The Foreign Service Journal, November 2007

regions. These regional powers dis- trust our purposes, fear our mili- tarism and reject our leadership. Distrust drives them to reaffirm the principles of international law we have now abandoned. Fear drives them to pursue the development or acquisition of weapons with which to deter the policies of pre-emptive attack and forcible regime change we now espouse. (If the weak think the powerful consider themselves above the law, the only protection for the vulnerable is to arm themselves. So scofflaw behavior in the name of halt- ing or reversing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction actually promotes it.) All this is creating a world of regional balances in which we play a lessened role. Some of these region- al balances, as in South Asia today and the Middle East of the future, involve dangerous nuclear standoffs between two or more middle-ranking powers. Misalignment of Power and Institutions As new centers of economic and political power emerge around the world, global institutions designed to include countries whose participation is essential to problem-solving are no longer in alignment with the actual distribution of either the world’s power or its problems. They reflect the past rather than the present inter- national pecking order. Because they exclude key players, they can’t con- trive workable solutions or secure buy-in from those who must support them or, at least, refrain from wreck- ing them if they are to succeed. The problem is most obvious in organizations devoted to economic matters. Take the Group of Eight, a self- constituted Euro-American-Japanese club of democracies plus Russia. The G-7, as it was until 1998, once played a central role in managing the global economy. It still discusses global trade and investment imbalances. But without Chinese participation, this amounts to little more than inef- fectual whining. Or consider energy and the envi- ronment, other issues of broad con- cern. With the fastest-growing new energy consumers like China, India and Brazil outside the Organization for Economic Cooperation and De- velopment and its affiliated Inter- national Energy Agency, there is no way to coordinate an effective inter- national response to energy shortages or crises. And when the United States absents itself, as we have from the Kyoto regime and from some parts of the U.N. system, even less can be accomplished. The same pattern of growing mis- alignment between power and insti- tutions exists throughout the interna- tional system. The membership and voting arrangements of the U.N. Security Council, for example, reflect both the colonial era and the out- come of World War II far better than they mirror current realities. A body charged with the management of global security and other vitally important issues is obviously handi- capped in its ability to make, legit- imize and enforce its decisions if it overweighs Europe, inflexibly slights India and Japan, and includes no Muslim nation or group of nations among its permanent members. The U.N.’s difficulties are compounded by the contemptuous treatment it now receives from Washington, and by the effects on its image here and abroad of our using it primarily to fend off international condemnation of outrageous behavior by Israel. We can and must do better than this. To regain both credibility and international respect, we Americans must, of course, restore the vigor of our constitutional democracy and its respect for civil liberties. But that in itself will be far from enough. The willingness of others to follow us in the past did not derive from our abil- ity to intimidate or coerce them. Instead, we inspired the world with our vision and our example. Now we know what we’re against, but what are we for? Whatever happened to American optimism and idealism? To be able to lead the world again, we must once more exemplify aspira- tions for a higher standard of free- dom and justice at home and abroad. We cannot compel, but must per- suade others to work with us. And to lead a team, we must rediscover how to be a team player. Toward a Concert of Powers When President Franklin Delano Roosevelt first proposed what be- came the United Nations, he envis- aged a concert of powers that could foster a harmonious and largely peaceful world order, increasingly free of both want and fear, and respectful of individual and collective rights as well as of the cultural diver- sity of humankind. That vision remains both relevant and com- pelling. The bipolar struggles of the Cold War strangled it at birth, but that conflict is over. The world that is emerging, though it contains multiple strategic geometries, needs a com- mon architecture that can flexibly 46 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7 We can count on no common threat to rally the world behind us. In the new era, there are no blocs and no clear battle lines.