A U.S.-led Coalition
For an Era of Global Turbulence

We’re all to speak for a few minutes about America’s leadership role. Let me concentrate on the security dimension and begin by reminding you that when the Commission was founded, the security condition of the world was defined largely in bipolar terms and the critical phrase which captured the essence of the security problem was, of course, the “Cold War.”

Not quite a decade ago, the Cold War came to an end and we all started searching for another formula which would capture the essence of the new situation in which we found ourselves. A phrase emerged which was meant to describe the fundamental character of the security condition of the world, and it was the “New World Order.” The New World Order was to imply accommodation, cooperation. Initially, implicit in it was the idea of a de facto American-Soviet condominium, because the Soviet Union was reforming—these were the late Gorbachev years—and the notion was that the two would cooperate. Subsequently, after the fall of the Soviet Union, “assertive multilateralism” emerged, with the implicit notion that the U.N. would help to shore up the New World Order. Of course, very quickly we discovered that assertive multilateralism was an oxymoron and that the New World Order wasn’t there.

We have come to recognize increasingly that global security rests very much on a central new fact of life, the new reality. Namely, for the first time in human affairs, there is a global superpower that stands alone. That has never happened before, and the United States, of course, is that only global superpower, the first global superpower in the history of mankind.

But it has also become evident to us, and increasingly so, that the United States cannot exercise that special security role, in spite of its status as a superpower, all by itself. First of all, preponderance, which the United States indeed does exercise, is not the same as omnipotence. We have found, over and over again, that preponderance is not omnipotence. And secondly, and perhaps even more importantly, the first global superpower, this “hegemon,” to use an old-fashioned word, is also uniquely a democracy. And there has never been a truly imperial power that was at the same time a populist democracy. And as a democracy, the United States is reluctant to undertake excessive burdens, to shed too much blood, to make the kind of sacrifices which are necessary in order to exercise a dominant, assertive security leadership role.

Occasionally, the problem has been compounded by manifestations of an absence of strategy, and occasionally by the tendency for policy to be driven by specific domestic impulses. I have particularly in mind the tendency of specific domestic groups to dictate wide-ranging sanctions, adopted against some 30-40 countries—more than any other nation has ever attempted or any other nations combined have ever attempted to impose.

The problem is also compounded by the absence of vigorous partners who are interested in global security. Europe—an emerging Europe—is clearly a most important partner of the United States; but Europe is at best “unifying” (it certainly isn’t “united”), and its record on such issues as Bosnia has not been one of assertive security leadership. Japan, a most important partner of the United States, is going through a difficult phase in its domestic policy and it is still struggling to define its regional role, and indeed its global role, particularly in this very complicated and sensitive area of security. That compounds the dilemmas inherent in a democracy being the only global superpower.

Of course, all of the foregoing is made even more difficult by the reality of a series of international crises. In the Middle East, and in the Persian Gulf, American policy is not steady, it isn’t very clear. And there are serious gaps between the United States and some of its partners. Regarding North Korea, we have not been able to fashion a policy which addresses the progressive acquisition by North Korea of surreptitious nuclear weapons, and this is causing some problems in our relations with our Japanese partners. Russia, which we once viewed as a potential partner in the New World Order, is going through a deep crisis which is bound to last, in my view, for at least a decade or so, a crisis which is pregnant with potential risks to global peace, given the concentration of nuclear weapons in the former Soviet Union. And, last but not least, China, despite the easy forecasts that it is going to be the next global power, is in fact likely in the course of the next two decades to emerge at most as a very significant regional power, and is also likely to experience growing internal difficulties.

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All of that compounds the global security problem and leads in my mind to several conclusions. First of all, if we are to capture the essence of the present global security condition, clearly “Cold War” is no longer applicable, neither is “New World Order.” In my view, perhaps the simplest description is to speak of “global turbulence.” We are in a phase of global turbulence, in that there is likely to be no central war, no massive global catastrophe arising out of the security dimension, but in all probability percolating regional conflicts with which it will be difficult to cope, and with which the United States will be reluctant to cope on its own, and our partners even less so.

Secondly, we are likely to be living through a phase in which we will not be confronted by any grand ideological challenge of the sort that dominated much of this century, which posed philosophical, moral, and political issues in terms of black and white, of sharp dichotomy. But we are likely to be living in a phase of philosophical ambiguity and moral incertitude. We see some of that at home. We see it also on the global stage. And that’s going to contribute to a sense of uncertainty, of relativism, of, probably, a lack of direction.

The third conclusion which emerges from the foregoing is that, above all else, what we need on the global scene is an effective democratic coalition—a democratic coalition that is genuinely sensitive to the dilemmas of global security and tries to address them on a coalitional basis. The United States has to take the lead in shaping that coalition, given its unique position. But we will not be able to succeed in doing so unless we have a more unified Europe, which means a progressive expansion of the European Union and the progressive expansion of NATO, so that there are no zones of insecurity in Europe. And it also means that Japan becomes more involved, gradually, in coordinated efforts to enhance global security and successful in reconciling itself with its neighbors (in that respect Japan has lagged behind what Germany has been able to accomplish in Europe). We do need an internationally involved, internationally engaged Japan.