An election. . .for a sheriff
For the first time since the Vietnam era's presidential campaigns in 1968 and 1972, foreign policy will dominate a presidential election as it hasn't done through successive convulsions from the collapse of the Soviet Union to the first Gulf War. The slogan that captured American politics in 1992 was "It's the economy, stupid." In 1996, fewer than 5 percent voted on the basis of foreign policy.
Next year, however, the war cry is apt to be "It's terrorism, stupid." How does an open and disputatious democracy (i.e. us) deal with a ruthless group of radical Islamists with no known address, who are willing, even eager, to die in what they view as an existential struggle between the West and Islam? Not since Saladin crushed the Crusader armies at the Horns of Hattin in 1187 has any Islamic group felt that it had the power to drive the infidel from the Middle East and threaten the West.
Every candidate will have to face the reality that terrorists may become armed with technologies that literally permit them to wage a world war. Candidates who equivocate on this will surely fall.
The West was united against the Soviet Union and won. The dismaying fact is that today the West is divided on terrorism. Too many believe that the American answer is, in itself, a source of instability and hatred. But what was America to do when it suffered more casualties on 9/11 than at Pearl Harbor? The Bush administration concluded that we had to go on the offensive, even to the point of pre-emption--to get them before they get us.
Love-hate. The case for pre-emption is strong. It does not fit the normal lexicon of democratic polity, but the imminent threat today is not the imminent threat of yesterday, when armies massed at frontiers, advertising their hostile intentions. There will be no warning from those who hide in the dark, intent on inflicting death on thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, irrespective of race, religion, or creed.
There is a positive side to the doctrine of pre-emption as practiced in Afghanistan and Iraq. Given that the Arab world is the heartland of radical Islamism, the Bush administration sees instituting the freedoms we associate with democracy as essential for a stable society whose energies may be turned inward, where they belong. If we could undertake this task with friends and allies, it would be for the best, and we should certainly try harder. But we must do it, even if it means going it alone.
Everybody knows that this is the American century. Some love it, and some, of course, hate it. Why? Because our dominance seems ordained for decades, given the relative youth of our population compared with those of Europe and China, not to mention our widening technological gap with the rest of the world.
Not surprisingly, this has caused other big powers to rethink where they fit. Russia dissolved its empire and now lives within borders that reflect no historical precedent. It seeks a new relationship with the West and with the former satellite states of the Soviet Union. China is emerging from centuries of decline as a major power. Europe is redefining whatever political entity will emerge from the European Union. As Henry Kissinger has pointed out, "Never before has a new world order had to be assembled from so many different perceptions of the world, or on so global a scale."
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