Despite the weeks of hype leading up to the Iowa caucuses -- the true kickoff of the US presidential election season -- most of Iowa's eligible voters chose to forego the opportunity to vote. As the US retains her lead position in international society, the presidential election will be in the political spotlight in the new millennium.
The US has found it exceedingly difficult to define its national interest in the post-Cold War period. Yet such periods of transition are important, because they offer strategic opportunities. The Soviet Union's collapse coincided with a great revolution. Dramatic changes in information technology and the growth of knowledge-based industries have altered the very basis of economic dynamism, accelerating already noticeable trends in economic interaction that often circumvented and ignored state boundaries.
As competition for capital investment has intensified, states have faced difficult choices about their internal economic, political, and social structures. As the prototype of this new economy, the US has seen its economic influence grow and with it, its diplomatic influence. The US has emerged as both the principal benefactor of these simultaneous revolutions and their beneficiary.
The process of outlining a new foreign policy must begin by recognizing that the US is in a remarkable position. Powerful secular trends are moving the world toward economic openness and, more unevenly, democracy and individual liberty. In a democracy as pluralistic as ours, the absence of an articulated national interest either produces a fertile ground for those wishing to withdraw from the world or creates a vacuum to be filled by parochial groups and transitory pressures.
US foreign policy should refocus on the national interest and the pursuit of key priorities. These tasks are:
* To ensure that the US military can deter war, project power, and fight in defense of its interests if deterrence fails;
* To promote economic growth and political openness by extending free trade and a stable international monetary system to all committed to these principles, including in the western hemisphere, which has too often been neglected as a vital area of US national interest;
* To renew strong and intimate relationships with allies who share US values and can thus share the burden of promoting peace, prosperity, and freedom;
* To focus US energies on comprehensive relationships with Russia and China, and others, that can and will mold the character of the international political system; and to deal decisively with the threat -- of rogue regimes and hostile powers -- which is increasingly taking the forms of potential for terrorism and the development of weapons of mass destruction.
Many in the US are uncomfortable with the notions of power politics, great powers and power balances. In an extreme form, this discomfort leads to a reflexive appeal instead of to notions of international law and norms, of institutions like the UN. The national interest is replaced with humanitarian interests or the interests of the international community.
The belief that the US is exercising power legitimately only when it is doing so on behalf of someone or something else was deeply rooted in Wilsonian thought, and there are strong echoes of it in the Clinton administration. To be sure, there is nothing wrong with doing something that benefits all humanity, but that is, in the sense, a second-order effect.
The US pursuit of the national interest will create conditions that promote freedom, markets, and peace. So multilateral agreements and institutions should not be ends in themselves. US interests are served by having strong alliances and can be promoted within the UN and other multilateral organizations.
However, the Clinton administration has often been so anxious to find multilateral solutions to problems that it has signed agreements that are not in the US' interest, such as the Kyoto treaty and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. The Clinton administration's attachment to largely symbolic agreements and its pursuit of illusory norms of international behavior have become an epidemic. Neither is it isolationist to suggest that the US has a special role in the world and should not adhere to every international convention and agreement that someone thinks to propose.
On one hand, the US should pay more attention to power politics, relations with other powerful states. There is work to do with the Europeans on defining what holds the transatlantic alliance together in the absence of the Soviet threat.
NATO is badly in need of attention in the wake of Kosovo and with the looming question of its further enlargement in 2002 and beyond. The door to NATO for the remaining states of eastern and central Europe should remain open, as many are actively preparing to meet the criteria for membership. But the parallel track of NATO's own evolution, its attention to the definition of its mission, and its ability to digest and then defend new members has been neglected.
On the other hand, China is a rising power; in economic terms. That should be good news, because in order to maintain its economic dynamism, China must be integrated more into the international economy. This will require increased openness and transparency and the growth of private industry. Economic integration will probably lead to sustained and organized pressure for political liberalization. Trade and economic interaction are good, not only for the US' economic growth but for its political aims as well. But trade in general can open up the Chinese economy and, ultimately, its politics too.
This view requires faith in the power of markets and economic freedom to drive political change. What we do know is that China is a great power with unresolved vital interests, particularly concerning Taiwan and the South China Sea. China resents the role of the US in the Asia-Pacific region. This means that China is not a status quo power but one that would like to alter Asia's balance of power in its own favor. China will do what it can to enhance its position, whether by stealing nuclear secrets or by trying to intimidate Taiwan.
Hence, the US has a deep interest in the security of Taiwan. It is a model of democratic and market-oriented development, and it invests significantly in China's economy. The long-standing US commitment to a "one China" policy that leaves to a future date the resolution of the relationship between Taipei and Beijing is wise. But that policy requires that neither side challenge the status quo and that Beijing, as the more powerful actor, renounce the use of force.
If the US is resolute, peace can be maintained in the Strait until a political settlement on democratic terms is available. Moreover, the US must deepen its cooperation with Japan and South Korea and maintain its commitment to a robust military presence in the region. Some things take time. US policy toward China requires nuance and balance. It is important to promote China's internal transition through economic interaction while containing Chinese power and security ambitions. Cooperation should be pursued.
The US is blessed with an extraordinary opportunity. It has had no territorial ambitions for nearly a century. Its national interest has been defined instead by a desire to foster the spread of freedom, prosperity, and peace. Foreign policy in the US presidential campaign will most certainly be internationalist; the leading contenders in the party's presidential race have strong credentials in that regard.
But it will also proceed from the firm ground of the national interest, not from the interests of an illusory international community. Both the will of the people and the demands of modern economies are in accord with that. However, even the US' advantages offer no guarantees of success. It is up to the US' presidential leadership and policy to bridge the gap between tomorrow's possibilities and today's realities.
Hong Chi-chang is a DPP legislator.
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