New post-Cold War paradigm emerging in wake of
attacks
By BERNARD F. DONAHUE
Earthshaking events appear in many forms. Some are as natural as
earthquakes; some are as manmade as terrorist attacks and some are paradigm
shifts. Paradigm shifts? In 1962 Thomas Kuhns The Structure of
Scientific Revolutions introduced the idea of the paradigm as an accepted
set of principles by which the world is viewed.
A paradigm shift occurs when one paradigm replaces another
paradigm. For example, such a revolution occurred when Copernicus asserted that
the earth existed in a heliocentric universe, not the geocentric one of
Ptolemaic theory. This produced a paradigm shift of cosmic proportions.
Humankind was no longer the center of the universe, at least spatially. The
need for a profound reorientation of ones ideas about the world one lives
in becomes obvious and necessary in such a situation. As can be expected,
revolutions bring real and serious problems for people, as Galileo, for one
example, encountered in his appearance before the Inquisition. Old
absolutes die hard; new realities are difficult to
understand.
Many of us have lived long enough to have experienced two paradigm
shifts of, to my way of thinking, cosmic proportions. One was the
shift from the paradigm of World War II to the paradigm of the Cold War, from a
balance of power system to a bipolar world dominated by two superpowers, the
United States and the Soviet Union. It was a conflict to determine whether the
principles of a Pax Americana or a Pax Sovietica would govern the
world. It was a surreal world in which former mortal enemies became allies and
former allies became mortal enemies. Weapons of mass destruction that had ended
one war became the means of mutually assured destruction in a Cold War. This
produced a nuclear stalemate between the superpowers, but did not prevent local
wars. It was a world in which a global balance of terror supported
peaceful coexistence.
The other paradigm shift many of us have experienced began with
the end of the Cold War and its paradigm. The accepted set of
principles by which nations, principally the United States and the
U.S.S.R., viewed the world of that era fell apart with the demise of the Soviet
Union in 1991. The national security concerns that attended the ideologically
based bipolar struggle of the two superpowers underwent a profound
transformation.
Foreign policies going by the names of containment and wars of
national liberation became obsolete, as did the Truman Doctrine, Eisenhower
Doctrine, Nixon Doctrine, Reagan Doctrine and Brezhnev Doctrine that spawned
them. Terminology such as First World, Second World and Third World lost
coherence. Alliances such as the Warsaw Pact and the Southeast Asia Treaty
Organization ceased to exist. And so it went.
However, its successor paradigm did not have the benefit of a
cosmic theory or a body of doctrines to provide an accepted set of principles
to fashion a new architecture of the international system. The
paradigm of world politics today is not the balance of power system of the 19th
and early 20th centuries, which ended with World War II. It is not the bipolar
system of the Cold War. The fact is, there is no clear-cut, generally accepted
post-Cold War paradigm to provide insights into the twists and turns of
todays international politics, particularly in the wake of the terrorist
actions of Sept. 11.
Same old geostrategies
However, it now appears certain that the United States will focus
its foreign policy and national security concerns on the War Against Terrorism
that has been declared by the Bush administration, a turn of events that could
produce a post-Cold War paradigm of international relations. Given this
situation, one can fall back upon some old and basic principles that have
guided the United States in meeting previous national crises. During my
teaching career over the last 35 years, geopolitics served that purpose. It is
still a useful tool of analysis for providing insights into the present and the
future of American foreign policy. The United States still maintains several
major geostrategies that it pursued under the Cold War paradigm and its
predecessors and which today still guide the use of its national security
assets. They are the maritime, the continental and the hemispheric
geostrategies.
The United States became a world power by establishing itself,
first of all, as a sea power. Even before World War I, it adopted a maritime
geostrategy. By means of the Spanish-American War in 1898, the United States
announced its bid to become a major power. Now with the Cold War ended and the
War Against Terrorism begun, its future as a great power still depends upon its
maintaining the same geopolitical base. The use of the world ocean for
conducting trade and protecting national security, while also denying its use
to any who threaten U.S. interests, remain vital national interests.
The presence of the recently established Fifth Fleet in the
Persian Gulf attests to that fact today. The geopolitics of oil led the United
States to wage a war against Iraq in the Persian Gulf in 1991, and nothing has
changed the U.S. intention to protect the oil supplies of that region. However,
that naval presence has now become a part of the War Against Terrorism. The
deployment of four carrier battle groups to the waters adjacent to South Asia
placed some of our national security assets at the service of the U.S. effort
to eliminate terrorism.
Of course, in this matter as in so many others, much depends upon
the will of the American people. After World War I, the isolationist mood took
hold, and the United States rejected membership in the League of Nations. After
World War II the internationalist perspective prevailed, and the United States
championed the cause of the United Nations and other international agencies. It
also undertook the work of building security communities around the globe at
great costs in human and material resources. Through it all the United States
stood firm as the leader of the free world. Ten years after the end
of the Cold War, the American public found new reasons to support the extent to
which it will be engaged with the rest of the world in pursuing its maritime or
any other geostrategy.
One test of this renewed purpose will also certainly focus upon
the U.S. commitment to another of its geostrategic moorings, the continental
geostrategy with which it flirted in World War I, firmly adopted during World
War II and continued during and after the Cold War. Events on the Eurasian
continent during the last half of the 20th century convinced the American
people that the defense of U.S. national security interests began on the shores
opposite its Atlantic and Pacific coasts, not on its own shorelines.
Americans continued support for the Cold War continental geostrategy of
membership in NATO and of security treaties with Japan and South Korea remains
firm. The present commitment of U.S. military forces to peacekeeping in the
Balkans and on the Korean peninsula offers further evidence that the U.S.
continental geostrategy is still alive. But what about future tests of American
resolve?
Strategic surprises have been a part of history -- from the Trojan
horse to Pearl Harbor to the collapse of the Soviet Union to the terrorist
actions of Sept. 11. Powder kegs exist today in various parts of
the globe, with real possibilities of exploding in American faces. The
face-offs between China and Taiwan, Israel and its Arab neighbors, India and
Pakistan, Iran and Iraq and now the U.S. confrontation with the forces of
terrorism present the American people with the necessity of redefining the
maritime and continental geostrategies they inherited from the Cold War
era.
The misadventure in Somalia, which cost American lives, certainly
tempered our desire to respond militarily to regional flash points that do not
affect vital U.S. national interests. In that sense, the global cop
of the Cold War paradigm may have retired. That does seem to be the case in the
region that is the focus of the third long-standing U.S. geostrategy -- the
Western Hemisphere.
In our own hemisphere
From the assertion of the Monroe Doctrine to the military
interventions of the Cold War, the United States acquired a long and somewhat
inglorious history of relations with its hemispheric neighbors to the south.
Its unilateralist approach to those relations was often more appropriate to the
actions of an imperialist power than those of a good neighbor. Now,
however, the Cold War fears of Soviet penetration of its sphere of
influence are gone, and the United States is free to adopt a
multilateralist rather than a unilateralist approach in its hemispheric
geostrategy. This is an approach to international relations that the United
States employed during the Cold War to promote its own national interests --
from the founding of NATO to its leadership of the Persian Gulf coalition
against Saddam Hussein and to its building of an anti-terrorist coalition among
states today.
It is now also the approach the United States is using in its
relations with the nations of the Western Hemisphere.
The integration of national economies has become one of the
hallmarks of the globalization process and one of the major aspects of
multilateralism today. The establishment of the North American Free Trade
Agreement, NAFTA, has engaged the United States with Canada and Mexico in a
multilateral effort to create an economic bloc in the midst of other economic
blocs, such as the European Union. The need for a regional solution to the
economic problems of the Western Hemisphere has been made obvious by the
disparity between the rich and the poor nations and the problems this situation
creates for the region. The United States, for example, acts like a magnet
attracting undocumented workers by the millions from the countries to its
south.
Thus, it has embraced the multilateralist approach in its
hemisphere not only through NAFTA, but also by participating in the Summit of
the Americas, which has brought together the heads of state of the
hemispheres nations in 1994, 1998 and 2001. This bodys most
significant economic initiative has been its call for the formation of the Free
Trade Area of the Americas, FTAA, by 2005. Indeed, the future course of
multilateral efforts by the United States seems well established by these
recent actions in the Western Hemisphere and by its efforts to put together a
coalition of nations committed to the War Against Terrorism.
One last caveat to mention is the possibility of the United
States pursuing a unilateralist approach to some of its relations with
other nations. The issues currently surrounding the building of a national
missile defense shield, particularly the issue of unilaterally abandoning the
Antiballistic Missile Treaty, raise the specter of the United States
succumbing to a go-it-alone approach in regard to some major international
issues. As the only superpower left after the Cold War, the United States must
be wary about committing any acts of hubris. Its efforts to put together
a multinational coalition against terrorism after the events of Sept. 11, have
served to affirm its recognition of the need for a multilateral approach to
important, common problems. It is certainly the approach that is needed
to enlist other states in the war against terrorism.
By maintaining the national interests protected by its maritime,
continental and hemispheric geostrategies, the United States has some major
foundations upon which to conduct its relations with other states in the
post-Cold War world. At the same time, the American people must preserve the
mood of internationalism that has brought it to its present greatness.
Americans must also be prepared for strategic surprises, particularly in the
war against terrorism. Warnings about the role of chance events in the affairs
of states issued by Thucydides and Machiavelli should be taken seriously,
especially by a nation that is capable of being seduced by the arrogance of
power.
The emerging paradigm of international relations, with its hope
for a new and better world order inspiring it, would be devastated by a tragic
American failure in good judgment. With enlightened American leadership,
however, a non-imperialistic Pax Americana may emerge with the end of
the Cold War. As the leader of an anti-terrorist coalition of states, the
United States could mobilize the efforts of all states that seek to eliminate
the horrors for which Sept. 11 has become the symbol. That is a worthy goal for
the United States in confronting the menace of terrorism. It could also be the
basis for a new paradigm of international relations.
Oblate of St. Francis de Sales Fr. Bernard F. Donahue is
retired professor of politics at De Sales University, Center Valley, Pa.,
and a former National Endowment for the Humanities professor at Princeton
University.
National Catholic Reporter, October 19,
2001
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