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.

No abstract principle can be applied. Few believe that a Soviet attack is likely in Europe, but many observers fear the irrationality of, say, North Korea. Weakening military support for Israel could threaten that nation's very existence, whereas disengaging from Southeast Asia or the Indian or South Asian subcontinent could be justified as a reorientation of American policy.

The situation in Europe is still the most critical in the near term. The collapse of communism has ended the Cold War, and as a consequence Soviet power is receding, Germany is unifying and a new balance of power is emerging. The United States still plays the dominant role in reconstructing the new security order in Europe. But America faces two conflicting pressures. On the one hand, the United States wants to facilitate the unification of Germany together with the construction of security guarantees that Germany will not disrupt the European balance, now or ten years from now. This implies that limitations and restrictions be placed on Germany as well as the provision of American guarantees for Germany's neighbors, including perhaps the U.S.S.R.

On the other hand, American policy cannot ignore the possibility, if not the probability, that Soviet power will revive some years hence and again pose a threat to Eastern and central Europe. This suggests a policy of reinsurance, including a strong Western alliance and a strong, united Germany. It also suggests a military posture that can be rebuilt in fairly rapid order. Such a posture, in turn, influences how far the United States can go in reductions negotiated in arms control agreements, which seem less critical now than five years ago; indeed, their value may lie more in their intricate inspection and verification systems than in the actual reductions of nuclear weapons.

Executing the subtleties of a reinsurance policy, however, may prove quite difficult in the atmosphere of conciliation and euphoria that is taking shape in Europe and the United States. What the United States needs is a new policy plan similar to the one that was approved by Truman shortly after the communist invasion of South Korea. That document, NSC-68, had the virtue of bringing together the various strands of policy, under the broad theme of containment.

Thus any review of American policy eventually returns to the point where the Cold War started. Because the changes in the Soviet Union are so far-reaching, for perhaps the first time since 1917 Washington has a chance to work out a genuinely new relationship with Moscow. Americans have given little thought to what could be expected of a postcommunist Russia. That is no longer a subject for idle fantasizing. The Bolshevik Revolution has finally run its course, and we may be witnessing the breakup of the Soviet empire; that is, of the Soviet Union itself. But we cannot know what will replace it-a relatively benign confederation or a belligerent, nationalistic Russia.

What can, or should, the United States do about it? Where do America's interests lie?

VI

It is often argued that the United States needs a new "vision" of its role in the world. Such arguments take on added weight if one also agrees with the conventional wisdom that the United States will have less and less influence in world affairs and therefore will be forced to navigate more skillfully. But as events of the past year show, there is good reason to question conventional wisdom. Who would have thought one year ago that any Soviet leader would propose the dismantling of the leading role of the Communist Party, that the Berlin Wall would be torn down and Germany be united, that a dissident playwright would become president of Czechoslovakia? It has not been a vintage year for punditry, and as America begins to reconsider its world role, it might do well to prepare for more surprises that will defy any carefully crafted vision.

A final note of warning is also in order. One of the most astute observers of American foreign policy, the late Hans Morgenthau, warned against the tendency of American policy to swing between the extremes of an "indiscriminate isolationism and an equally indiscriminate internationalism or globalism." Both extremes, he concluded, are "equally hostile to that middle ground of subtle distinctions, complex choices and precarious manipulation which is the proper sphere of foreign policy."

1 For an analysis of post-Cold War choices, see Charles William Maynes, "America Without the Cold War," Foreign Policy, Spring 1990; see also Henry Kissinger and Cyrus Vance, "Bipartisan Objectives for American Foreign Policy," Foreign Affairs, Summer 1988; Stanley Hoffmann, "What Should We Do in the World," The Atlantic Monthly, October 1989; and Burton Yale Pines, "Waiting for Mr. X," Policy Review, Summer 1989.