Prometheus 6

A New Grand Strategy
The U.S. must see that in today's world, its principles carry more heft than economic, political and military might.
By Gary Hart

July 29, 2004

Although the Cold War ended more than a decade ago, in August 1991, our political system has not yet produced a new, grand strategy for the United States to replace containment of communism.

Until Sept. 11, this failure might have been attributable to the lack of a common enemy. Since then, the strategic vacuum has been filled, but only partly, by the war on terrorism.

But I believe it is not enough for the world's greatest power — greatness measured in every traditional dimension of economic, political and military power — to limit its strategic focus to crushing only one method (terrorism) employed by one radical fundamentalist network (Al Qaeda). Shouldn't we have a greater and nobler purpose in the 21st century world?

Our new century is dynamic in four revolutionary ways: globalization, information, sovereignty and conflict. Globalization and information technology are revolutionizing international markets and finance and transforming whole economies and societies. They in turn are eroding traditional nation-state sovereignty and compromising the state's ability to provide economic and physical security. Weakening of the state's monopoly on violence has led to the transformation of war and fundamental alterations in the nature of conflict.

Neither an ad hoc approach — "We'll deal with these issues as they arise" — nor the Bush administration's "war on terrorism" is an adequate framework for defining the role of the United States in the years ahead. The European nation-state is giving way to the United Europe, thus making restoration of the Atlantic Alliance problematic. The Chinese and Indian economic explosions, national redefinition in Japan and a nuclear North Korea all require fresh U.S. policies on Asia. Elsewhere, failed states, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, epidemics, mass migrations and global warming — the new agenda of the century — all require closer international collaboration and probably new international institutions.

A grand strategy is simply the application of a nation's powers to the achievement of larger purposes. I would argue we have three such purposes: to ensure security (both for ourselves and, where possible, for others), to expand opportunity and to promote liberal democracy around the world. And to achieve them, we can harness three powers — economic, political and military — far superior to anyone else's. Our economy is larger than the next four or five national economies combined. We have an unrivaled diplomatic and political network. And soon we will spend more on our military than the rest of the world combined.

But we also have a fourth power, shared by few if any other great nations in history. That power is contained in our founding principles, the constitutional statement of who we are, what we believe and how we have chosen to govern ourselves. The idea that government exists to protect, not oppress, the individual has an enormous power not fully understood by most Americans, who take this principle for granted from birth. Far more nations will follow us because of the power of this ideal than the might of all our weapons.

But the power of principle is complex: It is our greatest strategic asset and our greatest national constraint. Our principles are the predominant reason we are admired in the world, but on those occasions when we fail to live up to these principles, we are weakened accordingly.