America in a Multipolar World—Whatever That Is

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AMERICA IN A_ MULTIPOLAR WORLDWHATEVER THAT IS Alan Tonelson JLt's official—international politics is becoming more multipolar. The list of statesmen, academics, think-tank staffers, and journalists that has endorsed this view reads like a Who's Who of today's American foreign policy community. It includes conservatives such as former UN AmbassadorJeane Kirkpatrick, former Undersecretary of Defense Fred C. IkIe, and University of Chicago political scientist Albert Wohlstetter; moderates such as former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger, former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, and former State Department officials Lawrence Eagleburger, Kenneth Dam, and Helmut Sonnenfeldt; liberals such as former Secretary of State Cyrus R. Vance, editorialists at The New York Times, and Harvard professors Stanley Hoffman , Joseph S. Nye, Jr., and Graham Allison; and "realist" critics of American foreign policy such as Yale historian Paul Kennedy, Princeton political scientist Robert Gilpin, SAIS professor David P. Calleo, and author James Chace. Yet the identification of emerging multipolarity raises more questions than it answers, particularly in its implications for U.S. foreign policy . This is because multipolarity itself can assume, in theory, a variety of forms, and because each of these forms can affect, in theory, the United States in any number ofways. The debate over multipolarity in turn raises a more fundamental question about a practice that, almost unnoticed, has become a fixture in the formulation of U.S. foreign policy: Can Alan Tonelson, associate editor of Foreign Policy from 1983 to 1987, is writing a book for The Twentieth Century Fund on redefining U.S. foreign policy interests. 45 46 SAIS REVIEW contemporary analyses of any supposed international trends say anything definitive about the nature of America's international interests? In other words, is any reading of unfolding international political developments per se capable of serving as a reliable guide for the making of American foreign policy? America's experience in the post-World War II era indicates that the answer is "No," and that U.S. leaders and foreign policy analysts inside and outside the government should start concentrating less on crystalball gazing and speculating about the future course of human history, and more on studying the international requirements of American security and prosperity that will exist no matter what shape world affairs take. Multiple Notions of Multipolarity Many of the grand concepts that have marked post-World War II U.S. foreign policy—containment, collective security, the Truman Doctrine, the Eisenhower Doctrine, the Nixon Doctrine, the Reagan Doctrine , and others— have meant many different things to different people. Multipolarity so far is no exception. The essence of the concept seems to be that, after decades of being dominated by two superpowers and the rival camps that they headed, world politics is witnessing the effective disintegration of the superpower blocs, and the emergence of new power centers—chiefly Western Europe, Japan, and China. But in its manifold versions, multipolarity encompasses other developments as well. Many believe that big Third World countries like India, Brazil, or Saudi Arabia also belong on the list of new power centers being created by multipolarizing trends. Others argue that the blocs are simply undergoing a major transformation, but remain intact and will continue to do so. In this vein, multipolarity is sometimes viewed primarily as an economic and financial phenomenon, especially by those who confine it to the industrialized world. But others, especially those who emphasize its relevance to understanding the Third World, see multipolarity as taking political and military forms as well and giving these countries increased capacities to resist the dictates ofthe industrialized countries. At the same time many of these foreign-policy thinkers have closely associated multipolarity with what they see as the declining role of military force in international relations. An ideological dimension is often added to multipolarity as well. Specifically, it is held to signal the world's growing political and philosophical diversity, as increasing numbers of restless countries, eager to blaze their own political trails, have become ever more difficult to pigeonhole as pro-Western or pro-Soviet, communist or capitalist, democratic or AMERICA IN A MULTIPOLAR WORLD 47 authoritarian. Related to this trend, at least in the view of many commentators during the 1970s...