Symposium: American Foreign Policy in the 1990s

SYMPOSIUM:____________________ AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY IN THE 1990s Mark S. Mahaney, editor RichardJ. BarnetNancy Landon Kassebaum Richard Elliot BenedickRichard G. Lugar William R. ClineJoseph S. Nye, Jr. Melvin A. ConantGerard C. Smith Richard E. FeinbergJed C. Snyder Charles H. FergusonJohn Steinbruner Peter S. Thacher [Editor's Note: In an attempt to provide focus to the upcoming debate over U.S. foreign policy in the 1990s, the SAIS REVIEW presents the following written symposium. Contributors were selected from a diverse field of experts and were requested to respond to these two questions: Which one current international development (be it of a political , strategic, economic, technological, or environmental nature) holds the greatest significance for U.S. national interests in the 1990s? How should the United States react to this development? Ambassador Paul H. Nitze, with half-a-century of experience in public affairs, was invited to write the symposium's concluding article. And to place the upcoming decade and its challenges in their historical context, Vojtech Mastny was asked to write the introductory essay. His article precedes.] 15 16 SAIS REVIEW Richard J. Barnet is a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. His new book, The Rockets' Red Glare: The American People and America's Wars, will be published in January by Simon & Schuster. jfVs'¡ we enter the 1990s, with the Cold War moving slowly but inexorably to an end, it is becoming clearer that the United States faces serious national security problems and that these are primarily economic. The source of these problems are capitalist, not communist, nations. The Soviet Union wishes to be a player in the world economy but is not one; and it is not yet clear what role it could play were it ever to become one. Like the Soviet Union, but unlikeJapan and Germany, the United States has systematically sacrificed economic strength to the accumulation and projection ofmilitary power. In the process the sinews of nationhood have become frayed. Neither our neglected education system nor our weakened industrial base can support the global role which the United States in the past has played and to which our national security elites still aspire. Thanks in large part to their catastrophic experiences in World War II and the disarmament imposed upon them at its end, Germany andJapan built their recovery on economic power and subtle diplomacy rather than on military might. Both now have impressive military establishments, but their growing influence in the world rests on an understanding of technological development, a skill in managing the character and pace of their economic integration into the world economy, and a discipline in husbanding resources for long-term investment that surpasses anything demonstrated in recent years by the United States. The Cold War is fading because the Soviet Union is seeking to opt out of it. In so doing, it is helping to create the most open and hopeful moment in world politics in more than forty years. As part of its strategy the Soviet Union is calling off the ideological Holy War. General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev pronounces class struggle to be a minor historical force and celebrates the common security concerns of all humankind. Much of the new ideological rhetoric is borrowed from the West, and no one can yet say how rooted it really is in Soviet consciousness. But the end of ideological certitude in the Soviet Union is real, and it is a most welcome development. Yet, it is ironic and disturbing that as the Soviet Union mutes the cries of ideological warfare and tries to come to terms with the failures of socialism, the United States assumes a complacent, even congratulatory mood. The 4.5 trillion dollar U.S. economy is growing. The stock market is booming. Inflation is down. Employment is up. But in fact there is no ideological victory to celebrate. That the United States should AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY IN THE 1990s 17 ever have felt so threatened by revolutionary ideology and economic experiments in the Soviet Union and other underdeveloped countries reflects a failure ofconfidence rather than a realistic assessment of the competition. The revival of largely unfettered free enterprise in Great Britain and the United States seems to have run...