June 3, 1975
Page 16626
THE FUTURE OF AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY
Mr. STEVENSON. Mr. President, the distinguished senior Senator from Maine (Mr. MUSKIE) brought our debate on foreign policy to the people of Illinois in a significant speech to the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations yesterday.
Senator MUSKIE thoughtfully analyzes the era of cold war policies and the realities of detente and concludes:
Historians may later refer to the present era as the balkanization of world politics. And in such a world, peace and progress will require patience, flexible diplomacy, and truly brilliant statecraft.
Instead of seeing a weakened America, Senator MUSKIE reminds us that America's changing role in the world comes largely from changed circumstances that we helped create – an emergence of strong nation-states among our allies and in the third world.
This development has been a basic objective of U.S. foreign policy since World War II – a world not dominated by the United States or any other power; a world in which democracy is secured through collective action.
We strove to make the world more interdependent, and we succeeded. In such a world, bilateral maneuverings and unilateral saber rattling can undermine this historic objective. We must instead, as Senator MUSKIE urges, continue to build the institutions of collective leadership for a leaderless world. As he rightly sums up:
We cannot achieve our objective in the world through military might alone and we cannot do so even through our enormous economic power. Instead, we must pursue our objectives through a combination of diplomatic skill and international political leadership – a leadership position which is enhanced not primarily by the credibility of our military commitments but by the credibility of the political values for which we stand.
Mr. President, I commend to the attention of all my colleagues this most important address, and ask unanimous consent than it be printed in the RECORD.
There being no objection, the speech was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
THE FUTURE AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY
(By Senator Edmund S. Muskie)
There is a widely shared view, both here and abroad, that American foreign policy today is at an historical crossroads. Will the United States continue to be an active leader in world affairs? Do the Congress and the people have the will to sustain fundamental American commitments abroad? Is there a fading of America?
There is no doubt that the United States has been going through a difficult period in world affairs. We have had some major foreign policy failures. There has been disagreement on some basic issues between the Executive and Legislative branches. There has been a national political scandal of unprecedented proportions. We are going through our most serious economic difficulties since the 1930's.
All this has given rise to a good deal of apocalyptic rhetoric about America in decline and a loss of national nerve. I think it is time for everyone to calm down and begin instead a rational, dispassionate national debate about the world we live in and our purposes in it.
Such a debate would, I think, serve two constructive purposes: First, it would reveal a deeper sense of unity on fundamental foreign policy issues than many people recognize.
Hedley Donovan of Time has observed that the "bedrock purpose of our foreign policy is, in the end, to preserve the independence, freedom and prosperity of the U.S." He adds that "we also expect our foreign policy to enable us to feel good about being Americans, to feel good and be good."
Secretary Kissinger recently put it another way: "The fundamental goal of our foreign policy [is] to preserve peace and achieve progress – economically, humanly, and politically – in the world."
I do not believe many Americans would disagree with either formulation. Americans differ on the means to achieve these objectives but not on the objectives themselves. This underlying unity – as well as the differences – were documented in the opinion survey commissioned by The Chicago Council on Foreign Relations last December, which was a most useful contribution to public understanding of the mood of the American people.
A serious national debate about the world we live in and our purposes in it would serve, I believe, a second constructive purpose: It would show that we live in a very different world today from the one our foreign policy since World War II has prepared us to deal with. I would like to speak about some of those changes today and to suggest what they might mean for the future of American foreign policy.
I
The international system which emerged in 1945 and lasted into the 1960's was characterized principally by a bipolar balance of power between two great coalitions of nations – locked in a hostile adversary relationship aptly described as "cold war." The stability of this system was based largely on the existence of two superpowers whose preeminence within their respective spheres was not seriously challenged by their own allies.
It was also based increasingly, as time went on, on the nuclear balance of terror, which required that each side exercise caution and restraint in dealing with the other, lest events get out of control and lead to a nuclear conflagration. It was not a comfortable system – indeed, it was quite dangerous – but it did achieve a tenuous stability through mutual paralysis in the fundamental areas of a conflict. In the words of one writer, the two superpowers resembled two scorpions in a bottle, holding each other at bay, and neither able to abandon the encounter.
As we all know, this cold war world gave way to a different kind of international system. Some of the members of the opposing coalitions began to chafe under superpower leadership. China split openly with the Soviet Union and shifted into an adversary relationship. France under de Gaulle became a vocal opponent of American hegemony in Europe. Economic and cultural relations between the two blocs deepened, and the siege mentality of both sides began to lessen. Although the military balance remained essentially bipolar in nature, in other respects the bipolar world of the cold war was transformed into a multipolar world of several significant power centers.
In retrospect, this transformation of the international system seemed inevitable. But for the Soviets and ourselves, the transformation was not easy at the time. Much as we enjoyed observing growing difficulties with China and some of her Eastern European satellites, we were not at all amused by President de Gaulle's antagonism toward our own leadership of the Western alliance. But in the end we had no choice but to accommodate ourselves to the new political realities which were beyond our power to control.
This natural evolution away from the cold war system has also been hastened by the concerted effort of the United States and the Soviet Union to move from confrontation to negotiation over the basic issues which have separated us. The purpose of detente has always been limited. It is not an effort to develop a relationship of great warmth and mutual friendship. It is simply an effort to moderate the most dangerous areas of conflict, and to cooperate as closely as possible in the pursuit of one common and overriding objective: the avoidance of nuclear war.
I believe that detente has been a wise and prudent reaction to the confrontation policies of the cold war. It recognizes that although the two scorpions haven't killed each other thus far, they have been pressing their luck. In the words of Stanley Hoffman of Harvard, Secretary Kissinger has "very cleverly and rightly tried to turn our [Soviet] policy from an adversary relationship to one that is half adversary and half cooperative."
Perhaps the notion of a relationship which is half adversary and half cooperative is too subtle for the critics of detente to comprehend. The more sophisticated critics of detente, on the other hand, do understand the necessity of limited cooperation with the Soviet Union. They voice their criticism only to remind us that we are dealing with a. regime which is very different from our own and whose purposes in the world are not friendly to us. They urge the Administration to be tough-minded and not to be beguiled by Russian charm. They want our leaders to keep a close watch on American interests.
I certainly agree with that point of view, and I have no objection to such public reminders. I would only hope that President Ford and Secretary Kissinger do not need them.
So the policy of detente has been a limited exercise – and limited not only in the bilateral Soviet-American relationship. If Kissinger has had any illusion about detente, it is his
overly optimistic appraisal of the benefits of his policy for long-term world order – in
President Nixon's words, for "a generation of peace." But as Stanley Hoffman has remarked, "Kissinger has approached [detente] with the notion that if he controlled this key relationship, everything else would fall into place. The problem is that the two superpowers control less and less of world politics. What we are seeing now is the revenge of every other party pursuing its own self interest. All over the world there is a reassertion of the smaller powers."
The world in which we find ourselves today has gone beyond the multipolar stage. It is in the process of becoming completely decentralized. Historians may later refer to the present era as the balkanization of world politics. And in such a world, peace and progress will require patience, flexible diplomacy, and true statecraft. What can the United States do in such a world? What is our role?
II
The most important thing to see as we look at today's world is simply this: We are no longer in charge. After World War II we emerged as the world's predominant power. Our predominance was undermined by postwar Communist successes and by the development of a nuclear capability in the Soviet Union. It was further whittled away as our own allies began to pursue more independent policies. And more recently, our image of ourselves as a superpower has been dealt a body-blow by the apparent ability of smaller states – individually or collectively, as in the United Nations – to trample on our interests with impunity. The United States is certainly not a pitiful, helpless giant. But many Americans, including some of our leaders who should know better, seem to think that that is what we have become. Our first priority must be to overcome this mood of defeatism, and to look at our situation positively and realistically.
It is not easy for anyone – individual or nation – to suffer a relative loss of stature and influence in the community. The United States is no exception. But it is helpful to remember that the erosion of our influence in the world results largely from the development of stronger and more viable nation-states among our allies and in the third world. And just such a development has been a basic objective of U.S. foreign policy since World War II.
Harlan Cleveland has recently pointed out that our present condition results from our achievements, and he has reminded us that we decided long ago we didn't want to be in charge of the world – and we didn't want anyone else to be either. We offered our atomic monopoly to the U.N. in the Baruch Plan. We helped Western Europe recover its health and confidence. We established the principle of development assistance for the underdeveloped countries. We educated thousands of young people all over the world. We pushed for independence for many colonies, thereby creating a new majority in the United Nations. Our objectives were right, and our achievements are impressive. So let us not now sulk about the results. They were foreseeable.
The emergence of this new world, however, does create real problems for American foreign policy. Although we are no longer in charge, we are still the most powerful. We have global interests of our own and we have a major stake – perhaps the major responsibility – in preserving the peace. We must continue to pursue objectives which we have pursued in the past, but with much reduced leverage. The rules of the game have changed.
The traditional tools of diplomacy have become useless in many situations. The preservation of a military balance of power, for example, is still a necessary condition of our security – but it is far from sufficient. If the Soviets were to gain a clear-cut military advantage over us, we would have cause to worry. But even if the opposite were true, we would still have serious problems. For the threats to American influence in the world today are no longer concentrated in the Communist world, nor are they military in nature.
The new threats are those over which we have little control, which are affected by domestic trends in various countries, and which originate with personalities and regimes which come to power and are hostile to us.
We really have no effective or direct way to deal with this problem. Direct intervention is almost always counterproductive, and covert activities by the CIA designed to influence and control the domestic politics of foreign countries have probably cost us far more than we have gained, while undermining our nation's credibility in the world far more than we know. It will simply not do to defend such activities on the theory that the Soviet KGB is doing the same thing, only worse. We are not the Soviet Union. Instead of adopting Soviet methods, we should help other countries identify the threats to their sovereign independence and, if necessary, provide appropriate assistance so that they can deal with such threats themselves.
In short, the United States can no longer expect to "manage" world politics through the traditional techniques of force, foreign aid, covert conspiracies, or grand alliances. Instead, we will require more skillful, flexible diplomacy. We will have to rely more on our brains than our military or economic brawn. And we must simply learn to live with events which are uncontrollable, whatever our diplomatic skill.
III
Some students of international relations have suggested that there is a convergence of domestic policy and foreign policy in the contemporary era. Traditionally, foreign policy and domestic policy were considered quite distinct. A nation's foreign policy was supposed to be based on objective national interests determined, above all, by potential military threats from other countries. Foreign policy was supposed to be forged by rational men who would coolly calculate the nation's interests and choose suitable methods of pursuing those interests. The guiding principle was "reason of state."
This image of the foreign policy process is obviously unsuited to the contemporary world. The real process is messier. Foreign policy today is more likely to be a complex mixture of current public opinion and political styles, along with realistic calculations of the national interest. A nation's external acts may often be based as much on internal requirements as on external interests. In the advanced countries, foreign policy is also deeply affected by the complex interaction of large bureaucracies.
This being true, our foreign policy leaders today must be men and women of considerable experience and vision. They must be skillful negotiators; they must be sophisticated about the use and limitations of military force; they must understand the international economic system; and they must be masters of bureaucratic politics.
But in addition to these qualities, I would argue that our diplomats should also be "political" people – that they be able to recognize and deal with the interaction between domestic and foreign policy, and that they help us to forge a foreign policy for ourselves, in style and substance, which takes account of the domestic political realities of the various countries with which we must deal.
Such a "political" awareness within our foreign policy establishment should begin at home. Secretary Kissinger has acknowledged that domestic support is the litmus test of any successful foreign policy. And yet there is an odd resentment of the American public and of the Congress, as though public opinion were just another troublesome factor in a confused and chaotic world to be managed and controlled as part of the diplomatic process.
"Modern democracies," Kissinger said recently, "are besieged by social, economic and political challenges that cut across national boundaries and lie at the margin of governments' ability to control ... Instant communications force the pace of events and of expectations ... A premium is placed on simplification – an invitation to demagogues.
"All of this," he continues, "has compounded the complex problem of Executive-Legislative relations ... Executive authority is challenged by legislators who themselves find it difficult to affect policy except piecemeal or negatively. Issues become so technical that legislative oversight becomes increasingly difficult – just as the issues become increasingly vital. The very essence of problem-solving on domestic issues – accommodation of special interests – robs foreign policy of consistency and focus when applied to our dealings with other nations."
Secretary Kissinger has preferred a personal diplomatic style involving secrecy, surprise and unpredictability as a means of keeping our adversaries off guard. To pursue such a policy, he has sought maximum independence from the Congress and maximum freedom from legislative constraints. And yet, in my view, this very style has done more to weaken us in the world than any Congressional action. It has deprived our foreign policy of the consistent continuous, moral and universal elements which have been the basis of American influence in the world for many years.
Moreover, as I have already argued, there are greater similarities between domestic and foreign policy than Secretary Kissinger would admit. He dismisses domestic policy as being essentially the accommodation of special interests. But what is foreign policy, if not the accommodation of special interests in the international sphere? Our diplomatic leaders would do well to pay more attention to domestic politics. They might learn some useful techniques – and, in the process, they should come closer to achieving long-term consistency and focus in our foreign policy than Secretary Kissinger's grand conceptual frameworks have been able to give it.
IV
I began my remarks today by asking whether there has been a fading of America in the world. I have argued that our capacity to manage and control world politics has lessened as the result of a natural and even desirable historical evolution since World War II. But the image of a "fading" America is, in my view, so much scare talk. We have been through some difficult times. But as James Reston of the New York Times said in a recent column, it is a mistake to see the future in terms of the gloomy present.
Take, for example, the case of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union failed to achieve its political goals in Europe after World War II, despite the fact that Europe lay prostrate at her feet. The Soviets forged a dramatic alliance with China, only to see it fall to ruins. It achieved inroads in Cuba, only to be humiliated by President Kennedy in the missile crisis. It supplied the Arab states with military hardware, only to see their military advisers kicked out of Egypt. But where is all the talk about the "fading" of the Soviet Union?
I do not mean to downplay the real problems we face in the world. But let us maintain a proper perspective. The end of American influence is not at hand. So let us debate intelligently how best that influence should be used.
Now that the Indochina war is behind us, I believe there is a firm basis for national unity on the principal challenges before us. I would summarize those challenges, in Harlan Cleveland's words, as the need to build the institutions of collective leadership in a leaderless world, and to "turn our American ingenuity loose on the humanistic management of interdependence."
Secretary Kissinger recently enumerated the major tasks of our foreign policy, and in keeping with the bipartisan spirit, I would like to emphasize my own strong support.
Among those tasks is the need to maintain and strengthen the great democratic alliances, which provide an "anchor of shared values and purposes" as we struggle to deal with the contemporary world. We must also look ahead to a fundamentally reformed international economic system, which recognizes the legitimate needs of the developing world. I believe President Ford and Secretary Kissinger made significant progress in both areas during their stay in Europe last week. We must build upon that progress.
The challenges before the world are immense:
We must maintain an equilibrium in the military balance with the Soviet Union in order to ensure the continued security of ourselves and our allies. But at the same time we must seek to reduce the burden of arms on both sides and lessen the continuing dangers of nuclear war.
We must encourage other countries to forego a nuclear option for themselves, and to exercise restraint in the development of conventional military capabilities.
We must re-write the rules of international trade and investment, and help the poorer countries of the world cope with the problems of overpopulation, lagging economic growth, and famine.
We must, in Kissinger's words, "stand up for what we believe in international forums, including the United Nations, and resist the politics of resentment, of confrontation, and stale ideology."
We must achieve cooperation with other nations in establishing rules to govern the oceans, space, and the global environment, so that we may preserve and enhance for future generations the common heritage of mankind.
We cannot achieve our objectives in the world through military might alone and we cannot do so even through our enormous economic power. Instead we must pursue our objectives through a combination of diplomatic skill and international political leadership – a leadership position which is enhanced not primarily by the credibility of our military commitments but by the credibility of the political values for which we stand. That in turn depends on what we do as a people, and on the standards of international conduct which we establish for ourselves in the world.
Your own distinguished Senator, Adlai Stevenson, said it well in a Senate speech not long ago. "Some nation must lead these and other great causes," he said. "If they are not led by the United States, they may not be led at all ... We have now a chance to begin where we left off, recognizing that morality and self-interest can coincide, that our best interests are served by our best principles, and that the peace and security of the world demand ... the cooperative efforts of free nations joined as equals and led, once again, by America."