For present purposes, the methodology of coming to a correct
placement is less important than the consequences of getting it
wrong. If conflict arises between a nation's global aspirations and
the real resources it is willing or able to devote to their
fulfillment, the result will surely be an unstable foreign policy.
Under such circumstances, policymakers will tend to ignore the
nation's central interests in favor of will-o'-the-wisp enterprises.
They will fail to make the necessary adjustments to bring foreign
policy back on an even keel. Which in turn means that the return on
the national foreign policy investment will be negative. Sooner or
later this will lead to diminished domestic welfare.

The idea that the quality of foreign policy decision-making has a
direct impact on domestic well being is still rather new in the
United States. In its 1992 report Changing Our Ways, the Carnegie
Endowment comments that foreign policy can affect the price of a
mortgage. But such a recognition is the exception. Foreign policy in
the United States--as in most countries--is an elite occupation. The
notion that their decisions could render their fellow citizens better
or worse off is not central to the considerations of this elite. No
calculus is made, for example, of whether the funds expended in
Somalia or Haiti have or have not created a better life for those
from whom this money was compulsorily obtained in the form of
taxation. The expenditures are justified according to the codeword
precepts of foreign policy "leadership" or "reliability."

This thinking is in fact quite typical of great powers. For them, a concern about status, rather than the accountant's slide rule, represents the governing motivation of foreign policy. There may be nothing wrong with this - so long as the resources are available, whether coerced by an absolute monarchy or freely given by a democratic citizenry. For France under Richelieu or Great Britain under Palmerston, this act can be carried off effectively. The same was true for the United States under Eisenhower - or perhaps under all post-World War II presidents until the fall of the Berlin Wall. The difficulties start to multiply when their successors try - as is the case today - the same tricks without the benefit of substantive props.

Herein lies the crux of the argument. Arguing against aid for Mexico in January 1995, a Republican congressman from Texas stated bluntly, "We're broke." This may be an exaggeration, but the resources available for foreign affairs are unquestionably on a long downward cycle. With regard to foreign development aid, for example, the United States now ranks bottom among OECD nations in terms of aid as a proportion of GDP. Beyond this, military prowess - the central element in the "sole remaining superpower" thesis - appears to have limited use in terms of today's problems. That this is the one area in which the new Republican leadership foresees an expansion of foreign policy resources may therefore have little utility.

To take policy toward Asia as an example, in the past two years, the United States has quarreled with India over Kashmir, the ASEAN nations over Burma, Singapore over caning and freedom of speech, China over human rights, Japan over trade, and North Korea over nuclear proliferation. In theory, a superpower should have won all these quarrels-pretty much regardless of the tactics it used. This is not what happened. Looking back, it is difficult to argue that the American position is stronger or more widely accepted than it would be had these quarrels not taken place or had they been conducted in less pro-consular style.

When in 1969 President Richard Nixon tried to bring home to an Asian audience that they would have to provide more of their own defense, he encountered a plaintive cry from Japan: "Please don't run away from us." At the time, the United States dominated the relationship with Japan. In March 1994, the visit of then Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa provided a vignette of how things had changed. As a grim-faced President Bill Clinton announced the breakdown of trade talks, Hosokawa stood at his side, discreetly smiling, far from cowed. He later left the meeting to receive congratulations from Japan on standing up to the United States. In September 1994, much the same pattern was repeated as Japanese trade negotiators withstood enormous American pressure to open their automobile markets.

These episodes represent a growing number of incidents in which the United States is unable to impose its will easily. Decline may still be too strong a word to describe this phenomenon, but at the very least a shift in relative power has taken place. This requires a corresponding adjustment in diplomatic posture. If this adjustment can be made smoothly, American power and influence will be maintained for many more decades - probably to the great benefit of global welfare and human liberty. If it is resisted, then the example of Great Britain may be instructive - not as a literal forecast of what will happen in the United States, but by way of illustration of some of the hurdles to be overcome in this very difficult adjustment process. That, of course, is precisely the point of this cautionary tale. As Henry Tizard so sagely remarked, a great nation does not have to be a great power in the sense of feeling responsible for each and every event from Abkhazia to Zaire. During the global competition marked by the Cold War, it may have been excusable to disregard this advice. Afghanistan, Angola, and Grenada were all cut from the same cloth. The mistake lies in trying to continue with an unchanged policy today.

Now, there may come a time when the United States will have to use force again to defend American interests (in fact it would be very surprising indeed if it does not come). But the moral of the British analogy is that if - as many of the foreign policy elite advise - forcefulness, either in the form of actual deployment of force or in a general dependence on it to command foreigners' deference, is seen as the main ingredient of American foreign policy, then disappointment lies ahead. As they grow accustomed to their new power on Capitol Hill, the new Republican leadership will need to be particularly sensitive to this potential error.

The real problems with which American policymakers have to grapple lie in areas where force has little application but where sustained and subtle consensus-building maneuvering is everything. Maintaining commercial access to Japan and East Asia; accommodating the rise of China to superpower status; creating structures in Europe to prevent the Europeans from succumbing yet again to their self-destructive passions; forming a sensible relationship with evangelical Islam; building systems in the western hemisphere that insulate the United States from the effects of fissiparous tendencies, particularly in Mexico and Canada; fostering stable arrangements for global trade - these are the issues which should attract leadership time and attention. They are, of course, not "imperial" in character and certainly do not provide what George Ball once called the "satisfactions of power." Yet they are the bedrock. The future welfare of this nation does not depend on facing down minor opposition like Raoul Cedras or Saddam Hussein, but in attending effectively to the small number of really important issues. Much of this work will be unspectacular, short on military glamour, and wholly untelegenic. In their time the British, bewitched by nostalgia for conditions that had vanished and a role that was no longer appropriate, neglected these nuts-and-bolts aspects of their foreign policy and paid the price. If the United States now makes the same mistake, not only will its own interests be set back, but a great opportunity to determine the whole character of the post-Cold War era will be lost.

Jonathan Clarke is a former diplomat. His new book, After the Crusade: American Foreign Policy for the Post-Cold War Era, will be published by Madison Books in May, 1995.

Essay Types: Essay