Research Library

Assuming he is confirmed by the Senate, Greg Mankiw, a leading Harvard economics professor, will soon be the new Chairman of President Bush?s Council of Economic Advisers. The president should be congratulated for such an outstanding choice.

Mankiw may need some advice, however — a historical perspective, in particular, on what an adviser can do when official White House policy goes contrary to his convictions as a professional economist. Of course, it would be a remarkable coincidence if any president accepted every position that his economic advisers had taken on every issue. But there are likely to be especially large divergences between this president and good economics as represented, for example, by Mankiw?s own very popular textbook. This is why I am concerned. I am thinking of such issues as budget deficits, steel tariffs, agricultural subsidies, and conflict with the Fed.

He will be joining an NEC director and Treasury secretary who have already been asked to sell a shift toward budget deficits that appears inconsistent with their past views. But it is possible for a Treasury Secretary or an Assistant to the President to toe the party line while in office, and then confess later that this did not entirely correspond to his true beliefs. (On the subject of budget deficits, see the memoirs of David Stockman and Richard Darman, for example, who were, respectively, Budget Director and Assistant to the President in the first Reagan Administration.) A professor of economics like Mankiw, who plans to return to Harvard after his service as a White House advisor, cannot engage in such inconsistencies, without risking losing some of the professional credibility that is so important to an academic career. Indeed, this truth–telling constraint may be the most valuable advantage of having a Council of Economic Advisers, and may explain why Congress legislated the institution in the first place. Encumbered by academic reputations, they are unencumbered by long–term political careers.

It might help to know the variety of strategies tried by past economic advisers, when they have found themselves disagreeing with the president. The history may be especially instructive in that often the disagreements have been over some of the same issues likely to come up in the current administration.

Shortly after September 11th, President Bush's father observed that just as Pearl Harbor awakened this country from the notion that we could somehow avoid the call of duty to defend freedom in Europe and Asia in World War Two, so, too, should this most recent surprise attack erase the concept in some quarters that America can somehow go it alone in the fight against terrorism or in anything else for that matter.

But America's allies have begun to wonder whether that is the lesson that has been learned - or whether the Afghanistan campaign's apparent success shows that unilateralism works just fine. The United States, that argument goes, is so dominant that it can largely afford to go it alone.

It is true that no nation since Rome has loomed so large above the others, but even Rome eventually collapsed. Only a decade ago, the conventional wisdom lamented an America in decline. Bestseller lists featured books that described America's fall. Japan would soon become "Number One". That view was wrong at the time, and when I wrote "Bound to Lead" in 1989, I, like others, predicted the continuing rise of American power. But the new conventional wisdom that America is invincible is equally dangerous if it leads to a foreign policy that combines unilateralism, arrogance and parochialism.

A number of adherents of "realist" international-relations theory have also expressed concern about America's staying-power. Throughout history, coalitions of countries have arisen to balance dominant powers, and the search for traditional shifts in the balance of power and new state challengers is well under way. Some see China as the new enemy; others envisage a Russia-China-India coalition as the threat. But even if China maintains high growth rates of 6% while the United States achieves only 2%, it will not equal the United States in income per head (measured in purchasing-power parity) until the last half of the century.

Still others see a uniting Europe as a potential federation that will challenge the United States for primacy. But this forecast depends on a high degree of European political unity, and a low state of transatlantic relations. Although realists raise an important point about the levelling of power in the international arena, their quest for new cold-war-style challengers is largely barking up the wrong tree. They are ignoring deeper changes in the distribution and nature of power in the contemporary world.

Three kinds of power

At first glance, the disparity between American power and that of the rest of the world looks overwhelming. In terms of military power, the United States is the only country with both nuclear weapons and conventional forces with global reach. American military expenditures are greater than those of the next eight countries combined, and it leads in the information-based "revolution in military affairs". In economic size, America's 31% share of world product (at market prices) is equal to the next four countries combined (Japan, Germany, Britain and France). In terms of cultural prominence, the United States is far and away the number-one film and television exporter in the world. It also attracts the most foreign students each year to its colleges and universities.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, some analysts described the resulting world as uni-polar, others as multi-polar. Both are wrong, because each refers to a different dimension of power that can no longer be assumed to be homogenized by military dominance. Uni-polarity exaggerates the degree to which the United States is able to get the results it wants in some dimensions of world politics, but multi-polarity implies, wrongly, several roughly equal countries.

Instead, power in a global information age is distributed among countries in a pattern that resembles a complex three-dimensional chess game. On the top chessboard, military power is largely uni-polar. To repeat, the United States is the only country with both intercontinental nuclear weapons and large state-of-the-art air, naval and ground forces capable of global deployment. But on the middle chessboard, economic power is multi-polar, with the United States, Europe and Japan representing two-thirds of world product, and with China's dramatic growth likely to make it the fourth big player. On this economic board, the United States is not a hegemon, and must often bargain as an equal with Europe.

The bottom chessboard is the realm of transnational relations that cross borders outside government control. This realm includes actors as diverse as bankers electronically transferring sums larger than most national budgets at one extreme, and terrorists transferring weapons or hackers disrupting Internet operations at the other. On this bottom board, power is widely dispersed, and it makes no sense to speak of uni-polarity, multi-polarity or hegemony. Those who recommend a hegemonic American foreign policy based on such traditional descriptions of American power are relying on woefully inadequate analysis. When you are in a three-dimensional game, you will lose if you focus only on the top board and fail to notice the other boards and the vertical connections among them.

A shrinking and merging world

Because of its leading position in the information revolution and its past investment in traditional power resources, the United States will probably remain the world's most powerful single country well into this new century. While potential coalitions to check American power could be created, it is unlikely that they would become firm alliances unless the United States handles its hard coercive power in an overbearing unilateral manner that undermines its soft or attractive power—the important ability to get others to want what you want.

As Josef Joffe, editor of Die Zeit, has written, "Unlike centuries past, when war was the great arbiter, today the most interesting types of power do not come out of the barrel of a gun." Today there is a much bigger payoff in "getting others to want what you want", and that has to do with cultural attraction and ideology, along with agenda-setting and economic incentives for co-operation. Soft power is particularly important in dealing with issues arising from the bottom chessboard of transnational relations.

The real challenges to American power are coming on cat's feet in the night and, ironically, the temptation to unilateralism may ultimately weaken the United States. The contemporary information revolution and the globalization that goes with it are transforming and shrinking the world. At the beginning of this new century, these two forces have combined to increase American power. But, with time, technology will spread to other countries and peoples, and America's relative pre-eminence will diminish.

For example, today the American twentieth of the global population represents more than half the Internet. In a decade or two, Chinese will probably be the dominant language of the Internet. It will not dethrone English as a lingua franca, but at some point in the future the Asian cyber-community and economy will loom larger than the American.

Even more important, the information revolution is creating virtual communities and networks that cut across national borders. Transnational corporations and non-governmental actors (terrorists included) will play larger roles. Many of these organizations will have soft power of their own as they attract citizens into coalitions that cut across national boundaries. It is worth noting that, in the 1990s, a coalition based on NGOs created a landmines treaty against the opposition of the strongest bureaucracy in the strongest country.

September 11th was a terrible symptom of the deeper changes that were already occurring in the world. Technology has been diffusing power away from governments, and empowering individuals and groups to play roles in world politics—including wreaking massive destruction—which were once reserved to governments. Privatization has been increasing, and terrorism is the privatization of war. Globalization is shrinking distance, and events in faraway places, like Afghanistan, can have a great impact on American lives.

At the end of the cold war, many observers were haunted by the spectre of the return of American isolationism. But in addition to the historic debate between isolationists and internationalists, there was a split within the internationalist camp between unilateralists and multilateralists. Some, like the columnist Charles Krauthammer, urge a "new unilateralism" whereby the United States refuses to play the role of "docile international citizen" and unashamedly pursues its own ends. They speak of a uni-polar world because of America's unequalled military power. But military power alone cannot produce the outcomes Americans want on many of the issues that matter to their safety and prosperity.

As an assistant secretary of defense in 1994-95, I would be the last to deny the importance of military security. It is like oxygen. Without it, all else pales. America's military power is essential to global stability and an essential part of the response to terrorism. But the metaphor of war should not blind us to the fact that suppressing terrorism will take years of patient, unspectacular civilian co-operation with other countries. The military success in Afghanistan dealt with the easiest part of the problem, and al-Qaeda retains cells in some 50 countries. Rather than proving the unilateralists' point, the partial nature of the success in Afghanistan illustrates the continuing need for co-operation.

The perils of going alone

The problem for Americans in the 21st century is that more and more things fall outside the control of even the most powerful state. Although the United States does well on the traditional measures, there is increasingly more going on in the world that those measures fail to capture. Under the influence of the information revolution and globalization, world politics is changing in a way that means Americans cannot achieve all their international goals by acting alone. For example, international financial stability is vital to the prosperity of Americans, but the United States needs the co-operation of others to ensure it. Global climate change too will affect Americans' quality of life, but the United States cannot manage the problem alone. And in a world where borders are becoming more porous to everything from drugs to infectious diseases to terrorism, America must mobilize international coalitions to address shared threats and challenges.

The barbarian threat

In light of these new circumstances, how should the only superpower guide its foreign policy in a global information age? Some Americans are tempted to believe that the United States could reduce its vulnerability if it withdrew troops, curtailed alliances and followed a more isolationist foreign policy. But isolationism would not remove the vulnerability. The terrorists who struck on September 11th were not only dedicated to reducing American power, but wanted to break down what America stands for. Even if the United States had a weaker foreign policy, such groups would resent the power of the American economy which would still reach well beyond its shores. American corporations and citizens represent global capitalism, which some see as anathema.

Moreover, American popular culture has a global reach regardless of what the government does. There is no escaping the influence of Hollywood, CNN and the Internet. American films and television express freedom, individualism and change, but also sex and violence. Generally, the global reach of American culture helps to enhance America's soft power. But not, of course, with everyone. Individualism and liberties are attractive to many people but repulsive to some, particularly fundamentalists. American feminism, open sexuality and individual choices are profoundly subversive of patriarchal societies. But those hard nuggets of opposition are unlikely to catalyze broad hatred unless the United States abandons its values and pursues arrogant and overbearing policies that let the extremists appeal to the majority in the middle.

On the other hand, those who look at the American preponderance, see an empire, and urge unilateralism, risk an arrogance that alienates America's friends. Granted, there are few pure multilateralists in practice, and multilateralism can be used by smaller states to tie the United States down like Gulliver among the Lilliputians, but this does not mean that a multilateral approach is not generally in America's interests. By embedding its policies in a multilateral framework, the United States can make its disproportionate power more legitimate and acceptable to others. No large power can afford to be purely multilateralist, but that should be the starting point for policy. And when that great power defines its national interests broadly to include global interests, some degree of unilateralism is more likely to be acceptable. Such an approach will be crucial to the longevity of American power.

At the moment, the United States is unlikely to face a challenge to its pre-eminence from other states unless it acts so arrogantly that it helps the others to overcome their built-in limitations. The greater challenge for the United States will be to learn how to work with other countries to control more effectively the non-state actors that will increasingly share the stage with nation-states. How to control the bottom chessboard in a three-dimensional game, and how to make hard and soft power reinforce each other are the key foreign policy challenges. As Henry Kissinger has argued, the test of history for this generation of American leaders will be whether they can turn the current predominant power into an international consensus and widely-accepted norms that will be consistent with American values and interests as America's dominance ebbs later in the century. And that cannot be done unilaterally.

Rome succumbed not to the rise of a new empire, but to internal decay and a death of a thousand cuts from various barbarian groups. While internal decay is always possible, none of the commonly cited trends seem to point strongly in that direction at this time. Moreover, to the extent it pays attention, the American public is often realistic about the limits of their country's power. Nearly two-thirds of those polled oppose, in principle, the United States acting alone overseas without the support of other countries. The American public seems to have an intuitive sense for soft power, even if the term is unfamiliar.

On the other hand, it is harder to exclude the barbarians. The dramatically decreased cost of communication, the rise of transnational domains (including the Internet) that cut across borders, and the "democratization" of technology that puts massive destructive power into the hands of groups and individuals, all suggest dimensions that are historically new. In the last century, Hitler, Stalin and Mao needed the power of the state to wreak great evil. As the Hart-Rudman Commission on National Security observed last year, "Such men and women in the 21st century will be less bound than those of the 20th by the limits of the state, and less obliged to gain industrial capabilities in order to wreak havoc... Clearly the threshold for small groups or even individuals to inflict massive damage on those they take to be their enemies is falling dramatically."

Since this is so, homeland defense takes on a new importance and a new meaning. If such groups were to obtain nuclear materials and produce a series of events involving great destruction or great disruption of society, American attitudes might change dramatically, though the direction of the change is difficult to predict. Faced with such a threat, a certain degree of unilateral action, such as the war in Afghanistan, is justified if it brings global benefits. After all, the British navy reduced the scourge of piracy well before international conventions were signed in the middle of the 19th century.

Number one, but...

The United States is well placed to remain the leading power in world politics well into the 21st century. This prognosis depends upon assumptions that can be spelled out. For example, it assumes that the American economy and society will remain robust and not decay; that the United States will maintain its military strength, but not become over-militarized; that Americans will not become so unilateral and arrogant in their strength that they squander the nation's considerable fund of soft power; that there will not be some catastrophic series of events that profoundly transforms American attitudes in an isolationist direction; and that Americans will define their national interest in a broad and far-sighted way that incorporates global interests. Each of these assumptions can be questioned, but they currently seem more plausible than their alternatives.

If the assumptions hold, America will remain number one. But number one "ain't gonna be what it used to be." The information revolution, technological change and globalization will not replace the nation-state but will continue to complicate the actors and issues in world politics. The paradox of American power in the 21st century is that the largest power since Rome cannot achieve its objectives unilaterally in a global information age.

New Crises elsewhere have replaced Afghanistan in the headlines, but this week is an important anniversary.

A year ago on Thursday, Afghan leaders signed the Bonn Agreement, a roadmap to take Afghanistan from the wreckage of years of conflict toward democratic elections in 2004. So it is a good time to ask whether Afghanistan is still important to anyone but the Afghans and whether the Bonn roadmap is steering Afghanistan in the right direction.

The answer to both questions is yes. Until the Taliban fell, Afghanistan gave haven to the world's most dangerous terrorists, who would be quick to return if coalition troops withdrew. They, the drug barons and the warlords, would plunge Afghanistan back into darkness. Sept. 11 showed why the world must work with the Afghans to prevent this and why we should commit ourselves to achieving a universally acceptable vision for Afghanistan: the establishment of a sovereign, stable, and secure country with a self-sustaining economy, strong institutions, and a broad-based, multiethnic regime committed to eradicating terrorism and opium production, reducing poverty, and honoring its international obligations - most notably the human rights of minority groups and women. These aspirations are undeniably ambitious. They should be more easily achievable if we apply three R's to Afghanistan. Not, in this case, the traditional reading, 'riting and 'rithmetic, but realism, respect, and resilience.

Realism reminds us that Afghanistan cannot be magically transformed into a modern democracy. Progress toward anything like it will take time. Meanwhile, holding together the myriad Afghan groups means focusing on the essential and the achievable. This applies even to human rights. Those responsible for past atrocities should be called to account. But not yet. At this stage, Afghanistan's fragile consensus could not survive a comprehensive investigation of past excesses.

Nor, realistically, can all the warlords simply be swept away. Instead, the immediate goal must be to draw them into greater dependence on the Kabul administration, with reconstruction aid for their fiefdoms made conditional on good behavior, and to find other work for their foot soldiers. In time, the nascent national army should outgun the private armies.

Realism also suggests that those still calling for the deployment of large numbers of foreign troops to several Afghan cities should drop the idea. Static foreign garrisons would be expensive and vulnerable targets. The present "light footprint" system, backed by the threat of US air power, has worked well. Developments on that theme, not garrisons, can best help keep the peace in the provinces.

Respect means remembering that Afghanistan belongs to the Afghans. Building Afghan capacity must underpin everything we do. Hence the need to nurture viable Afghan institutions, drawing on Afghanistan's cultural and religious heritage. Hence, too, the importance of eradicating opium production and providing alternative livelihoods for farmers. If the rule of law does not prevail, Afghanistan—and we—will fail.

Resilience, in terms of commitment and stamina, will be needed to overcome the many daunting challenges we will continue to face. The international community moved Afghanistan from the top of the "in" basket to the "too difficult" basket after the Soviet occupiers left. Warlords, Taliban, and Al Qaeda took advantage. Whatever difficulties and distractions surface now, we must not snatch defeat from victory by abandoning the Afghans again.

The solutions we develop must also be resilient. Regional neighbors like Pakistan and Iran now tacitly accept the unacceptable—the presence of Western forces—to underwrite peace in Afghanistan. The West, in turn, must accept that Afghanistan's neighbors should be involved in finding solutions, not dismissed as part of the problem. An imperial outpost in Afghanistan in the face of regional hostility isn't a long-term solution. Ask the British. Ask the Russians.

The Afghans and the international community can be proud of what has been achieved in Afghanistan in the last year, with progress in bringing relative stability and normality to daily life, delivering humanitarian aid, providing education and health care, and removing land mines. The return of so many refugees testifies to that success. But Afghanistan is still fragile, and nobody can be complacent about the size of the task ahead. Realism, respect, and resilience are three essential tools if we are to do the job right. It is in our own interests, as well as those of the Afghans, that we should.

Southern Africa is suffering its worst drought in a decade. The U.N. World Food Program estimates some 13 million people in six countries will need 1.2 million tons of food aid till March 2003 to avoid famine. Yet two countries, Zimbabwe and Zambia, have spent most of the summer rejecting food aid shipments of corn from the U.S. because some varieties of U.S. corn are "genetically modified" (GM). Incredibly, African leaders facing famine are rejecting perfectly safe food. What is going on here?

Regulatory Authorities

Farmers in the U.S. have been planting (and Americans have been consuming) genetically engineered corn, soybeans and cotton since 1995. Regulatory authorities in the EU and Japan have also approved such GM crops, but in Europe food safety regulators have been mistrusted by consumers ever since the unrelated but traumatizing mad cow disease crisis of 1996. EU Commissioner for Health and Consumer Affairs David Byrne repeatedly states there is no scientific evidence of added risk to human health or the environment from any of the GM products approved for the market so far, and he can point to 81 separate scientific studies, all EU-funded, that bolster this conclusion.

But greens and GM critics in Europe say this absence of expected or known risks is no longer a sufficient regulatory standard. Touting the "precautionary principle," they argue that powerful new technologies should be kept under wraps until tested for unexpected or unknown risks as well. Never mind that testing for something unknown is logically impossible (the only way to avoid a completely unknown risk is never to do anything for the first time).

Europeans can perhaps afford hyper-caution regarding new crop technologies. Even without planting any GM seeds, European farmers will continue to prosper—thanks to lavish subsidies—and consumers will remain well fed. The same is not true in the developing world, especially in Africa, where hunger is worsening in part because farmers are not yet productive.

Two-thirds of all Africans are farmers, most are women, and they are poor and hungry in part because they lack improved crop technologies to battle against drought, poor soil fertility, crop disease, weeds and endemic insect problems. The productivity of African agriculture, per farm worker, has actually declined by 9% over the past two decades, which helps explain why one-third of all Africans are malnourished.

This ought to change the calculus of precaution. If GM-improved crops are kept out of the hands of African farmers, pending tests for the "nth" hypothetical risk, or the "nth" year of exposure to that risk, the misery of millions will be needlessly prolonged.

But now we are seeing an even less justified application of regulatory caution toward GM foods. Governments in Africa that are facing an actual famine have been rejecting some food aid shipments because they contain GM seeds. In May 2002, the government of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe rejected 10,000 tons of corn shipped from the U.S. because it was not certified as GM-free. This at a time when four to six million Zimbabweans approached a risk of starvation.

Next, the government of Zambia banned all imports of GM corn, including food-aid imports, even though some 2.3 million people in the country were at risk. On Aug. 16, Zambian Information Minister Newstead Zimba announced on state TV that the government had decided, in light of the uncertainties surrounding GM foods, that it would be best to "take the precautionary principle on this matter" and not accept or distribute GM food aid. Silumelume Mubukwanu, Zambia`s High Commissioner to London, explained that food aid was being rejected because "too much is unknown about GM foods yet."

Precautionary European policies toward the environment are also keeping Africans from growing their own food. The EU has been insisting that governments in Africa treat GM crops as a potentially serious threat to rural "biological safety." This helps explain why there are no GM crops yet being planted commercially anywhere on the continent, except in the nation of South Africa. Instead of helping Africa`s hungry to grow more food, European donors are helping them grow more regulations.

African governments also must worry that accepting GM food aid will cost them commercial export sales to Europe. The EU has not been importing any U.S. corn since 1998, because U.S. shipments can contain some GM varieties not yet approved in Europe. African governments now worry that any illicit planting of U.S. corn by farmers could jeopardize their own exports to Europe. Trying to remain GM-free for commercial export reasons is a policy that does not help poor subsistence farmers, but it may soon become the norm in Africa, once the EU moves next year toward much tighter labeling and traceability regulations on all imported GM foods and animal feeds.

Documentary Records

Even while professing that GM foods are safe, EU officials will soon require that they be traced individually through the marketing chain, with legal documentary records to be saved by all producers and handlers for five years. African countries won't have the institutional capacity to implement this traceability regulation, so they will have to remain GM-free to retain their access to the EU market. Meat products raised with GM feed are not yet covered by this new EU regulation, but Zambia's initial rejection of GM corn in food aid shipments was partly based on a fear that if the country lost its GM-free animal feed status, poultry and dairy exports to the UK would slump.

By inducing African governments to embrace excessively cautious biosafety regulations and by requiring stigmatizing labels and costly traceability certificates for all imported GM foods and feeds, wealthy and comfortable officials in Europe have made it harder for drought-stricken societies in Africa to accept food aid from the U.S. European critics of GM foods did not foresee this potentially deadly misapplication of their precautionary principle. Yet here it is.

Ranchers have learned painfully the wisdom of the maxim: when pursuing deadly rattlesnakes, don't provoke the fatal attack you are aiming to prevent. Does the Bush administration's chosen strategy of publicized preemption risk violating that prescription?

President George W. Bush believes not. In this week's address to the nation, the essence of his argument for acting now is that we must hit Saddam before he hits us. Unless we take preemptive action to disarm Iraq and eliminate Saddam, he argued "on any given morning," Saddam could surprise us with a chemical or biological 9/11.

The nation's best intelligence analysts disagree. As the latest National Intelligence Estimate, declassified this week, states unequivocally: in the absence of a US attack, the likelihood of Saddam attacking us with chemical and biological weapons in the foreseeable future is "low." On the other hand, if Saddam becomes convinced that we really are about to attack him to topple his regime, intelligence analysts conclude the likelihood that he would attack us with chemical or biological weapons is "high." In sum: to prevent an attack the likelihood of which is low, the US is taking action that makes the likelihood of that attack high.

Which of these conflicting judgments seems more likely to be correct: the president's or the intelligence community's? Since the competing bets are driven by strategic logic, not secret information, let us consider the question.

Bush presented the basic facts clearly in Monday's address. We know that Saddam has chemical and biological weapons including "anthrax and other deadly biological agents*mdash;capable of killing millions." We know that Iraq has "a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas." We know that he "is exploring ways of using these UAV's for missions targeting the United States." We know that "a small container and one terrorist or Iraqi intelligence operative could deliver" biological agents to an American city. We know that those who hate America would be "eager to use biological or chemical or nuclear weapons." Thus "we have an urgent duty to prevent the worst from occurring."

The issue remains how best to prevent the worst from occurring.

On the current path, for more than a year the Bush administration has broadcast its firm intention to change the regime in Iraq: to kill Saddam and everything he holds dear. Currently, the US is positioning military forces in the region in preparation for such an attack. A congressional resolution authorizing the president to take "all necessary means" has been passed. Shortly thereafter, a Security Council resolution authorizing intrusive inspections and, after Saddam stiffs inspectors, permitting a US-led military attack to disarm Iraq seems assured.

Given this picture, what do we imagine Saddam is now planning for us? Given Bush's summary of Saddam's character (evil), his history (homicidal), and his intentions (ruthlessly hostile), is he likely to go down with a whimper—or a bang? Will he attack Americans here at home? Has he already dispatched operatives to American cities with biological weapons like smallpox? Will he attack Israel with biological weapons? Will he infect bases in the region where American troops are preparing to launch an attack upon him? If Saddam's overriding objective is his own survival, as we launch, or finalize plans to launch, an attack that threatens to extinguish him, is there any reason to expect him to do less than his best to kill as many Americans as possible?

If the evidence the president cites is correct, the logic of the snake hunter's maxim would appear to lead inexorably to the National Intelligence Estimate's conclusion: "Conducting a WMD attack against the United States would be his last chance to exact vengeance by taking a large number of victims with him."

Therefore, what to do? If one finds a pair of rattlesnakes in his backyard, backing off and hoping they slink away is not the answer. Nonetheless, prudence requires that before attacking a coiled rattler that has no escape route, we are as prepared as we can be to blunt its strike.

President Bush asked: "Does it make any sense for the world to wait to confront him as he grows even stronger and develops even more dangerous weapons?" The answer is: it depends. Specifically, it depends on whether his offensive capabilities to harm us are growing faster than our capabilities to defend ourselves against the counterattack our action may provoke.

Before taking action that will likely provoke the very attack we seek to prevent, Bush should assure Americans that our troops in the field and citizens here at home are prepared for the biological and chemical attacks the country's best intelligence analysts judge to be "likely." Have you gotten your anthrax and smallpox vaccinations yet?

How can the United States conduct a war to remove Saddam Hussein from power if Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them? Senator Edward Kennedy, echoing the standard views of political scientists, has questioned the wisdom of pursuing regime change in Iraq by military means. If a war to remove him is going well, the argument goes, Saddam will see that he, personally, is doomed, and will decide that he might as well inflict as much pain as he can on his enemies before he dies. The logic of pure reason says that you cannot deter a leader who has nothing to lose.

There are several things wrong this argument. The first is history. This is not the first time a war has been waged to effect regime change against a leader who had weapons of mass destruction. Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich had stockpiles of nerve gas and a weakened but still effective military chain of command to execute his orders. But when the Red Army was entering Berlin, there were no clouds of Sarin or Tabun unleashed against the Soviet soldiers who would, without doubt, deal out the roughest kind of justice to Germany and Hitler himself. Not only that, but earlier in the war, Hitler’s orders to destroy Paris as the Germans withdrew were not obeyed. As German defeat became more certain, even the killings of Jews and others in the death camps were halted, at least for some periods of time.

Tyrants do not commit mass murder with their own hands. They have subjects who carry out their commands. Tyrants are obeyed because they are feared, and go to great lengths to ensure that their subjects fear them more than they fear the external enemies of the regime. But when they begin to lose a total war, the balance of fear among those they have been oppressing begins to shift. People begin looking around them to see if it is safe to turn their coats, defect, or mutiny. If one prominent subordinate successfully disobeys orders, others learn the lesson and act accordingly, creating a cascade of increasing numbers of defections. This is why dictatorships that seem so solid can so rapidly fall apart when the first cracks in the regime become publicly visible. In a regime guilty of crimes against humanity, subordinates will not want to be taken prisoner while in the act of committing mass murder, defending a tyrant who is on the verge of total defeat.

Logically, this suggests that tyrants might unleash their stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction before it is obvious to their subordinates that they will be overthrown. If Saddam Hussein saw the inevitable coming early enough, he could order his remaining SCUDs loaded with biological weapons and launched against Israel, by generals who still feared him more than the American armies that might falter before they got to Baghdad.

This overlooks another major characteristics of tyrants. They tend to have hefty amounts of self-confidence. They have, after, all gained and held absolute power against all comers. They have survived attempts to kill or defeat them. They have difficulty believing that they can lose. Hitler, when hearing of the death of Franklin Roosevelt in April of 1945 cheered himself up with the thought that, like Frederick the Great, he would still pull through because a key adversary had died. In addition, tyrants are not surrounded by people who bring them down to earth. All the evidence we have from the Hitler, Stalin, and Mao regimes shows that their subordinates did not present, but rather concealed, information that revealed the ongoing failure of policies ordered by the tyrant. The subordinates of the tyrant know, long before the tyrant is forced to believe, that the game is up. The idea that men like Saddam Hussein will believe that they are doomed, and order apocalyptic action before the very last moment, is to ignore everything we know about the most basic part of their personalities.

If what is written above is correct, there are some clear policy implications for the United States as it plans its war against Saddam Hussein. First, we should say, publicly and often, that Iraqi commanders who commit mass murder will be found and executed, and that those who forbear will be treated mercifully. We should state publicly that we know that Saddam Hussein has given his commanders operational control of chemical and biological weapons, so that if the weapons are used, it is because of the actions of local commanders, who will be held accountable. We should state, finally, that the war will be waged to destroy Saddam Hussein’s secret police, so that military commanders will not have the excuse that they were acting under compulsion. If nothing else, this is sure to initiate a round of purges by Saddam Hussein of his military before the war starts that will weaken it, just as the Red Army was weakened in the years before World War II. When the war starts, inducing senior Iraqi military defections will be an objective as important as gaining territory or destroying Iraqi SCUDs, and the news of the defections should be broadcast continuously back into Iraq.

Second, the first American military actions should be massive. Saddam Hussein’s command structure and military capabilities should be hit as hard as possible with air and ground forces in the first days of the war, while he still believes that he will dodge the bullet with his name on it one more time. By the time he realizes that he is history, there should be as little possible left of his military and security structure. This will require a war very different from the war we recently waged in Afghanistan, in which logistical and legal considerations led to a tempo of war that built slowly to a climax. It should be even more different from the 1991 war in which the air campaign was waged for weeks before the ground campaign began. It should be a new form of lightning war, the purpose of which is to shock and paralyze the enemy leadership with air strikes, special forces, helicopter air assaults, and whatever special devices have been invented over the last year. It should be augmented by and coordinated with Israeli military action.

The problems associated with attacking a tyrant with weapons of mass destruction are real, but not insuperable. They do require new modes of military thought and action. And they will be even larger in a few years time if we do not act now.

Reconociendo las dificultades para analizar una situación mundial cada vez más compleja, Mijaíl Gorbachov y yo tratamos de identificar hace apenas un año los principales problemas con los que parecía enfrentarse la humanidad en los albores del siglo XXI. Dejando aparte los medioambientales y el avance del sida y otras enfermedades infecciosas, dos problemas destacaban entre todos: la pobreza y desigualdad crecientes y el hecho de que la tercera ola democrática se hubiera detenido. Los acontecimientos desde el 11 de septiembre de 2001 han añadido tres problemas más, relacionados con los anteriores.

El primero, evidente, es que han aumentado las sensaciones de inseguridad e incertidumbre. Muchas de las certezas que un ciudadano de cualquier país del mundo tenía entonces se han convertido en incógnitas que nos preocupan, angustian o aterran, y que nos hace temer con fundamento que el mundo en el que vivirán nuestros hijos y nietos será mucho más difícil y, desde luego, peor que el nuestro.

El segundo, que añadió el presidente Clinton a mi lista, es "el círculo vicioso que existe en la mayoría de países musulmanes en Oriente Próximo y el Magreb": la escasa educación que reciben las mujeres lleva a tasas elevadas de natalidad, y éstas, a que un porcentaje demasiado elevado de la población sea de niños con escasas posibilidades de integrarse dignamente en la sociedad al llegar a la edad adulta. La mitad femenina de estos niños apenas recibe educación, mientras que la masculina la recibe sólo de organizaciones islámicas que imparten una versión intransigente del Corán. Clinton recordaba que un niño paquistaní de diez años, guapo y de voz dulce, que sabía el Corán de memoria, declaraba que su mayor felicidad cuando fuera mayor sería morir matando a todos los americanos que pudiera. El presidente Clinton opina que este problema, unido a los de la pobreza y crisis democrática, es el principal responsable de la emergencia del terrorismo y la inseguridad.

Hay un tercer problema, que añado a los anteriores, y que podría simplificarse como el de un unilateralismo creciente de Estados Unidos. La lista de temas importantes con grandes diferencias de posición entre su Gobierno y el resto del mundo (como Oriente Próximo, América Latina, la Corte Penal Internacional, el Convenio de Kioto, el sistema antimisiles, el proteccionismo a su sector siderúrgico, su casi nula ayuda externa, etc.) crece aceleradamente; pero estas discrepancias, lejos de incitar a Estados Unidos a reexaminar sus posturas, van acompañadas por una arrogancia cada vez mayor. Creo que los estadounidenses tienen dificultades para ver que la falta de un contrapeso a su poder hegemónico, que no tiene precedentes históricos, y el escaso interés de sus electores por todo lo que ocurre más allá de sus fronteras les está llevando a una política exterior que en lugar de ganar corazones y voluntades en el mundo los está alienando.

Hace dos semanas, el Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, de la Universidad de Harvard, organizó en Talloires, junto al lago de Annecy, una conferencia titulada El futuro de la política exterior de los Estados Unidos. La política del WCFIA de impedir la atribución de las opiniones a los participantes, acertada para estimular su libertad y espontaneidad, me obliga a no hacer citas. Sin embargo, puedo asegurar que la conferencia reunió a unos treinta de los mejores especialistas en relaciones internacionales procedentes de unos veinte países, entre ellos a varios profesores norteamericanos, algunos de ellos demócratas y otros próximos a la Administración de Bush. Creo poder afirmar que casi todos los europeos y asiáticos, y espero que algunos americanos, salimos de Talloires extraordinariamente preocupados por las exposiciones que hicieron personas próximas a la mentalidad del Gobierno de Estados Unidos.

La discusión en la conferencia estuvo dominada por dos análisis, actitudes y predicciones contrapuestas: a) una autoproclamada imperialista, que considera legítimo el intervencionismo de Estados Unidos en cualquier situación de amenaza; b) otra (offshore balancer) aislacionista, que postula que Estados Unidos no debe intervenir, sino enfrentar una contra otra a potencias regionales para que se controlen o eliminen entre sí (ejemplos, Irán contra Irak, India contra Pakistán, China contra Rusia o contra Japón). Ambas posturas son unilateralistas; están basadas en la aplastante superioridad militar de Estados Unidos y ninguna considera necesario ningún tipo de coalición o consenso internacional, ni la participación de un organismo multilateral como las Naciones Unidas, ni siquiera la aquiescencia previa de la Unión Europea y de otros antiguos aliados de Estados Unidos, a quienes se considera irrelevantes.

La postura imperialista ha acogido con entusiasmo los discursos del presidente Bush, que, tras la reacción moderada inmediatamente después del 11 de septiembre, han crecido en belicosidad a lo largo de 2002; al del Eje del Mal del Estado de la Unión ha sucedido el reciente de West Point, en el que Bush considera un error esperar a que las amenazas militares o terroristas se materialicen y considera legítimo el derecho a iniciar ataques y guerras preventivas. La doctrina de la necesidad de efectivos militares se puede resumir en un "4+2+1". El 4 representa el número de lugares en los que Estados Unidos debe ser capaz de ejercer su poder disuasivo. El 2 representa el número de guerras simultáneas (por ejemplo, Irak y Corea del Norte), y el 1, la capacidad de Estados Unidos de forzar un cambio de régimen, lo cual presupone la necesidad de ocupar ese país por un ejército terrestre. Naturalmente, esta postura defiende incrementos presupuestarios importantes en un momento en el que el superávit se ha convertido en serio déficit y en una coyuntura económica desfavorable.

La postura aislacionista tiene tres premisas basadas en la vieja doctrina de Monroe, que ha regido la política exterior de Estados Unidos durante más de siglo y medio. Estados Unidos debe a) establecer su hegemonía regional en las Américas, b) vigilar para que ninguna potencia domine de igual manera en Europa o en Asia y c) tratar con esas potencias rivales sólo si otras demuestran ser incapaces de controlarlas. Por ejemplo, es esencial que ninguna potencia local (Irán o Irak) predomine en el golfo Pérsico amenazando el acceso al petróleo de la zona. "A los americanos no les gusta perder vidas". EE UU debe intervenir sólo en caso de extrema necesidad: la amenaza directa de una potencia rival.

Mis reflexiones durante esta discusión entre dos posturas "alucinantes", que dirían mis hijos, pero "realistas" y reales, me llevaron a varias observaciones y conclusiones. Primero, tras el 11-S cabían dos preguntas: 1) ¿quién nos ha hecho esto?, y 2) ¿por qué? Plantear sólo la primera conduce a la paranoia, y sólo la segunda lleva a las verdaderas causas—es decir, a los problemas enumerados al principio de este artículo—y supone un paso hacia las soluciones. Mi temor es que muchos analistas se han quedado en la primera pregunta. No analizar las causas que llevan a personas a morir matando por una causa y creer que el problema se puede solucionar por métodos militares es ignorar las lecciones de la historia.

Segundo, fue muy revelador que en una conferencia sobre política exterior se hablara exclusivamente de intereses, temas militares y de seguridad, y en ningún momento de valores, solidaridad, ayuda, apertura de mercados, diplomacia y paz.

Tercero, América Latina y África no fueron tema de discusión. Igual que noviembre de 1989, fecha de la caída del muro de Berlín, supuso la marginalización definitiva para África, el 11 de septiembre lo ha supuesto para América Latina.

Por último, los europeos y asiáticos y algunos de los americanos alejados del poder proclamamos nuestra preocupación. Casi todos opinamos que un Estados Unidos aislacionista es más peligroso que uno intervencionista. En todo caso, el predominio de intereses sobre valores, de temas militares sobre económicos y diplomáticos, de Rumsfeld sobre Powell, de la guerra sobre la paz, indica un divorcio creciente entre Europa y EE.UU. La hora del diálogo entre ambos ha sonado y es, sin embargo, más difícil que nunca.