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 REAL THREATS

Most urgently, we need to focus on the real security threats from which Iraq has so dangerously diverted our attention. This means doing the hard work to build strong coalitions to infiltrate and destroy terrorist networks, to stop nuclear proliferation, and to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of terrorists. In the twenty-first century, a nuclear threat will come not from a missile but from a suitcase or a cargo hull. In such a world, nuclear security will not be achieved with missile defense or a new generation of nuclear weapons. It will come through tough, patient, determined diplomacy to secure fissile material worldwide.

Nuclear terrorism is the most serious security threat we face: nothing will stop suicidal jihadists from using a nuclear bomb if they get their hands on one. Some good things are already being done to improve global nuclear security. The nuclear agreement with India, if the Indian Parliament approves it, will help bring a great democracy, a natural ally of the United States, into the global nuclear regime. The Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program has reduced the danger from Russian loose nukes. Its budget should be increased and its timetable accelerated. The Proliferation Security Initiative is also an effective program. But the ease with which A. Q. Khan was able to obtain and distribute nuclear technology demonstrates that the danger from loosely guarded nuclear materials is global and will require a comprehensive, global solution.

The United States, as the leading nuclear power, must immediately lead a comprehensive, global effort to reduce the number of nuclear weapons and the amount of bomb-grade fissile material in the world, to consolidate and secure that which remains, and to consolidate nuclear enrichment worldwide in a limited number of highly secure facilities through a global-fuel-banking agreement. A comprehensive strategy also must prevent the construction of any new power plants that use highly enriched uranium.

If we want other countries to cooperate with us, we need to show that we are willing to do our part. We should reaffirm the commitment we made to the long-term goal of a nuclear-weapons-free world when we signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. We should offer to reduce our arsenal to a few hundred weapons -- enough to deter any attack -- if other nuclear nations reduce their arsenals, too, and if non-nuclear-weapons powers agree to stronger global safeguards and the consolidation of nuclear enrichment.

We must engage China and Russia more effectively, strategically, and systematically, making nuclear security our top priority, especially with Russia. One of the few occasions on which President Bush tried to engage Russian President Vladimir Putin on this issue was at a February 2005 conference in Bratislava, Slovakia. During these negotiations, the United States rightly sought to include Russia's conversion of civilian reactors that use highly enriched uranium. When Russia demurred, however, this item was omitted. The conference was used to berate Russia about human rights violations rather than to pressure it to safeguard its tactical nuclear weapons and fissile material. We should be concerned about creeping authoritarianism in Russia, which is a potential long-term danger to our national security. But we also need to realize that even superpowers have limited leverage over the internal politics of other states and that we should prioritize matters we actually can influence. The top priority of the U.S. president must be preventing a nuclear 9/11.

Fighting nuclear trafficking will require better human intelligence and better international intelligence and law enforcement coordination. And it will require tough and persistent U.S. diplomacy to unite the world, including China and Russia, behind efforts to contain the nuclear ambitions of Iran and North Korea, even as we provide these nations with incentives and face-saving ways to permanently renounce nuclear weapons. We should remember that no nation has ever been forced to renounce nuclear weapons but that many nations have been convinced to renounce them. The case of Libya shows that even regimes with terrorist pasts can be persuaded to give up their nuclear weapons ambitions. In a rare resort to diplomacy, and building on connections begun by President Bill Clinton, the Bush administration convinced Libya's Muammar al-Qaddafi to abandon his plans to develop WMD and to end his support for terrorism. Rather than threatening regime change, we convinced Qaddafi that by coming out of the cold, he would have a secure future. After years of delay, progress is now finally being made with North Korea as well.

We should approach Iran the same way. We need to stop the saber rattling and instead work tirelessly with the international community to impose severe multilateral sanctions. The Iranians must know that they have no future as a nuclear weapons power: the international community will stand united behind painful sanctions. But they also must know that they will receive benefits similar to those that Libya received if they renounce uranium enrichment. If they meet international security standards, sanctions will end, and they will have guaranteed access to fuel enriched and banked elsewhere.

We must also open an ideological front in the war against jihadism. There is a civil war within Islam between extremists and moderates -- and we have been inadvertently helping our enemies in that civil war. We need to start showing, both through our words and through our deeds, that we are not embroiled, as the jihadists claim, in a clash of civilizations. Rather, the clash is between civilization and barbarity. Our enemy is not Islam: most Muslims reject terrorism. Even most Muslims who do not share our liberal democratic values do share our commitment to peace. To enlist them as partners, we need to respect our differences and to present them with a vision that is better than the apocalyptic fantasy of the jihadists -- a vision of peace, prosperity, tolerance, and respect for human dignity.

We should support democracies and democrats around the world, but we should give up on the failed policy of promoting democracy at gunpoint. We must recognize that democratization is a complicated, difficult, long-term project. It took decades or centuries for today's democracies to consolidate themselves. I believe that all nations would benefit from democracy, but we need to recognize that democratization does not happen overnight, especially in nations with deep ethnic or religious divisions or weak civil societies.