Beyond Peace (6 page)

Those on the right and left pursue their extreme convictions too uncompromisingly. But the most disappointing group of political leaders are the mushy moderates. They compromise and temporize, bend and bow, bob and weave, and hem and haw until they stand for nothing. In an attempt to please all sides of the debate, they end up pleasing no one. They are like the onion in Ibsen's
Peer Gynt:
You peel away layer after layer until you reach the center and find that it is hollow. They extol the virtues of prudence in policy and view. But prudence is more than caution. Prudence means making the right decision, which can be either to take strong action or to refrain from action. Prudence means anticipating consequences. The mushy moderates hide behind a veneer of prudence to justify doing nothing instead of prudently doing the right thing.

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The renewal of America at home is necessary for the renewal of our example abroad. When the people of the world look to America for leadership, we want them to see not just the strongest and richest country on earth but also a uniquely good country. The American people are industrious, generous, and devout; they have great character and spirit. They rise to any challenge they are given. We still have the power to move others. Do we have the power to move ourselves? Ultimately, a country that has lost faith in its ideals cannot expect its ideals to appeal to others.

In a televised speech to the Soviet people in Moscow in 1959—the first time a major American official had ever addressed the Soviet people on television—I stated that our goal should be an “open world, a world of open cities, open minds
and open hearts.” In contrast to the beginning of the twentieth century, the beginning of the twenty-first century offers the first realistic chance for developing policies that could lead to a peaceful world, a prosperous world, a free world, and an open world.

The communications revolution, having helped win the Cold War by breaking down the ideological wall between East and West, has made dictatorships of all kinds obsolete, since to keep power they require total control over information, and that is now impossible. No dictator can survive in tranquillity for long with CNN being beamed into his country. There is an ever-growing flow of ideas among the world's cultures. This does not mean that we are destined to be a dull, homogeneous world. It does mean that future generations will have an opportunity to travel to all parts of the world, or at least see them on television. An open world will lessen the chance of war, increase the chance to move beyond peace, and ultimately enrich us all.

Building a more open world beyond peace means moving beyond transient pleasures, beyond superficial happiness, beyond the collection of emblems of earthly status, beyond the pursuit of power for its own sake, and beyond the contentment found in the attainment of peace. It means moving to a new plane of national mission. It is a call to a new glory—not the glory of war but the glory of peace. It is a call to take up not the arms of war but the tools of peace.

What, then, is the promise of peace? It means an even better life for all Americans—more and better jobs, improved education, less crime and drug abuse, a cleaner environment, and a government that better responds to people. More important, the promise of peace means a better spiritual life, in which hope is heard not just in empty echoes of rhetoric but in the voices and actions of every citizen, and faith guides the life of the nation.

The United States must lead. We must lead to open the eyes of those still blinded by despotism, to embolden those who remain oppressed, and to bring out from the dungeons of tyranny those who still live in darkness. The question remains whether
the United States will meet its responsibilities of leadership beyond peace as it did to defeat the communists in the Cold War. History thrusts certain powers at certain times onto center stage. In this era, the spotlight shines on the United States. How long it stays on us—and how brightly it shines—will be determined by us alone.

We cannot lead solely by example or solely by power but must combine the best elements of both. Today we must find the moral equivalent of war to unify and inspire us. We do not seek a war at home or abroad, but we do need a mission that will evoke the same selfless response in individuals. When the people of the world look to us, they should see not just our money and our arsenal but also our vast capacity as a force for good.

Peace demands more, not less, from a people. Peace lacks the clarity of purpose and the cadence of war. War is scripted; peace is improvisation. As writer Sophie Kerr observed, “If peace . . . only had the music and pageantry of war, there'd be no more wars.” Our conduct at home and abroad will determine how well we improvise beyond peace.

When Mao asked me if peace was America's only goal, he too had been searching for something beyond peace. His answers were the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, ruthless attempts to create political and social utopia in China that resulted in misery, devastation, and death for millions. Progress cannot be commanded; renewal cannot be dictated. The inspiration for a true leap forward for America must come from within—from within the people making up the nation, and from within the soul of the nation itself. In moving beyond peace, we must recognize that while human nature prevents us from ever attaining perfection, the infinite potential of human beings compels us to embark on a search for the best practicable good. We stand at a great watershed in history, looking back on a century of war and dictatorship and looking forward to a century we can make one of peace and freedom. The future beyond peace is in our hands.

Leaders of small countries at times have a clearer understanding of how the world works than do leaders of major countries, who are burdened with the day-to-day responsibilities of world leadership. During a conversation I had in 1967 with one such leader, Singapore's Lee Kwan Yew, he likened the world to a forest. “There are great trees, there are saplings, and there are creepers,” he said. “The great trees are Russia, China, Western Europe, the United States, and Japan. Of the other nations, some are saplings that have the potential of becoming great trees, but the great majority are creepers, which, because of lack of resources or lack of leadership, will never be great trees.”

Since he made that statement twenty-seven years ago at the height of the Cold War, a political forest fire has swept over the world. Although Russia, China, Japan, Western Europe, and the United States are still the only giant trees in the forest, the fire has dramatically changed them and the world around them. Communism has collapsed in the Soviet Union. One hundred million people in Eastern Europe have been liberated from communist domination. China is no longer an enemy of the United States and is using capitalist tools to achieve communist goals. Japan has become an economic superpower. Western Europe, no longer united by the threat from the East, is searching for a new rationale for NATO, a new relationship with the newly liberated nations of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, and a new momentum toward economic unity. After bearing the
burden of free-world leadership for forty-eight years, the American people, as indicated by the 1992 presidential election, want to devote their attention and their resources to their problems at home rather than those abroad.

Profound disagreement exists about the role the United States should play in the era beyond peace. A number of arguments against a continued American leadership role in the world have wide appeal:

• Because of the downfall of the Soviet Union, there is no need for American global leadership.

• Since the United States carried the major burden of the Cold War, other nations should lead now.

• Even assuming that we are the only ones who can lead, we should give priority to our pressing domestic problems.

• The United States, with huge budget deficits and trade imbalances, can no longer afford to lead.

• Because of our massive problems at home, the United States is not worthy to lead.

All of these statements are wrong.

Only the United States has the combination of military, economic, and political power a nation must have to take the lead in defending and extending freedom and in deterring and resisting aggression. Germany and Japan may have the economic clout but they lack the military muscle. China and Russia have the potential military might, but they lack the economic power. None has sufficient standing with all the world's great powers, none has the record of half a century of leadership. As the only great power without a history of imperialistic claims on neighboring countries, we also have something all these countries lack: the credibility to act as an honest broker.

The popular idea that the United Nations can play a larger role in resolving international conflicts is illusory. During the last forty-eight years, the U.N. has debated, passed resolutions
on, and contemplated intervention in scores of conflicts in every part of the world. But it has acted militarily on only two occasions: when the Soviet Union boycotted the Security Council vote during the Korean War, and when President Bush enlisted the U.N. to support our efforts to defeat Iraqi aggression during the Persian Gulf War. As former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Jeane Kirkpatrick has observed, “Multilateral decision making is complicated and inconclusive. U.N. operations—in Bosnia or in Somalia or wherever—are characteristically ineffective.”

Those who have led their peoples through the ultimate crisis of war understand better than anyone else that no leader can permit his country's interests to be held hostage to the whims of an international body. Winston Churchill was one such leader. I vividly remember my last meeting with him in 1958. I had gone to London to represent the United States at the dedication of the chapel at St. Paul's Cathedral honoring the American dead in World War II. I called on him at his home, where he was recovering from a stroke.

As I saw him slouching down in a big chair before a wood-burning fireplace with a shawl over his legs, I thought how lethargic he seemed, compared with the extraordinary energy he radiated when I first met him in Washington just five years earlier, after he had returned to power.

Marshall Tito and his wife had called on Churchill during the same period. She told me later that they too had noticed a striking change in him. He had been ordered to cut back on his smoking and drinking, and he looked on enviously as Tito smoked a huge Churchill cigar and drank Churchill's scotch as well as his own. Speaking to no one in particular, Churchill had said, “How do you stay so young? I know. It's power. Power keeps a man young.”

I found that while Churchill had lost his power and some of his energy, he had lost none of his unique understanding of how the world worked. After a limp handshake, he ordered a glass of brandy. The effect when he drank it was like lighting a match to
dry twigs. Our discussion ranged far and wide, from developments in the Soviet Union to a minidispute between Ghana and Guinea. When I asked him about the U.N., he said that he had supported it from the beginning and believed it had a significant role to play. But he added, “Under no circumstances can a major nation submit an issue affecting its vital interests to the U.N. or any other collective body for decision.”

The concept of “assertive multilateralism” being advanced by some U.N. supporters can only be described as naïve diplomatic gobbledygook. A collective body cannot be effective unless it has leadership. As de Gaulle told André Malraux shortly before his death, “Parliaments can paralyze policy. They cannot initiate it.” Even a collective body as closely knit as NATO was not able to be “assertive” in Bosnia. Can anyone seriously suggest that a collective body such as the U.N., one third of whose members have populations smaller than that of the state of Arkansas and half of which are not stable democracies, could be “assertive”?

This does not mean that the United Nations should be thrown on the scrap heap of history. It does mean that without leadership from the world's strongest nation, the U.N. will not act. We should enlist U.N. support for our policies but not put the U.N. in charge of them. The suggestion that the United States should put American troops under a U.N. command to give collective security a chance to work is completely unacceptable. To serve as President means accepting ultimate responsibility for the lives of troops put in harm's way. It would be not only unwise but immoral for him to deliver the lives of American soldiers into the hands of an international bureaucrat selected by the United Nations. As Senator Bob Dole has pointed out, the Secretary General of the United Nations was not elected by the American people.

The idea that the United States cannot afford to lead is fallacious. As Herb Stein has observed, “The United States is a very rich country. We cannot afford to do everything, but we can
afford to do everything important.” The United States is the world's top economic power, with the highest productivity per worker, the most advanced technological base, and one of the highest per capita GNPs in the world. It exports more goods, generates more scientific discoveries every year, and produces more Nobel Prize winners than any other country. Over $12.7 trillion in defense spending, $1.1 trillion in foreign aid, and more than one hundred thousand lives were the price the United States paid to ensure victory in the forty-five-year war against tyranny. We can well afford the infinitely smaller amount necessary to ensure that we do not lose the peace for which we sacrificed so much.