Contending Schools.

• Author: Maynes, Charles William
• Position: Two thoughts of foreign policy

IN HIS BOOK Diplomacy, Henry Kissinger maintains that at the turn of the last century the United States faced a choice between two fundamentally different approaches to international relations, one represented by Theodore Roosevelt and the other by Woodrow Wilson. America was then emerging from decades of preoccupation with continental expansion, the country's economic might was beginning to outdistance that of all others, and its merchants were establishing trade ties in every corner of the globe. Two schools of thought, represented by two men who became president, arose to vie for influence in charting America's approach to such an altered world.

Theodore Roosevelt, president from 1901 to 1909, urged the nation to establish its relations with the rest of the world solidly on the concept of national interest, based on military might and balance of power diplomacy. Woodrow Wilson, president from 1913 to 1921, pressed the nation to support a foreign policy grounded in law and deriving strength from cooperation with others.

In Kissinger's view, and in that of others in the traditional school of foreign policy to which he belongs, Wilson won the argument. As a consequence, America's approach to the world has been colored by its resistance to the adoption of a more traditional, more European, more "realistic" view of international relations. That is to say, America has been hesitant to develop an approach to the rest of the world based on a quest for power and a determination to act according to the standard of the national interest. (We shall leave aside for now the paradox that a country allegedly so handicapped has been more successful diplomatically, and has accumulated more power, than any of the other countries that followed more traditional approaches to international affairs.)

Now America is entering another century, and, for many of the same reasons that the debate between Roosevelt and Wilson broke out at the beginning of the twentieth century, a new debate over America's role in the world is taking place. Today, as then, America finds itself having successfully concluded a long struggle and wondering what to do next. When Roosevelt and Wilson argued about the direction of American foreign policy their clash took place against the backdrop of a nation successfully completing its internal consolidation. The nation was secure from coast to coast and hence free to consider important strategic choices, which it proceeded to do. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the emerging debate over foreign policy is taking place in a nation that has successfully prevailed in a global struggle against a powerful adversary. With international communism fatally crippled or functionally dead, the Soviet Union gone and the Warsaw Pact disbanded, America is again secure and, hence, as it was a century ago, free to consider different strategic choices.

There is another similarity. Americans are optimistic today about themselves and their future. As in the days of Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, we are convinced that we know the way--politically and economically--and that therefore we have an obligation, if not also a right, to lead others to a better future.

Most counties, of course, are not so blessed by geography and history as to be able to consider radical new approaches to the world. They may enjoy temporary periods of enhanced security or their populations may develop a greater sense of confidence or optimism, but geography and history predetermine their international stance. They are trapped within narrow strategic margins.

America also faced such limitations so long as it was militarily weak and had not reached its natural limits. But once the country was internally consolidated, once other major powers were definitively excluded from its hemisphere, and its own population began to exceed that of all other industrialized countries, the United States developed into a unique state in the international system: It acquired, and still possesses, a larger strategic margin than that enjoyed by any other power.

It is therefore quite understandable that, at the beginning of the last century and at the beginning of this one, a debate over basic strategic options could take place. A country so confident and so secure begins to understand that it has options open to it that are not available to others. It has the luxury of the kind of public debate about its external options that most state elites try to avoid. And, indeed, over the past few years three schools of American commentators have begun to clarify three different approaches to the issue of America's place in the world. Various labels have been applied to these schools. I believe that they are best described--in terms of the scope they envisage as appropriate for their country's role--as the controllers, the shapers and the abstainers, it being understood that each school has its conservative and liberal wings.

The earliest of the three schools to advance its case has been that which seeks to control the international system. Its adherents are the self-proclaimed hegemonists, who have decided that it is in America's interest to use its immense power not merely to make America the leader of the international system--its primus inter pares--but to dominate it. They call for major sacrifices in money and, if necessary, in blood to ensure that the American domination lasts as long as possible (though they acknowledge that one day it must end).

The shapers believe that a quest for leadership is more realistic than a quest for domination. They are cautious about the use of power. They believe that as powerful as America may be today, it cannot prevail without the help of others. In concert with allies and friends, America's goal should be to shape the changing international environment into more permanent patterns that will benefit U.S. interests over the longer run.

In forming their view of America's international posture, the abstainers focus on the demise of the Soviet Union and the pacifying effects of globalization. Since America is now no longer threatened by a major international foe, and as globalization is benign, America can comfortably scale down its active role in the world, trusting to natural balances the task of keeping the peace.

Despite their differences, all three schools of thought are attempting to confront the fundamental problem in international relations: How can the state be made secure? Each school of thought strives to place America within a system that will provide that security. The controllers believe it must be a system that America determines. The shapers believe it must be a system that America molds with the cooperation of others. The abstainers believe that the international system is now sufficiently benign or nonthreatening that America should neither control nor mold it.

A closer examination of each of these three broad schools of thought may shed light on the nature of American interests as we enter the twenty-first century.

The Controllers

IN THE post-Cold War context, the first to speak for the controllers was the administration of George Bush. As that administration drew to a...