To the Editor:

Robert Kagan, in “American Power—A Guide for the Perplexed” [April], raises the question as to which principles should guide our foreign policy. His answer is that American preeminence in world affairs must be maintained. Tb do so, he sanctions the use of force and die spreading of our values. His conclusion stems from pragmatic considerations, begging the question of how to determine where our interests lie.

Let us note that interests are reflective of purpose. It behooves us to state our purpose, and on that basis define our national interests. . . . In my (libertarian) view, the Founding Fathers had it right. The Declaration of Independence championed the unalienable rights of man. Government’s role was to preserve them by defending the nation against aggression. Virtue was to be spread spiritually, by example and through ideas, and not at the point of a gun. Consequently, we were to avoid foreign entanglements rather than impose our way of life on other nations. The principles that logically follow are: a never-ceasing spiritual and ideological war against all forms of tyranny, and decisive military action only when America is threatened. Our foreign policy would then be neither realist (unprincipled), moralist (counterproductive), or, as Mr. Kagan wishes, hegemonic (interventionist).

Government ought not to be used to protect spheres of influence, or American hegemony, or anything else that is not necessary for national or civilizational survival. When Mr. Kagan says that the most important objective is to maintain America’s preeminence, he is presuming that it is right for America to lead other nations militarily, mat doing so would buttress our way of life, and that national survival can be risked for political advantage (of course, if survival and advantage coincide, there is no issue).

In my view, to defend our interests we should separate ourselves from the tyrannies of the world. . . . By this token, we should not be involved in Bosnia (or Somalia or Haiti), for our civilization is not direatened by mem and in mose places all sides are in the wrong. Nor should we attempt to establish friendly relations with repressive nations, for we do not share their objectives or methods. . . .

Let us spread our way of life by the example of a nation that practices liberty and responsibility, with minimal government intervention. It is not American power mat should be (or can remain) preeminent, but American civilization.

Allen Weingarten
Morristown, New Jersey

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To the Editor:

The thrust of Robert Kagan’s “American Power—A Guide for the Perplexed” is constructive: a reconsideration by the U.S. of its role in the world, in pursuit of a peaceful and just world order. Still, the devil is manifest in some of Mr. Kagan’s details.

In the article, Mr. Kagan in part slights Hans J. Morgenthau, one of me founders of the postwar “realist” school of foreign-policy analysis. But Morgenthau stood less for the proposition that morality cannot direct U.S. foreign policy than for the reminder that mis concern, ipso facto, cannot be dispositive of whether America intervenes in world politics. On this particular count, today’s neorealists do not differ, though they bear some hostility to the idea of fostering U.S. ideals abroad. With some justification, they advocate directing U.S. energies, if not necessarily more financial resources, to “home” improvement. Moreover, contrary to Mr. Kagan, who asserts that U.S. military superiority must be maintained, many neorealists view “superiority” as illusory, supererogatory, and a rationalization for increased expenditure. . . .

Finally, Mr. Kagan contends that President Bush placed Bosnia outside the realm of vital national interests. Not so! The former President merely acceded to the democratic will, however short-sighted and philosophically debatable this position might be. A fortiori, that inaction did not necessarily signify that the U.S. had abandoned international responsibility. After all, some responsibilities cannot be incurred unless others are prepared to join in.

Elliott A. Cohen
New York City

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To the Editor:

Robert Kagan’s call for the U.S. to meet its responsibilities as the world’s unrivaled power is most welcome, especially in view of the recent radical swings of our so-called foreign policy from internationalism to isolationism. But as a “Guide for the Perplexed,” Mr. Kagan’s advice is less than Maimonidean. Whereas the great Maimonides . . . sought to meld realistic and idealistic points of view into a workable synthesis, it is Mr. Kagan’s wish to have idealism triumph over realism in foreign affairs.

If we have learned anything in the 20th century, it is that a single perspective pursued single-mindedly leads to disaster. But idealism, when pursued in concert with realism, can work miracles. This was the case with the Marshall Plan, whose scope would have been inconceivable without the memory of the Versailles Treaty and its consequences, revisionist historians notwithstanding.

The difficulty for theorists, I think, is that we are accustomed to viewing diplomacy as a single track on which alternating policies must operate either with the moralism of a John Foster Dulles or the doctrinaire realism of a Henry Kissinger. It may be more fruitful to think in terms of two tracks or modes of foreign policy: a modus operandi and a modus vivendi, the former bearing the policy of realism, the latter the policy of idealism. . . . The modus operandi of realism provides the stable basis that frees up the modus vivendi of values and ideals. . . .

Given the current less than perfect state of the world, we should take up Kissinger’s suggestion that we employ what is at hand. In other words, we need to rehabilitate the notions of hegemonic states and their respective spheres of influence. . . . Today’s hegemons are the U.S., Russia, China, Japan, Germany, Great Britain, and France. These should come together to forge a new modus operandi for world order. Within such a framework, both realism and idealism can find their respective places. . . .

Ken Whelan
San Francisco, California

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To the Editor:

Congratulations to COMMENTARY on the great article by Robert Kagan; it opened my mind to many new thoughts. How true it is that our interventions are either wrong or ill-timed. We never learn from history or know how to deal with dictators. I still remember our sanctimonious President declaring “Never again!” at the Holocaust Museum, yet allowing the killing to continue in Bosnia. . . .

I participated in one of our interventions—77 days in Haiti. Was it necessary? Well, after we had destroyed the Haitian economy with our ill-conceived embargo, it seemed the morally correct dung to do. Will we ever get it right?

William J. Lee
Fort Drum, New York

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To the Editor:

Robert Kagan’s argument that U.S. victory in the cold war was due to a unique combination of material power and ideals is sound, and should contribute to a debate on what America should now seek in the world.

Mr. Kagan focuses on our past successes. For the future, he endorses the objective argued by a number of like-minded people, including me (see the Spring 1995 issue of the Washington Quarterly and RAND’s Strategic Appraisal 1996), that the U.S. should seek to consolidate its position as the sole superpower and try to prevent the rise of another global rival.

What is important now is to deal with the challenges and dangers we need to prepare for if we are to be serious about this objective. While we do not now face a global rival, we face a number of lesser dangers, which we must prevent from becoming greater. . . . The dangers are numerous: the future of our alliances is uncertain; China is a wild card; Russia could return to dictatorship or fragment; the Middle East remains a tinderbox despite progress in resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict; weapons of mass destruction and missiles are spreading; we are likely to face new forms of warfare as a result of technological and political changes, some of which . . . have the potential to make us catastrophically vulnerable again.

These possibilities imply that we cannot take it for granted that the current favorable conditions will last indefinitely, or even for the next twenty years. The key question is how we can consolidate U.S. global leadership and develop effective strategies for dealing with these challenges. We cannot succeed unless we are able to deal effectively with the following issues:

• How do we maintain alliances among the world’s rich democracies and welcome more nations into them?
• How do we preclude hegemony by hostile powers in critical regions such as Asia, Europe, and the Middle East?
• How do we hedge against possible reimperialization by Russia and expansionism by China?
• How do we preserve our military preeminence in a cost-effective manner in the face of proliferation and new forms of warfare?
• How do we avoid overextension?
• How do we maintain our economic prosperity in the face of intensified international competition?
• How do we build public support for U.S. global leadership?

These are the central foreign-policy and national-security questions that Bob Dole and President Clinton must address between now and November.

Zalmay Khalilzad
Rand Corporation
Washington, D.C.

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Robert Kagan writes:

I appreciate the thoughtful comments of all five writers, each of whom has taken a slightly different tack in responding to my article.

Allen Weingarten cogently presents a view of America’s proper role which is widely held these days, and not just by libertarians. I doubt, however, that the Founders would have agreed that we should use their foreign policies as a guide to our present conduct. While they declared many principles “self-evident” and were bold enough to create institutions of government which they believed should be maintained by future generations with little alteration, they made no similar effort to impose upon future generations a certain type of foreign policy. The best of them understood that foreign-policy principles would change as the power of the young nation grew. The infant nation which they sought to preserve, after all, was too weak to shape events in Canada, Mexico, or even in the lands beyond the Appalachians, much less play a role beyond the seas.

It would have been foolish, as George Washington declared in his Farewell Address, for the young nation to “implicate [itself] . . . in the ordinary vicissitudes of [European] politics” or to become embroiled in the “ordinary combinations and collisions” of such global giants as France, England, Spain, and Russia. But Alexander Hamilton hoped the United States would some day play the role of a great power equal to that of the Europeans. And Washington, in a much-neglected part of the Farewell Address, declared that if the nation would survive its early tests, “the period [was] not far off” when it would possess the power and the freedom to “choose peace or war, as our interest guided by our justice shall counsel.”

Perhaps it is a peculiarly American notion that a nation’s approach to die rest of the world can remain the same despite radical changes in its own power and in the international configuration. The realists of Hans J. Morgenthau’s era set out to refute this kind of sentimental view, and they performed a valuable service. But I think Elliott A. Cohen does Morgenthau an injustice in summarizing his views on morality in foreign policy. At his most rigorous, Morgenthau was saying more than that morality could not be “dispositive” in determining American policy. After all, who but the most woolly-headed idealist would suggest that it should be?

Morgenthau aimed to fashion a coherent philosophy of foreign policy, and it was the intriguing paradox of his logic that morality could be achieved in international affairs only if nations restrained themselves from pursuing morality in their foreign policies. Much as I criticized Morgenthau in my article, I find his views more enlightened than those of the “neorealists,” at least as Mr. Cohen describes them. I do not believe Morgenthau would have agreed that a nation like the United States had to choose between active overseas engagement and “home improvement.” Nor can I imagine that Morgenthau would have considered military superiority “supererogatory.”

Contrary to Mr. Cohen’s insistence, President Bush and his top advisers did indeed consider the war in Bosnia outside the sphere of vital national interests. In his memoirs, former Secretary of State James Baker writes that “unlike in the Persian Gulf, our vital national interests were not at stake. The Yugoslav conflict had the potential to be intractable, but it was nonetheless a regional dispute.”

I thank Ken Whelan for his kind comments. But it was precisely the aim of my article to insist that questions of morality and idealism be fully included in the calculation of our national interest. I never suggested that idealism should “triumph.”

I also want to express thanks for William J. Lee’s kind remarks, especially since he appears to have been part of the very successful American mission to shore up democratic government in Haiti.

I am grateful to Zalmay Khalilzad for his very cogent summary of the important issues that need to be addressed by political leaders of both parties. They might begin by reading his excellent Washington Quarterly article and die RAND study on which it was based, both of which have influenced my own thinking.

Mr. Khalilzad’s list of possible threats that may lie over the horizon is persuasive. I would add only one other: none of the above. We could face threats ten years from now which are literally unimaginable. The history of this century alone has shown just how quickly a world order may collapse and be transformed if the powers or power charged with protecting that order fail in their responsibility.