The United States occupies a unique position in world history today, one that contains the elements of both awesome power and morality. The seeds of such a foreign policy have existed for twenty years, from the time when Ronald Reagan first uttered the words "evil empire," and they began to grow during the last decade, from the time of the Gulf War through Kosovo. Now, entering the beginning of the new century, America has a chance to craft a foreign policy based upon the dual principles of power and morality.
In the past, foreign policy has only contained one of these two elements, never successfully managing to combine both in a single vision. Since the treaty of Westphalia and the formation of the nation state, power has ruled the day.
During the 19th century and up until World War I, the European powers played a great game, attempting to balance each other so that no one country could become dominant. This "game" was nearly universally approved by the great powers during that time, and was credited with bringing stability to the European theater.
The second half of the twentieth century saw the United States engaged in a struggle over ideology, backed by power. The Soviet Union was attempting to spread communism to every corner of the earth, usually through forcible means, and the United States attempted to stop Soviet advances and spread democracy instead. This conflict, while ideological in nature, was based off a premise of power - that the United States could not afford to let communism spread, lest the Soviet Union dominate the world.
Finally, in the 1980s, Reagan turned the conflict into one of morality as well as power. The Soviet Union was evil, and for that reason alone it should be challenged. At the same time the Soviet Union threatened American interests, and for that reason, too, it should be challenged.
In the 1990s, the United States conducted operations all over the world for both security and humanitarian reasons. In the most visible of those operations, the Gulf War, the United States protected its strategic link to oil, while at the same time freeing the people of Kuwait from a potential lifetime of brutal occupation.
Later in the decade, the United States intervened in Bosnia, Somalia, Haiti, and Kosovo, all of which were as much moral operations, if not more so, than they were security missions. In those cases where the US failed to meet is strategic objective, it did so because they were either poorly executed or relied upon poor assessments of how to meet its ultimate objectives.
Today, with our position as the world's only superpower, advances in technology, a clear moral vision, and the recognition of how power works in the international order, the United States has the chance to rearrange the world order in a way that both benefits the United States' security needs and helps the other peoples of the world. By understanding that peace and prosperity must be protected by force and that moral imperatives cannot proceed without the guarantee of power, the United States will be able to craft a foreign policy that will provide the basis of peace and stability in as many regions of the world as possible.
Already one aspect of this vision has been incorporated into American foreign policy. Throughout the world, America, in general, has supported democracies. Democracies have tended to be friendly to the United States which increases our security, while at the same time tending to be far more benign and responsive towards their own citizens. This is the kind of duality that the United States is now in a position to implement.
The United States cannot intervene in every troubled spot in every corner of the globe due to limitations in resources. So when we do intervene militarily in order to preserve some aspect of our security, it should be our goal to leave the situation better than we found it. There is no reason why enhancing US strategic interests should be incompatible with enhancing the lives of ordinary people.
During the Cold War, the United States supported dictators in a variety of places because we believed the Soviet Union and communism represented a greater threat to the security of this country than did the anti-communist dictators. It was a marriage of convenience, which in many cases ultimately turned out negatively for the US.
However, now that we are free of the restraint of great power conflict and the need to contain communism, the United States can work on improving our security by placing people in power who are not only amenable to our ideas, but who also have liberalizing influences on the countries in which they are in. A roadmap for U.S. foreign policy in the future should be the destruction of dictatorial and totalitarian regimes, the replacement of those regimes with democracies or at least democractic structures, full support of liberal societies and governments over authoritarian ones, and support for emerging democratic movements over support for movements lead by morally dubious and/or nefarious individuals.
One day Saddam Hussein's regime will fall, probably at the hands of the United States. We will then have a choice. We can install former Iraqi military leaders, who were once part of Saddam's inner circle to run the country, or we can put people in power who have a respect for democracy, human rights, and individual freedoms. In the past we have often chosen the former, believing them to be more competent. Today, we should not repeat that error in judgment.
The beginning decades of this century will be shaped by American power and strategic vision. As long as we recognize that the world is a hostile and dangerous place that must be dealt with accordingly, we can implement a policy which is both effective at protecting the US and is morally just.
Both ideologues and cynics will find reason to criticize this approach. Ideologues believe that morality can never rest on a foundation of power and cynics believe that power can never rest on a foundation of morality. We should make it the business of the United States to prove them wrong.
