Superpower Without a Sword

Alan Tonelson

From Foreign Affairs, Summer 1993

Article preview: first 500 of 4,561 words total.

Summary:  America's leaders still cling to a superpower role. President Clinton himself has paid at least rhetorical support to spearheading a democratic world order. But his administration's proposed defense budget would strip the nation of the power needed to carry out those ambitions. A mismatch of financial means and political ends looms on the nation's horizon. The way to close the gap is not to build up defense, but to build down U.S. foreign policy goals.

GRAND GOALS AND DWINDLING BUDGETS

Phase one of the great debate on post-Cold War American foreign policy is over. The Clinton administration's proposed fiscal 1994 defense budget makes it clear that, although the president may continue to affirm America's position as a superpower, he has denied the nation the military resources that role requires, even in a world with no Soviet rival. In other words, the "declinists" have won.

The Clinton budget presents recommendations for defense spending levels through 1998 and would leave the nation with military capabilities that in effect accept the declinists' fundamental argument: that the country's best strategy for long-term security and prosperity is to scale back an overextended foreign policy. That means defending fewer countries, doling out less foreign assistance and focusing more on consolidating national power than on shaping the international environment. Equally important, the president's budget reflects the post-Cold War national priorities revealed in the 1992 presidential vote. The electorate's message was clear: in a time of fiscal austerity, when the nation's preeminent goals are domestic economic and social revival, significant resources must be shifted from foreign policy programs.

But the country has yet to face the challenge of adjusting to a shrinking defense budget. Clinton's proposals have allowed that debate to begin. Some demand that the gap between America's bloated international commitments and dwindling resources be closed by restoring defense spending to pre-Clinton levels. Others, the president included, insist that no means-ends gap in fact exists. Still others believe that the nation should simply be prepared to live with one.

The best course on the merits, as well as the most expedient in terms of domestic politics, is to narrow the gap by seeking more modest foreign policy objectives. The superpower role that America has played since 1945 is now not only too expensive and risky for the public taste, but it is also unnecessary. Even in an increasingly turbulent world, a geopolitically secure, militarily powerful and economically competitive country like the United States can attain safety and prosperity by carrying a significantly lower international profile.

Still, retrenchment alone will not produce foreign policy success. If the American public has indeed decided that spearheading the creation of a new world order is not worth the candle, it will eventually need a wholly new strategy for pursuing security and prosperity. Otherwise the nation will find itself in the dangerous position of hinging its fate on objectives that have become unattainable, because the assets that it expects can achieve them no longer exist.

DOWNSIZING FOREIGN POLICY

A strong consensus for reordering national priorities and downgrading foreign policy crystallized early in the 1992 presidential campaign. Despite the fact that both George Bush and Bill Clinton defeated less internationalist rivals in party primaries, polls found that foreign policy continued to rank low among voter concerns. Not only did Clinton's internationalist positions attract little voter attention but fully 19 percent of the electorate opted for Ross Perot, the one candidate who made assailing traditional free trade policies, ...

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