A Different World
Transforming the globe.

By Roman Martinez, an M.Phil candidate in international relations at the University of Cambridge.
February 21, 2002 8:50 a.m.

eptember 11 catapulted foreign policy right to the top of the American political agenda — and as President Bush has repeatedly made clear, that's where it will stay for some time to come. The era in which a Patients' Bill of Rights could be considered Washington's top priority may finally be over (campaign-finance reform notwithstanding).

For foreign-policy hawks of all political stripes, our changed priorities offer a vital opportunity to transform America's approach to the world. Neoconservatives like Robert Kagan, William Kristol, and others have urged the Bush administration to develop a "new internationalism," invoking the spirit of Cold War containment to support an expanded effort to fight evil abroad. Tough-minded liberals led by Sen. Joe Lieberman have echoed the call. The time has come, they argue, to cast aside the sterile realism, narrow isolationism, and starry-eyed multilateralism that marked the varying approaches to U.S. foreign policy of the 1990s.

Instead, they propose a bold and vigorous alternative. It centers on American global leadership and a muscular commitment to promoting our values abroad. In immediate terms, it calls for nation building in Afghanistan, spreading democracy in the Middle East, and targeting rogue regimes such as Iraq. Over the long haul, its aim will be to remove the threat of hostile tyrannies armed with weapons of mass destruction and to promote liberty and justice around the world. The task, as Kristol wrote in the Washington Post, "will not be easy or painless. But it is worthy of a great nation."

For such a policy to succeed in the long run, it must command the strong support of the American people. Early signs are encouraging. The liberation of Afghanistan has been widely cheered at home, and surveys show a majority of citizens willing to take on Saddam.

But the neocons and their allies shouldn't celebrate quite yet. Already, public-opinion polls show a nation more concerned with the flagging economy than with the threat from abroad. Far from being the long-desired strategic shift in America's approach to the world, the recent campaign in Afghanistan might be nothing more than a quintessentially "Jacksonian" response to the Sept. 11 attacks. So, though full of fury and quick to avenge an outrage against the nation's honor, the reaction could also be quick to subside.

That would be a shame. There is a need for greater American leadership and purpose in the world. But public support is an essential requirement of any long-term shift in foreign policy. The lessons of the 1990s are only too clear. Time and time again — in Haiti and Somalia, in the fits-and-starts blocking action in Bosnia, in America's costly decision to stay out of Rwanda, in ineffective missile strikes against terrorist training camps, and in the constant fear of casualties hindering efforts in Kosovo — Clinton administration officials were paralyzed by the belief that Americans would not tolerate strong and potentially dangerous action abroad.

The memory of Sept. 11 will not guide opinion forever. And so the challenge facing the internationalist hawks is to keep foreign policy at the front of the public mind. Those hoping to enlarge the scope and ambition of American involvement in the world must pay critical attention to public opinion — not merely in the narrow sense of polls and focus groups, but more deeply, in broader moral and cultural terms.

The task is especially important as it concerns future generations of American voters and leaders, who will be entrusted with sustaining the "new internationalism" in the years to come. As Harvard historian Ernest May has argued, appreciating the context in which statesmen grow up is essential to understanding the decisions they make while in power. Thus the "lessons of Munich" prompted American leaders to forge bold policies in the early Cold War, and lingering memories of Vietnam influenced the Clinton administration's approach to the world in the 1990s. Those urging a hawkish foreign policy should pay close attention to the culture in which future leaders are coming of age.

In post-Cold War America, that culture has been defined, for the most part, by peace and prosperity. The demise of the Soviet Union created a world in which — it was easy enough to imagine — history had ended and the United States no longer faced serious enemies abroad. Strong economic growth and ever-increasing globalization also contributed to the rosy outlook, leading younger Americans to embrace a global, cosmopolitan outlook. To them, the Great Depression, World War II, Vietnam, and the imminent threat of nuclear war are mere abstractions, relics of a distant past. The world as they know it is a kinder, gentler place. And in that world, America is not always the good guy.

The nation's educational system no longer devotes itself to building civic pride and patriotism. Scant time is spent studying American history (in a recent survey, only 60 percent of students at top colleges could name the half-century in which the Civil War was fought), and teaching is often mired in anti-Americanism. A study by Harvard researcher Sarah Stotsky, for example, found that basic textbooks used in primary and secondary schools across the country consistently trumpet what she calls "victim theory — the belief that all women and non-Western people have been nothing but victims of Western patriarchy or cultural imperialism." The result, Stotsky writes, is to "make white children feel ashamed of their country."

Higher education is not much better. Conservatives have long decried the postmodernism, multiculturalism, and moral relativism that haunt the halls of modern academia. Few students graduate actually quoting Derrida or Foucault, but they do absorb, if only by osmosis, a basic disdain for age-old ways of thinking about right and wrong. The result is a pervasive amorality that avoids making judgments — especially, of course, with regard to other countries and cultures. As David Brooks documented last year in an essay for The Atlantic, college students today have lost the language of sin. "Evil," he observed, "is seen as something that can be cured with better education, or therapy, or Prozac." It's certainly not something to be countered by force.

These attitudes have serious implications for the future of American foreign policy. They suggest that a rising generation of American citizens and leaders will have grown up in a culture of self-satisfaction, irony, and moral doubt — precisely the wrong qualities needed for exercising bold leadership abroad. If all values are relative, such citizens will wonder, then why encourage the spread of democracy, free speech, or religious freedom abroad? Isn't that just a form of moral or cultural "imperialism"?

Sustaining an energized foreign policy will require an American public that is confident in its ideals and willing to defend them around the world. It will require a willingness to make sacrifices, even in human life. Above all, it will require a tragic sense that, as President Bush declared in his State of the Union address, "evil is real, and it must be opposed."

For neocons and their allies, therefore, instilling these values in the culture at home must go hand in hand with a hawkish strategy abroad. Sept. 11 provided a powerful first push in that direction. The real work still lies ahead.