The Foreign Service Journal, January-February 2017

20 JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2017 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL have continued to shoulder alongside us in Afghanistan, Iraq and throughout the Sahel. The Asia-Pacific region contains a challenging mix of threats and opportunities. A more domestically palatable Trans-Pacific Partnership with a safety net for its losers would help maintain momentum in a region with tremendous potential for American exporters. China’s increasingly assertive presence in the region will grow our list of potential partners, and North Korea will require special attention. As with Russian President Vladimir Putin, it is likely that Democratic People’s Republic of Korea Presi- dent Kim Jong-un will test you early; the best way to avoid getting to the worst-case scenario is being visibly prepared for it. Asia also has tremendous potential for the emergence of a moderate ver- sion of Islam that we should continue to engage. In this hemisphere , you will have some digging out to do after some toxic campaign comments. After shoring up our popular image and reassuring trading partners, there will be a temptation to leave the region on autopilot as you turn your attention to the more dramatic parts of the planet. This would be a mistake, however, given the tremendous untapped economic potential so close to home—starting with a reform- minded Mexico and a Canada with whomwe already have the largest trading relationship of any two nations in the world. A rational immigration policy also starts with good relations with the rest of the hemisphere. South Asia remains one of the few parts of the world where a nuclear conflagration could ignite, and is also one of the most likely regions to spread nuclear technology and know-how. But India, in particular, has immense trading potential. Indeed, as foreign policy commentators Kim R. Holmes of the Heritage Foundation and Will Inboden of the University of Texas, Austin, put it: “Our burgeoning strategic partnership with India has the potential to fundamentally transform the international order of the Indo-Pacific region.” Africa meanwhile has come alive, and we deserve some small credit for its “renaissance” (if not too premature a label), given our partnerships with its many struggling states. But progress is fragile and incomplete and, like Latin America, it is an easy place to neglect. There are more opportunities than risks in Africa, espe- cially for commerce, and there are 50 states in the African Union whose collective diplomatic clout is not insignificant. But many parts of the continent suffer from terrorism and violent extrem- ism, as well as civil wars and ethnic conflicts that cry out for the stronger institutions that America has become better at nurturing. Finally, the Middle East is either in collapse or skittish, and badly in need of attention and reassurance. Whether fair or not, old allies feel abandoned, and the region believes our attention has gone elsewhere (the danger with pivoting somewhere is that it implies pivoting away from somewhere else). This is not the time for a major push on the Middle East peace process, but it is a time for putting American influence behind measures to ensure the two-state option remains viable. With Iran, we have a good-enough agreement in the Iran nuclear deal (the Joint Compre- hensive Plan of Action), but it requires assertive management of Tehran’s regional meddling. The biggest challenge in the Middle East, however, is getting states to an orderly place indi- vidually, and building a stable regional order among those states. Syria, Yemen, Libya and Iraq are the tests of our ability to successfully shepherd failed states to stability; the key in each of them is reaching an agreement on an inclusive national political system, however imperfect and compromised—a daunting task we have avoided fully getting behind. To manage all of this, we will need to strengthen relationships broadly, moving away from the transactional arrangements we have fallen into since 9/11 and back to the more fundamental alli- ances and regional arrangements of a previous era. We also need to do more to develop with other global leaders a clear vision and action agenda for global order, because—as former U.S. ambas- sador and strategic thinker Carlos Pascual puts it—“This is simply too big for one country.” You should consider ways to formalize all this in a new global architecture, such as the “Group of 16” idea the Brookings Institu- tion has proposed. With the United Nations’ architecture impos- sible to quickly enhance, the G-8 out of date and the G-20 never really taking off, a G-8 plus Brazil, China, India, South Africa, Mex- ico, Indonesia, Turkey and Nigeria might be the way to broaden participation and commitment on a full range of global issues. Americans have developed a love-hate relationship with nation-building, with the result that we have never developed the tools to address the “fragile state” phenomenon adequately.