Principled Engagement:
America's Role in the 21st-Century World
"Principled Engagement:
America's Role in the 21st-Century World"
by Gary Hart
Speech delivered on Monday, February 10, 2003,
World Affairs Council & Council on Foreign Relations, San Francisco CA
We are now more than a decade beyond the Cold War and as yet our political leadership has failed to provide a comprehensive sense of America's role in the post-Cold War, early 21st-century world. For almost half a century our central organizing principle, upon which both a foreign policy and defense policy were built, was "containment of communism". The world in which we now live defies the simplicity and predictability such a doctrine offered. And even containment of communism left unanswered the question of how to achieve that goal, a question that often divided our country deeply, not least between those advocating the use of power to promote our interests and those advocating adherence to human rights as defining of our values.
But rather than presenting a new foundation and framework to define America's role in the world, our current administration has embarked on a dangerous effort to apply power without relationship to America's principles. Its doctrine seems to be that we are powerful enough to do as we wish, and those not with us are against us. A world divided between pro- and anti-Americans is not a world in which we will hope to be secure.
Moreover, the administration's preoccupation with military superiority erodes our greatest strength—the admiration the world has for the American character. We drive the world's prosperity. We are the champions of the ideal of democracy. We are the world's greatest source of optimism, energy, and hope. Global citizens by the hundreds of millions say that they disagree with the United States government but like the American people. To compromise that goodwill through belligerence is to squander our greatest resource.
In direct contrast to a policy featuring force, and to replace a decaying Cold War-era debate between interests and values, today I would like to propose a foreign policy based upon principle, indeed a set of principles upon which I believe America should base its relations with the peoples of the world in this new century, principles representing the best traditions and beliefs of the American people.
These principles flow from the distinctive nation that we are. Historically, we are a revolutionary nation that has been at its best when it applied its revolutionary character of innovation and adaptability to the challenges of changing times. Given our revolutionary heritage, we should welcome, not resist, innovation and experimentation by other nations rather than be seen as reactionary and antagonistic to change. And, constitutionally we are a democratic republic whose government powers are checked and balanced by a written Constitution.
As a democracy, we are committed to free elections, freedom of assembly, petition, and the press, and most of all freedom of speech. And we believe all people are created equal with equal right to participate in their own self-governance.
As a republic, we believe American citizenship bears certain duties, that we earn our rights by performance of those duties, that republics are subject to corruption and that corruption must be vigilantly resisted, that there are an identifiable common good and national interest, and that, most of all, in this Republic the people—not elites or powerful interests—are sovereign.
When we act outside these definitions of our character, for example when we exhibit the characteristics of an imperial power, a hegemon, or a global constable, or when we resort to manipulation, deceit, or intrigue in our dealings with other nations, we become some other kind of nation than who we truly are. And when we do so, we always pay a price. Indeed, we diminish our authority as a world leader when we abandon our ideals or violate our principles.
Based upon our principles, American foreign policy must arise from a new grand strategy for the United States in the 21st-century world. A new world is upon us. It is characterized by globalization, or the internationalization of finance and commerce, by the information revolution and the digital divide, by the erosion of traditional nation-state sovereignty, and by the changing nature of conflict and violence.
Our new grand strategy will emerge from the answers to these questions:
America's alliances must be based on more than common enemies and must increasingly require more equitable sharing of the burden of creating stability. Throughout the Cold War our practice of expediency was based on the belief that the enemy of our enemy was our friend. It led us, for example, to support a corrupt and repressive regime in Iran until the Shah fell and then to support an even more dangerous regime in Baghdad in a war against Iranian militants who dethroned the Shah. If that policy of expediency ever served our larger purposes, it no longer does so. And, further, it is against our principles.
Today, as we muster for war against Iraq, we are forming alliances with countries like Yemen, whose head of state, Ali Abdullah Salleh, is busily importing Scud missiles from North Korea, is trading weapons throughout the region, is someone who sided with Iraq in the last Gulf war, and is refusing to let us investigate militant groups believed to harbor al Qaeda cells in his country. He exhibits none of the qualities that define democratic leaders. Yet, he is our new best friend for one simple reason—he will let us use his territory for military purposes. Is there a price to be paid after the dogs of war are chained? Absolutely—both in compromise of our principles and in the substantial cash we are undoubtedly paying him.
And nowhere is that price more evident than in Iraq itself, which we willingly supplied with dozens of biological and chemical warfare agents in the 1980s. After the first Persian Gulf war, U.N. arms inspectors found quantities of chemicals and missile parts with names like Union Carbide and Honeywell on them. A recent news report states:
The story of America's involvement with Saddam Hussein in the years before his attack on Kuwait—which includes large-scale intelligence sharing, supply of cluster bombs through a Chilean front company, and facilitating Iraq's acquisition of chemical and biological precursors—is a typical example of the underside of U.S. foreign policy. It is a world in which deals can be struck with dictators, human rights violations sometimes overlooked, and accommodations made with arms proliferators, all on the principle that "the enemy of our enemy is our friend."
That is indeed a foreign policy principle. It just happens not to be an American one.
While resisting the sacrifice of principle to expediency, we must also make our respectable alliances more relevant to the new age. Now our most important alliances, such as NATO, must be built upon equitable partnership shares of both benefits and burdens. NATO was formed to contain communism behind the Iron Curtain and it now seeks a new and more relevant purpose. That purpose may well evolve into a peace-making commitment on the borders of Europe, such as in the Balkans, and entail the development of special-purpose forces to carry out that mission. We must redefine the common interests that cause us to continue to ally. If NATO is to accept a peace-making role, areas of vital interest, command structures, and relative contributions must all be spelled out in advance of a crisis.
We should consider, for example, creation of a NATO intervention force with the mission of keeping the sea lanes of communication open, of protecting the flow of oil supplies, of dealing with any force that might want to block international commerce or exact some tribute for the open usage of any of the world's critical maritime straits. Over the years, this mission could then transition into a full-blown international peace-making force.
This is but an illustration of further ways in which 20th-century alliances need to be more relevant in the 21st century.
As a matter of additional principle, the United States must not seek empire in the Middle East or elsewhere. According to published reports, senior officials in our current government propose, quietly, that we create a permanent U.S. military presence in a defeated Iraq to intimidate Iran and Syria, buffer Israel, and replace Saudi oil with Iraqi oil. Any such grandiose notion of playing hegemon in the greater Middle East region is folly and a prescription for disaster. Its political and financial costs are unknown and probably unknowable. This secret dream of empire represents hunger for power at its worst and is contrary to America's traditional principles. This is the kind of aggressive and arrogant post-Cold War thinking the American people must steadfastly resist.
Since the president has not seen fit to tell us what our larger purposes are in the region, suspicions legitimately arise when rumors of empire drift through the salons of Washington. Will we assume responsibility to reconstruct Iraq, referee its bitter ethnic quarrels, bear the cost for rebuilding a nation of 22 million, and place thousands of American service personnel in jeopardy for an untold number of years? Or will we simply retreat from the rubble and let Iraq devolve into a sinkhole of tribal violence on CNN? The American people deserve to be told the truth about their nation's policies and the obligations in lives and treasure those policies require.
In using our economic strength to offer opportunity and hope in the less developed world, we can start with refugee camps and non-functional economies where well over a billion people live on less than a dollar a day. Though we can't, by ourselves, alleviate all their suffering, we can help create international institutions that can by bolstering infrastructure construction—particularly water resources development, micro-loans for the financing of shelter and income creation, assault on diseases such as AIDS and malaria, universal global literacy, and agricultural development sufficient to provide an adequate level of nutrition.
Traditional "top down" foreign aid must be replaced by new grassroots methods of creating economic opportunity. And we must make a new priority of addressing the needs of women in the developing world. Through such avenues as education, micro-lending, agricultural technology, and property rights, empowerment of women—especially mothers—improves children's health, education, and nutrition and lifts the conditions of society at large.
We must also enlist corporate America in the struggle for global economic opportunity. Though our businesses have been forces for global progress, we must insist that our companies set humane standards against child and slave labor, uphold worker rights, and eliminate environmental damage in the developing world. American corporations, representing American interests, should be as good citizens abroad as they are at home, for corporate America as well as the U.S. government is judged by its behavior, and we Americans are all judged by the behavior of both.
Finally, if we truly want our economic power to win the world to our cause, we must open our markets to the products of the world's poorest people. Protection against these products hurts American consumers and foreign workers and sets back the march of democracy. We must continue to be global leaders in expanding world trade.
American military power must be used judiciously and prudently, even more so now that we are the dominant military power on earth by several orders of magnitude. We now spend more each year on our military establishment than at least the next five major powers, including China, Russia, and the U.K., combined.
Our forces must be used primarily to protect our legitimate security interests and those of our allies. When they are used, certain standards must be clearly stated and met. We must define our political and military objectives, and our political goals must be tangible, obtainable, and stated in concrete terms. The American people must support the use of our forces in any sustained military operation and must be fully cognizant of the proposed levels of military force and the potential costs, including in human lives. Our military forces should be committed only after diplomatic, political, and other means of conflict resolution have been exhausted and after local forces are determined to be insufficient to resolve the conflict. We must be clear on how we intend to achieve our objective and what strategies, tactics, and doctrines we mean to employ. And command structures must be clearly defined and our plan of operation must be simple and achievable in its execution.
Given the openness of the administration's intentions in Iraq and the region, there are few if any security reasons why the American people—to whom the American military belongs—cannot be better satisfied that these conditions have been met. The principle at stake here is openness and honesty with the American people whose sons and daughters fight our wars.
We must prevent or prepare for state failure. Yugoslavia is an instance where we and our allies did not do so and hundreds of thousands of people suffered from that neglect. Like Yugoslavia, Iraq, Jordan, and others nations in the Middle East are artificial concoctions thrown together to satisfy European ambitions and competitions following World War I. We must now be prepared to manage their restructuring if the seams fail, especially in Iraq. The penalty for unwillingness or inability to anticipate state failure is harsh.
Iraq stands as the most immediate example of the threatened problem of a vanquished state. The United Nations has estimated as many as ten million Iraqis, including two million refugees and homeless, will be at risk for disease and hunger following an American invasion. Early talk of an American military pro-consul running the country conjures up images of warring Kurd, Shia, and Suni factions laying siege to the American emperor's palace. But post-war Iraq does not stand alone. Congo and Nigeria, and even potentially Pakistan, represent immediate examples of state failure whose humanitarian consequences are staggering and, therefore, geopolitical.
Whether the U.S. likes it or not, this burden—the human costs of war—must be calculated and born when we invade a country or when a state fails. Whether it is called "nation building" or something else, the United States must enlist the greater democratic world in anticipating the collective burden of supporting fragile states or restructuring those that fail or that we cause to fail.
Russia, China, and India are key nations in their regions and are becoming so in the greater world. The success of democratic evolution in these nations will be crucial to regional and world stability. Both because of their size and their importance in their respective regions, the U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century gave as one of its most important recommendations "to assist the integration of key major powers, especially China, Russia, and India, into the mainstream of the emerging international system." And we should encourage greater regional leadership roles for each. Democracy in Russia is still taking root and has yet to develop in China, and its failure to develop in either giant nation would have profound implications for the United States and the world.
North Korea offers a particularly vivid example where China should be called upon to lead in regional isolation of, and collective negotiation with, a nation that endangers East Asian security more than it does ours. If we are unable to convince states neighboring outlaw nations that their interests are at stake in isolating and resolving threats such as North Korea, then we are in for a long century. The threat of North Korea also underscores my first principle that alliances should be properly formed. North Korea received much of its recent nuclear technology from Pakistan, our ally in Afghanistan. True allies do not let their immediate self-interest endanger their partners.
Only recently prominent conservative voices were heard advocating military confrontation with China. The implications of that policy are difficult to imagine. Rather, our belief in the therapy of capitalism should lead us to encourage forces of democracy in China and its emergence as a stabilizing force in the region.
Likewise, Russia can and should become a major Western nation and a major oil exporter, in partnership with Western production companies, to replace unstable supplies in the Persian Gulf and reduce OPEC's leverage on the United States. Further, Russia must become a stable partner in the Western economic and political world—including membership in NATO—as soon as possible. And India's vast technological potential can energize a regional information revolution and help position it as an economic and political leader in the region.
An additional principle is that our concept of security must evolve even as the nature of conflict evolves. As an advocate of military reform for the past 20 years, I now believe it is time to apply reform principles to American diplomacy— needed are new strategies, new doctrines, and new ways of structuring relationships. Security will be achievable only if we deny the basic resources of money, weapons, sanctuary, and recruits to new forces of violence—mafias, pirates, most of all terrorists, and other "non-state actors." New kinds of threats will require new kinds of resistance—para-military and special forces especially trained and equipped to deal with quasi-criminal forms of warfare.
Security will increasingly be defined as opportunity for economic growth, stability of communities and cultures, adaptability of disparate countries to the new age of information and globalization, and possibly even evolution of new forms of democratic government. More expansive definitions of security will require more expansive means of achieving them—means of diplomacy, of economic growth, and of dispersed investment more immediately beneficial to dispossessed people than to already wealthy elites.
Finally, the nature of sovereignty will change in the 21st century under the pressure of globalization, and events may require selective delegation of sovereignty to international organizations newly-designed to make the peace where violence erupts, to regulate weapons production and proliferation, or to regulate currency and financial markets to prevent imminent collapse. Care must be taken not to abrogate traditional nation-state sovereignty unnecessarily or lightly. But events may provide no alternative but to create new, carefully-constructed international regimes to prevent collapse or chaos.
Multilateral peace-making will be an increasing global requirement. Peace-making requires offensively trained and equipped forces—multilateral because no single nation, including the sole superpower, could or should possess or wish to possess the capability to police the world, and offensive because peace-keeping forces cannot keep the peace where none exists.
Additionally, the time may come—and soon—when international institutions are required to coordinate the stabilization of markets and currencies, secure financial structures, and regulate international commerce. Globalization will increasingly require coordination of macroeconomic, anti-trust, banking and securities regulation, and even tax policies. To these add such human policies as the environment and public health. Other collaborative tasks may be undertaken by new regional entities and even coalitions of the willing.
And there will be increasing occasions in which we must pool our sovereignty to implement programs of peace-keeping, nation-building, third world development, counter-proliferation of weapons, and standards of justice. The more we ignore the imperatives of this new reality, the more we hoard our sovereignty, the more isolated we will become, the more we will be tempted to resort to our own force, and the less sovereignty we will have left to protect. If we want to lead the world, we must stay engaged in and ahead of the world in a way that respects the people of the world.
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These principles proposed here are offered for the purpose of providing a framework in which policy can be made. They are designed to help us think differently about how we should act on the world stage. And they are meant as a caution against how we should not act.
We should not emulate European realpolitik traditions and practices associated with European statesmen of old. We are not a people who see the world principally in terms of the exercise of power, though its exercise is necessary when required for security and stability. Neither American political party, nor any ideology, should possess or seek to possess the franchise on the exercise of American power.
We should not hide our policies from our own people or from the world at large. In the long run, and increasingly in the short run, there are few if any secrets. Our policies must withstand the therapy of sunlight. In almost every case, except the most important security secrets, if we are afraid to disclose our practices or intentions, it usually means we will be ashamed of them when they are ultimately exposed.
We should not behave differently to others, including the most humble nations, than we would have them behave towards us. Our dealings must not only be transparent, they must also be fair and just. This is true all the more so since we now stand constantly examined in the court of international opinion and we do not have the excuse of combating communism to rationalize our misdeeds. Even our resistance to terrorism must not become a new excuse to shortcut our principles, bully our neighbors and allies, and act as the new empire-builders.
In the closing decades of the Cold War we oscillated between a policy of "values"—human rights—and a policy of "interests"—power and its applications. We should not separate our values from our power or our power from our values. A truly great power exercises that power humanely, judiciously, and fairly to all. Power exercised for its own sake, or for the sake of a selfish or expedient interest, is ultimately self-defeating.
As a successor to the central organizing principle of containment of communism, I am instead offering the framework for a foreign policy based on democratic principles—a policy that is resolute but is also one the American people can be proud of.
Our duties as republicans and our freedoms as democrats are the source of our principles, both for ourselves and for other peoples in the world. We can only achieve a new kind of security in a new century by constant resort to these principles. And we can only preserve our status as leaders through a new grand strategy that recognizes that our small planet increasingly requires both enlightened and principled engagement in our common interest.
Perhaps most importantly, all Americans must now become engaged in America's conduct in the world. Our foreign policy, our relations with the peoples of the world, is no longer the province of so-called experts. The forces of globalization, the spread of American commercial and cultural influence, the internationalization of the Internet, the immediacy of travel, the rise of a global environmental common, all now require the engagement of the American people. We must not let our role in the world be dictated by ideologues with their special biases and agendas, by militarists who long for the clarity of Cold War confrontation, by think-tank theorists who grind their academic axes, or by Americans who too often find it hard to distinguish their loyalties to their original homelands from their loyalties to America and its national interests.
As war is too important to leave to the generals, so, in the 21st century, is foreign policy too important to be left to specialized elites and interests. In the 21st century, the veil separating the foreign policy priesthood from the people must be removed. We, the people, must insist that our nation's finest principles characterize our dealings with our global neighbors. In this new age, our policy toward the world must be the policy of the American people—a policy that reflects our belief in our freedom, a policy that shows our desire to be friends and helpful neighbors, a policy that makes us proud of our heritage when we meet our foreign neighbors abroad and when we greet them here at home, and most of all a policy that leaves a legacy to our children that makes them proud of us.
Gary Hart
Kittredge, Colorado
Copyright © 2003 by Gary Hart. All rights reserved.