The New Internationalisms

The New World is the title of the book that Zbigniew Brzezinski Michael Mandelbaum and William Schneider America in a New was writing before he went to ’Washington to serve as National Security Advisor to President Carter. The problems and challenges that the United States confronts do indeed seem different from the ones that dominated international politics for three decades after the end of World War 11. But in order to wrestle with those problems and meet those challenges successfully, the new Administration needs to borrow something from the past, namely a domestic consensus for its foreign policy. For almost a quarter century Americans were united in support of resistance to the spread of Communism , by war if necessary, under the leadership of a President with considerable leeway to conduct the nation’s business abroad. The cold war consensus is gone. What has taken its place? How do Americans see international politics? How do they define the requirements for the nation’s security? What constraints does public opinion place upon foreign policy? What do Americans consider their nation’s proper role in this new world? Is there any consensus on anything in our foreign policy? A good deal of evidence on these questions can be found in the 1976 Presidential campaign. The election is not the most obvious place to look; public opinion surveys give a more scientific picture of what people are thinking. But surveys almost invariably show popular inattention and indifference to foreign policy issues. Public opinion tends to crystallize in an election because the campaign takes on the structure of a debate. And political leaders draw their assessments of public opinion more from election campaigns than from polls. They shape their policies with an eye on elections of the past because they expect to run in elections of the future. The fear of being charged with “losing” Viemam especially haunted Democratic officeholders, including the President, in the 1960s because the Republicans had parlayed the charge that the Democrats had “lost” China into a vehiclefor electoral successin the early 1950s. In what sense can campaigns be characterized as a debate?The two major-party candidates in a Presidential campaign usually avoid taking controversial stands. They concentrate on “valence” issues, those where everyone is on the same side; they extol peace, abhor corruption, and commit themselves to a policy of conMichael Mandelbaum is Assistant Professor of Government and Research Associate of the Program for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University. William Schneider is Associate Professor of Government and Research Fellow at the Center for lnternational Affairs, Haroard University. During 1976-1977 Mr. Mandelbaum was a Rockefeller Fellow in the Humanities and a Visiting Scholar at the Research Institute on International Change at Columbia University and Mr. Schneider was a National Fellow at the Hoover Institution on War, Rmolution , and Peace. 81 I 82 International Security trolling inflation and reducing unemployment. Candidates address these issues because voters care about them, and because they will automatically lose votes by taking sides on divisive issues. But valence issues dominate only the second part of a presidential contest-the general election-when the candidate’s task is to knit together a broad coalition of voters, and when he is at pains to avoid giving people a reason to vote against him. In the first stage of the contest, the nominating process, which includes, most crucially, the primaries, the task is different. There are other aspirants who share the candidate’s general outlook. He must find a way to stand out in the crowd. He must identify and mobilize his own personal constituency. Candidates often do so by forthrightly addressing ”position” issues, that is, issues which have alternative sides, like busing, or Vietnam policy, or defense spending. There is fundamental disagreement among Americans over two related foreign policy issues-detente and antimilitarism. Both issues involve basic conflicts of principle. Detente is the issue of America’s stance vis-his international Communism . Should the United States attempt to resolve differences with Communist countries through negotiation-a policy which assumes an attitude of international ”toleration”-or should we base our foreign policy on the notion of implacable opposition and unresolvable differences between the two world-views...