Going It Alone

By Strobe Talbott

The bombing attack against Libya is the most dramatic example to date of an important theme in the foreign policy of the Reagan Administration: a determination to use American military power against enemies anywhere in the world, regardless of whether the U.S. has the support of its allies. Being a superpower often means not having to say either please or sorry.

Pundits and political scientists have a fancy, almost tongue-tying bit of jargon for this tendency: global unilateralism. That phrase has been bandied about by both admirers and critics of the Administration, as well as by others who are ambivalent about official American attitudes and behavior.

Several other examples of global unilateralism look, in retrospect, like dress rehearsals for this latest, most spectacular and most controversial military clash in the Reagan era. In 1981 the U.S. Navy made quick work of Gaddafi's air force over the Gulf of Sidra, and late last month the U.S. bloodied those waters again. There were also the 1983 invasion of Grenada and last year's interception of an Egyptian airliner with the Achille Lauro hijackers aboard.

The new American penchant for going it alone is also apparent in two more general commitments of the Administration: the so-called Reagan Doctrine of support for anti-Communist guerrilla movements and the Strategic Defense Initiative, or Star Wars.

The Reagan Doctrine holds that the U.S. should bypass nervous and sometimes unreliable foreign friends in order to harass and, if possible, overthrow Moscow's clients in the Third World. SDI, as originally conceived by Reagan in 1983, was a deus ex machina of global unilateralism: a made-in-the-U.S.A. system for effectively disarming the Soviet Union and any other foreign threat to the U.S. (including, in a number of scenarios, a nuclear-armed Gaddafi or other Islamic firebrand.

These policies--whether quick-and-dirty one-shot actions such as Sidra I, II and III or long-term strategies such as the Reagan Doctrine and Star Wars --have evoked mixed reactions abroad. Denis Healey, the British Labor Party's most prominent spokesman on foreign policy, has continually protested global unilateralism in so many words. Last week Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze, sensing a new buzz word in the Esperanto of Uncle Sam bashing, denounced the U.S. for "neoglobalism." At the same time, public remonstrations from the chancelleries of Europe and elsewhere have often been modulated with whispered encouragement to Washington to keep up the good work. The point about global unilateralism, however, is not whether others like it or not, but that the U.S. no longer cares quite so much one way or the other.

. While the Reagan Administration has given global unilateralism both doctrinal and operational standing that it did not have before, the phenomenon has been around for decades. After World War II, the U.S. found itself with global interests, global responsibilities and global reach. It also had in the Soviet Union an adversary of far-reaching ambitions and capabilities. Yet American alliances were, and remained, essentially regional. In the '50s and '60s, the U.S. worked hard to give its allies a sense that they were partners in the U.S.'s worldwide mission.

But the allies often balked, questioning the ends and means of American policy in far-flung corners of the world and resisting participation in American missions. The West Europeans' ability to understand, and willingness to support, American exertions of force seemed inversely proportional to the distance of a trouble spot from the center of Europe. Even the Korean War, while fought under the flag of the United Nations and with the help of brave but largely token contingents from 15 other countries, was essentially an American (and, of course, South Korean) enterprise. The Viet Nam War was not just a losing exercise, it was an anguishingly, and disillusioningly, lonely one. Then in the late '70s and early '80s, the U.S. found itself at cross purposes with friends and allies over Iran and Nicaragua.

The battle against terrorism has been frustrating in a different way and, in terms of the Atlantic Alliance, especially divisive. NATO is supposed to be based not just on shared geopolitical interests but on shared values as well. The trouble is that as in other, bigger wars, allied territory is often the battleground in the war of terrorism. That makes West Europeans less enthusiastic than Americans for shoot-'em-up methods and more inclined to subtlety if not accommodation. To large numbers of Americans, however, the apparent willingness of many West Europeans to tolerate Arab terrorism as a fact of life has made them seem not just parochial but pusillanimous.

Moreover, many Americans, particularly those on the resurgent right, have long worried that while the U.S. was observing the niceties of bilateralism and multilateralism and all those other virtuous isms, the Soviet Union was very unilaterally getting away with murder around the world. It was time to play the Great Game by the same rules as the other superpower.

A number of conservative thinkers began to propound a radical form of . global unilateralism: since alliances and international bodies have become an impediment to the vigorous, assertive defense of the national interest, it is time for the U.S. to disregard if not jettison the U.N., NATO and the rest.

President Reagan has stopped well short of following that extreme advice. He has an instinctive attachment to the vision not of Fortress America (that would be isolationism), but of Battleship America--or, more to the point last week, Aircraft Carrier America, steaming around the seven seas, flying the flag in friendly ports and, when provoked, launching air strikes against unfriendly ones. But he has tried to find a middle ground between global unilateralism and what might be called traditional internationalism. He has adopted a pattern of consulting allies in advance, welcoming their support if they offer it and trying to allay their misgivings if they object--but he is not going to make their backing a precondition for American action.

Whatever the merits of last week's attack, that essentially moderate approach to the allies was in evidence. As Reagan put it in his Monday-night address to the nation, "I said that we would act with others if possible and alone if necessary." Such is the lot of a superpower.