The Foreign Service Journal, November 2014

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | NOVEMBER 2014 23 T he changing climate and its effect on our environ- ment, the civilization-destroying effects of nuclear war and the enhanced possibilities of global pan- demics are only three examples of challenges that require an unprecedented degree of cooperation, and not just between national governments but among peoples. In this essay, Ambassador Goodby describes what he calls “the Putin Doctrine”: a coherent set of actions consis- tently applied over many years, designed with a specific, overriding goal in mind. That goal seems clear now, in light of the risks Russian President Vladimir Putin has been prepared to take to achieve it: to ensure Moscow’s domi- nance over as many of the former republics of the Soviet Union as is feasible given Russia’s resource limits, and to incorporate them, and those too strong to dominate, into a regional economic and political bloc led by Russia that is capable of exerting global influence. That strategic objective may not be achievable by Mos- cow for a host of reasons. But its pursuit can skew the way the international system shapes up in the future by holding out the model of a set of competing, relatively closed regional blocs, run by authoritarian systems of governance. Americans will have to rise to the occasion by building a consensus, hard as that may be, around our own goals in a world awash in change. Though I don’t sense that there is a consensus on that at the present time, I believe most Americans would agree that the United States must stand for open societies and for the rules embodied in the Charter of the United Nations and in regional compacts, such as the Helsinki Final Act. That is fundamental so long as nation-states remain central to the structure of the international system. But beyond that, we must be actively seeking to build institutions, whether global or regional, that can respond to challenges to humanity’s well-being and even its survival. The goal of that kind of policy and that kind of diplomacy, quite simply, is to position our nation to continue to thrive in the new world. –George P. Shultz, former Secretary of State, October 2014 The Need for Consensus on American Goals U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz with General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev in the Kremlin, meeting to finalize the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. Paul Nitze is behind Gorbachev. Moscow, Oct. 23, 1987. Courtesy of the Hoover Institution