Seize the Moment (3 page)

In Eastern Europe, euphoria gave way to a grim recognition of sobering realities. The odds against successful reform were stacked against the new democracies. A lack of domestic capital, willing foreign investors, modern technology, and well-trained managers was compounded by the loss of traditional markets and the danger of simultaneous hyperinflation and mass unemployment. To complicate matters further, all
these problems had to be solved while politicians who had more experience in Communist prisons than democratic parliaments put into place entirely new political systems. While the anticommunist revolutions of 1989 represented a great step forward, they were only a first step on the long road to stable democratic government and market-based prosperity.

In third world regional conflicts, peace remained illusive. After the Red Army withdrew from Afghanistan, resistance forces liberated 80 percent of their country but failed to topple the Communist government in Kabul. Hunkered behind its Soviet-built fortifications and bankrolled with its $3-billion annual aid allotment, Kabul opted for stalemate instead of a just political settlement. In Cambodia, negotiations between the warring parties bogged down as their Communist leaders insisted on achieving through the fine print of an agreement what they had failed to win on the battlefield: uncontested power. In El Salvador, peace talks stalemated as the guerrillas tested U.S. staying power and escalated attacks and civil strife.

Elsewhere, promising developments went sour and hopeless situations grew worse. In the Philippines, the Aquino government betrayed its commitments to adopt market reforms and end corruption. The transition from the Marcos to the Aquino regime seemed only to replace one hand in the till with another. In Sri Lanka, ethnic warfare between the Tamils and the Sinhalese grew ever more violent. In South Africa, President Frederik W. de Klerk pressed ahead with reform, but the death toll from black-on-black violence climbed to more than five thousand, over five times the number of blacks killed by the apartheid regime in the past ten years. In Liberia, savage revolutionaries overthrew a brutal dictatorship and then turned on each other. In the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, communal violence continued, as Israeli
military police killed over eight hundred Arabs and Arabs killed sixty-five Israelis. In Lebanon, the tortured life of a once-prospering country no longer even made the headlines.

Saddam Hussein dealt the final blow to the high hopes of 1989 for a new world order with his invasion of Kuwait in August 1990. His aggression violated every tenet of the “new era” in world affairs: a barbaric dictator flouted international law and world opinion by conquering and annexing militarily a weak neighbor. It brought back memories of Hitler and Stalin picking off small European countries one by one.

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In 1991, we risked forgetting the hard lessons of 1990 amid the euphoria of the victory in the Persian Gulf and the defeat of communism in the Soviet Union.

President Bush masterfully orchestrated the world's response to Saddam Hussein's aggression. Sturdily supported by British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, he recognized the grave threat to Western interests and promptly deployed the military force needed to deter further Iraqi aggression. He skillfully forged a global coalition and won U.N. Security Council approval for the use of force. He mobilized sufficient forces to achieve a rapid and decisive victory and repeatedly articulated the rationale for U.S. actions in terms of our strategic interests and moral values. He set forth a clear list of political demands and explored every diplomatic channel from the Soviet Union to the Arab League to try to achieve them without war. When he ordered our troops into battle, he resisted the temptation to micromanage the military effort. After he achieved his fundamental military objectives and even after he shielded the Kurds from Saddam Hussein's wrath, he avoided the quagmire of playing kingmaker in
Iraqi internal politics. Though some believe he stopped too soon, it was a textbook case of superb presidential crisis management and wartime leadership.

Had we not intervened, an international outlaw would today control more than 50 percent of the world's oil. While the United States could survive if necessary without Persian Gulf oil, Western Europe and Japan could not. What happens to the economies of the other industrial democracies directly affects the health of our own economy. We therefore could not have afforded to allow Iraq to control access to Gulf oil and blackmail the world through its choke hold on our oil lifeline.

A far more momentous event than the Persian Gulf War followed five months later: Soviet communism committed suicide. Karl Marx once wrote that all great historical events happen twice, the first time as tragedy and the second time as farce. When the old Bolsheviks took power in the revolution of October 1917, they ushered in an era of unprecedented tragedy for the Russian and non-Russian peoples of the Soviet Union. When neo-Bolsheviks tried to overthrow Gorbachev in a coup in August 1991, they finally fulfilled one of Marx's prophecies: their putsch collapsed after a farcical three-day run on center stage.

The plotters were a Soviet version of the gang who could not shoot straight. When they decided to depose Gorbachev, they failed to understand how much his reforms had changed Soviet society. A freer press, laxer controls on social and political organizations, and free elections at the republic and local levels had toppled key pillars of the totalitarian order. Even the instruments of force—the army and the KGB—no longer responded to orders without questioning their legitimacy. The coup plotters were Stalinists who no longer commanded a Stalinist system.

They were not the only casualties of the revolution. Gorbachev as the central figure in Soviet politics and Moscow as the center of the Soviet empire also suffered devastating blows. The Soviet president, whose authority had eroded during six years of start-and-stop reform and economic deterioration, lost much of his remaining political standing by virtue of having appointed all the coup's ringleaders to their high positions. In the aftermath of the coup, Yeltsin and the leaders of the other Soviet republics eclipsed Gorbachev as the authors of the Soviet future, and virtually all of the non-Russian nations took advantage of the paralysis at the center to assert their political independence. They forced the center to take a series of steps—such as cutting nuclear arms and curtailing aid to client regimes—that the precoup government had opposed. Though Gorbachev returned, it was a hollow and temporary victory.

After the tumultuous events of 1989, 1990, and 1991, the time has come for America to reset its geopolitical compass. We have a historic opportunity to change the world. While many of our traditional security concerns have faded with the end of the cold war, many new political and economic issues have assumed a new importance. Our top priority must be to redefine America's global mission and reformulate its strategy.

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After the Communist victory in Vietnam in 1975, many believed the United States could achieve nothing of value in the world. After the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe in 1989, many argued that we had nothing left to achieve. After the victory in the Persian Gulf in 1991, many concluded that we could achieve anything. After the new Soviet revolution in 1991, many asserted that America's leadership
was no longer needed. All these views miss the mark. Today, for the first time, the United States stands as the world's only complete superpower. The key is how we choose to use this unprecedented power.

The Persian Gulf War highlighted America's unique position. No other country could have mobilized the world to defeat Saddam Hussein. Western Europe, economically powerful but politically fragmented, acted individually, not collectively. Japan, an economic heavyweight but military lightweight, only barely met its financial pledges. Germany, limited by its constitution and preoccupied with the bills for reunification, remained peripheral. The Soviet Union, struggling with its internal crises, reluctantly followed America's lead, but only diplomatically and not militarily. Only the United States, supported by Britain and France among the major powers, possessed the combination of economic, military, and political power needed to meet the challenge.

In the war's aftermath, two rival American traditions—isolationism and internationalist idealism—clashed again. Isolationists argued that the United States should quit serving as the world's 911 emergency number. Some of those on the isolationist left denounced aspirations to make America the world's policeman and demanded that resources be kept at home to solve pressing problems such as the underclass, drug addiction, and AIDS. Others argued that because of our faults at home, we were not worthy to lead abroad. Those on the isolationist right insisted that the defeat of communism eliminated the rationale for a global U.S. presence, that foreign aid wasted money on ungrateful foreigners, and that “America should come not just first but first, second, and third.” In this unholy alliance, both counseled a retreat into comfortable isolationism.

The United States has too much at stake to heed that advice.
Isolationists say, “Come home, America.” But the security of our home in this politically, economically, militarily, and ideologically interdependent world is affected by changes everywhere. Walking away from global challenges will carry a dangerous price. History may once again produce nations aspiring to regional or global dominance. Proliferation of nuclear and ballistic missile technologies renders the oceans obsolete as buffers against aggression. With imports and exports comprising over 20 percent of our economy, our prosperity depends on international stability. Most important, an America withdrawn into isolationism would not be true to itself. Our values, derived from our religious tradition, demand public as well as private virtue. This does not imply an unlimited commitment to right every wrong, but does involve a moral imperative to use our awesome capabilities as the world's only superpower to promote freedom and justice in areas where our interests and our ideals coincide.

Idealistic internationalists argued that the United States enjoyed a unique opportunity to create a “new world order.” Some insisted that we should launch a crusade to advance the democratic revolution around the world and that imposing democracy on Iraq through military force would have represented a vital initial step. Universal democracy, they argued, would not only guarantee the respect of human rights but would also ensure peace because a democratic state has never started a war. Others viewed the role of the United Nations as the key to victory in the Gulf War and called for the United States to make collective security and international law the centerpieces of its foreign policy. Their goal was not just a better world, but a perfect world.

These noble aspirations are unrealistic. Those who call for a global democratic crusade ignore the limits of our power.
Recognizing these limits does not mean that we should shrug off forces struggling to advance democracy or that we should give a green light to dictators poised to strike against fragile democratic regimes. But we do not have sufficient power to remake the world in our image. Even in the West, democratic government has existed for only two hundred years. Nations in Asia, Africa, and Latin America cannot develop overnight the traditions, cultures, and institutions needed to make democracy work. What works for us may not work for others. In these regions, democratic government does not necessarily mean good government. It could lead to majority repression of minorities and to mob rule that would make authoritarian rule enviable by comparison.

The advocates of a greater role for the United Nations ignore the abysmal record of collective security. Woodrow Wilson envisioned the League of Nations as the body that would make World War I the “war to end all wars.” Yet within two decades the bloodiest war in history engulfed the world. In the more than one hundred wars since 1950, the U.N. adopted scores of resolutions condemning aggression, but took effective action in only two—the Korean War, when Moscow boycotted the Security Council debate and thus negated its veto power, and the Persian Gulf War, when all the major powers had a common interest in stopping Iraq. Because no great power will abdicate its right to defend its interests, the United Nations cannot operate successfully unless the major powers agree in advance. Though useful in slapping down minor aggressors, the U.N. will be paralyzed in any conflict that puts great powers on opposite sides.

Although President Bush has used the phrase “new world order,” he does not share this woolly-headed idealism. In the Persian Gulf conflict, he used the U.N. rather than being used by the U.N. Moreover, as he explicitly stated, failure by the
U.N. to authorize “all necessary means” to liberate Kuwait would not have changed his course. Even without the U.N.'s blessings, the United States and its allies had the right to use force under the principle of a state's inherent right of individual or collective self-defense. President Bush clearly aspires to enlarge the constructive role of the U.N. as part of a “new world order.” But he recognizes that no substitute exists for U.S. leadership and power. Where U.S. vital interests are threatened, the United States should act with the U.N. where possible but without it if necessary.

A new American mission in the world must be based not on the soft sand of unrealistic idealism but on the hard rock of enduring geopolitical realities. States have ideals and interests. To advance their interests, they acquire power, including military forces. In advancing interests, states often come into conflict. Without an umpire to settle disputes, such conflicts can—and almost certainly will—lead to war. These principles preceded the cold war and will survive the cold war. Unless the world transcends the current international system, we must accept them as immutable facts of life.

The sterile debate over whether we should have a policy of realism or one of idealism misses the mark. Idealism without realism is impotent. Realism without idealism is immoral. As Robert Kaufman has observed,
“Realpolitik
alone will not suffice to win the domestic support necessary to sustain an effective foreign policy. Americans must believe that U.S. foreign policy is right and legitimate as well as in our self-interest.”