In February, I heard Zbigniew Brzezinski on Charlie Rose. I got the same feeling from him as I get from Richard Clarke — of a rare someone who sees clearly and speaks without posturing. My impression was confirmed in this New York Times review of “THE CHOICE: Global domination or Global leadership,” in which Brzezinski's new book is called “the single most lucid and systematic statement of America's 21st-century security challenges yet to appear.”
Note what the reviewer concludes. He agrees with Brzezinski that what we need is “best pursued by reducing the misery and injustice that cause political violence and by promoting human rights and democracy,” and goes on to say that “the problem is the sheer intractability of this challenge.”The United States is in the midst of a great debate about national security.The last great debate was in the 1940's as American officials struggled to cope with the insecurities generated by postwar Soviet power and global Communism. That era's search for security transformed the American relationship with the world, yielding a global system of alliances, doctrines of containment and deterrence and commitments to multilateral cooperation.A half-century later, the events of Sept. 11, 2001, painfully revealed a post-cold-war world menaced by new threats, and the Bush administration moved quickly to articulate a new vision of national security organized around pre-emption, coalitions of the willing, and the unfettered use of American military power. While critics have vigorously faulted the administration for its unilateralism and a rush to war in Iraq, they have offered only glimmerings of an alternative national security vision.Until now. The debate is now fully joined with “The Choice” by Zbigniew Brzezinski, the single most lucid and systematic statement of America's 21st-century security challenges yet to appear. For those troubled by President Bush's “war on terrorism” approach to national security, the flag of the opposition has finally and firmly been planted. Together, this new book by the distinguished scholar-diplomat and the Bush administration's 2002 national security strategy define the parameters of the establishment debate on national security.Mr. Brzezinski says that American national security is profoundly tied to international security, and so the country's security is increasingly in the hands of others. The old link between national sovereignty and national security has finally been severed. In this new era the United States must be willing to work with other democracies to reduce the “convulsive and percolating strife” that lies behind today's global violence and terrorism.Accordingly, Mr. Brzezinski argues that Washington must use this moment of unrivaled American power to build an “increasingly formalized global community of shared interest” that can provide a long-term basis for global peace and security. If the slogan of the Bush administration is “America will never seek a permission slip to defend the security of our people,” Mr. Brzezinski's slogan might be “America will never be able to defend the security of its people without the help of others.”His critique of the Bush administration's approach is understated but hard-hitting, and it is effective precisely because he accepts two key White House assumptions. He agrees that American power is indispensable in providing the framework for global order.Mr. Brzezinski also accepts the administration's view that the United States faces radically new security problems in which the threats are coming not from established great powers but from illiberal states, backward societies and aggrieved peoples. Globalization and the growing ease of communication and transport project American ideas and society into the world but also provide tools for the weak to organize and hit back.But Mr. Brzezinski parts company with President Bush in three fundamental respects. First, he argues that the “war on terrorism” is not an adequate or unifying mission for American foreign policy. Terrorism is a tactic — and so to declare war on terrorism is equivalent to Franklin D. Roosevelt's declaring war on blitzkrieg. The Bush administration's “theological approach” to terrorism, in which we are in a struggle between good and evil and others are either with us or against us, is too abstract, politically unsustainable, and inevitably leads to scare-mongering. It is also an inadequate diagnosis of the problem and, in the end, other countries whose cooperation we need won't sign on to it.Second, Mr. Brzezinski argues that an adequate approach to terrorism must focus on the historical and political context in which violence is generated. Lurking behind every terrorist act is a political problem. A “careful political strategy is needed in order to weaken the complex political and cultural forces that give rise to terrorism,” he says. “What creates them has to be politically undercut.” The American reluctance to confront the sources of Islamic radicalism, rooted in the modern history of the Middle East, is in Mr. Brzezinski's view a dangerous form of denial. To simply say that terrorists hate freedom is to miss the impulses that underlie their actions.Perhaps most important, he argues that American moral authority is the country's most prized asset and has been squandered by the Bush administration's arrogation of the unilateral right to define threats and use force. “America's global military credibility has never been higher, yet its global political credibility has never been lower,” he says. Ultimately American power is enhanced if it is legitimate, and this means that Washington must concert its power with other states and exercise consensual leadership.Mr. Brzezinski, who was President Jimmy Carter's national security adviser, began his career as a scholar of Soviet power and geopolitics, so it is not surprising that he is most penetrating in his discussion of the character and limits of American power. He is less illuminating in his depiction of how consensual hegemony or an American-led concert of great powers might operate.He also finds himself bumping up against the same problem that confounds Republican hard-liners. Both sides agree that American security is enhanced by the enlargement of “zones of global stability,” best pursued by reducing the misery and injustice that cause political violence and by promoting human rights and democracy. But the problem is the sheer intractability of this challenge.In the end Mr. Brzezinski poses but does not really answer the essential question: Can a democratic superpower, rendered vulnerable by hidden and uncertain threats, advance its security by strengthening and binding itself to the world, or will it lash out in a way that leaves itself isolated? The good news is that the last time the United States had a grand debate on national security, it did ultimately act in its enlightened self-interest.[G. John Ikenberry is the Peter F. Krogh professor of geopolitics and global justice at Georgetown University and a trans-Atlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.]
Thomas Friedman in a column this week, AWAKING TO A DREAM, says, “I so hunger to wake up and be surprised with some really good news — by someone who totally steps out of himself or herself, imagines something different and thrusts out a hand.”
Those of you on this list can imagine what these observation do to me. I feel like I have the key to the kingdom, but can't get anybody to let me put it in the lock. My latest is an attempt to get recognizable signatures to a call for an investigation of the crop circles phenomenon (noteworthy scientists also, even if they aren't well known). If this is anything you could help with, please pass along my document: http://theconversation.org/call.pdf. (If you have doubts about the authenticity of the phenomenon, look at “Why Real Crop Circles Can't be Hoaxed”: http://theconversation.org/booklet2.html.) Producing this material, along with amping up the presentation that I do with our webmaster, Allen Branson — http://theconversation.org/presentation.pdf — is what's been keeping me busy enough not to have posted anything for awhile.
A corollary to the idea in Brzezinski's book that “an adequate approach to terrorism must focus on the historical and political context in which violence is generated” is what's been quoted in this week's obituary as coming from the great Peter Ustinov: “Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich.”
Fareed Zakaria in a Newsweek piece, Terrorists Don't Need States, speaks more core stuff on “the new face of terror: dozens of local groups across the world connected by a global ideology.” Saying, “Next week I will explain how best to tackle this threat,” he concludes with what applies to the world in trouble and to the possibility that crop circles represent: “But first we need to see it for what it is.” Here's the email I sent him:
“But first we need to see it for what it is.” This is so smart — as was all of your well-reasoned piece. The thing we lack for most is straight thinking. How could Bush maintain any popularity if people saw things for what they are and not in the distorted light that this administration basks in?
I'm now tracking the award winning Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo, to get his inside view of day to day developments. It's where I picked up Fareed Zakaria's piece. Both his commentary and the links he gives are hugely helpful to keep me feeling well informed. A measure of his worth is that he frequently is quoted by other good observers, like our listmember Danny Schechter, whose News Dissector Weblog I also read daily.
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