn from the world--far from it. Since 1989, U.S. military forces have been deployed in combat zones almost constantly: Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq, Somalia, Haiti and Panama. At the same time, U.S. economic interdependence with the rest of the world has deepened.

Beyond the presidential campaign, scholars and think-tank strategists have debated the issues more broadly, focusing on two major unknowns.

One is the shape of the post-Cold War world. The challenge of the 20th century was posed by big totalitarian states: Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, Soviet Russia. What’s the challenge of the 21st?

The other is the proper American response: What should the United States do to make the world peaceful and prosperous?

The challenges may be new, but much of the debate is familiar. Since the early days of the Republic, Americans have argued about their rightful role in the world: intervening in affairs beyond their borders, or minding their own business at home?

A conventional list of foreign policy schools would include these groups, divided most clearly in recent years by the debate over U.S. military intervention in Kosovo:

* Humanitarian interventionists: Mostly Democrats, they want the United States to intervene overseas in defense of democracy and human rights. They supported the war in Kosovo. Example: Clinton, in his speech in Macedonia in June.

* Nationalist interventionists: Mostly Republicans, they want the United States to intervene overseas in defense of democracy, trade and military security. They supported the war in Kosovo but thought that Clinton became involved for the wrong reasons. Example: Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).

* Realists: Both Republicans and Democrats, they are more skeptical about intervention. They opposed the Kosovo war before it started but reluctantly gave their support once it was underway. They want the United States to concentrate on blocking any concert of potentially hostile powers (China, Russia and India, for example) from gaining power over the Eurasian landmass. Examples: Henry A. Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski--and Kennan, now 95 and a retired professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J.

* Realists plus: An amalgam of the last two categories--realists who also believe that the United States should intervene in behalf of human rights in a few, carefully selected situations. Examples: Haass (who coined the phrase), George W. Bush.

* Minimalists: Heirs of the isolationist tradition, they believe that the United States should stay out of most foreign quarrels and save its strength for the conflicts that really matter. Example: Buchanan.

But those categories are incomplete; plenty of foreign policy questions center on issues other than military intervention.

So Haass has devised a more elegant index, based on answers to a single question: What should the nation’s priorities be? Unlike the situation in Kennan’s day, the answers vary substantially:

* To help other countries adopt democratic governments. (He calls those in this camp Wilsonians, after President Wilson, who attempted to bring the United States into the League of Nations.)

* To promote trade, prosperity and free markets (economists).

* To preserve an orderly balance of power without worrying too much about the kinds of states that are out there (realists).

* To make sure the United States keeps its status as the only superpower (hegemonists).

* To address oppression, poverty, hunger and environmental damage (humanitarians).

* To avoid spending time and treasure on any of these matters (minimalists).

Most experts--and most voters--agree with at least two of these six schools, in different combinations.

And beyond the dispute over what the nation’s goals should be, there is a second debate: how the United States should pursue them. Should it act unilaterally? Should it project its strength through alliances? Or should it rely on multilateral institutions such as the United Nations?

Thus, in Haass’ design, Bush is a realist-economist who (like his father) believes in U.S.-led alliances. Clinton is a Wilsonian-economist whose policy has evolved from multilateralism to embrace U.S.-led alliances as well.

The breeding ground for these contending prescriptions is a profusion of conflicting diagnoses of the post-Cold War world. Kennan’s doctrine of containment stemmed from his view that the Soviet juggernaut would eventually collapse of its own structural weaknesses, a view that won agreement over time from most other analysts of the day. Now there is no such consensus.

Today’s optimists include Francis Fukuyama, a Bush administration strategist who wrote, in the Cold War’s immediate aftermath, that liberal democracy had triumphed and history was at an end. A related camp of economic optimists, including Yale Dean (and former Clinton aide) Jeffrey E. Garten and New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman, says globalization has made conflict largely obsolete.

Pessimists include Harvard’s Samuel P. Huntington, who has argued that deep cultural differences among the world’s great civilizations--Western, Eastern Orthodox, Islamic, Chinese and others--are likely to lead to conflict. Writer Robert D. Kaplan says burgeoning elements of chaos in the world--famine, disease, ethnic strife, weapons of mass destruction--mean a nasty roller-coaster ride lies ahead.

James N. Rosenau of Princeton, a “paradoxer,” believes that both these trends are happening at the same time. He predicts that the main drama of the coming decades will be the conflict of economic globalization and cultural localization. Rosenau has coined the awkward word “fragmegration” to describe the coexistence of fragmentation and integration in the same world.

Finally, such geostrategists as Kissinger and Brzezinski insist that, however new the world may look, the fundamentals still apply. Old factors--powerful nation-states in the important land masses of Europe, Russia, the Middle East and East Asia--still matter. To those in this camp, the big change of the next few decades is the prospect that smaller countries may acquire military technology that can neutralize the U.S. advantage in weapons of mass destruction.

Each foreign policy school proceeds from one of these premises. The Wilsonians--those who would promote democracy--are optimists at the core. The economists promote trade and free markets out of their sense of economic optimism. Pessimists, by contrast, are preparing for confrontation with Confucian China or Islamic Iran. And the realists are concentrating on keeping the U.S. military strong and on preventing Russia and China from forming an anti-Western axis.

Deibel, of the National War College, sees no narrowing of the gulfs that separate these camps.

“At the moment,” he said, “we appear to be a nation of proliferating interests, but no clear national interest. During the Cold War, we had a central organizing principle because we had a central threat. I don’t know how you replace that. I don’t have a feeling that there’s another Kennan anywhere on the horizon.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

What’s Your Foreign Policy?

Answer the following and see what school of post-Cold War foreign policy thinking you fit into:

*

1. What are the most important goals for U.S. foreign policy?

a. End oppression, poverty and environmental damage in other countries.

b. Maintain the United States as the world’s only superpower.

c. Preserve an orderly balance of power among governments.

d. Keep foreign entanglements to a minimum.

e. Help other countries develop democratic government.

f. Promote free markets, trade and prosperity.

g. Protect American jobs from unfair foreign competition.

*

2. The main goal of U.S. relations with China should be:

a. Promoting human rights in China.

b. Containing China’s ambitions to be a great power.

c. Working with China to ensure stability in Asia.

d. Avoiding needless entanglement in conflicts in Asia.

e. Promoting democracy in China.

f. Increasing U.S. trade with China.

g. Reducing U.S. imports from China.

*

3. Should the United States have participated in the NATO bombing campaign over Kosovo last spring?

a. Yes, to save the lives and homes of the ethnic Albanians.

b. Yes, because NATO and the U.S. warned Yugoslavia that they would strike, and backing down would have damaged our credibility.

c. Yes, because it’s America’s job to ensure order in Europe.

d. No, we should have stayed out.

*

4. Should the United States have sent troops to stop the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, where more than 800,000 people died?

a. Yes, because genocide anywhere is unacceptable.

b. Yes, because it is America’s duty as the world’s only superpower.

c. No, because Central Africa is not an area of major U.S. interest.

d. No, because we should not risk U.S. soldiers’ lives on humanitarian missions.

*

GRADING SYSTEM

If your answers include: You are a: Your foreign policy may resemble that of: 3 or 4 A’s humanitarian Bill Bradley 3 or 4 Bs hegemonist John McCain, Henry Kissinger 3 or 4 Cs realist George W. Bush 3 Ds: minimalist Pat Buchanan 2 E’s: democrat Bradley, Bill Clinton, Al Gore 2 Fs or 2Gs economist McCain, Buchanan None of the above: hybrid

*

Source: Times Washington Bureau