We Can All Do Better (16 page)

Still, Wilson left a legacy of democratic messianism that would shape the statecraft of future generations. Franklin Roosevelt's “Four Freedoms” address in 1941, the United Nations charter in 1945, and the U.N.'s Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 all took their inspiration from his efforts. Determined to prevent history from repeating itself, and more and more beguiled by the idea of democratic exceptionalism, the United States, as World War II came to an end, led in the creation of the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.

Beyond the aspiration, there were big questions left unanswered. Were all countries—no matter how large or how central to the strategic interests of the United States—to be treated the same? Who would assume the cost in money and lives to bring this dream to reality? By what criteria would we decide whether or not to intervene on behalf of human rights?

George Kennan, the diplomat who authored containment policy against the Soviet Union, raised a more fundamental point in discussing the Versailles peace treaty: “[It] was the sort of peace that you got when you allowed war hysteria and impractical idealism to lie down together in your mind . . . when you indulged yourself in the colossal conceit of thinking that you could suddenly make international life over into what you believed to be your own image.”
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President Dwight Eisenhower seems to have agreed with Kennan. Acting from the older tradition of national interest, he ended the war in Korea, resisted involvement in Vietnam, and refused to intervene in the Hungarian uprising against the Soviet Union.

The country welcomed President John Kennedy, who, in his campaign for the presidency, had moved to the right of Richard Nixon on defense, claiming, among other things, that Eisenhower
had allowed a “missile gap” to develop with the Soviet Union. In his inaugural address, he asserted that “we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” Kennedy conveyed a new energy, epitomized by the Peace Corps—an energy that touched people both here and abroad, who seemed captivated by the idea that the most powerful man in the world could be so young and so dashing. Reality soon destroyed their illusions about youthful magic. Kennedy, reflecting inexperience, approved the Cuban émigrés' disastrous invasion at the Bay of Pigs. Less than a year and a half later, in a remarkable testimony to personal growth, he prevented nuclear war by giving the USSR an acceptable way out of the Cuban missile crisis. But the country continued to see every potential conflict through a Cold-War lens. Slowly but inexorably, Kennedy was led into the quagmire of Vietnam, and his successor, Lyndon Johnson, only deepened our involvement, unable to distinguish an honorable withdrawal from defeat.

The United States had been attempting to control events in other countries since the end of the Korean War: In 1953, there was the CIA-sponsored coup against Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, the elected leader of Iran, followed by the elevation of the despotic shah. The coup against President Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán of Guatemala in 1954, the Bay of Pigs invasion, and the coup against Chile's democratically elected Salvador Allende in 1973 reflected our belief that interference in the politics of other countries was our prerogative. In the post–Vietnam era, this kind of intervention continued, with efforts to depose dictatorial or communist regimes in Angola, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Panama—efforts that offended millions of Americans in spite of arguments invoking the ideals of the Founders or our principled opposition to communism.

The moralism in foreign policy that diplomat George Kennan so decried in his lectures on foreign policy at the University of Chicago
in 1950 was once again fashionable by the end of the 1970s. Woodrow Wilson's democratic messianism was back in vogue. President Jimmy Carter espoused a muscular human-rights policy but was wise enough to use only economic and diplomatic means to enforce it, even as he authorized covertly aiding the Mujahideen in Afghanistan in their war against the USSR. President Ronald Reagan committed U.S. troops to Lebanon and Grenada while sponsoring covert wars in Central America. The first Iraq war, in 1990–1991, revived the argument about “just wars” and the United States invoked the U.N. charter's prohibition on members invading another member nation as justification for our involvement. President George H. W. Bush conducted the war flawlessly and ended it by keeping the promise he made to his allies: that Iraq would be evicted from Kuwait, not occupied, and Kuwait's sovereignty would be restored. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, President Bill Clinton used the just-war argument to justify our intervention in Serbia in defense of human rights, while not responding to genocide in Rwanda—raising the old question posed to democratic interventionists: “Where do you draw the line?”

With each of these exercises of military power, America became more self-righteous. We invaded on principle, which seemed to make violence acceptable—and besides we were omnipotent, so no one could stop us. There was no countervailing force to our entry into or instigation of wars intended to rid the world of this or that tyrant and “make the world safe for democracy.” Most of these interventions were brief and accomplished with allies—Who wouldn't want to curry favor with the world's only superpower?—which further convinced us that the world was swinging our way. Our democratic example could now be spread more aggressively. We decided to expand NATO eastward, even though the organization's purpose—to counter Soviet military power—had evaporated with the dissolution of the USSR and the end of Russian communism. What could Russia do about it? Democracy was on the march—and Russia was invited to come along.

When we bombed Serbia in 1999 and the Russians protested, our response, in effect, was that we had a right to intervene because in the sectarian violence between Serbs and Albanian Kosovars, we had concluded that the Serbs were more in the wrong. In 2008, we recognized the independence of Kosovo from Serbia. For the first time since the Helsinki Accords of 1975, a territory had been taken from a nation against its expressed desires. President George W. Bush was received in Albania by cheering crowds, just like Wilson in Paris in 1919. In 2010, the Council of Europe issued a report pointing out that Kosovo's prime minister, Hashim Thaçi, in the last decade, headed a group once responsible for heroin trafficking and trade in human organs. Yet again, self-determination had created something quite different from what democratic interventionists had envisioned.

Then 9/11 happened, in the first year of a new president who had campaigned against nation-building abroad. Ten years, two wars, and more than $1 trillion later, during the administration of Bush's successor, Barack Obama, we finally killed the leader of the 9/11 strike, Osama bin Laden. By that time, our rhetoric had gotten us into a no-win situation.

We maintained that we were in Afghanistan not for revenge but to remake a society in our image. We were there so Afghanis could rule themselves freely, women could receive equal treatment, and the standard of living could rise. Slowly it became clear that the reality of Afghanistan and Iraq was quite different from the liberal democratic ideal promoted by proponents of the invasions. We never really knew who our friends were in the government circles or among the intelligence sources in either country. We took our NATO allies into the Afghani conflict in part to show the reach of NATO's new, broader, self-justifying mission. Instead, we may have generated, along with the NATO bombing of Libya, forces of
disillusionment and discord that may well lead to NATO's demise. As in the fog of war that obtained in Vietnam, our only recourse was to stay longer and send more troops. We had trouble recognizing that our version of democracy might not neatly apply in deeply divided tribal cultures.

For those of us who believe that our example is our strongest asset in world affairs, what example do these wars convey to the world? How have they furthered our long-term interests? What have they said not only to the Muslim world but also to China, India, Brazil? What have they said to the billions of young people around the world who are looking for leadership they can admire and trust? What did we think we were doing by using military power to force democracy on countries that didn't ask for it, at great expense to our own citizens in terms of money and lost lives? In the end, we have just been talking to ourselves, trapped in assumptions and rhetoric from another time. There has to be another path.

I would go back to George Kennan and re-read his opposition to messianism in our foreign policy. While Americans feel that democracy—our democracy—is the best form of government ever invented, they are divided about whether we should fight wars to impose it on other countries. That's called imperialism, and it requires occupation for decades and trillions of dollars to finance. There is no shortcut. And we have never aspired to be the English or the Ottomans or the Romans. The prosecution of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan contradicted the values that inform our view of ourselves. Bombing citizens of another country is now called “collateral damage.” We seem to think that a quick apology and restatement of our anti-terrorist purpose is sufficient to cleanse our hands. Yet such self-justification only further erodes our example. Who, after all, would want to emulate a country whose only contact with you is the humming of a drone?

A country needs a strong enough military to defend itself from genuine threats. The use of that military, however, should be rare. The lesson of the Cold War was that deterrence requires not military action but only the development of a credible threat. In the 1990s, though, a new question arose: “Why have a military if we don't use it?” My response is that militarizing too many disputes undermines our example and our claim to leadership and inevitably, given the law of unintended consequences, leaves us in no-win situations. The results of military actions are unpredictable. Thinking of military intervention as a handy policy tool you can pull out when the time is right ignores the messiness of war and underestimates its potentially negative effects on our political objectives, not to mention the cost in lives and treasure.

So, what is the example we should be setting—the stance from which we should seek to lead the world? I think it should be the example of a pluralistic democracy with a growing economy that takes everyone to higher ground. By “pluralistic” I mean a tolerant, multiracial, multiethnic country in which people seek to learn from one another's uniqueness but also accept what it means to be an American: our language, institutions, and the political ideals that hold us together. By “democracy” I mean a country in which people not only vote but also participate in the affairs of their communities, and a country whose judicial system renders judgments based on the law, our present circumstances, and our hoped-for future, not on politics, ideology, your ability to pay lawyers, or a too-narrow construction of the Constitution. By “a growing economy that takes everyone to higher ground,” I mean a country in which upward mobility is possible and bad luck at birth doesn't ensure bad luck
for a lifetime; a country that encourages and rewards innovation and gives all Americans the educational tools they need to excel; a country that ensures its citizens' access to health care; a country in which, if you work hard, you can have a good retirement. I believe this example has wide appeal. It is not fully realized. Still, if people around the world see that we're on the path to its fulfillment, they will be with us. And we should invite them to join us.

In the twenty-first century, the intelligence of people will determine the future. Our free society can be the magnet for some of the world's brightest minds if we deliberately, carefully, and intelligently open ourselves up. Lee Kuan Yew, the former Prime Minister of Singapore, has said that while China has a talent pool of 1.3 billion people, the United States, given its history of accepting the foreign born, can draw talent from all 7 billion people in the world.
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We should welcome the arrival of doctors, scientists, writers, mathematicians, computer specialists, language teachers, and other such talented professionals from abroad. The United States has always benefited from immigration of talented people. One of the side effects of the persecution of the Jews that preceded the horror of the Holocaust was the immigration of Jews who have immeasurably enriched American society. As a meritocracy, we should welcome those who can get admitted to our universities or provide us with needed skills in government agencies, science laboratories, hospitals, and elsewhere. For example, we need an intensive effort to train Americans to effectively teach science and math, but in the interim the only way we can educate our kids in these critical areas is with the help of foreign teachers. The former mayor of Chicago, Richard M. Daley, once told me he was trying to import math and science teachers from China and Eastern Europe to the Chicago school system because he couldn't find competent Americans. Any time a foreign student gets an advanced degree from an American
university, he or she should automatically get a green card. We should also be open to those with entrepreneurial spirit who have the resources and want to start a business. Finally we should welcome not just the brightest or those with resources but also, as we always have done, those in limited numbers who just want a better life and show the ambition to seek it here. Surely, in a land as large as ours, we can make room for the energy, drive, and optimism that immigrants bring to our shores.

Ever since the Great Depression, the economic prospect that has most terrified policymakers has been a labor surplus—unemployment. Even now, when unemployment remains at an unacceptably high level, it's difficult to imagine that within fifteen years we will have a labor scarcity. The magic number needed to maintain a stable population is 2.1 children per woman. In 2010 we were at 1.93. Forty-seven of the most advanced countries are at 1.6 or less.
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As baby boomers retire over the next decade, we will need new workers to make the economy grow, pay the Social Security and Medicare taxes necessary to fulfill our promises to the elderly, and produce the goods that they will demand. We either increase our birth rate, or accept more immigrants, or settle for slower economic growth. Look at Japan or Russia, which are both losing population because of low birth rates and hardly any immigration. They are committing slow-motion national suicide. Would you rather have hardworking and sometimes brilliant foreigners paying into our Social Security system and making retirement more comfortable for elderly Americans, even as they create jobs for working Americans, or a smaller U.S. working population that will be unable to sustain the program at its current level in a few years? We need more young people to carry the load for the increasingly larger number of retirees. Demographics don't lie.