Indyk , Kenneth G. Lieberthal , and Michael E. The third set of questions involves the instruments of foreign policy, which include public and private diplomacy, military force, sanctions, incentives, and covert action.
In every instance, questions arise about whether and how to use particular tools. Policymakers must constantly assess whether acting with a particular instrument in a particular fashion makes more sense than using others in other ways—or than doing nothing at all. The fourth debate is over resources.
Similar assessments could be written about the dollars devoted to intelligence, foreign assistance, and diplomacy. In every case, it is necessary to address not simply how much should be spent but how it is spent.
R Richard N. The fifth and last debate involves how foreign policy is made. Are procedures and institutions that for the most part developed in a very different context—a world divided by Cold War and fundamentally less global than our own—still adequate for the challenges facing the United States today? If not, what changes should be made by the executive branch, Congress, or both?
All five debates are important. At the same time, they are often obscured by specific foreign policy issues. Much the same can be said of debates surrounding Kosovo and other humanitarian interventions. Likewise, controversy surrounding the use of economic sanctions reflects disagreements over both the wisdom of unilateral action and the relative value of particular tools.
Of the five sets of questions, the most important are the first two, which reflect the purposes of the United States and its basic approach to the world. The latter three debates—matters more of instrumentality, implementation, and process—while critical to the success of policy, are less fundamental.
For that reason this essay will emphasize the debates over priorities and approaches. The question of priorities is another way of asking what the United States should do with its primacy. Although a world of democratic, market-oriented states would obviously be desirable, bringing it about is likely beyond our capacity. Moreover, other issues—stemming the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, avoiding the outbreak of war, protecting core economic stakes—are simply more important.
Interests need to take precedence over concerns. Looming above it all is the forbidding menace of climate change, as our planet gradually suffocates on carbon emissions. Amy Zegart: The race for big ideas is on. This moment screams for leadership to help forge a sense of order—an organizer to help navigate this complicated mess of challenges, stabilize geopolitical competition, and ensure at least some modest protections of global public goods.
But now we are living through the worst intersection of man and moment in American history. The post-pandemic future of the United States is not preordained. We still get a vote, and we still get to make some fateful choices. They are more complicated than those we faced at the end of the Cold War, when our undisputed primacy cushioned us from our mistakes and sustained our illusions. The United States must choose from three broad strategic approaches: retrenchment, restoration, and reinvention.
Each aspires to deliver on our interests and protect our values; where they differ is in their assessment of American priorities and influence, and of the threats we face. Each is easy to caricature—and each deserves an honest look. Proponents of retrenchment argue that for too long, friends and foes alike were glad to let the United States underwrite global security while they reaped the benefits. Europe could spend less on defense and more on social safety nets.
China could focus on economic modernization, while America kept the peace. The U. Retrenchment is easily distorted as a kind of nativist isolationism or pathological declinism.
Retrenchment means jettisoning our arrogant dismissiveness of nationalism and sovereignty, and understanding that other powers will continue to pursue spheres of influence and defend them. And it means acknowledging that the U. The main risk in retrenchment lies in taking it too far, or too fast.
Any effort to disentangle the United States from the world comes with complicated downsides. There are bigger structural questions too. Even if the U. However sclerotic some of our alliances have become, how confident are American leaders that they can shape our fate better without them? And would an America retrenching in hard power still be able to play the organizing role on issues like climate change, nuclear nonproliferation, and global trade, which no other country can play right now?
A case can be made that American diffidence, not hubris, is the original sin. A report by the current Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon in was accepted in principle by the UN General Assembly: that is, the General Assembly endorsed the principle that states have a responsibility to protect their own people.
This was the first time that this was actually enunciated in international law. According to the Responsibility to Protect doctrine, there is an international responsibility to assist.
States have a primary responsibility to protect their own people; if they fail to do so or egregiously violate that responsibility and persecute their own people, then the international community has the responsibility to respond and assist. So this doctrine puts a big hole in the old sovereignty norm that basically said that states could do whatever they wanted to their own people.
The Responsibility to Protect is limited to four specific crimes, and especially crimes against humanity and ethics. As I mentioned, these are norms and not a legally binding treaty, but they are of strong form. How do we get a broad international consensus? The definitive evidence would be a UN Security Council authorization, something that in some cases we have gotten, like the Ivory Coast Intervention in the spring of that was supported by a Security Council resolution.
In the Libya intervention there was also a Security Council resolution supporting it. That is definitive evidence for legitimate international intervention, but I do not think that we should make Security Council authorization a necessary condition. That would allow one, maybe two states, if they were Permanent Members of the Council, to veto crucial action in defense of the Responsibility to Protect their own citizens.
In fact, there is a norm developing that is a little softer than the first norm, that a veto is illegitimate in essential situations; the UN Secretary-General has enunciated it before. So a consensus could be declared if the otherwise required number of states—nine in the Security Council—actually voted in favor of the resolution, even if a Permanent Member voted no.
I talked earlier about participation. There should be broad participation: active engagement by more than one or two states, not just by us. And there should be active logistical support by a number of other states.
In other words, they should not just passively sit back and raise their hand in the Security Council or General Assembly. One of the most important criteria is that there has to be an indigenous opposition to the repressive regime. Now, if that is hard, you have to make a judgment. Is a coherent, indigenous coalition capable of ruling?
Is it feasible? Do you have a reason to make a flawed judgment? It is a difficult judgment. I think we have to ask this question: after we intervene, if we succeed in totally ousting the regime and restore order, is there a group of people or locals who we can hand power over to? I am not saying they have to be democratic, but they have to be effective and potentially better than the people prior.
Now, take a look at Figure 1. Figure 1 : Intervention criteria where the United States lacked crucial interest. Now you get the big picture. What I have done is simply to take my nine criteria on the left hand column and the six cases across the top. So the first issue: was force essential to achieve the objective? The answer is yes in all of these cases; we could not have achieved the objective without force.
So there is no easy way out. We are already in the hard cases, where in order to do anything effective, we needed to use force. Is there an exit strategy? Well, there was not in Somalia. The first Bush Administration intervened in Somalia in and the Clinton Administration maintained the intervention until the Black Hawk Down incident in October But, there was no exit strategy; there was no one we could see to turn the reins over to.
There was a Tutsi movement, self-organized without our help, and we could have intervened with an easy exit strategy. We should have intervened there. There was also an exit strategy with Kosovo: having an independent Kosovo. It would not have been run by the people you want next door to you, not your city council in Princeton, New Jersey, but they were able to run their own affairs with some help and not a huge amount of money. In Libya, it is still questionable whether the opposition is coherent enough to run a peaceful, orderly state.
I think that we do not have an exit strategy in Afghanistan that will preserve the gains we hoped to achieve. What about the goals, are the goals clear? The goal in Somalia was first to save people from famine; that was a clear goal. The other goal was to improve governance in Somalia, which was not achieved.
There would have been a clear goal in Rwanda: stopping the murder of , people in two months. But tragically, there was no intervention in Rwanda. There was a clear goal in Kosovo: to get the Serbs out and let Kosovo run their own country. In Iraq, there was one clear goal: remove Saddam. After that, it seems to me there was not a clear goal.
In Libya, there was a clear goal: defeat Gaddafi, even though this was not the same goal that the UN approved. In Afghanistan, I think it is not clear what the goal is; there is no attainable goal. There was an implicit reevaluation in Kosovo; we scaled down our involvement and said we are not going to solve all these problems for you.
In Iraq, we did not reevaluate until awfully late. I do not know if there is a plan for reevaluation, but I think there should be. And maybe Obama is reevaluating in Afghanistan.
If there is no coherent indigenous opposition Now I turn to the other criteria. There was just cause in Somalia, Rwanda, and Kosovo. I think it is very unclear in Iraq what the just cause was for invasion. Saddam was a dictator, but it is not clear that Saddam was killing more people than have died after the invasion. But I think in Libya there was just cause, because Gaddafi was murdering his people and threatening war, and R2P was applied there.
There was just cause in , but now there are maybe one hundred al-Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan. It was not tested in Rwanda because, tragically, there was no intervention. There are lots of oppressive regimes in the world. If you were committed to liberating people who were oppressed then you would be liberating lots of countries.
Is there a consensus? Well, in general in Somalia and Libya there was consensus. In the Rwanda case, there could have been. In Iraq there was not.
We did not have a lot of support if you look at the American coalition: the US and Britain, a few NATO allies, and a lot of tiny little states without any resources to speak of.
The Bush Administration had an obvious, self-interested reason for going to war. I think we are seeing a decreasing consensus in Afghanistan. With regard to the question of the internal opposition, the problem was that in Somalia there was no coherent opposition, unlike Rwanda and Kosovo. In Libya, there was internal opposition, which was crucial. In Afghanistan, the US supports the government. If the government were coherent, this could be OK; but I do not think it is.
In Rwanda, we should have intervened. This was, ironically, the case that meets the criteria best; and we did not intervene, to our shame. In Kosovo, we were right to intervene; it meets the criteria quite well.
In Iraq, we were wrong to intervene. There was no exit strategy. There was no broad consensus. There was no broad involvement by others. There was no coherent opposition.
Newsletters Donate My Account. Research Topics. Democratic support for active U. Majority of public favors U.
Public says good diplomacy is best way to ensure peace For more than two decades, majorities have consistently expressed the view that good diplomacy, rather than military strength, is the best way to ensure peace. Views on tradeoff between security and privacy in anti-terrorism efforts The public is roughly split over the question of whether Americans need to sacrifice some privacy and freedoms in order to be safe from terrorism.
Most say the U. Next: 4. Facts are more important than ever In times of uncertainty, good decisions demand good data. In polarized era, fewer Americans hold a mix of conservative and liberal views.
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