America Abroad

By Strobe Talbott

TWO MONTHS AGO, A HIGHLY CLASSIFIED PENTAGON document known as the Defense Planning Guidance found its way into the New York Times. A front-page headline proclaimed that the Bush Administration had a secret plan to "thwart challenges to the primacy of America" in a "one-superpower world." The nation's top brass appeared to have endorsed "global unilateralism," the doctrine promoted by conservatives who believe that the U.S. essentially must go it alone in enforcing world peace. The Times called the suddenly famous ! Pentagon paper "the clearest rejection to date of collective internationalism" -- a competing view, favored by liberals, that coalitions, especially ones sanctioned by the U.N., are the way to keep global order.

The leak caused an uproar on Capitol Hill, where legislators are looking to cut costs and share burdens. Senator Joseph Biden, a Democrat, scoffed at the idea of "America as 'Globocop.' " At a recent international conference in Lisbon, I found Europeans and Japanese still fretting about the Times's scoop, which they took as proof that the U.S. is bent on giving new meaning to old cliches like Pax Americana and Uncle Sam as the world's policeman.

A few days later, back in Washington, I had an opportunity to get a clearer sense of Pentagon thinking. Along with several other curious civilians, I spent most of a day listening to American military officers explain how they are adjusting to the budgetary stringencies and geopolitical complexities of the post-cold war era. They are under orders to reduce the size of the U.S. military 25% in the next three years and cut by more than half the number of G.I.s in Europe.

All this is happening, of course, because the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact no longer exist. In place of the devil we knew is a threat represented on the briefers' charts by an eerie phrase: THE UNKNOWN AND THE UNCERTAIN. Instead of preparing to fight World War III, the Pentagon is planning to deal with what the charts call MRCS, or major regional conflicts. The National Security Agency, which eavesdrops on real and potential enemies around the world, is retiring Russian speakers to make room for specialists in Farsi and Swahili. One of the few categories of procurement that are growing is air- and sea-lift transports so the U.S. can rush troops to the scene of an MRC -- or perhaps to two scenes at once. For example, North Korea might attack the South just when the U.S. is preoccupied with a new flare-up in the Persian Gulf.

After listening to the generals and admirals for several hours, I realized that many of us on the outside have oversimplified the terms of the debate that is going on within the defense establishment. In "the Tank," the mahogany-paneled room where the Joint Chiefs of Staff meet regularly to thrash out their problems, global unilateralism and collective internationalism do not seem quite so much like a strategic dichotomy, an either-or choice that the U.S. must make now and live with for decades. Instead, the chiefs want to ; keep all options open. When necessary, they want the U.S. to be the Lone Ranger who can go after a bandido like Manuel Noriega of Panama. But whenever possible, they would prefer to play the sheriff who leads a posse against the likes of Saddam Hussein.

However, there is a trickier third contingency. It is all too easy to imagine a local conflict -- in the Balkans, the Horn of Africa, Southeast Asia -- threatening to become an MRC. Foreign intervention is urgently required. The U.S. may not feel its vital interests are sufficiently threatened to take the lead, but American participation would increase the credibility and effectiveness of the operation. In such a case, the U.S. should be prepared to join a posse led by someone else.

That prospect clearly made our briefers uneasy. There was no mention of the U.N. on their many charts, so my fellow visitor, Samuel Lewis, kept raising the issue. A former American ambassador to Israel, he is now president of the U.S. Institute of Peace, a congressionally funded foundation and think tank devoted to conflict resolution. At his probing, our hosts were willing to allow that U.S. military units might participate in a multinational peacekeeping mission under a non-American general in a U.N. blue beret. But their lack of enthusiasm for the idea was palpable.

At the end of our stay, we met with General Colin Powell, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. He was much less grudging about multilateral operations in general and the U.N. in particular. In response to more questions from Lewis, Powell recalled that the U.N.'s founders established a Military Staff Committee, composed of representatives of the five permanent members of the Security Council, to direct peacekeeping activities. Noting that the committee had been "moribund" through the cold war, Powell said he would now like to see it made "more relevant."

In addition, the U.N. as a whole needs more power and resources for peacekeeping, including an ability to call on American troops to serve under the world body's flag. Powell's subordinates might wince at the thought. But they need not worry. Since the U.S. has a veto on the Security Council, the President would not be giving up his ultimate authority or responsibility as Commander in Chief.

Powell is still a long way from trading in his green Army cap for a blue beret, but he is no Globocop either. It is encouraging that the American soldier who is most willing to work the U.N. into the Pentagon's plans is also the highest ranking.