The Endangered American Dream.

• Author: Vernon, Raymond

WITH THE USSR acronym already fading out of memory, governments are turning to the dangerous, dirty, and unglamorous task of pulling apart their nukes and reprocessing the components. But that is not the only adjustment that marks the passage of the Soviet empire. Geo-politicians, having for so long occupied center stage among the foreign affairs elite, find their audiences dissipated, their status challenged.

But all is not yet lost. Nation states are still the principal players in the international game and show no signs of relinquishing that role. And geo-politicians can count on one basic verity as they face the future: In the words of Edward Luttwak, "states are relentlessly adversarial." So we can expect the continuation of warfare, even if it takes the form of economic rivalry. In such a world, the state that wishes to emerge triumphant needs the services of the geo-economist. And where best to find the well-prepared geo-economist than from the ranks of the underemployed geo-politicians?

One thing is certain: National economic security is the growth subject of the Washington think tanks. The Soviet Union is no more, revealed in the end as a paper tiger; but Asia is fast developing new menaces, whose armaments take an economic form. The status of national economic security as the subject of the moment is now confirmed from many directions, including the reports of congressional committees and the addresses of leaders in the executive branch.

To be sure, the demand for national economic security has had nothing like the compelling clarity that more old-fashioned concepts of national security can command. National economic security conjures up no simple image of a Cuban missiles crisis or a Berlin wall or 30,000 threatening warheads spread across twelve time zones. The geo-economist must content himself instead with the threat emerging from an insignificant string of islands, devoid of natural resources, and crowded beyond bearing with rapidly aging workaholics. The economic security threat, therefore, cries out for definition.

In the search for definition, history is no great help. Although there have been clauses in international agreements on traffic in implements of war and in the things that support a warmaking potential, the idea of national economic security has never been the subject of an international treaty. Indeed, most U.S. economists, being devoted to such antediluvian propositions as the virtues of free trade, have had some difficulty even understanding what the phrase purports to represent. Hence the compelling need, Luttwak tells us, for a breed of thinkers, honed by the...