05-30-2006, 04:37 AM
<b>A new strategy for the new geopolitics</b>
by Michael Warner
THE late Nicholas Spykman, a pioneer in the study of international relations, once said that "he who controls the Rimland controls Eurasia, who controls Eurasia controls the destinies of the world." This classic statement of geopolitics has guided American foreign policy for more than 60 years. Since June 1940, when the French army collapsed and Hitler seemed poised to dominate Europe, twelve U.S. presidents have followed a grand strategy congruent with the premises and conclusions of Spykman's dictum.
What are those premises? The first is that modern war is so costly and devastating that America must keep it contained to the Old World, or, better yet, prevent it from erupting at all. The second is that only a few nation-states have both the power to wage modern war and the geographic proximity to constitute a serious threat to us.
What policies follow from these premises? That we should concentrate our vigilance on key nation-states along the Atlantic and Pacific littorals. That we must foster a balance of power to ensure that no hegemon arises on either shore of the Eurasian landmass, or builds a power base from which to dominate the world economy. And finally, that for our own security and the greater good of mankind, we should build ties of trade and cooperation among states, encouraging commerce and the peaceful resolution of disputes.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's genius was to respond to Hitler's onslaught with a combination of Wilsonian idealism and the hard-headed realism of Spykman and other apostles of geopolitics. FDR's grand strategy for winning World War II and the subsequent peace developed these approaches, but it fell to his successor, Harry Truman, to build the national and international institutions to implement them in peacetime. Truman created the National Security Council and the Department of Defense, and fostered the United Nations, the Marshall Plan, NATO, and the World Bank. He kept the Soviets out of Western Europe, and then applied Roosevelt's strategy to East Asia to prevent a communist takeover of Korea.
Every president since Truman has wittingly or unwittingly operated within this strategic paradigm. Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson strengthened and expanded Truman's institutions. Nixon saw himself as a master of applied geopolitics in his skillful exploitation of the Sino-Soviet rivalry. Jimmy Carter shifted the ballast of our policies back to the Wilsonian emphasis on human rights, and Ronald Reagan adjusted the two elements anew, striving to balance Soviet power while insisting on democratic reforms in the Third World. The first President Bush applied FDR's strategy to Southwest Asia in the liberation of Kuwait. President Clinton, for all the talk of a post-Cold War world, made no radical changes to this strategy.
ROOSEVELTISM, for lack of a better term, had become the default setting of American foreign policy by the time George W. Bush took office in 2001. Early hints from his administration suggested that he intended to stay the course. The Pentagon's 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review, for instance, spoke of "precluding hostile domination of critical areas, particularly Europe, Northeast Asia, the East Asian littoral, and the Middle East and Southwest Asia." Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld could have called our area of greatest interest "the Rimland" and saved on printing costs.
Did September 11 render Roosevelt's strategic vision obsolete? Perhaps. That morning of horror showed that armed conspirators, not just nation-states, could now reach over the oceans to wreak havoc in our cities. It also made clear that terror was one of the new tactics of choice among the enemies of the United States. That seems to be what bin Laden and his comrades desired: to terrify the "Zionist-Crusader entity" into a retreat from traditionally Muslim lands.
The grand strategy of Roosevelt and previous administrations took account of people whose aim was mass murder, but it assumed that these aims would come to nothing without the political, economic, and technological means available only to powerful nation-states. Now that our country is vulnerable to nonstate bands of terrorists, what changes should be made in our foreign policy?
The Bush administration gave an initial answer on September 17, 2002 in its National Security Strategy. Published on the Internet and unveiled with modest fanfare by the White House, it is only now garnering sustained attention, in part because of other news over the last year. A few early observers debated its themes even before the war in Iraq. Yale historian John Lewis Gaddis, for instance, offered an insightful analysis last autumn in Foreign Policy, calling it perhaps "the most important reformulation of U.S. grand strategy in over half a century."
The Strategy deserves more attention than it has received thus far. For starters, as Gaddis notes, this document stands out among official tracts as relatively lucid and candid. More important, however, is the Strategy's potential for shifting the emphasis in America's foreign policy and recasting a generation's worth of debate over how best to secure the country's interests. Rather than squabbling over last year's intelligence estimates, or worrying about Straussian moles in the Pentagon, we might instead focus our attention on this serious document. President Bush's Strategy cannot be the last word on the topic, but it is a good place to start.
THE National Security Strategy basically says two things. <b>First, it reminds us that nation-states are still important. Here the news is more good than bad:</b>
For most of the twentieth century, the world was divided by a great struggle over ideas: destructive totalitarian visions versus freedom and equality. That great struggle is over. The militant visions of class, nation, and race which promised utopia and delivered misery have been defeated and discredited. America is now threatened less by conquering states than we are by failing ones. We are menaced less by fleets and armies than by catastrophic technologies in the hands of the embittered few.
In other words, this generation beholds "the best chance since the rise of the nation-state in the seventeenth century to build a world where great powers compete in peace instead of continually prepar[ing] for war." Such an outcome is neither automatic nor inevitable; it demands patience and toil. The National Security Strategy vows that America will not flag in this work:
Today, the United States enjoys a position of unparalleled military strength and great economic and political influence. In keeping with our heritage and principles, we do not use our strength to press for unilateral advantage. We seek instead to create a balance of power that favors human freedom: conditions in which all nations and all societies can choose for themselves the rewards and challenges of political and economic liberty.
Finally, we look for the spread of the surest guarantor of peace--freedom--to nations that rivaled us in the Cold War:
America will encourage the advancement of democracy and economic openness in both [Russia and China], because these are the best foundations for domestic stability and international order. We will strongly resist aggression from other great powers--even as we welcome their peaceful pursuit of prosperity, trade, and cultural advancement.
As Gaddis and others have noted, this is a Wilsonian vision of breathtaking scope. It also follows Spykman's dictum, defending the Rimland and guarding against future hegemons. <b>Thus it is classic "Rooseveltism," hardly changed in its essence from its interpretation under previous administrations. </b>
BUT something else is happening in the world that requires our attention, according to the National Security Strategy. <b>Its second message is the frightening news that terrorism has grown from a cottage industry to murder on an industrial scale. Terrorism, in the hands of its deadliest practitioners, has progressed from a tactic to oust imperialist occupiers to killing almost for the sake of killing</b>:
Enemies in the past needed great armies and great industrial capabilities to endanger America. Now, shadowy networks of individuals can bring great chaos and suffering to our shores for less than it costs to purchase a single tank. Terrorists are organized to penetrate open societies and to turn the power of modern technologies against us.
The paper goes on to describe this possibility in one of its most-quoted lines:
<b>The gravest danger our Nation faces lies at the crossroads of radicalism and technology. </b>Our enemies have openly declared that they are seeking weapons of mass destruction, and evidence indicates that they are doing so with determination.
Who are these enemies, and what motivates them? Surprising to say, answers to these questions have to be teased out of the National Security Strategy. The closest it comes to describing "our enemies" is in its discussion of rogue states that "reject basic human values and hate the United States and everything for which it stands." Since these same states "sponsor terrorism around the globe," we can also infer that the terrorists share this hatred of America. But why do they hate us?
Perhaps because they regard America's Wilsonian aspirations For democracy and human rights as the greatest threat to their very existence and way of life. If you think liberal democracy is a cancer on humanity, then you ought to fear an American president who proclaims in his National Security Strategy that "freedom is the non-negotiable demand of human dignity; the birthright of every person--in every civilization," and who pledges that the United States will use this moment of opportunity to extend the benefits of freedom across the globe. We will actively work to bring the hope of democracy, development, free markets, and free trade to every corner of the world.
THE hatred that the terrorists have for such ideals is not so different from the critique offered by some in the West--one that dates back nearly two centuries, and argues that bourgeois life is a blight on history, or, to shift metaphors, an opiate that numbs the minds and spirits of the masses to beauty and truth. The terrorists maintain that America is evil, and that all who live and work there are legitimate military targets. We in the West, of course, know better.
Or do we? Liberal ideas and institutions are increasingly under attack by Western thinkers who describe liberalism as a cloak for oppression and deconstruct it into its allegedly racist, sexist, and imperialist elements. <b>Many of those same Western thinkers also admire the antibourgeois sentiments of nineteenth-century utopians and twentieth-century revolutionaries. The latter, of course, espoused the "militant visions of class, nation, and race" that the National Security Strategy supposes have been "defeated and discredited." </b>
And herein lies another question. Are the two issues that the National Security Strategy raises--the spread of democracy and the growing threat posed by rogue states and terrorists--somehow parallel in a way that is unglimpsed, or undiscussed, by the Strategy's authors? Is there an affinity between the mindset of those rogue states and terrorists who "reject basic human values and hate the United States and everything for which it stands," and those in the West who protest in ever-more-violent and organized ways the spread of liberal democracy they call "globalization"? If so, the National Security Strategy does not address it.
That is a question for the future. <b>For now the issue is whether geopolitics has been supplanted by a politics of ideas</b>. Certainly, modern power is no longer simply resources and geography (and the scientific and technological means of exploiting them), but ideas as well.<b> Ideas like the rule of law, human rights, economic liberty, and democracy are what free societies export to the rest of the world. And yet, nation-states are still crucial to the building of a peaceful world order. </b>Without a skillful application of "Rooseveltism" in the future, the world is not likely to summon the resources and will to win the global war on terror.
STRATEGIES cannot change overnight, even in the wake of crises like Pearl Harbor and the terrorist attacks of September 11. New strategies perforce adapt elements of their predecessors, as Franklin Roosevelt adapted Wilsonian ideals to sell his foreign policy to liberal constituents and to ensure that even a stable balance of power would gradually ameliorate the bloody rivalries of "old Europe."
This makes the job of crafting a new strategy--and recognizing one as it emerges--all the more difficult for officials and observers alike. Time will tell if the National Security Strategy represents a blind alley or a landmark along the path to a new and lasting strategic synthesis for the United States, but early indications suggest it is heading in the right direction.
<b>MICHAEL WARNER serves on the history staff of the Central Intelligence Agency.</b>
<i>The views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily Of the central Intelligence Agency. </i>
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Article Title: A New Strategy for the New Geopolitics. Contributors: Michael Warner - author. Magazine Title: Public Interest. Issue: 153. Publication Date: Fall 2003. Page Number: 94+. COPYRIGHT 2003 The National Affairs, Inc.; <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
by Michael Warner
THE late Nicholas Spykman, a pioneer in the study of international relations, once said that "he who controls the Rimland controls Eurasia, who controls Eurasia controls the destinies of the world." This classic statement of geopolitics has guided American foreign policy for more than 60 years. Since June 1940, when the French army collapsed and Hitler seemed poised to dominate Europe, twelve U.S. presidents have followed a grand strategy congruent with the premises and conclusions of Spykman's dictum.
What are those premises? The first is that modern war is so costly and devastating that America must keep it contained to the Old World, or, better yet, prevent it from erupting at all. The second is that only a few nation-states have both the power to wage modern war and the geographic proximity to constitute a serious threat to us.
What policies follow from these premises? That we should concentrate our vigilance on key nation-states along the Atlantic and Pacific littorals. That we must foster a balance of power to ensure that no hegemon arises on either shore of the Eurasian landmass, or builds a power base from which to dominate the world economy. And finally, that for our own security and the greater good of mankind, we should build ties of trade and cooperation among states, encouraging commerce and the peaceful resolution of disputes.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's genius was to respond to Hitler's onslaught with a combination of Wilsonian idealism and the hard-headed realism of Spykman and other apostles of geopolitics. FDR's grand strategy for winning World War II and the subsequent peace developed these approaches, but it fell to his successor, Harry Truman, to build the national and international institutions to implement them in peacetime. Truman created the National Security Council and the Department of Defense, and fostered the United Nations, the Marshall Plan, NATO, and the World Bank. He kept the Soviets out of Western Europe, and then applied Roosevelt's strategy to East Asia to prevent a communist takeover of Korea.
Every president since Truman has wittingly or unwittingly operated within this strategic paradigm. Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson strengthened and expanded Truman's institutions. Nixon saw himself as a master of applied geopolitics in his skillful exploitation of the Sino-Soviet rivalry. Jimmy Carter shifted the ballast of our policies back to the Wilsonian emphasis on human rights, and Ronald Reagan adjusted the two elements anew, striving to balance Soviet power while insisting on democratic reforms in the Third World. The first President Bush applied FDR's strategy to Southwest Asia in the liberation of Kuwait. President Clinton, for all the talk of a post-Cold War world, made no radical changes to this strategy.
ROOSEVELTISM, for lack of a better term, had become the default setting of American foreign policy by the time George W. Bush took office in 2001. Early hints from his administration suggested that he intended to stay the course. The Pentagon's 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review, for instance, spoke of "precluding hostile domination of critical areas, particularly Europe, Northeast Asia, the East Asian littoral, and the Middle East and Southwest Asia." Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld could have called our area of greatest interest "the Rimland" and saved on printing costs.
Did September 11 render Roosevelt's strategic vision obsolete? Perhaps. That morning of horror showed that armed conspirators, not just nation-states, could now reach over the oceans to wreak havoc in our cities. It also made clear that terror was one of the new tactics of choice among the enemies of the United States. That seems to be what bin Laden and his comrades desired: to terrify the "Zionist-Crusader entity" into a retreat from traditionally Muslim lands.
The grand strategy of Roosevelt and previous administrations took account of people whose aim was mass murder, but it assumed that these aims would come to nothing without the political, economic, and technological means available only to powerful nation-states. Now that our country is vulnerable to nonstate bands of terrorists, what changes should be made in our foreign policy?
The Bush administration gave an initial answer on September 17, 2002 in its National Security Strategy. Published on the Internet and unveiled with modest fanfare by the White House, it is only now garnering sustained attention, in part because of other news over the last year. A few early observers debated its themes even before the war in Iraq. Yale historian John Lewis Gaddis, for instance, offered an insightful analysis last autumn in Foreign Policy, calling it perhaps "the most important reformulation of U.S. grand strategy in over half a century."
The Strategy deserves more attention than it has received thus far. For starters, as Gaddis notes, this document stands out among official tracts as relatively lucid and candid. More important, however, is the Strategy's potential for shifting the emphasis in America's foreign policy and recasting a generation's worth of debate over how best to secure the country's interests. Rather than squabbling over last year's intelligence estimates, or worrying about Straussian moles in the Pentagon, we might instead focus our attention on this serious document. President Bush's Strategy cannot be the last word on the topic, but it is a good place to start.
THE National Security Strategy basically says two things. <b>First, it reminds us that nation-states are still important. Here the news is more good than bad:</b>
For most of the twentieth century, the world was divided by a great struggle over ideas: destructive totalitarian visions versus freedom and equality. That great struggle is over. The militant visions of class, nation, and race which promised utopia and delivered misery have been defeated and discredited. America is now threatened less by conquering states than we are by failing ones. We are menaced less by fleets and armies than by catastrophic technologies in the hands of the embittered few.
In other words, this generation beholds "the best chance since the rise of the nation-state in the seventeenth century to build a world where great powers compete in peace instead of continually prepar[ing] for war." Such an outcome is neither automatic nor inevitable; it demands patience and toil. The National Security Strategy vows that America will not flag in this work:
Today, the United States enjoys a position of unparalleled military strength and great economic and political influence. In keeping with our heritage and principles, we do not use our strength to press for unilateral advantage. We seek instead to create a balance of power that favors human freedom: conditions in which all nations and all societies can choose for themselves the rewards and challenges of political and economic liberty.
Finally, we look for the spread of the surest guarantor of peace--freedom--to nations that rivaled us in the Cold War:
America will encourage the advancement of democracy and economic openness in both [Russia and China], because these are the best foundations for domestic stability and international order. We will strongly resist aggression from other great powers--even as we welcome their peaceful pursuit of prosperity, trade, and cultural advancement.
As Gaddis and others have noted, this is a Wilsonian vision of breathtaking scope. It also follows Spykman's dictum, defending the Rimland and guarding against future hegemons. <b>Thus it is classic "Rooseveltism," hardly changed in its essence from its interpretation under previous administrations. </b>
BUT something else is happening in the world that requires our attention, according to the National Security Strategy. <b>Its second message is the frightening news that terrorism has grown from a cottage industry to murder on an industrial scale. Terrorism, in the hands of its deadliest practitioners, has progressed from a tactic to oust imperialist occupiers to killing almost for the sake of killing</b>:
Enemies in the past needed great armies and great industrial capabilities to endanger America. Now, shadowy networks of individuals can bring great chaos and suffering to our shores for less than it costs to purchase a single tank. Terrorists are organized to penetrate open societies and to turn the power of modern technologies against us.
The paper goes on to describe this possibility in one of its most-quoted lines:
<b>The gravest danger our Nation faces lies at the crossroads of radicalism and technology. </b>Our enemies have openly declared that they are seeking weapons of mass destruction, and evidence indicates that they are doing so with determination.
Who are these enemies, and what motivates them? Surprising to say, answers to these questions have to be teased out of the National Security Strategy. The closest it comes to describing "our enemies" is in its discussion of rogue states that "reject basic human values and hate the United States and everything for which it stands." Since these same states "sponsor terrorism around the globe," we can also infer that the terrorists share this hatred of America. But why do they hate us?
Perhaps because they regard America's Wilsonian aspirations For democracy and human rights as the greatest threat to their very existence and way of life. If you think liberal democracy is a cancer on humanity, then you ought to fear an American president who proclaims in his National Security Strategy that "freedom is the non-negotiable demand of human dignity; the birthright of every person--in every civilization," and who pledges that the United States will use this moment of opportunity to extend the benefits of freedom across the globe. We will actively work to bring the hope of democracy, development, free markets, and free trade to every corner of the world.
THE hatred that the terrorists have for such ideals is not so different from the critique offered by some in the West--one that dates back nearly two centuries, and argues that bourgeois life is a blight on history, or, to shift metaphors, an opiate that numbs the minds and spirits of the masses to beauty and truth. The terrorists maintain that America is evil, and that all who live and work there are legitimate military targets. We in the West, of course, know better.
Or do we? Liberal ideas and institutions are increasingly under attack by Western thinkers who describe liberalism as a cloak for oppression and deconstruct it into its allegedly racist, sexist, and imperialist elements. <b>Many of those same Western thinkers also admire the antibourgeois sentiments of nineteenth-century utopians and twentieth-century revolutionaries. The latter, of course, espoused the "militant visions of class, nation, and race" that the National Security Strategy supposes have been "defeated and discredited." </b>
And herein lies another question. Are the two issues that the National Security Strategy raises--the spread of democracy and the growing threat posed by rogue states and terrorists--somehow parallel in a way that is unglimpsed, or undiscussed, by the Strategy's authors? Is there an affinity between the mindset of those rogue states and terrorists who "reject basic human values and hate the United States and everything for which it stands," and those in the West who protest in ever-more-violent and organized ways the spread of liberal democracy they call "globalization"? If so, the National Security Strategy does not address it.
That is a question for the future. <b>For now the issue is whether geopolitics has been supplanted by a politics of ideas</b>. Certainly, modern power is no longer simply resources and geography (and the scientific and technological means of exploiting them), but ideas as well.<b> Ideas like the rule of law, human rights, economic liberty, and democracy are what free societies export to the rest of the world. And yet, nation-states are still crucial to the building of a peaceful world order. </b>Without a skillful application of "Rooseveltism" in the future, the world is not likely to summon the resources and will to win the global war on terror.
STRATEGIES cannot change overnight, even in the wake of crises like Pearl Harbor and the terrorist attacks of September 11. New strategies perforce adapt elements of their predecessors, as Franklin Roosevelt adapted Wilsonian ideals to sell his foreign policy to liberal constituents and to ensure that even a stable balance of power would gradually ameliorate the bloody rivalries of "old Europe."
This makes the job of crafting a new strategy--and recognizing one as it emerges--all the more difficult for officials and observers alike. Time will tell if the National Security Strategy represents a blind alley or a landmark along the path to a new and lasting strategic synthesis for the United States, but early indications suggest it is heading in the right direction.
<b>MICHAEL WARNER serves on the history staff of the Central Intelligence Agency.</b>
<i>The views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily Of the central Intelligence Agency. </i>
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Article Title: A New Strategy for the New Geopolitics. Contributors: Michael Warner - author. Magazine Title: Public Interest. Issue: 153. Publication Date: Fall 2003. Page Number: 94+. COPYRIGHT 2003 The National Affairs, Inc.; <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->