Dennis Ross, Statecraft: And How to Restore America's Standing in the World (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007), 384 pp., $26.00.

Amitai Etzioni, Security First: For a Muscular, Moral Foreign Policy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), 336 pp., $27.00.

Nina Hachigian and Mona Sutphen, The Next American Century: How the U.S. Can Thrive as Other Powers Rise (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008), 368 pp., $26.00.

 

NEARLY ALL of the 2008 presidential candidates-both Democrats and Republicans-have made some version of "restoring America's global leadership" a key foreign-policy priority. Dennis Ross, Amitai Etzioni, Nina Hachigian and Mona Sutphen have plenty of advice to offer-and their recommendations seem to parallel those often heard from "Republican realists." But aren't these authors on the other side of the aisle? The Washington Post identifies Dennis Ross as a foreign-policy advisor for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama; Amitai Etzioni is a long-standing member of the progressive community (and served in the Carter White House); Nina Hachigian and Mona Sutphen were part of the Clinton foreign-policy apparatus (and Hachigian is now based at the Center for American Progress).

But why should this approach to U.S. foreign policy be considered outside the mainstream of the Democratic Party? After all, one of the defining figures for the Democrats in the modern era-Franklin D. Roosevelt-would feel quite comfortable with the proposals laid out here. Paul Starobin, in his 2006 National Journal essay on foreign-policy realism, identified FDR as the "most cunning (and successful) realist ever to occupy the White House"-this, the president who co-authored the Atlantic Charter, with its vision of a world at peace, defined by free states. But FDR balanced his idealism-his hopes for a globe defined by his Four Freedoms-with a realistic assessment of what could be achieved in a given space of time. Unlike those British idealists who in 1940 called for war against both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union (under the assumption that both were totalitarian dictatorships), Roosevelt worked in stages-allying with the Soviet Union to ensure the liberation of Western Europe in 1945 and laying conditions for the eventual spread of freedom elsewhere. Susan Butler, who produced an edited volume of FDR's correspondence with Stalin, observed, "Roosevelt wanted to win the war; he wanted to win the peace that followed." Ross, Etzioni, Hachigian and Sutphen are the heirs of FDR's vision and approach.

Ross takes his service in two administrations (those of George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton) to produce a series of case studies (including how the reunification of Germany was accomplished in 1990, the formation of a truly international coalition to expel Saddam Hussein from Kuwait in 1991 and the emergence of a transatlantic consensus that facilitated joint action to bring about a peace settlement in Bosnia in 1995) that illustrate the lessons of "statecraft"-that the successful policymaker must have clear foreign-policy objectives in mind; understand what means are needed to achieve them; and know how to apply leverage to obtain desired outcomes. Ross has no objection to ambitious foreign-policy goals-as long as an administration has lined up the wherewithal to implement them. In many cases, this means that the United States will have to shape its objectives in ways that allow other states to become shareholders when they have the ability to make substantive contributions.

His principal criticism of the current administration-criticism he hopes a future president will take to heart-is not as much with specific policy choices made by the Bush team but with its lack of effectiveness-its propensity for engaging in foreign policy "on the cheap" and its seeming unwillingness to undertake the "intensive and extensive efforts" to convince other governments to support its plans. He contrasts this with what Secretary of State James Baker did to secure votes for the United Nations resolutions that first imposed sanctions on Iraq and then authorized the use of force to expel Saddam Hussein from Kuwait-bringing together a coalition of states where the burdens of the first Gulf War were truly shared. The first Bush Administration never compromised on what it sought to achieve in Kuwait, but Baker, in private, conveyed a message to other capitals that, in asking for their support of U.S. plans, "if there was something we could do to make it easier for them to do so, they should let us know what that might be."

What happens if another country wants to be "left alone" in return for cooperation on our top priorities? Say, if an authoritarian regime agrees to give up a nuclear-weapons program in return for security guarantees from the United States? Amitai Etzioni argues that this is a bargain worth considering, especially if one can demonstrate concrete results. In Security First, Etzioni argues that the United States would be well served digesting the "Libya Lesson"-Muammar Qaddafi's willingness to give up his nuclear- and chemical-weapons components and end his support for terrorist groups in return for reintegration into the international system as a legitimate member of the family of nations. "There is little to be lost and much to be gained by providing security guarantees and other rewards in exchange for vigorous and verified deproliferation and an end to harboring, financing and equipping terrorists", he observes.

If a necessary trade-off for compliance with a U.S. security agenda is for Washington to stop engaging in regime transformation, especially in pursuing democratization, then so be it. Etzioni has little faith that "big bang" efforts designed to produce instant democracies will succeed. He finds himself in agreement with what Richard Haass wrote in these pages one year ago-"the principal business of American foreign policy must be the foreign policy, not the domestic policy, of others."

Why Etzioni is skeptical of U.S. "social engineering" in the name of democratization comes from his assessment that, at present, many in the world-and certainly a majority among Muslims-are best described as "illiberal moderates." These are people who reject violence and extremism and support the concept of an accountable government operating under a rule of law but do not subscribe to Western notions of secularism or cultural pluralism-for example, Iraq's Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. If the United States adopts an approach that only liberal democrats are worthy partners for Washington, then America runs the risk of rejecting "hundreds of millions that might be at least neutral if not allies in fighting against terrorism and other forms of violence."

It is important to note that when Etzioni speaks about giving security guarantees to an authoritarian state, he does not include defending that regime against genuine internal challenges that favor reform and democracy. But his views seem more in line with Irving Kristol's statement, made in the first issue of this magazine, that spreading democracy is not the principal task of U.S. foreign policy, but rather creating the conditions "so that the nations of the world can have the opportunity to realize whatever potential for popular government and economic prosperity they may possess, or come to possess."

Etzioni sees major powers acting in concert as a cornerstone for the architecture of global security, a theme he explored in more depth with his 2004 foreign-policy opus, From Empire to Community. This idea is taken up in far greater detail by Nina Hachigian and Mona Sutphen in The Next American Century: How the U.S. Can Thrive as Other Powers Rise. They posit that the United States should work to bring the five other "pivotal powers"-China, the European Union, Japan, India and Russia-into alignment around a shared agenda for global security.

Hachigian, who was a National Security Council staffer during the second term of the Clinton Administration, and Sutphen, who served as special assistant to Clinton's national security advisor, Sandy Berger, recognize that the global balance of power is changing; that despite America's continued predominance, the other pivotal powers "do challenge American dominance and impinge on the freedom of action the U.S. has come to enjoy and expect." Rather than focusing on the negatives, however, they believe that these six powers have the same vested interests: All are dependent on the free flow of goods around the world and all require global stability in order to ensure continued economic growth (and the prosperity it engenders).

Hachigian and Sutphen propose bringing these powers into a new global concert (a C-6), either via a reform of the UN Security Council or by linking the C-6 to the G-8 assemblage. Through such a mechanism, they believe we can avoid the dilemma posed by General Brent Scowcroft earlier this year: "The world is not susceptible to U.S. domination-but without U.S. leadership not much can be achieved." Instead, they argue that the C-6 means that Washington would "be engaged enough for problems to get solved, yet not so involved that it discourages pivotal power responsibility or overspends its own finite resources."

But the C-6 is not a "League of Democracies" of the type envisioned by Senator John McCain (R-AZ), since it would contain two clearly illiberal states-Russia and China. This raises the question: Would the C-6 formula require America not only to make substantial compromises to other states but also to reduce its ability to press for democratization around the globe?

Essay Types: Book Review