Foreign Affairs at 70

William G. Hyland

From Foreign Affairs, Fall 1992

William G. Hyland leaves the editorship of Foreign Affairs with this issue.

By 1990 the Cold War was over. The United States was confronted with the need and opportunity to reexamine its foreign policy. A Foreign Affairs article stated that:

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.

It soon became fashionable to argue over the proper "vision," but as America began to reconsider its world role, it was not quite prepared for surprises that defied any carefully crafted foresight.

Saddam Hussein provided one such surprise: the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990, and the subsequent deployment of international forces to defend Saudi Arabia recast the debate over America?s global role. Fouad Ajami described the importance of American military power during the crisis.

An old order has passed in the gulf. There is talk of a ?new political order,? but no one knows what this new political order might look like. It is clear that there is a great power standing sentry in the gulf?a power that was on the verge of believing that military force is the thing of the past. . . . The skeptics may say that Operation Desert Shield is something of a rent?a?superpower deal. But the American military presence in the peninsula and the gulf and the cobbling of the American?led coalition were the only viable answers to aggression in an order of states that remains anarchic and vulnerable to the assaults of aggressors like Saddam Hussein.

The dominant role for the United States in Desert Storm led to new ideas about America?s place in what President Bush had called "the new world order." Columnist Charles Krauthammer argued that the United States was the unipolar power in the post?Cold War world, and securing international order depended on American leadership.

Compared to the task of defeating fascism and communism, averting chaos is a rather subtle call to greatness. It is not a task we are any more eager to undertake than the great twilight struggle just concluded. But it is just as noble and just as necessary.

In the same issue Michael Mandelbaum wrote that the gulf crisis was an anomaly that distracted attention from the real nature of the new world.

The post?Cold War international agenda is beginning to take shape. It is not likely to be dominated by military confrontations between great nuclear powers, or even by crises like the one in the Persian Gulf. Instead, economic issues will predominate, particularly as formerly communist Europe and countries in other regions move toward market institutions and practices.

This message was echoed by Robert D. Hormats in the Summer 1991 issue.