America's New Course

William G. Hyland

From Foreign Affairs, Spring 1990

Summary:  Analysis of the USA's post-Cold War security interests, seeing a decline in military and ideological issues, and growth of interest in trade and economic policy, the environment, terrorism and drug trafficking. FA editor.

William G. Hyland is Editor of Foreign Affairs.

For the past fifty years American foreign policy has been formed in response to the threat posed by this country's opponents and enemies. In virtually every year since Pearl Harbor, the United States has been engaged either in war or in confrontation. Now, for the first time in half a century, the United States has the opportunity to reconstruct its foreign policy free of most of the constraints and pressures of the Cold War.

Upon reaching such a turning point, it is natural to fall back on certain basic principles as a guide to charting a new course. This is a difficult undertaking for the United States. The basic foreign policy principle of the Founding Fathers-nonentanglement-was prescribed for a weak republic surrounded by the territories of stronger European powers, who were determined to carry their ancient struggles to the New World. Nonentanglement in these endless conflicts was clearly in the national interest of the fledgling United States, and for well over 150 years the United States was secure behind the protection of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans (and the British fleet). But Pearl Harbor destroyed the illusion that America could somehow remain safe while ignoring distant threats to the peace in Europe and Asia.

Since 1941 the United States has been fully entangled. Now as we move into a new era, a yearning for American nonentanglement may be returning in various guises. If the Cold War is over-and there seems to be a growing consensus that it is-how far should the United States go in disengaging from the positions it created during the past fifty years? Can America at long last come home?

The answer is not at all clear. The United States does in fact enjoy the luxury of some genuine choices for the first time since 1945. America and its allies have won the Cold War, and some disengagement is quite possible. No demands are heard from responsible quarters for a return to isolation, but there are proposals from both right and left for a substantial reduction in the American presence abroad. Even the centrists who advise maintaining a significant American involvement allow for some retrenchment.

II

The Great Debate has started once again; much as it did in 1914-20 and in the early years of the Cold War. The main question is this: For what purpose and to what end should America commit its awesome power and resources? What will be the new priorities of a post-containment foreign policy, and which instruments will be most effective?1

It is worth recalling that there have always been legitimate reservations about the extensive commitments that the United States undertook in the Cold War. Even as President Truman moved the United States toward a new internationalism, there were strong voices, especially from the moderate right (e.g., Ohio's Republican Senator Robert A. Taft), arguing against such commitments, or insisting that the new obligations be strictly limited. This was particularly true in 1950-51, after the Korean War broke out and the first American troops were returned to Europe, but that debate was easily resolved because the danger from the communist bloc was clear and present.

Now danger emanating from Moscow is no longer the driving force of debate. This country has to decide what role it wishes to play in the world when there is no overwhelming danger to national security and no clearly identifiable enemy. That is the central change, but there are other dimensions that will shape this new debate.

The most important structural change is that the clear bipolar division of international politics has broken down in two respects. First, the two superpowers are no longer clearly predominant, compared with the relative power of a number of other countries in Europe and Asia; this has been true for some time. The second change is more surprising: the once fundamental East-West division is now virtually eliminated by the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the weakening of the Soviet state.2

The revolution of 1989 has yet to run its course, especially in Europe, but the character of American policy has already begun to change in response to the events in Eastern Europe. The Cold War was a broadly conceived struggle that gave primacy to geopolitics and military preparedness. At the outset, the United States was the most powerful nation in the world. Few questioned that it could afford the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, the rearmament of NATO, the strategic arms race, the interventions in Korea and Vietnam or, more recently, the buildup of armaments in the early 1980s. For the next decade, however, ideological and military issues are likely to recede, economic factors will predominate and other issues (e.g., the environment, terrorism, drug trafficking) will grow in importance.