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2 COMMENT The art of the
possible By Lee H Hamilton
reforms. The requisite
identification of the costs we were willing to
endure was markedly absent. In short, once set,
such goals lead to dilemmas for everyone from the
cabinet official in Washington to the diplomat to
the soldier on the ground.
Our resources
are not unlimited. We cannot effectively fight a
war in Iraq, stabilize Afghanistan, deal with Iran
and North Korea, and combat radical Islamist
terrorism and nuclear proliferation around
the
world. When we try to do everything at once, we do
things less well. And we certainly become even
more reactive, wrestling with implementing these
huge goals and not anticipating what might be over
the horizon: the next September 11 or the next
nuclear domino to fall. In turn, we often have
trouble sustaining our policies.
It is
important for presidents to rally and inspire the
nation and for specialists to consider ambitious
solutions to the challenges that we face. Yet
those efforts must be complemented - in both our
political discourse and our policymaking process -
with a greater focus on how these goals will be
carried out in practice and how they will impact
the lives of ordinary Americans. All of our
policies should be able to pass the basic test of
pragmatism: not just how proposals sound in
speeches or what they would accomplish with
limitless resources - but how would they work out
in practice?
That means we should seek
progress instead of perfection in our policies.
And we should be more precise in our aims. Let's
take the "war on terror": instead of conflating
all terrorist and extremist groups, we should
focus our resources on the core of al-Qaeda.
Instead of demanding the change of regimes we do
not like, we should try to change their behavior -
and we must decide what kinds of behavior deserve
our immediate attention because there is plenty of
egregious behavior in the world to go around.
Instead of demanding the immediate transformation
of closed governments into full-blown democracies,
we should seek the extension of more rights and
opportunities to their citizens, and more
transparency and accountability by their
governments. Instead of demanding American
hegemony, we should try to shape a multipolar
international system to serve our interests, as is
the case with the six-party talks over North Korea
and the Iraq Study Group's proposed regional
conference on Iraq's future. We should be
idealists without illusions and pragmatists with a
vision.
One cannot discuss foreign policy
today without mentioning democracy, but the
democracy that demands the most attention is our
own.
The understandable fact is that
foreign-policy debates are driven by domestic
politics. Thus, candidates often fall back on
sloganeering - debates about who is "tough" or
"strong" or, as the cover of the previous issue of
The National Interest phrased it, who loves
America more. Instead of looking ahead to how a
candidate will govern in office, much of the
debate revolves around a simplified or partisan
analysis of the headlines - so as a candidate,
Bush decried "nation-building" in reference to
Kosovo, but it became a central aspect of his own
foreign policy; or Bill Clinton ran for
re-election on a collection of domestic policy
platforms, and then focused his second term on the
Balkans and Middle East peacemaking. When ethnic
constituencies come into play - as they do, for
instance, with Cuba or the Middle East - campaign
positions can be shaped by our political map, not
our overarching interests.
The political
considerations of foreign policy are even more
acute in Congress. Foreign policy rarely dominates
congressional campaigns. When it does - or when it
comes to votes - members are often driven by party
discipline or ethnic politics. I'll never forget
talking to one member about a particularly
contentious question involving US policy toward
Turkey. My colleague told me his district was 100%
for taking a hard line toward the Turks. When I
asked him the basis of this determination, he said
he'd heard about the issue at three Greek Orthodox
churches over the last recess.
The problem
with this simplified or distorted debate is that
whereas education or health-care policies are
subjected to extensive vetting by a broad
cross-section of the American population, foreign
policy ends up being debated and shaped by an
elite group of people -academics, pundits,
lobbyists and activists who follow the issues
closely. It is from this group that the
president's closest advisors are chosen. This was
the case when I came to Congress in 1965, and it
is very much the same today. With regard to
military intervention - which takes place at an
alarming clip of roughly one major intervention
every two years - this may be more pronounced
today since we shifted to an all-volunteer
fighting force, insulating the direct consequences
of military action from the vast majority of the
American people.
This is not to criticize
America's foreign-policy elite - many talented and
patriotic individuals rise through these ranks.
But there are problems borne out of this
disconnect between policymaking and the people.
The decision-making responsibility that
policymakers inside the beltway have is
disproportionately greater - in astronomical terms
- to the burdens they bear for those policies. The
opposite is true of the American people. Ordinary
Americans - not just the troops and their
families, but taxpayers who fund expensive
endeavors, consumers and workers whose well-being
is increasingly tied to our relations with other
countries, or, most dramatically, the person going
to work in the World Trade Center - pay the price
for our policy follies. Yet the root of so many
ambitious foreign-policy decisions - take, for
example, the decision to go to war in Iraq - is
made by a strikingly small group of people.
After September 11, Americans knew we
needed to be more engaged in the world. After the
shock of the last few years, Americans understand
the limits of what we can accomplish. They are
ready for leadership that speaks candidly about
these questions: laying out goals that are
achievable; setting priorities; using our awesome
power not to transform the world, but rather to
make the lives of ordinary Americans safer and
better, moving the arc of history steadily in the
right direction.
Lee H Hamilton
is the president and director of the Woodrow
Wilson International Center for Scholars. He
served as the chairman and ranking member of the
House Committee on Foreign Affairs, co-chair of
the Iraq Study Group and vice-chair of the 9/11
Commission.
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