Foreign Affairs at 70

William G. Hyland

From Foreign Affairs, Fall 1992

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

After more than a century of fashionable Marxist mythology about economic determinism and the ?crisis of capitalism? . . . today, in a supreme irony?it is the communist system that looks bankrupt, morally as well as economically. The West is resilient and resurgent.

For Shultz this Western triumph was manifest in the spread of democracy in Latin America and of free enterprise reforms there and in Africa and Asia. But the full affirmation of classical liberalism was to come a few years later. It was ushered in both intentionally and accidentally by a man whose arrival Shultz heralded as "a fresh opportunity" for the United States and the Soviet Union to approach "constructive possibilities."

The accession of Mikhail Gorbachev in March 1985 was the great watershed. Even at this early date it seemed to outside observers to be an opportunity for change in the Soviet Union:

In Moscow, for the first time, the leadership of the Soviet party has passed to a man born after the Bolshevik revolution. Change is in the air. A new generation is taking power.

Gorbachev?s plans for the Soviet Union were uncertain, even after he began to outline a policy of "perestroika." In any case the constraints on Soviet policy were apparent.

At some point he will have to grapple with strategic realities. One of those realities is that the Soviet Union finds itself beset with problems: a potential explosion in its decaying East European empire; an endless war in Afghanistan; infectious religious fanaticism along its southern borders; vibrant adversaries in China and Japan. . . . The new leaders in Moscow should also recognize that the ?correlation of forces? that they so carefully assess is no longer favorable to the Soviet Union.

It was in eastern Europe where the world witnessed the decisive turn toward political liberation in that historic autumn of 1989. As Michael Howard put it, "the springtime of nations" blossomed with the abdication of communist rule across eastern Europe.

In 1989, while the nations of Western Europe celebrated the bicentenary of the French Revolution, the nations of Eastern Europe reenacted it. . . . Whatever happens, the structure of world politics has been changed, and changed irrevocably. The problems that those changes present to our statesmen are urgent and complex, but never has there been a better opportunity?not in 1945, not even in 1918?to construct a new order that will finally defuse Europe as a focus of world conflict.

The last great bastion of communism broke loose. At first observers were optimistic about the reforms in Chinese politics and economics and more moderate cooperative behavior in China?s foreign policy. But, tragically, China would reverse this course with the June 1989 killings at Tiananmen Square and the subsequent nationwide repression. For many Americans, concern over long?term U.S.?China relations was drowned by the flood of outrage at the regime?s brutality. Winston Lord, former president of the Council on Foreign Relations and ambassador to China, sought to balance the passion of American convictions for human rights with the reason of American interests in continued diplomacy.

While we must not condone what has happened and is happening in China, we must not totally isolate the Chinese and rip out all the roots that we have so carefully nurtured. We need to find a way to balance our objectives of expressing near?term censure and holding open long?term cooperation with an enlightened leadership.