Rising to a New Generation of Global Challenges

Mitt Romney

From Foreign Affairs, July/August 2007

Summary:  Washington is as divided on foreign policy as it has been at any point in the last 50 years. As the "greatest generation" did before us, we must move beyond political camps to unite around bold actions in order to build a strong America and a safer world. We must strengthen our military and economy, achieve energy independence, reenergize civilian and interagency capabilities, and revitalize our alliances.

Mitt Romney, Governor of Massachusetts from 2003 to 2007, is a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination.

Finally, we need to strengthen old partnerships and alliances and inaugurate new ones to meet twenty-first-century challenges. The inaction, if not the breakdown, of many Cold War institutions has made many Americans skeptical of multilateralism. Nothing shows the failures of the current system more clearly than the UN Human Rights Council, an entity that has condemned the democratic government of Israel nine times while remaining virtually silent on the serial human rights abuses of the governments of Cuba, Iran, Myanmar, North Korea, and Sudan. In the face of such hypocrisy, it is understandable that some Americans would be tempted to favor unilateralism. But such failures should not obscure the fact that the United States' strength is amplified when it is combined with the strength of other nations. Whether diplomatically, militarily, or economically, the United States is stronger when its friends stand alongside it.

In the changing world we face, our alliances and engagement must change, too. Clearly, the United Nations has not been able to fulfill its founding purpose of providing collective security against aggression and genocide. Thus, we need to continue to push for reform of the organization. Yet where institutions are fundamentally incapable of meeting a new generation of challenges, the United States does not have to go it alone. Instead, we must examine where existing alliances can be strengthened and reinvigorated and where new alliances need to be forged. I agree with former Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar that we should build on the NATO alliance to defeat radical Islam. We need to work with our allies to pursue Aznar's call for greater coordination in military, homeland security, and nonproliferation efforts.

The challenges we now face -- especially terrorism, genocide, and the spread of weapons of mass destruction -- require global networks of intelligence and law enforcement. We should also look for new ways to strengthen regional cooperation and security partnerships with responsible actors in order to confront challenges such as the genocide in Darfur. And if the UN Human Rights Council continues to be inactive or behave hypocritically, we should unite with nations that share our commitment to defending human rights in order to promote change.

In no area is our leadership more important and more urgently needed than the Islamic world. Today, the Middle East is facing a demographic crisis: over half the population there is under 22 years old, and the GDP of all Arab nations put together remains lower than that of Spain. A growing population and a lack of jobs create fertile ground for radical Islam. The Marshall Plan showed our deep understanding that winning the Cold War would depend on far more than the strength of our military. The situation we face today is dramatically different from the one we faced in the wake of World War II. Yet it requires the same type of political attention and resolve we exhibited then. Today, thousands of Americans, such as former Senator Bill Frist, are helping to alleviate problems in the vulnerable parts of Africa and the Middle East, showing that we are a compassionate people. And other leaders in this effort, such as the musician Bono, have highlighted the need to address problems far from one's borders in today's interconnected world. Recent government efforts such as the Middle East Partnership Initiative, the Broader Middle East and North Africa Initiative of the G-8, and the Forum for the Future are a start, but they have garnered nowhere near the degree of attention, resources, and commitment necessary to address such serious problems.

If elected, one of my first acts as president would be to call for a summit of nations to address these issues. In addition to the United States, the countries convened would include other leading developed nations and moderate Muslim states. The objective of the summit would be to create a worldwide strategy to support moderate Muslims in their effort to defeat radical and violent Islam. I envision that the summit would lead to the creation of a Partnership for Prosperity and Progress: a coalition of states that would assemble resources from developed nations and use them to support public schools (not Wahhabi madrasahs), microcredit and banking, the rule of law, human rights, basic health care, and free-market policies in modernizing Islamic states. These resources would be drawn from public and private institutions and from volunteers and nongovernmental organizations.

A critical part of this effort would involve creating new trade and economic opportunities for the Middle East that could be powerful forces, not only economically, but also in breaking down barriers to cooperation on even the most intractable problems. Muslim countries pursuing free-trade agreements with the United States, for example, have dismantled all aspects of the Arab League's boycott of Israel. The power of trade to break down barriers and build ties is also seen in the Qualified Industrial Zone program that grants U.S. free-trade benefits to Egyptian products that incorporate materials from Israel. When the program was first suggested, some Egyptian officials balked, saying that trade with Israel would spark protests. When the program was launched, there were indeed protests -- from Egyptians who were excluded from the program and wanted to participate.

Congress must give the president the authority to move forward with these efforts so that we can expand and integrate our existing free-trade agreements in the region. A critical part of the economic resurgence and peace of postwar Europe was the United States' support for a unified market and U.S. engagement in cross-country ties. Today, we must push for more integration and cross-border cooperation in the Middle East. As a group of experts working on the Princeton Project on National Security noted recently, "The history of Europe since 1945 tells us that institutions can play a constructive role in building a framework for cooperation, channeling nationalist sentiments in a positive direction, and fostering economic development and liberalization. Yet the Middle East is one of the least institutionalized regions in the world."

Few would have thought before 1945 that the war-torn and divided nations of Europe could achieve the stability and economic growth that these states know today. Some have called for developing in the Middle East a regional organization based on the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which would build cooperation and encourage political, economic, and security reforms and integration. How these efforts would be institutionalized is a question that we must address in partnership with our friends in the region and key allies. Yet we cannot wait to address this problem.

Merely closing our eyes and hoping that jihadism will go away is not an acceptable solution. U.S. military action alone cannot change the hearts and minds of hundreds of millions of Muslims. In the end, only Muslims themselves can defeat the violent radicals. But we must work with them. The consequences of ignoring this challenge -- such as a radicalized Islamic actor possessing nuclear weapons -- are simply unacceptable.