Restoring pre-eminence

The most important question for the person who would become the 44th president is: “How do you plan to restore the United States to its pre-eminent role in the world as a respected, vital and effective superpower?”

Thanks to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, the period of American pre-eminence as the world’s only superpower lasted barely more than a decade from the collapse of the Soviet Union to shortly after Bush declared “mission accomplished” in Iraq.

For all the urgency of domestic issues, the power and prestige of the United States needs to be restored – or as Mitt Romney warned, we may become the France of the 21st century. A great country, still, but just another power.

I have referred in several columns to “lack of strategic vision” as a prime cause of the Bush administration’s failures. This administration had a strategy, of course: pre-emption and the misnamed “war on terror.” The problem is their strategy and policies, after a sensible, successful intervention in Afghanistan, were unilateralist, based on lies, emphasized force rather than diplomacy, lacked any planning to match the scale of the undertaking, and were at odds with national interests.

To begin to restore America’s place in the world, our next leader should turn back to a period when the world was in the midst of similar shifts in geopolitical forces and different yet formidable threats: the post-World War II era. The Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, the creation of NATO and containment confirmed the stature of the U.S. in the world after a war and set a standard for what was achievable in an unpredictable environment. Henry Kissinger called this era “the most creative period in the history of American foreign policy.”

Robert Beisner, in his biography of a key architect of these policies, former Secretary of State Dean Acheson, underlines two concepts that Bush and Cheney ignored in their development of pre-emption that are needed now. One was to marry “power to purpose,” and the second was the patience to build the necessary “foundations of strength,” politically, economically, militarily and diplomatically before acting.

Here are five goals to restore strategic continuity to American foreign policy.

1. Get our own house in order. Not easy, but essential to improve our education system, revive the economy, fix Social Security, reduce energy consumption and so forth.

2. Strengthen the capacity to think strategically. Failure to foresee the collapse of Soviet Union, Pakistan’s nuclear test, not to mention Sept. 11, government officials need to look ahead more boldly. There are signs of progress. The Project on National Security Reform is a nonpartisan initiative to improve the government’s ability to integrate all elements of national power and respond more effectively to future challenges. It is reviewing the National Security Act of 1947 and Congress’ committee structure.

3. Align budgets with priorities, and global trends. Even the Secretary of Defense has called for a sizable boost in the State Department’s budget – which has remained at a tiny fraction of national security spending for decades. When you consider the challenges, it’s incredible that we don’t devote more resources for tough diplomatic tasks.

4. A better-informed public: Foreign affairs councils are increasing. But simplistic talk shows remain popular; newspapers are cutting foreign bureaus. Few students can find Iraq on a map.

5. Leadership is the $64,000 question. I’m confident that any of the three remaining candidates can lead this turnaround if they choose key advisers wisely. Three senators who have dealt with international affairs are more qualified than governors. While not a senator, George H.W. Bush proved to be the most able leader in foreign affairs of recent presidents, in part because he was well-prepared when he came to office. The 41st president failed to exploit an extraordinary chance to reshape the post-Cold War world, but he dealt effectively with critical challenges, especially the collapse of the Soviet Union, the peace process in the Middle East and the invasion of Kuwait.

We are not cut out to be an empire – even with military resources unprecedented in history. But an alternative course is open to us if we will simply return to our strengths, our ideals and a greater readiness to apply our considerable resources and dynamism to a clearer definition of our national interests. We also need to take a longer view of history and lead by example.

It was not just our military power and diplomatic flexibility that led to the peaceful end of the Cold War. It was the example of a free and prosperous West led by the U.S. that, combined with internal forces, brought about the fall of the Berlin Wall.

And that happened not with impatience, governing by fear, assuming an arrogant, colonial mantle to impose our ideas, but to a number of good old American values: clear-headed pragmatism, sense of purpose, bipartisan spirit, and a recently ignored premise of our own Declaration of Independence, “a decent respect for the opinions of mankind.”

Fred Hill of Arrowsic was a foreign correspondent for The Baltimore Sun and worked on national security issues for the Department of State. His e-mail is hill207@juno.com.