A World in Disarray: American Foreign Policy and the Crisis of the Old Order

by Richard N. Haass

But some of the credit for how history

unfolded surely goes to successive U.S. presidents and, more broadly, the sustained efforts of the United States and its allies over four decades. George Kennan, the architect of containment, proved prescient when he suggested the Soviet system might not be able to withstand the prolonged frustration of being unable to expand its reach.9 George H. W. Bush, the American president at the time the Berlin Wall came down in November 1989, deserves special praise for his handling of the Cold War’s final chapter. Bush was criticized at the time and afterward for not making more of these events, but he was careful not to humiliate his opposite numbers and risk bringing about a situation that could have pressured them to take dramatic action

or brought to power those who wanted to do just that. That the Cold War ended peacefully and included the breakup of the Soviet Union, the unification of Germany, and Germany’s entrance into NATO is nothing short of rema...

of 2003 when it went to war with Iraq. Unlike the case in the 1990–91 Gulf War, when Iraq invaded and took over what had been a sovereign country, this time there was no Iraqi breach of a widely shared norm. Rather, the administration of George W. Bush determined that in the wake of 9/11 the possibility that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction posed an unacceptable risk.

President John F. Kennedy once warned, “There are risks and costs to a program of action. But they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction.”14 The lesson to be derived is not that acting is always right—in the case of the 2003 Iraq War, to name just one example, it

most surely was not—but rather that not acting can be every bit as consequential as acting and, as a result, needs to be assessed with equal rigor.

The economic rise of the Asia-Pacific is nothing short of extraordinary. Economic output, whether by country or per capita, increased by over 300 percent over this two-and-a-half-decade period. And again, what makes this so

remarkable is that stability held despite this economic transformation and with sharp increases in spending on national military forces. A third reason

Actually, the notion of sovereign obligation is well advanced here and includes the ability to detect infectious disease outbreaks, notify others around the world, and take steps (or ask for assistance) to deal

with outbreaks. The challenge is to make sure that governments and the World Health Organization have the capacity to meet it, something that could require technical and financial assistance.10 But “naming and shaming” (something that would scare off tourism and business and that thus might be viewed as a de facto sanction) will also be required to place pressure on those who refuse to meet their obligations in this area.

First, “best practices” multilateralism ought to become the norm for those issues that mostly involve

domestic policy but that

have global ...

Second,

pragmatism will need to play a large role when it comes to multilateral efforts to deal with collective challenges.

Third, relevant nonstate actors need to be included in whatever process is selected. Multilateralism cannot be a country-only enterprise in a nonpolar era.

Regional Responses

Diplomacy will count for a great deal; there will be a premium on dexterity. Consultations that aim to affect the actions of other governments and their leaders are likely to matter more than negotiations that aim to solve problems.

Another reality is that the United States for all its power cannot impose order.

The most basic test of the success of the model will be economic growth.

What would it take to increase current U.S. rates of growth? There is no universally accepted answer to this question, but my list would include better education at every level from preschool through K-12 through all forms of postsecondary education and on to lifelong learning. To this I would add a robust infrastructure program, something that would provide jobs, increase U.S. competitiveness, and make the society more resilient in the face of natural disasters or terrorism. Immigration reform that created greater opportunity for those with advanced degrees and needed skills to come and stay would help; also helpful would be immigration reform that included a

conditional path to legal status or citizenship for many of the twelve million or so people living in the country now without the necessary documentation. Tax reform that lowers corporate rates (among the world’s highest) is desirable, as are other reforms that would lower individual rates, as well as reduce so-called tax expenditures, such as being able to deduct what is spent on mortgage interest and charitable donations or not being taxed on employer health care contributions.

All of which brings me to the debt problem. What makes this issue particularly difficult is that it is part of a class of what I would describe as slow...

The cold truth is that the alternative to a U.S.–led international order is less international order. Growing world disarray cannot, however,

What seems all but certain, though, is that Asia in general,

and the Korean peninsula more specifically, will become a venue of considerably greater disarray. What is to be determined is just how much more.

No less certain is that such disarray will affect Americans and the United States. The good news is that the costs of promoting global order tend to be less than the costs of not; the bad news is that this truth does not seem to be recognized by many Americans, including the forty-fifth president. Abdication is as unwarranted as it is unwise.

The fact is a good deal of globalization is unavoidable, not a choice, and even when there is a degree of choice, embracing populism and nationalism make for poor choices. Trade and immigration have been engines of American innovation and economic growth; curtailing either or both

will prove expensive. In addition, it is a basic fact of living in a global world that no country can insulate itself from much of what happens elsewhere. As a result, in this century, sovereign obligations will need to complement sovereign rights if we do not wish the darker consequences of globalization to overwhelm us. A foreign policy based on sovereignty alone will not provide security in a global, interconne...