American leadership in the post-cold war period

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), May, 1996 by Strobe Talbott

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

OVER the past decade, the world has changed dramatically and, mostly, for the better. Nevertheless, there are many places around the globe where misery and brutality continue to dominate. The Balkans and Central Africa are just the most egregiously afflicted. Still, even reserving compassion and outrage for the bad news, it should be recognized that there is plenty of good news. We live in an era that is marked by triumphs of the human spirit: the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the fall of the Soviet Empire in 1991; the handshakes for peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors in 1993; and the end of apartheid in South Africa in 1994.

During this same period, there have been many quieter, but equally hard-won and promising, examples of progress. Nations from El Salvador to Ethiopia to Cambodia have moved from dictatorship to democracy; countries such as Argentina, India, and China have moved toward open markets. This is important since open markets are conducive to open societies, which, in turn, are conducive to basic political freedoms and more peaceful international relations.

American statesmen--Democrats and Republicans, in the executive and legislative branches--have played an important, often vital part in creating what essentially is a better world. We can't rest, though, because the work is not done. Now more than ever, the world looks to the U.S. for leadership. The rewards for providing that leadership abroad will be realized at home as well. We face historic opportunities, not just to combat threats and enemies, but to build a world that reflects American ideals and promotes American interests--one that will be more prosperous and more secure not only for this generation, but for our children's.

Yet, while we have a great national opportunity for international leadership, we do not have the necessary national consensus about how to seize it. Instead, once again, for at least the third time in this century, we face a great national debate over America's role in the world. The first two such debates came after World War I and II. The latest comes after the end of the Cold War. For that debate to lead us, ultimately, to make the right decisions and policies, it must take place not just inside the Washington beltway, or on the floor of Congress, or on the 1996 campaign trail, which, of course, already is officially open to traffic.

Today, in the aftermath of the Cold War, just as in the aftermath of other great struggles in our nation's history, there is a temptation to draw back into ourselves, to devote all our attention and resources to fixing our own problems and let other countries fend for themselves. This temptation particularly is evident in Congress, where there are those in both parties who imply that we should duck--not deal with--the international challenges of the era. This sentiment echoes that of the shortsighted naysayers of the 1920s: the wrong-headed patriots who rejected the League of Nations; embraced protectionism; downplayed the rise of Mussolini, Hitler, and Stalin; and opposed help to the victims of aggression and inadvertently endangered national security, chanting all the while the crowd-pleasing mantra "America first."

Arguments that would turn the American eagle into an ostrich always have had a certain appeal, in part because we are separated by vast oceans from Europe, Asia, and Africa; in part because we long have been at peace with our immediate neighbors on this continent; and in part because of the Founding Fathers' advice to avoid foreign entanglements.

Fortunately for the U.S. and the world, the leaders of the great coalition that won World War II learned several of the lessons from the aftermath of World War I. The American statesmen of the late 1940s and early 1950s resisted and rejected isolationism and embraced internationalism instead. Through the Marshall Plan, GATT, and the international financial institutions born at Bretton Woods, the diplomats who were present at the creation of the post-World War II world established the basis for a community of Western democracies and an increasingly interdependent and prosperous global economy. They created a mechanism to further the cause of enduring peace through the United Nations Charter--a document inspired by American ideals and largely written by American statesmen.

It is natural that internationalism is more likely to resonate with the public mood when there is a clear-cut enemy such as Soviet communism. During the Cold War, much of what we were for was dictated by what we were against. The imperative of containing communism permeated our policies. We formed alliances to defend against Soviet expansion; reached into our pockets for foreign aid to maintain our influence against the encroachments of the Red Menace in the Third World; and countered hard-eyed, stubborn Soviet diplomats on every issue and in every forum.

Now, the Cold War is over and, with its end, we face a resurgence on the home front of those old temptations and delusions that got the better of us in the 1920s. In short, the isolationist instinct is twitching again in the American body politic. It is twitching in calls to reject free trade agreements, keep our distance from foreign conflicts, or gut the UN. It especially is twitching in calls to slash the international affairs portion of the Federal budget.