Contending Schools
Mini Teaser: Three distinct schools of thought shape the debate on how America should best pursue its post-Cold War interests in the world.
In his book Diplomacy, Henry Kissinger maintains that at the turn of
the last century the United States faced a choice between two
fundamentally different approaches to international relations, one
represented by Theodore Roosevelt and the other by Woodrow Wilson.
America was then emerging from decades of preoccupation with
continental expansion, the country's economic might was beginning to
outdistance that of all others, and its merchants were establishing
trade ties in every corner of the globe. Two schools of thought,
represented by two men who became president, arose to vie for
influence in charting America's approach to such an altered world.
Theodore Roosevelt, president from 1901 to 1909, urged the nation to
establish its relations with the rest of the world solidly on the
concept of national interest, based on military might and balance of
power diplomacy. Woodrow Wilson, president from 1913 to 1921, pressed
the nation to support a foreign policy grounded in law and deriving
strength from cooperation with others.
In Kissinger's view, and in that of others in the traditional school
of foreign policy to which he belongs, Wilson won the argument. As a
consequence, America's approach to the world has been colored by its
resistance to the adoption of a more traditional, more European, more
"realistic" view of international relations. That is to say, America
has been hesitant to develop an approach to the rest of the world
based on a quest for power and a determination to act according to
the standard of the national interest. (We shall leave aside for now
the paradox that a country allegedly so handicapped has been more
successful diplomatically, and has accumulated more power, than any
of the other countries that followed more traditional approaches to
international affairs.)
Now America is entering another century, and, for many of the same
reasons that the debate between Roosevelt and Wilson broke out at the
beginning of the twentieth century, a new debate over America's role
in the world is taking place. Today, as then, America finds itself
having successfully concluded a long struggle and wondering what to
do next. When Roosevelt and Wilson argued about the direction of
American foreign policy, their clash took place against the backdrop
of a nation successfully completing its internal consolidation. The
nation was secure from coast to coast and hence free to consider
important strategic choices, which it proceeded to do. At the
beginning of the twenty-first century, the emerging debate over
foreign policy is taking place in a nation that has successfully
prevailed in a global struggle against a powerful adversary. With
international communism fatally crippled or functionally dead, the
Soviet Union gone and the Warsaw Pact disbanded, America is again
secure and, hence, as it was a century ago, free to consider
different strategic choices.
There is another similarity. Americans are optimistic today about
themselves and their future. As in the days of Teddy Roosevelt and
Woodrow Wilson, we are convinced that we know the way--politically
and economically--and that therefore we have an obligation, if not
also a right, to lead others to a better future.
Most countries, of course, are not so blessed by geography and
history as to be able to consider radical new approaches to the
world. They may enjoy temporary periods of enhanced security or their
populations may develop a greater sense of confidence or optimism,
but geography and history predetermine their international stance.
They are trapped within narrow strategic margins.
America also faced such limitations so long as it was militarily weak
and had not reached its natural limits. But once the country was
internally consolidated, once other major powers were definitively
excluded from its hemisphere, and its own population began to exceed
that of all other industrialized countries, the United States
developed into a unique state in the international system: It
acquired, and still possesses, a larger strategic margin than that
enjoyed by any other power.
It is therefore quite understandable that, at the beginning of the
last century and at the beginning of this one, a debate over basic
strategic options could take place. A country so confident and so
secure begins to understand that it has options open to it that are
not available to others. It has the luxury of the kind of public
debate about its external options that most state elites try to
avoid. And, indeed, over the past few years three schools of American
commentators have begun to clarify three different approaches to the
issue of America's place in the world. Various labels have been
applied to these schools. I believe that they are best described--in
terms of the scope they envisage as appropriate for their country's
role--as the controllers, the shapers and the abstainers, it being
understood that each school has its conservative and liberal wings.
The earliest of the three schools to advance its case has been that
which seeks to control the international system. Its adherents are
the self-proclaimed hegemonists, who have decided that it is in
America's interest to use its immense power not merely to make
America the leader of the international system--its primus inter
pares--but to dominate it. They call for major sacrifices in money
and, if necessary, in blood to ensure that the American domination
lasts as long as possible (though they acknowledge that one day it
must end).
The shapers believe that a quest for leadership is more realistic
than a quest for domination. They are cautious about the use of
power. They believe that as powerful as America may be today, it
cannot prevail without the help of others. In concert with allies and
friends, America's goal should be to shape the changing international
environment into more permanent patterns that will benefit U.S.
interests over the longer run.
In forming their view of America's international posture, the
abstainers focus on the demise of the Soviet Union and the pacifying
effects of globalization. Since America is now no longer threatened
by a major international foe, and as globalization is benign, America
can comfortably scale down its active role in the world, trusting to
natural balances the task of keeping the peace.
Despite their differences, all three schools of thought are
attempting to confront the fundamental problem in international
relations: How can the state be made secure? Each school of thought
strives to place America within a system that will provide that
security. The controllers believe it must be a system that America
determines. The shapers believe it must be a system that America
molds with the cooperation of others. The abstainers believe that the
international system is now sufficiently benign or non-threatening
that America should neither control nor mold it.
A closer examination of each of these three broad schools of thought
may shed light on the nature of American interests as we enter the
twenty-first century.
The Controllers
In the post-Cold War context, the first to speak for the controllers
was the administration of George Bush. As that administration drew to
a close in late 1992, a draft Pentagon strategy paper, leaked to the
press, called for the United States to exploit the demise of the
Soviet Union in order to prevent the rise of any other power that
could challenge the strategic position of the United States. U.S.
policymakers would take steps not only to prevent the re-emergence of
another threat based in Moscow, but also to make sure that America's
allies, in particular Germany and Japan, remained in a dependent
condition.
Such views have not been restricted to Republicans. In the late
1990s, Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser in the Carter
administration, published The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and
Its Geostrategic Imperatives, in which he argued, with reference to
the approach of ancient Rome, that America should exploit its new
dominance to follow a strategy "to prevent collusion and maintain
security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and
protected, and to keepthe barbarians from coming together."
The American press judged the paper developed by the Bush Pentagon to
be a bid for world hegemony. In response to the ensuing public furor,
the Bush administration repudiated the paper as official policy,
though, as the administration left office, the Pentagon published a
declassified version that said much the same thing in more subdued
language.
Given one's view of the international system, the position expressed
in the paper can remain not only a legitimate option but a necessary
choice for the United States. The new "hegemonic realists" begin
their arguments with a fear and an observation: No state, not even an
ally or a democracy, can be trusted over the long run. Inevitably,
another state will rise up to challenge U.S. power. Ever has it been
thus and ever will it be. America now has power unparalleled in the
modern era. Perhaps not since the days of imperial Rome or ancient
China has a single state so dominated the international system. Like
them, the United States towers above others in military technology,
economic development, political cohesion and cultural magnetism. Why
not use that power, as Rome did, to hold down others as long as one
can?
Vocal in expressing the conservative side of this viewpoint have been
William Kristol and Robert Kagan of The Weekly Standard. The case
they make can be traced back to arguments advanced by Hans Morgenthau
in his seminal book on power politics, Politics among Nations,
published in the early 1950s. According to Morgenthau, "Human nature,
in which the laws of politics have their roots, has not changed since
the classical philosophies of China, India, and Greece endeavored to
discover those laws." If this statement is true, then it is a chimera
to expect much better behavior from modern states than the recorded
behavior of ancient states. The wars, massacres and betrayals will
continue unless a hegemon emerges to force other states into a
structure that makes it impossible for them to threaten the hegemon,
or one another.
From such a pessimistic view of human nature, guidelines for policy follow:
* The United States should seek hegemony because, if it does not,
someone else will. Better America dominating others rather than
others dominating America.
* The international system, inherently anarchic, needs someone in
control. Today, the United States is the only power able to impose
control on the international system. If America does not exercise
control, there will be either control by others or chaos.
* Others will strive to displace America from its position of
superiority, and some of them may be dangerous. Precisely for that
reason, America must use its superiority to retard others in their
effort to develop the ability to challenge the United States.
* Though no one likes a hegemon, America will be a much better
hegemon than others would be. On balance, America will exercise its
power with some restraint. American hegemony will be relatively
benign and therefore perhaps more tolerated.
* Whoever dominates the international system militarily will, to a
significant extent, be able to dictate to it politically and
economically. This presents the United States with an opportunity to
"fix" in place the system, at least temporarily, to its own benefit.
Though the "controllers" acknowledge that ultimately other powers
will rebel against American hegemony, and at some point will coalesce
to attempt to pull America from its perch, it is in the U.S. interest
to delay that moment as long as possible. Doing so will be expensive.
The editors of The Weekly Standard call for a sharp increase--as much
as $80 billion yearly--to the already large American defense budget
(a budget that is currently larger than the combined military
expenditures of all the other major powers).
There is also a liberal or progressive answer to the question of what
to do with America's enormous and essentially unchallenged military
power in a post-Cold War world that similarly favors American
control. Progressives typically distrust a foreign policy based on the cold, traditional definition of national interest, an approach to
international affairs that they associate with war and conquest. As a
rule, they are also more optimistic about the human condition,
rejecting the belief that human nature is unchanging.
At the same time, many progressives believe profoundly that, properly
used, the power of government is capable of bettering the human
condition. They also mourn the fact that the international system,
though much safer since the demise of the Soviet Union, is not
sufficiently benign in character. There are still states governed by
evil people. There is still much suffering and unrealized human
potential. Since America enjoys such military superiority, they
argue, why not use that power, not to hold down friends, but to
eradicate evil and to do good?
These "hegemonic liberals", then, accept that international affairs
involve some harsh realities, but contend that, through democratic
governance, America and probably all of its democratic allies have
risen above them. As the world consists, then, of the civilized and
the uncivilized, it is the duty (and in the interest) of the former
to impose order on the latter.
Authors like David Rieff, deputy editor of World Policy Journal, thus
urge the United States to exploit its military superiority, not to
impose a world hegemony over states (such as China or Germany) with
the inherent potential to challenge America some day, but to impose
order over currently distasteful, uncivilized powers like the Balkan
states, Sierra Leone and Haiti. In Rieff's stark words, "Our choice
at the millennium seems to boil down to imperialism or barbarism."
In the last century, people talked of the "white man's burden." In
this century, the hegemonic liberals urge America to assume a decency
burden. America should use its power to compel others to behave
properly.
The very disparity between America's military power and that of the
rest of the world imparts tremendous emotional force to this call for
decency. The disparity, it is maintained, implies an obligation to
act. In these terms, America in the international system begins to
resemble the adult in a school playground who witnesses a large
teenager beating up on a five year-old. Does that adult not have an
obligation to step in to stop the abuse?
Prior to the fall of the Soviet Union, of course, it would have been
impractical and dangerous for America to act in the way either branch
of controllers--conservative or liberal--wishes it to act. But given
the preponderance America now enjoys, the controllers maintain that
it would be a dereliction of national interest or moral duty not to
do so.
The Shapers
The Question arises: Do the American people have the taste for empire
that such a project of control would entail? Do Americans have either
the will or the skill to lord over foes, allies or the "uncivilized"?
George Kennan, the historian and diplomat, cautions his fellow
Americans not to be mesmerized by their own power. In humanitarian
interventions that would require taking over the powers of other
governments to the point of engaging in a form of neocolonialism,
"neither dollars nor bayonets" will assure success, he warned in an
interview with the New York Review of Books.
In light of such considerations, another school of thought has risen
up: the "prudent realists", or shapers, as I shall call them. Its
adherents argue that, rather than engage in a futile and dangerous
quest for hegemony, America should work with others to try to shape
the international environment in a manner that serves not only its
national interest, but that of the others as well.
Former officials of the Clinton administration's Department of
Defense occupy the conservative wing of this school. William Perry,
Joseph S. Nye, Jr., and Ashton Carter have asserted that the United
States in recent years has lost sight of its true national interest,
which is protection of the heartland. The vagaries of press interest
and coverage have redirected the nation's attention and energies away
from core issues toward areasof concern that are not critical to the
nation's future. What is more important: a better government in Haiti
or guarding against a backlash in Russia similar to the reaction in
Weimar Germany that led to Hitler's rise? Should the nation's top
diplomats be spending most of their time on the Balkans, or trying to
assist China in a peaceful transition from communist renegade to
reliable regional partner?
These analysts have classified threats to the United States into
three categories:
* Threats that could affect America's core security; e.g., a wayward
Russia, a hostile China, widening acquisition of weapons of mass
destruction.
* Regional conflicts that might involve the United States because of
treaty commitments or balance of power considerations; e.g., a war in
the Persian Gulf.
* Problems at the periphery that capture the headlines; e.g., Kosovo,
Bosnia, Rwanda, Somalia and Haiti.
Another conservative shaper is Richard Haass, until recently director
of Foreign Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution and now head
of policy planning in the Bush State Department. U.S. primacy, he
cautions, cannot last forever. Hence, America's goal should be to
persuade other centers of power to support "constructive solutions"
to the issues that the world will face. America should attempt to
build an international order based on four premises: less of a
reliance on force to resolve international disputes; reducing the
number of weapons of mass destruction; settling for a limited
doctrine of humanitarian intervention; and maximum feasible economic
openness. Could there be a better agenda for a prudent realist?
The categories we have discussed thus far help to clarify the Clinton
administration's foreign policy record. Overall, the administration
proved to be more cautious than a "hegemonic liberal" might hope. It
stopped short of such ventures as engaging in nation-building in
Africa, for example. But it proved to be more adventuresome than a
prudent realist might prefer. It did, after all, establish a U.S.
protectorate in the Balkans, under a NATO flag, that will in all
likelihood last for decades.
The Clinton administration's preference, however, was to assume a
more benign world than that which exists in the Balkans. In so far as
it is possible to discern a clear, primary concern over the past
eight years, it has been one of trying to assist history's "invisible
hand" to spread democracy and free markets. The belief was that this
hand was already at work, but that it needed the application of
American diplomacy to accelerate its progress.
A much more optimistic and liberal vision of the international system
and of human nature than that held by the hegemonists lies behind the
Clinton approach. Research by scholars such as Michael Doyle, a
professor of political science at Princeton University, has advanced
evidence for the belief that democratic states are by their very
structure peaceful, at least in their dealings with one another. With
this core belief as a foundation, the Clinton administration's
preference was for policy that would spread free markets, which would
lead to the development of a middle class, whose members, in turn,
would demand an opening of the political process. It was a form of
upside-down (or right side-up) Marxism: Economics drives politics,
but this time toward middle class democracy, not the dictatorship of
the proletariat. And since democracies do not attack one another,
free trade will bring not only prosperity but world peace. At the end
of this cycle, the rules of international politics themselves can be
rewritten, codified, and the new structure strengthened through
institutionalization.
The theory, of course, rests on the assumption that what has not
happened until now--democracies warring with one another--cannot
happen. The test might come if countries with no liberal
tradition--say, those of the Arab world--were to become democratic,
and then were engaged in contesting access--both on the part of each
other and of outside democracies--to vital resources such as water
and oil. Would democracy then prevent them from fighting?
In any case, given such an optimistic theory as a premise, any
sensible administration would be concerned to give history a push.
Following this logic, the Clinton administration has aggressively
pressed for the establishment of free-trade agreements with a growing
number of countries around the world. It also pressed the issue of
enlarging NATO even at the cost of disturbing relations with Russia.
President Clinton put the final theoretical piece in his approach to
international politics in place when, in his last year in office, he
called for Russian membership in both the European Union and NATO,
once Moscow met the membership criteria. Pulling Russia into some
kind of institutional structure could suspend the laws of
international politics that have applied in Europe for centuries,
just as it is assumed that American world hegemony could suspend
those laws for much of the rest of the world.
The Abstainers
Two seminal events have made the position of abstainer a more
credible approach to foreign policy than it was for most of the
twentieth century: the end of the Cold War and what we have quickly
learned to call globalization.
After World War II, the struggle with the Soviet Union rendered the
position of American isolationism untenable. An enemy that seemed to
have a presence everywhere had to be confronted everywhere. At the
same time, the model of economic development Western states had
developed as a result of the experience of both the Great Depression
and the Second World War called for a committed form of
internationalism, involving market interference by governments and
their public sector bankers to keep the world economy on the right
track. Now the Cold War has ended and the growing strength of
globalization, with its open borders and floating exchange rates, has
put the market back in the driver's seat.
With the loss of an external threat, the U.S. government was suddenly
deprived of the argument that there was no foreign policy option
other than internationalism. And with the "invisible hand" working
its globalist magic, Americans and others had yet another reason to
reconsider their approach to international affairs. Governments began
to lose their monopoly over international relations. Transnational
actors--businesses, non-governmental organizations, the news media
and private individuals from Jimmy Carter to George Soros to the
Pope--quickly came to exert more influence than senior U.S. officials.
Looking at these developments, some observers--Jessica Mathews,
president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, for
example--contend that a "power shift" has taken place in
international politics and that transnational actors are now "able to
push around even the largest governments." If one believes these
actors are benign, as many globalists do, one might well conclude
that we should sit back and relax, since increasingly governments can
present only the "appearance of free choice" when they set out to
make the rules. Of course, individuals who hold such views know that
the new force of globalization brings some ill as well as much good.
Nevertheless, the case they make progressively calls into question
whether the historic game of geopolitics played by empires and
democracies alike throughout the course of history will continue to
dominate international politics. Why not, then, draw the obvious
conclusion that a frantic concern with control is misplaced and
pointless, and that the most that is called for will be modest and
occasional efforts at small course corrections?
While Mathews and those who agree with her make a persuasive case and
point to real and important changes, the fact that similar claims
about the consequences of interdependence and earlier versions of
"globalization" have been made by others in the last two
centuries--Cobden, Marx and Engels, Norman Angell immediately come to
mind--suggests that a degree of caution is in order. The demise of
the sovereign nation-state has often been announced, but it is a long
time dying.
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, in his bestselling book,
The Lexus and the Olive Tree, expresses the new view graphically when
he contends that if a nation wishes to enjoy the prosperity of the
new globalized economy, it must put on a "Golden Straitjacket." And
once a nation is properly fitted, it finds that "two things tend to
happen: your economy grows and your politics shrinks." The competence
of the state remains important, Friedman argues, but as in the
delimited role of tailor and valet for the straightjacket.
Countries so bound may enjoy "more growth and higher average
incomes", but their political and economic policy choices are
narrowed to "relatively tight parameters." In Friedman's view, this
is the principal reason that there is now very little difference
between the policies of those in power and those in opposition "in
those countries that have put on the Golden Straitjacket." Supporting
his case is the record of governments in France and the United States
in recent years. Regardless of election promises or changes in
administration, policy remains fundamentally unaltered.
Of course, the suggestion is that it would be rational for
governments to put on the Golden Straitjacket voluntarily. But as not
everyone involved in the game of international politics is rational,
Friedman would not abandon the military instrument. Nevertheless, his
view of globalization, which is widely shared in financial circles,
offers a very optimistic view of international relations, one
suggesting that countries increasingly will lock themselves into an
international structure of economic interchange that will ensure a
more peaceful world. Within this structure, problems like
international terrorism and criminality may remain, but the scale of
bloodletting experienced in the world wars will be gone forever.
Indeed, once every country is in the straitjacket, the centuries-old
problem of international security will largely be solved.
Thus for the liberal abstainer, economics is more important than
politics; conversely, for the conservative abstainer--the traditional
isolationist--politics is more important than economics. The liberal
abstainer, convinced that globalism will lift all boats, believes the
nation's highest priority is to open markets among economies and
communications among cultures. The conservative abstainer, on the
other hand, is worried that global forces will constrict political
choice in the United States and thus erode national
sovereignty--precisely the development their liberal counterparts
praise.
Tom Friedman wants America, like other nations, to wear the Golden
Straitjacket. Pat Buchanan fights to ensure that, no matter what the
benefits, America will never try it on, because once worn it will be
impossible to shed. Buchanan, it is worth noting, can only take the
positions he does because America is now so secure. The United States
can go its own way only as long as that is true. Buchanan would use
America's strength to consolidate the home front, with America ready
to repel any power that dares challenge the United States in any
fundamental way.
The goal is to keep America out of harm's way, and the best way to do
this now is through disengagement rather than engagement. The United
States can withdraw from the 1947 Rio Pact with Latin American
governments--which calls for collective action against a potential
aggressor--because no such aggressor exists. It can abrogate any
security treaty that requires the country to go to war automatically,
while at the same time remaining allied with certain critical states.
These states will no longer need an American armed presence on their
soil to ensure their security, but will settle for American good
will. Thus, U.S. ground troops would leave Western Europe and South
Korea. In other words, America need no longer serve as a front-line
state forever taking the lead; it can return to the restricted and
safer role of the West's "strategic reserve."
Ironically, the hegemonists and the isolationists share a common
vision: Each group wants to make sure that America remains the sole
arbiter of its own fate, the former by keeping others subservient,
the latter by staying out of their quarrels. The shapers, both
conservatives and liberals, do not believe that U.S. power, vast
though it has become, is sufficient for America to ignore or reject
the need for allies and friends.
Questions and Choices
At the beginning of the last century, Americans interested in foreign
policy had an advantage that those similarly interested today do not:
Leading the debate over foreign policy choices were two exceptionally
eloquent national figures--Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson.
By contrast, today's politics produce--perhaps require--political
figures of narrow electoral calculation rather than lofty policy
conviction. Since Reagan in the 1980s, no recent president or
presidential candidate has been willing to make his vision of
America's role in the world a major thrust of his message to the
country. All have suffered from the lack of the "vision thing", and
perhaps all agree in private that displaying it might prove
politically lethal.
The schools of thought that have developed in recent years are
therefore the work of a mostly anonymous foreign policy intellectual
elite rather than that of major national figures. This circumstance
has both advantages and disadvantages. One advantage is that we are
not carried away by eloquence alone. Woodrow Wilson, by all accounts
a mesmerizing speaker, may have been more skilled at framing issues
for the public than Teddy Roosevelt. But it is not clear that he had
a better approach to international relations for the period the
country was entering than did Roosevelt. To put the best gloss on his
career, he appears to have been ahead of his time.
A key disadvantage surrounding our current debates is that they take place out of electoral earshot. The three schools of thought, each with its two ideological wings, frame thinking on foreign policy. They help to determine responses from administrations. But they pass no test of public support, so that, even if adopted, their doctrines are subject to rapid repudiation. And, indeed, in recent years the United States has announced and then renounced such different foreign policy approaches as a "new world order", assertive multilateralism, a la carte interventionism, priority to Russia and China, stress on alliance ties, democratic enlargement, and humanitarian intervention.
An expressly public and political forum is needed to begin to answer some fundamental questions: America has the power of Rome, but does it have its ambition? If America acquires the ambition, will it be able to maintain it? Americans clearly enjoy the role of leader, but will they accept the sacrifices that such a role will inevitably require?
Americans insist that others consult them, but will Americans consult with others? Americans want partners, but do they always understand the difference between partners and supplicants?
Should America's guiding star be respect for the law, or should it be the establishment of order? Is America's premier role model abroad that of the judge or the general?
Do Americans believe that the laws of international relations are immutable, or do they believe that states, if set in a certain institutional structure, can move beyond a mere quest for power? What is that structure and to which states does it apply?
Realists denounce those who urge humanitarian interventions, but can a hegemon maintain the respect from others that its position requires if it remains totally indifferent to what is happening within the system, even at the periphery? On the other hand, does the rule that assertive hegemons will, sooner rather than later, be met by countries determined to balance and contain their power--does that rule not apply to American hegemony? And if not, why not?
America is a status quo power that benefits enormously from the current balance of power in the international system. But, considering that a wave of anti-Americanism is sweeping the globe, should it rest content?
Americans need a serious debate on how best to defend their advantage. It seems unlikely, on the basis of a decade of waiting, that this debate will develop as a result of executive branch initiative. It is perhaps time for the Congress to open up hearings on the advantages and disadvantages of the broad options that the three schools of thought outlined here have developed.
Charles William Maynes is president of the Eurasia Foundation, which promotes economic and political reform in the former Soviet Union. From 1980 to 1997 he was editor of Foreign Policy.
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