Some of those who have had the chance to read my contribution to the March/April 2016 issue of the National Interest have taken me up on the implied challenge at the end of the article. If I believe that U.S. foreign policy across both the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations displays a serious “imbalance between resources and requirements” that has been produced by an unwillingness on the part of the American national security community “to contemplate hard choices and entertain unpleasant tradeoffs,” is there any viable “new approach” that might succeed? We’ve already tried things like “smart power,” which, while an appealing tagline, has not succeeded in providing a template for policy. Is there something that the next administration could use to better guide U.S. foreign policy choices, a workable paradigm for American foreign policy that answers moral considerations and that provides a rationale for American intervention and engagement in the world, yet can provide a template for avoiding perceived disasters like the Iraq War, the crises in Libya and Syria and the possibility of unintended conflicts with rising powers?

Both the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations, in turn, proved unable to bridge the gap between their rhetoric and pledged commitment to defend values and the actual policies they were prepared to execute on the global stage. Moreover, neither president’s national security teams seemed willing to grapple with the implications of the assessment Amitai Etzioni provided: “that the world is a harsh place and that it is difficult to change, and hence we should carefully select where we employ the scarce resources we actually command.” Perhaps they feared that a public embrace of a strategy of greater selectivity would undermine U.S. claims to leadership of the global community of nations—but a steady stream of ambitious failures over the last sixteen years cannot be said to have enhanced the U.S. position.

Anne-Marie Slaughter’s observation a decade ago, that the United States looks like “complete hypocrites in the eyes of the world” when its actions (or lack thereof) are compared with its solemn pronouncements about America’s obligation to end tyranny and spread democracy, remains valid today. At the same time, however, Americans are not comfortable with embracing an amoral realpolitik and, while there may be support for a degree of retrenchment, a purely isolationist approach is undesirable, since America’s own security and prosperity are intertwined with the global system the U.S. has helped to create and maintain.

My critique was that much of what we are hearing from this election year’s candidates is the vague assertion that a new executive in the White House will do a better job at executing the current international interventionism (in either its liberal or conservative variants). Instead, I believe that it is time to reconceptualize U.S. foreign policy aims for the twenty-first century—and as part of that process, it is time to give the “Security First” approach (as initially articulated by Amitai Etzioni) a second look.

This perspective builds on the observable track record of countries like the United States, which overestimate their ability to initiate and sustain broad-based transformations in other societies while mitigating the security risks. At the same time, as former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has observed, the challenge now facing policy makers is not to transform the world but to quarantine and manage critical problems in order to safeguard as much of the status quo as possible.

The starting point of Security First is the moral obligation on avoiding disorder whenever possible—even that chaos unleashed in the apparent service of a good cause. Chaos is the biggest violator of human rights, starting with the core right to life and the right to enjoy the basic security of both person and property. The more securely states protect life, the greater chance there is for the extension and furtherance of other rights. Because the use of military force—essentially the employment of the tools of chaos by a state—is so fraught with peril, it must be used only when all other options have been exhausted, and as a last resort. Indeed, in recent times, very few societies (whether South Sudan, Iraq or Libya, among others) have been shown to enjoy a higher quality of life or greater social peace as a result of war or armed intervention. The decision to use force must also not fall into the trap of optimistically overestimating U.S. capabilities, and consequently underestimating the actual amount of time and resources an operation might need in order to succeed.

This recommendation to use force less more effectively is an outgrowth of an observation that the United States, in particular, has engaged in a series of interventions on a regular basis—Derek Reveron notes that, on average over the last sixty years, the United States has resorted to military action overseas about every three years—but has done so in a haphazard and unfocused way. In many cases, when the United States has resorted to force, it has been neither fully committed nor prepared to employ force in a way that would guarantee success, in part guided by the political imperative of guaranteeing that action would be low in cost and low in casualties. This leads other countries to be concerned both about becoming the targets of a haphazard U.S.-led intervention, and to lose respect for the effectiveness of U.S. power. This occurs precisely because of the lack of American follow-through and commitment. A Security First approach would attempt to make the exercise of U.S. power predictable, and to reduce uncertainty about when, where and under what circumstances Washington would be prepared to undertake military action.

Security First would reduce the types of casus belli that might trigger an armed intervention to two types of actions. The first is behavior that threatens the very nature of the global order (proliferation of WMDs among terrorists, for instance) or which threatens the security of the United States or a treaty ally; the second, egregious actions that undermine the very basic right to survival. Etzioni maintains that the United States and other countries must absolutely be prepared to intervene and use overwhelming force in a focused and decisive manner. For a Security First approach to have any credibility, it is absolutely critical to demonstrate that red lines—particularly when dealing with questions such as nuclear proliferation—will be enforced. But the use of force must be precisely targeted to deal with the specific violation, say, to eliminate a WMD capacity or to protect a designated civilian population from attack, and to avoid the temptation of mission creep, that is, the temptation to extend the mission in favor of wholescale regime change and social engineering. The goal must be to do what is needed to terminate the offending behavior.

This paradigm also demands that an American statesman who wishes to be both moral and effective be prepared to undertake a sober assessment of the world's problems, giving priority to tackling the threats that are most egregious to American national security, and most universally applicable. Then the best partners for tackling those challenges must be identified—with the recognition that they will not always be liberal democracies. After all, there is an insufficient number of advanced, developed democracies that can, in partnership with the United States, solve critical world and regional problems by relying solely on their own resources and capabilities without reference to the other major powers in the world. Nondemocratic, non-liberal states and societies must be solicited as partners, but they will not accept any such invitation if they believe cooperation with the United States and its allies will be followed by attempts to bring about forcible regime change. To forge effective cooperation with such states, a bargain to cooperate on the “big issues” must include the right to be left alone on lesser issues, where their practices conflict with the preferences of a liberal democracy.

Etzioni has argued for an accord that would gain universal commitment to a series of basic “right-to-life” protection. However, as he maintains, a regime that possesses good governance and that guarantees basic security is sufficient for the time being, and should be able to partner with the United States and enjoy guarantees that it would not be undermined or overthrown with U.S. support. There is no need to demand immediate steps toward achieving a constitutional or democratic regime. Moderation in behavior rather than conformity in belief is the driving goal—the notion that “bad regimes can improve their behavior.” Getting an illiberal state or political movement to moderate and temper its internal and external actions (for example, eschewing violence) is better than gambling on regime change that could either destabilize a country, if it succeeds, or alienate a government and cause it to withdraw from any cooperative efforts, if it fails. The emphasis is to promote “de-tyrannization” rather than democratization.

So, the foreign policy decision maker must be guided by the ethics of a battlefield surgeon engaged in triage, not those of a family practitioner operating in a peaceful suburban neighborhood.

In turn, regimes that enjoy a greater degree of security might then be more inclined to take part in cooperative efforts designed to safeguard all states—democracies and non-democracies—from common threats. The Security First paradigm rejects the idea of using external military pressure to bring about change in other societies. In essence, it asks those who are dissatisfied with the level of civil, political or social freedom in their countries to forego asking for American or Western forcible intervention to bring about immediate relief in the short run. This is seen as the price to be paid for maintaining a series of cooperative relationships and security bargains that will enhance regional and global security.

Etzioni's gamble is that a Security First approach could create conditions for long-term, sustainable evolutionary change in a more liberal direction that would end up being more effective than the track record of the interventionists. Moreover, nothing in the Security First approach prevents extensive civil society efforts (that is, efforts that are not government-sponsored or -controlled) to try and persuade other societies to undertake reform; but the emphasis would shift to preaching about, rather than the promotion of, democracy. Etzioni’s confidence in this outcome is buttressed by the assessment that such long-term change did occur in East Asia over several decades: as regimes enjoyed a greater degree of internal and external security—and the rising prosperity that these conditions generated—there was a greater willingness to explore reform, to push for greater openness and pluralism and to anchor governance in adherence to the rule of law. In essence, the Security First approach takes the position that most states have the opportunity, over time, to be rehabilitated rather than wrecked—even if the process is generational rather than instantaneous.

In all cases, if liberal democracy is not a realistic possibility, there can exist other types of regimes—from illiberal democracy to soft authoritarianism—that may work to cooperate on vital issues, to reject terrorism and extremism, and to create conditions for eventual evolution along more liberal lines. These governments may also enjoy some degree of legitimacy even if they are not empowered by the ballot box. The assumption that only those who share a commitment to liberal values can be effective partners consigns all nonliberal forces beyond the pale, and draws no real distinctions between the minority, who actively seek to damage Western interests, and the vast majority, with no such aims.

There is also a second trade-off that Etzioni asks for: that citizens of some states (and their governments) voluntarily forego some of their theoretical rights under international law to freely choose their international relationships in order to help guarantee stability. Etzioni has argued, notably with his Mutual Assured Restraint proposal for decreasing tension between the United States and China, for those states that lie between the great powers and major blocs to accept some form of neutral status. He argues that this will decrease tensions and facilitate cooperation among the key power centers on key global issues that he feels are essential for overall global security. In return for foregoing the option of joining specific military alliances or blocs, neutral buffer states would have to be guaranteed the ability to determine their own domestic institutions and to pursue their economic interests.

Thus, the United States would pledge not to expand its system of alliances to encompass nations on the Chinese or Russian frontiers, in return for firm, actionable commitments by both Moscow and Beijing to cooperate on critical issues. One such issue is accepting the necessity for interventions, when diplomacy has failed, in order to deproliferate rogue regimes or to stop massive violations of the right to life. In addition, these countries would refrain from interference in the affairs of states lying on their borders as long as a set of minimal security conditions were being respected. (It goes without saying that failure on the part of Moscow or Beijing to respect those two conditions would invalidate the entire agreement.)

In an unipolar world dominated by the United States, these types of concessions would not have been needed or, perhaps, even desirable. Pretending that the United States can act on a strategy of primacy when global conditions have clearly changed is not a sign of resoluteness or determination. In addition, the shift implicit in Security First—from promoting democracy to encouraging liberal evolution by creating conditions of stability, both within states and in the larger regional and global order—may not align well with past statements about the U.S. obligation to spread democracy, but has a much better possibility of addressing the credibility gap in U.S. foreign policy. The approach may make possible a “stable synthesis” that would allow the United States to continue to articulate its values, without undermining them or the possibility of effective cooperation with nondemocratic regimes on shared interests.

American policy makers, starting with the 2016 presidential hopefuls, should be on the lookout for an approach to world affairs that retains U.S. involvement and leadership in the international system, but that avoids overstretch—an approach that is true to a moral compass but not draining of American resources and energy. The Security First approach has that potential.

Nikolas Gvosdev, a contributing editor at the National Interest, is coauthor of U.S. Foreign Policy and Defense Strategy (Georgetown, 2015), and the recently published Communitarian Foreign Policy: Amitai Etzioni’s Vision (Transaction, 2016), from which this essay is adapted.

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