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January/February 1995
Vol 74, Number 1 << Previous: Nov/Dec 1994 | Next: Mar/Apr 1995 >> FIND FOREIGN AFFAIRS ON A NEWSSTAND NEAR YOU
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A Plan for Europe: How to Expand NATO
Zbigniew Brzezinski
The Clinton administration needs to lead Europe and expand NATO, but without harming ties with Russia. Washington should dispel the ambiguity created by its current waffling. The president must take a two-track approach: start the process of accepting Central European states into NATO by spelling out criteria for membership and sign a global security treaty with Russia. To make it work, Germany and Poland will have to reconcile, the West and Russia will have to soothe Ukraine, and the problem of the Baltics will have to be finessed. Only American leadership can help create a wider, safer Europe for the next century.
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Paradigm Lost
Richard N. Haass
No single successor to the containment doctrine could possibly guide U.S. foreign policy after the Cold War. Instead, American policymakers must distinguish between the means and ends of policy and strike the proper balance between the contending schools of thought in each. The task is to fashion a sturdy intellectual framework for policy, one weighted in favor of American leadership and "augmented realism." But the drift toward short-term ad hocracy simply will not do.
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America's Unyielding Policy Toward Iraq
Eric Rouleau
Sustaining the embargo on Iraq punishes innocent civilians, not Saddam Hussein and his henchmen. Ridiculously, the U.N. Security Council has banned imports of socks, wristwatches, light bulbs, and other militarily useless items. The United States, meanwhile, drags its feet on removing sanctions in the spurious hope of overthrowing Saddam. The sanctions are demoralizing regional allies and costing them billions of dollars. The Clinton administration should treat Iraq as it has treated North Korea and China-with diplomacy instead of crude and ineffective coercion.
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Can Haiti Change?
Sidney W. Mintz
The first U.S. occupation of Haiti lasted almost 20 years and, by creating a modern military, buttressed the forces that have historically polarized the nation. Now American soldiers are back. Will we repeat those mistakes? Or can Haiti-a nation born of a slave revolt, isolated by the discrimination of anxious European and American powers, and inflicted with a parasitic upper class-finally overcome its past? Real democracy will require economic transformation. America must pick a side in the class warfare that has immobilized Haiti for 200 years.
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Why Russia's Politics Matter
Michael McFaul
The neoliberal economic and political models used by Western analysts to explain Russia's recent transformation ignore the interrelationship between the economy and politics. Russia is in the midst of a social revolution. Economic reform without political reform-as attempted by Yegor Gaidar-will fail. Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin's policies have met with some success because of accompanying political changes. This interrelated pattern of reform must continue.
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The Pacific Way
Kishore Mahbubani
Western thinkers assume that the rise of East Asian powers will inevitably result in conflict and that these nations will become more like Western societies. Neither is likely. East Asia's nations have emerged from colonial obscurity to center stage. They will not succumb to ruinous wars. The difficulty that Western minds face in grasping the ascent of East Asia comes from the unprecedented nature of this phenomenon: a fusion of Western and East Asian cultures in the Asia-pacific region.
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Mitterrand's Legacies
Ronald Tiersky
François Mitterrand, struggling against a life-threatening cancer to finish his presidency, has proven to be France's most important leader since Carles de Gaulle. His accomplishments - helping mold the European Union, boosting the legitimacy of France's domestic institutions, crafting Paris' response to the Cold War, and redefining the French left - are historic. As a result, Mitterrand's successors can face the post-Cold War era with considerable confidence.
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Europe's Map, Compass and Horizon: Where? Why? With Whom?
Dominique Moïsi and Michael Mertes
In Western Europe, there has been a cowardly inability to redefine NATO's role and no stomach for free trade with eastern neighbors. But there is hope if European leaders squarely face the issues. Which nations will be admitted into "Europe" and when? France and Germany must recognize that there is no alternative to the European Union, and European leaders must convince their electorates that the long-term benefits outweigh the near-term pain.
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The Atomic Bombings Reconsidered
Barton J. Bernstein
Fifty years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, America should ask itself why Japanese civilians became targets during World War II. Recently declassified documents suggest that Tokyo probably would have surrendered without the bombings or an Allied invasion of Japan. In the moral climate of 1945, however, there were few dissenters. "When you have to deal with a beast," Truman wrote, "you have to treat him as a beast."
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