A New Realism

A Realistic and Principled Foreign Policy

Bill Richardson

From Foreign Affairs, January/February 2008

Summary:  The United States needs a foreign policy that is based on reality and is loyal to American values. The next U.S. president needs to send a clear signal to the world that America has turned the corner and will once again be a leader rather than a unilateralist loner. Getting out of Iraq and restoring our reputation are necessary first steps toward a new strategy of U.S. global engagement and leadership.

BILL RICHARDSON, Governor of New Mexico, is a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination.

The next president needs to send a clear signal to the world that America has turned the corner and will once again be a leader rather than a unilateralist loner. To do this, the new president must first end the Iraq war. We need to withdraw all our troops and embrace a decisive new political strategy that engages all the nations of the region, as well as the international donor community. Only when we have done this can we begin the hard work of rebuilding our military and our alliances and restoring our tarnished reputation -- so that we can move forward and lead the world in addressing urgent global problems.

THE NEW CHALLENGES OF A NEW CENTURY

Getting out of Iraq and restoring our reputation and leadership capacities are necessary first steps toward a new strategy of U.S. global engagement and leadership. But these steps alone are not enough. To address new problems effectively, we must first understand them in all of their complexity. We must question old assumptions, break old paradigms, and embrace new approaches equal to our new tasks. Six trends are transforming the world today.

The first trend is fanatical jihadism bursting from an increasingly unstable and violent greater Middle East. This trend had been growing for years, but the invasion and collapse of Iraq have greatly fueled its rise. A second trend transforming the world (in ways still not well understood by the public) is the growing power and sophistication of criminal networks capable of disrupting the global economy and trafficking in WMD.

Together, these two trends raise the frightening specter of nuclear terrorism. We know that al Qaeda has tried to acquire nuclear weapons and that the Pakistani nuclear scientist A. Q. Khan sold nuclear technology to rogue states. We know that parts of the former Soviet nuclear arsenal still are not secure and that nuclear materials are scattered around the world in dozens of countries and hundreds of locations, some of them no more secure than a grocery store. The proliferation of nuclear weapons to new countries, especially North Korea, has further increased the opportunities for jihadists to obtain them, as has the diffusion of nuclear energy technologies that can be converted for use in weapons programs. Iran, a nation with close ties to the world's most skilled terrorist organization, Hezbollah, is enriching uranium. And al Qaeda has said that it wishes to kill four million Americans, including two million children. In its madness, it claims that such a slaughter of innocents would "balance the scales of justice" for crimes that it alleges we have committed against Muslims. We would be mad not to take it at its word.

A third trend transforming the world is the rapid rise of Asian economic and military power. India and China are destined to be global powers in the decades ahead -- one as a democracy, the other not. And a fourth trend is the reemergence of Russia as an assertive global and regional player with a large nuclear arsenal and control over energy resources -- and one tempted by authoritarianism and militant nationalism. The rise of India and China and the reemergence of Russia call for U.S. strategic leadership to integrate these powerful nuclear-armed nations into a stable global order.

A fifth trend transforming our world is the increase in global economic interdependence and financial imbalances without the sufficient growth of institutional capacities to manage these realities. Globalization has made every country's economy more vulnerable to resource constraints and financial shocks that originate beyond its borders. A global energy crisis or a sudden collapse of the U.S. dollar could do great damage to the world economy.

The sixth trend we face is that of grave global environmental and health problems. Climate change and pandemics such as AIDS do not respect national borders. Poverty, ethnic conflict, and overpopulation spill over national boundaries, feeding into a growing underground economy of money launderers, counterfeiters, and smugglers of drugs, arms, and human beings.

Together, these six trends present us with problems that are international and societal in their origins -- and that, accordingly, will require international and societal solutions. They also demand political leadership that only the United States, the sole superpower, can provide. If the world succeeds in defeating jihadism, preventing nuclear terrorism, integrating rising powers into a stable order, protecting the stability of global financial markets, and fighting global environmental and health threats, the United States will deserve much of the credit. If the world fails to meet these challenges, the United States will deserve much of the blame.