A plan for action: a new era of International Cooperation for a changing world: 2009, 2010, and beyond.

• Author: Handley, John
• Position: Report

Seeking to advise a newly elected American president on the formulation and conduct of foreign policy, this study's three co-directors, Bruce Jones (New York University's Center on International Cooperation), Carlos Pascual (Brookings Institute), and Stephen Stedman (Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation), recruited an impressive advisory group of nearly three dozen American and foreign individuals with extensive diplomatic experience. Published last September by Managing Global Security (MGI), A Plan for Action presents both a plan and a timetable for its implementation, all in support of MGI's mission to build "international support for global institutions and partnerships that can foster international peace and security ... for the next 50 years."

The directors assume that American global leadership is either a reality, or at least desirable, and then assert that "the greatest test of global leadership will be building partnerships and institutions for cooperation" that can meet the challenges posed by climate change, nuclear proliferation, terrorism, poverty, disease, and economic instability. In order for the U.S. to achieve (or maintain) this position of global leadership, it must first abandon well defined notions of sovereignty and adopt a new principle the directors label "responsible sovereignty." To that end the United States must accept "obligations and duties" toward other states, which have no comparable obligation.

The directors' plan consists of four separate yet mutually supporting "tracks," specific goals for each track, and all to be accomplished between 2009 and 2012. The first track--restoring credible American leadership--calls for the United States to reject unilateralism. As the implicit example of unilateral U.S. behavior seems to be its 2003 invasion of Iraq, this reader was left to speculate how many appeals to the UN must be made and how many allies must join the United States in order to render its action acceptably multilateral. The authors also call for the closure of the Guantanamo Detention Facility, without venturing to reveal what the United States must do with its current detainees. The track also calls for a doubling of the number of Foreign Service Officers and rewriting the Foreign Assistance Act without specifying exactly how either specifically contributes to a restoration of American leadership.

The second track calls for revitalizing international institutions by...