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.

The tide turned and the concept that turned it was the old European (and American) concept of human rights . . . with the moral rather than the tangible support of other Europeans (and Americans and Canadians) this concept of human rights paved the way for the enormous changes in Eastern Europe that we have recently witnessed.5

The opposing interpretation takes the following line:

What is clear is that in the fourth decade of the East's imprisonment, the U.S. and its allies determined to stand up more firmly than ever to the 'other force' and that the Soviet Union decided to stand down.6

This debate is not only about history; it is also about the next phase of Western (and American) policy and the path which that policy ought to follow. Those who are convinced that the anticommunist revolution of Eastern Europe was encouraged mainly by American power argue that it is too soon to give up positions of strength. They add that a reversion of the U.S.S.R. to its past expansionism is possible, though not probable because Soviet foreign policymaking is tied too closely to Gorbachev, whose problems at home are only growing. Others claim that a new era is opening, that matters have gone too far for Soviet policy to be reversed, and therefore it is high time to address a new agenda and leave behind much of the Cold War mentality and its policies.

New fuel to this debate has been provided by the elections in Nicaragua: one side is already arguing that it was the pressures from the contras and the United States that forced Sandinista President Daniel Ortega to hold elections, which then led to his downfall. The other side argues that the credit should go to the Latin American presidents who promoted the peace process and the elections, and thereby gave the Sandinistas a face-saving way out.7

The second debate is similar, but it is over China. It has erupted with considerable vehemence:

Once again China offers a choice especially difficult for Americans: between a foreign policy based on moral concerns and one that gives priority to geostrategic factors. Again, the U.S. relationship with China poses a head-on conflict between realpolitik and human rights.8

The Nixon-Kissinger opening to China in 1972 was justified in the name of creating a balance of power against the Soviet Union, and was welcomed in the United States even though the regime in Beijing had just emerged from the long bloody repressions of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. In 1989, however, the Cold War was virtually over and the "China Card" was worth far less. Although the post-Tienanmen Square debate has been cast in terms of China policy, it is at bottom a debate over the new purposes of America's post-Cold War policy.

The case for geopolitics was expressed by former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger:

A crackdown was . . . inevitable. But its brutality was shocking, and even more so the trials and Stalinist-style propaganda that followed. Nevertheless, China remains too important for America's national security to risk the relationship on the emotions of the moment. The United States needs China as a possible counterweight to Soviet aspirations in Asia and needs China also to remain relevant in Japanese eyes as a key shaper of Asian events.9