Bipartisan Objectives for American Foreign Policy

Henry A. Kissinger and Cyrus Vance

From Foreign Affairs, Summer 1988

Article preview: first 500 of 8,148 words total.

Summary:  If the USA is to sustain its role in the world, it needs a bipartisan foreign policy. "There is a strategic opportunity for a significant improvement in Soviet-American relations", while NATO needs redefinition as a guard against utopianism and in the light of economic integration in Europe. Also notes the US budget problem and relations with Japan and China. In the Middle East, supports guaranteed Israeli and Palestine states. Reviews pan-American issues. In general calls for "more selective and collaborative strategies based on new realities". Former US secretaries of state. The footnotes indicate the points on which the authors disagree, viz (1) the future of SDI (2) directions of arms control in the future (3) the value of an international conference on the Middle East.

Henry A. Kissinger and Cyrus Vance are former secretaries of state.

We have decided to write this article together because of our deep belief that the security of free peoples and the growth of freedom both demand a restoration of bipartisan consensus in American foreign policy. We disagree on some policy choices. But we are convinced that the American national purpose must at some point be fixed. If it is redefined—or even subject to redefinition—with every change of administration in Washington, the United States risks becoming a factor of inconstancy in the world. The national tendency to oscillate between exaggerated belligerence and unrealistic expectation will be magnified. Other nations—friends or adversaries—unable to gear their policies to American steadiness will go their own way, dooming the United States to growing irrelevance.

We hope the next president will appreciate the value of continuity in American foreign policy. He should know that the country has been well served by maintaining principles which have kept us strong and prosperous for almost half a century under Republican and Democratic presidents alike.

In this year of political transition, and in a foreign policy setting where major roles are changing at home and abroad, we believe it vital to identify several crucial bipartisan objectives for the next administration, whether it be Republican or Democratic. In this year’s political campaign, differences of opinion will exist between the candidates about the best ways to achieve these goals, and debate will continue past election day over specific policies and methods of implementation. However, if broad agreement on central foreign policy objectives can be achieved, the 41st president of the United States will be able to start his term with a strong popular mandate for leadership at home and abroad.

II

By the end of this century a number of the pillars on which the global order was rebuilt after World War II will have changed significantly. For the United States, our nuclear monopoly will have disappeared and our relative share of the world economy will be less than half of what it was forty years ago. Other countries, playing a variety of roles, already have had a major impact on U.S. interests: the economies of Japan, Western Europe and the "newly industrializing countries" are obvious examples; several countries have nuclear weapons capability and others are able to acquire it quickly. Old East-West security issues persist, but new issues such as state-sponsored terrorism and international drug trafficking have become urgent. At the same time, long-standing problems cannot be ignored: there will be a continuing need of the poorest countries and peoples for humanitarian assistance.

A growing list of constraints on American actions also must be considered: despite our vast military power, our ability to shape the world unilaterally is increasingly limited. Even with strong domestic support, we can no longer afford financially to do as much internationally by ourselves as was the case in the immediate postwar period. For many of our staunchest friends, the Soviet threat to the free world seems diminished, especially with the accession to power of a ...

End of preview: first 500 of 8,148 words total.