America Abroad

By Strobe Talbott

George Bush is back in Washington for no more than a week before flying off again. He is, as so often seems the case, between summits. It is no secret that this most peripatetic of Presidents prefers diplomacy to what he sometimes calls the "domestic stuff."

Next time he has a quiet moment at 35,000 ft., he should put aside his briefing books long enough to sample a spate of recent articles and speeches that all say the same thing: Come home, America. Now that the Red Menace is history and the Emir of Kuwait is back on his throne, many of Bush's constituents would like him to do more to save their schools, hospitals, banks, jobs and pensions.

In a fire-breathing cover story in the July Atlantic, Alan Tonelson of the Economic Strategy Institute, a Washington think tank, denounces the "irrelevance of our recent foreign policy, and even its victories, to the concerns of most Americans." The U.S., he says, should junk the idea of "exercising something called leadership" and "insulate" itself from the disasters of the Third World. He would also have the U.S. abandon "overseas missions that, however appealing, bear only marginally on protecting and enriching the nation." The list of activities he believes so qualify includes "promoting peace, stability, democracy and development around the world" and "protecting human rights."

Tonelson's piece is an extreme example of a widespread sentiment. The American labor movement is in a protectionist mood. So are many members of Congress. Local officials, bedeviled by deficits and cutbacks, fulminate at the idea of U.S. aid to the former evil empire. At a recent meeting of the National League of Cities, Sidney Barthelemy, the mayor of New Orleans, said, "The Federal Government needs to shift its priorities from continuing to assist and aid everybody outside America ((while)) ignoring the problems inside America."

Yet the message to Bush cannot be dismissed as neoisolationist. For one thing, in several cases the messengers have internationalist credentials as good as his own. In May, William Hyland, editor of Foreign Affairs, wrote a guest column for the New York Times calling on the U.S. to "start selectively disengaging" from overseas commitments, "a psychological turn inward" and a Marshall Plan "to put our house in order." Four weeks later, the Times's own James Reston argued that "the main threat to our nation's security ((comes)) from within" and urged Bush to build a "new American order." Meanwhile, Peter Peterson, chairman of both the Council on Foreign Relations and the Institute for International Economics, is advocating "the primacy of the domestic agenda."

Some version of this theme is sure to figure in the Democrats' presidential campaign next year. It's a safe bet their candidate won't echo John F. Kennedy's exhortation to "pay any price, bear any burden." Instead, Thomas Jefferson's warning against entangling alliances is back in fashion. Reston endorses John Quincy Adams' injunction to go "not abroad in search of monsters to destroy," while Hyland offers his own version: "The enemy is not at the gate, but it may already be inside."

There's still a case to be made for post-cold war internationalism. Renewal at home and active involvement overseas are not an either-or proposition. Quite the contrary, they are interdependent. As Robert Hormats, a veteran economist and policymaker, puts it, "The crisis in our educational system undercuts our productivity, which weakens our competitiveness, which lowers our political standing, which reduces our ability to influence world events."

At the same time, to deal with their daunting domestic agenda, Americans need global stability and open markets. The U.S. exports about 13% of what it produces, 20% of its manufactured goods and 30% of its farm output. For that reason alone, "disengaging" or "insulating" the U.S. from the outside world is simply not an option -- any more than is continuing to give short shrift to the "domestic stuff."

You don't have to be a believer in American decline like historian Paul Kennedy to worry about the state of the U.S. economy. Harvard's Joseph Nye, whose Bound to Lead (published this month in paperback by Basic Books) is the most forceful refutation of the declinist theory, argues that there are two kinds of power, hard and soft. Hard power -- a country's ability to force its will on others -- derives from the combination of military and economic clout. Soft power -- a country's ability to lead because others want to follow -- depends on the appeal of its culture, society and ideology. Over the years, America has exercised a unique combination of hard and soft power.

But, warns Nye, both could be in jeopardy.

"Our low savings rate and high deficit have diminished our hard power," he says. "By consuming too much and investing too little, we're risking our capacity to stay on the cutting edge of the third technological revolution, the one in information. In the '80s we went from being the biggest creditor nation to being the biggest debtor, and that has cost us a further degree of political influence. So has falling into second place behind Japan as a dispenser of foreign aid.

"As for soft power, we'll begin to see that erode too if our cities fall apart, if we no longer can offer our citizens upward mobility because our economy is stagnant, and if we shut our borders to immigrants. In short, a healthy economy is a precondition for a successful foreign policy."

The best example of what happens when a country fails to maintain its economic basis was on display at the Group of Seven summit last week. Only a few years ago, the West saw the U.S.S.R. as the menacing apotheosis of hard power. Yet Mikhail Gorbachev came to London as a supplicant because his country's armor-plated exterior for so long hid a rotten core.