The Elusiveness of A Humane World Community

Purpose

We live on a planet possessing the potential for peace and fulfillment for all, but societies have been distressingly unsuccessful in achieving these conditions for most of the human race. Why? This book begins to answer this fundamental question by examining two others: What has been the United States role in helping to achieve a secure and humane existence for all people? In pursuit of this goal, what should be the content of U.S. foreign policy now and during the remainder of this century?

In addressing these questions, my purpose is to examine recent U.S. foreign policy in order to clarify its impact on insuring the survival and well-being of U.S. citizens and the entire human race. Does the past conduct of U.S. foreign policy justify confidence that it can meet the unprecedented challenges of the 1980s? This analysis assesses the influence of U.S. policies on the prospects for realizing widely shared humanitarian values and for transforming the international system into one with an improved capacity to implement those values.

The present chapter will (1) illustrate the unprecedented foreign policy problems that will confront political leaders in the last quarter of the twentieth century; (2) explain why the complexity and worldwide dimensions of these problems demonstrate a pressing need for different normative standards for policy making than have been used historically; (3) describe the guidelines which seem essential to insure human survival and to facilitate the realization of other important values, such as the promotion of human rights and the abolition of worldwide poverty; and (4) explain the analytic approach employed in this study.

The Challenge to Humanity's Future

Global Problems in a National Context

Why should scholars, politicians, and ordinary citizens reassess the goals of U.S. foreign policy at this time? The answer is rooted in considerations of both prudence and morality. First of all, some fundamental policy adjustments will be required to satisfy the basic drive for security and survival in the future. Second, the fulfillment of our most cherished humanitarian values can be greatly facilitated by some modifications in the present national approach to policy decisions.

THE THREAT TO SURVIVAL

In the first instance, unprecedented problems that are global in scope increasingly exceed the capacity of traditional diplomatic practices and institutions to resolve. In general, our perception of foreign policy problems and opportunities has failed to stay abreast of rapidly changing world realities. This has meant that many policies have been growing increasingly unrealistic in the sense that they simply cannot achieve the ends sought. To oversimplify only slightly, the political leadership and attentive public apply essentially nineteenth-century diplomatic ideas to the solution of twenty-first-century problems, the technical and social origins of which are in the present. Nineteenth-century diplomatic ideas encourage (1) the continued emphasis on serving the national interest defined largely in terms of military power and sovereign control over a carefully defined piece of territory and segment of humanity; and (2) the assumption that the present system of competing national sovereignties either cannot or should not be fundamentally changed, and that it both can and will respond adequately to the foreseeable problems of national security, widespread poverty and resource shortages, severe ecological damage, and pervasive denial of human rights. Under the influence of old diplomatic habits and strong vested interests in the political and economic system inherited from the past, officials continue diplomacy as usual to confront newly emerging twenty-first century problems. For example, traditional diplomatic ideas and institutions persist even though their inadequacy is obvious for averting misuse of nuclear technology, the consequences of which cannot be confined to a carefully defined piece of territory, layer of the atmosphere, or segment of humanity. Traditional uses of military power and sovereign control, however sincerely and faithfully practiced, are impotent in the face of irresponsible behavior by a relatively small number of people who could affect millions of others in many countries for decades, centuries, or millennia to come.

A stark reality faces all inhabitants of the earth: through consequences resulting from major war or ecological imbalance, widespread suffering for millions of people and even eventual extinction of the human species are possibilities. Such statements have become commonplace, and thus they have lost their ring of urgency. Yet predicaments mount while time slips away, making remedial action more difficult and perhaps less likely. Even without major war or ecological collapse, existing political institutions prevent a billion of the world's people from having sufficient food, often resulting in permanent mental or physical disability, even though adequate nutrition is technically feasible. In brief, the decentralized structure of world power and authority, distributed among many sovereign states, perpetuates a relatively anarchic international system in which the danger of war, the shortage of food and other resources, and the presence of persistent ecological hazards threaten the survival of many people, if not, in the long run, of all human civilization. The survival question will not be examined in detail here, but a few brief comments about the political impact of nuclear technology and ecological hazards will illustrate the need to consider an alternative approach to the conduct of U.S. foreign policy. Subsequent chapters will substantiate this argument in greater detail.

The existence of nuclear weapons without their use in warfare since 1945 has produced a perhaps unjustified confidence that weapons of mass destruction will never be used. Yet, many dangers remain inherent in a strategy of nuclear deterrence. Although the United States is the most powerful nation on earth, it has no effective defense against a nuclear attack. The government can only hope to deter an attack. Yet as nuclear weapons technology spreads to additional countries, the likelihood that such weapons will be used in war increases. A well-known group of strategic experts in a Harvard-M.I.T. Arms Control Seminar have predicted that nuclear weapons will be used in combat before the end of the century — most likely by middle-range powers. Other experts have calculated that the probability of a general nuclear war is increasing. The danger of nuclear war will grow further as tactical nuclear weapons become smaller, lighter, "cleaner," and more...