In brief, the end of the Cold War presents a paradoxical situation. On the one hand, we have a new freedom of action to deal with the problems and seize the opportunities of the post–Cold War world. On the other hand, by successfully ending the Cold War, many would argue that we have accomplished our mission, met our responsibilities, and secured our objectives. Although they would acknowledge that there may well still be problems in the world, including the prevention of deadly conflict, they would say it is now time for them to be someone else's problems.
TOWARD A NEW FOREIGN POLICY CONSENSUS
In such circumstances, it perhaps is not surprising that, in ways reminiscent of the period following World War I, the American people -- and many of our leaders in both parties -- seem to have become afflicted with a severe case of what I would call foreign policy ambivalence. We seem to be increasingly ambivalent about being engaged in the world, to say nothing of exercising international leadership. This is especially the case when many of our allies seem somehow ungrateful for all the burdens we bore during the Cold War, and cannot be depended upon always to do what we ask of them. At the same time, we also are becoming increasingly ambivalent about using our military forces, when the costs and risks of doing so seem so clear, and consequences of inaction seem distant and elusive.
It is as though having won the Cold War, we "lost" not only our enemy but also our foreign policy bearings in the sense that there no longer is a broad consensus in this country about the purposes and organizing principles of our foreign policy. Given this ambivalence, it should not be surprising if the pressures to spread (if not shed) the burdens of international leadership we shouldered during the Cold War seem nearly irresistible; yet at the same time we give voice to the impulse to redress the injustices and relieve the suffering that we find in abundance in the post–Cold War world. And so we hear a cacophony of voices. On one side is a growing chorus insisting that this problem is one with which the Europeans should deal, and that one is properly the concern of the Africans, and that other one is no concern of ours. On the other side is another loud chorus insisting that as the world's leading democracy and only superpower, we cannot stand aside but must "do something" to resolve this crisis, end that conflict, rebuild this nation, or bring the blessings of democracy to that one.
IS ISOLATIONISM AN OPTION?
Put differently, for the first time in a generation, we face an apparent choice between international engagement and leadership on the one hand, and a retreat into isolationism and unilateralism on the other. It is, however, a false choice unless we really are prepared to squander the opportunities and responsibilities we face, and accept whatever kind of world results.
Isolationism is not a real option because the world is becoming increasingly interdependent. This growing interdependence, moreover, is unstoppable. Some might argue, however, that since we are the world's sole superpower, we can largely insulate ourselves from these trends so that they will not affect us very much. Now it probably is true that we could do better than most if we were to turn our backs on the world and concentrate on tending our own garden. But the fact is that despite our great wealth and power, our own fate -- in ways both grand and mundane, from the goods and services we use to the flood of illegal drugs that threatens our lives -- also is becoming increasingly intertwined with the fate of others. Indeed, it has become a commonplace among commentators to observe that the distinction between foreign policy and domestic policy is becoming increasingly blurred, if not arbitrary and artificial.
But the corollary of this commonplace all too often is overlooked: although the current international security environment is quite favorable to U.S. interests, we could make no worse mistake than to take it for granted. We saw signs of such an unconscious complacency in the 1992 presidential campaign, and again in the 1996 campaign. None of the candidates was challenged to articulate -- much less defend -- his vision of America's role in the (still-emerging) post–Cold War world, or his key foreign policy priorities, or simply where and for what he stood on key international issues. On the contrary, speaking to these issues became a sort of political liability. I believe our country was the poorer for not having had the candidates debate foreign policy, less because such debate would have affected the voters' choice and the outcome of the election than because its absence has encouraged a confusion about, and sense of drift in, this nation's roles and responsibilities in the post–Cold War world.
The fact is that although the present international environment may be good, it also is somewhat fragile, even brittle. Without continuous attention and maintenance, it can turn sharply and abruptly against our interests. That makes the job of sustaining the current international environment not a favor we do for others, or simply an idealistic effort to make the world a "better place," but a task that the combination of circumstances and our enlightened self-interest thrusts upon us. Unless the United States is prepared to leave it to others to defend our interests and stand up for what we believe in, we in fact have no choice but to remain engaged and continue to lead.
These are not new lessons. In this century, we have fought two world wars and one cold war. We were victorious in all three. But we have not always been as successful in "winning the peace." In the aftermath of World War I, we faced a collision between Wilsonian idealism and traditional American isolationism. Isolationism prevailed. The United States withdrew from international engagement and, in doing so, not only squandered much of what had been won in the bloody trenches of France, but also fertilized the ground in which the seeds of World War II took root. That experience demonstrated that it is worse than naive to believe that a country can inoculate itself from interdependence by retreating into isolationism. On the contrary, when we followed that misguided course, it led not to a lasting peace but all too quickly to another world war.
With courage and sacrifice, and at great cost in blood and treasure, we led the allied forces to victory in World War II. In the aftermath of that conflict, we soon faced a choice between a return to American isolationism and American leadership of the free world facing a growing Soviet menace. This time -- with the painfully learned lessons of the interwar period in mind, but primarily prodded by an aggressively belligerent Soviet Union -- bipartisan American internationalism won out and, building on that consensus, we embarked on a course that culminated in our victory in the Cold War.
The simple fact is that we can no more opt out of the external world and "mind our own business" in the post–Cold War world than we could after World War I or World War II. History tells us that following the siren song of neoisolationism ultimately serves neither our interests nor our values: we may be able to postpone a foreign policy day of reckoning, but we cannot avoid it. The United States literally cannot "abdicate" its role as international leader in the post–Cold War world because there is no one else -- no other country and no institution -- that could fill the role. Although we cannot and should not make every problem our own, we need to be clear that when and where we choose not to lead, chances are that no other country or institution will fill that vacuum. Put simply, no one and nothing else will take our place, because no one and nothing else can.
