After Containment: A New Foreign Policy for the 1990s

AFTER CONTAINMENT:________ A NEW FOREIGN POLICY FOR THE 1990s Mark O. Hatfield and Matthew F. McHugh I? August 1989, with our friend and colleague Mickey Leland, we released a report to the members of the Congressional Arms Control and Foreign Policy Caucus entitled The Developing World: Danger Point for U.S. Security. Tragically, it proved to be the final expression of Mickey's visionary hopes for a more secure world. The data the three of us reviewed during the year-long preparation ofthe report convinced us that spiraling political and economic instability in the developing world was emerging as a potentially greater threat to U.S. security than Soviet military power. Subsequent events in Eastern Europe and the invasion of Kuwait have only served to reinforce that conclusion. Since the end of World War II, the cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy has been the containment ofSoviet power and influence. It is increasingly clear that the dramatic transformation now taking place in Central and Eastern Europe, as well as in the Soviet Union, will profoundly alter Senator Mark O. Hatfield (R-Oregon) and Rep. Matthew F. McHugh (D-N.Y.), members of the appropriating subcommittees for foreign assistance, have both served as chairs of the Arms Control and Foreign Policy Caucus, an organization of 140 Members of Congress. Along with the late Rep. Mickey Leland (D-Texas), who was chairman of the House Select Committee on Hunger and also a member ofthe Caucus, they commissioned from their staffs and the staffofthe Caucus the study referred to in this article, The Developing World: Danger Points for U.S. Security. The authors are proud to acknowledge the crucial role played by Rep. Leland in developing the many concepts in the study that are reflected in this article. 1 2 SAIS REVIEW East-West relations. What is less well recognized is that our response to North-South issues, which has been largely determined by Eastr-West competition in the postwar period, must also change. In short, East-West concerns must no longer shape our response to North-South challenges in the 1990s.1 U.S. Security and the Developing World There must be a new awareness that U.S. security depends on the rapid amelioration of certain problems in the developing world: economic deterioration, environmental destruction, drug trafficking, the political strength ofmilitary forces that retard democracy, and regional militarization , which too often has led to excessive military spending, the proliferation of increasingly sophisticated weapons, instability, and war. In addition, the current U.S. approach to the conduct ofNorth-South policy must be significantly reoriented from a bilateral to a multilateral one. The problems that afflict the South and threaten our future are primarily multilateral ones, which can best be defused by multilateral initiatives. With each passing month, the Cold War, which has driven U.S. foreign policy for more than 40 years, becomes less threatening. Warming relations between the Soviet Union and the United States— propelled by Mikhail Gorbachev's quest for openness in politics and restructuring in economics, as well as by mutual interest in areas of crisis such as the Persian Gulf—has reinvigorated attempts to address such long-simmering issues as conventional force reductions and has broadened the superpower agenda to include even the possibility of U.S. technical assistance to further Soviet economic reforms, as proposed by Secretary of State James Baker. In Central and Eastern Europe—long a backwater of U.S. foreign policy concern because of Soviet control—last year's striking transition toward democratic rule in nations like Poland and Hungary left experts and citizens alike astonished. When the unimaginable happened, including the effective dismantling of the Berlin Wall in the fall of 1989, old policy formulations seemed even more out of date. Clearly, the pace and breadth of change in the East will profoundly alter the shape of Europe 1. As defined in this article, the "North" includes Europe, the United States, the Soviet Union, Japan, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand; the "South" is the remainder of the world. Definitions for particular data may vary slightly; sources and definitions for data used in this article may be found in the relevant chapters of the...