The Foreign Service Journal, December 2008

cause — inaugurated by the Clinton administration, continued in the Bush administration, and endorsed by both presidential candidates in 2008. But as a foreign policy goal, it comes at a high price. It alienates the Russians and is strongly opposed by, among others, Germany and France. In effect, it represents an unimaginative and ungener- ous response to Russia’s divesting itself of the Soviet Union. It recreates a new version of the Cold War system but with the West pushed forward into the old Russian sphere. It carries the geopolitical order of 1949 into the new century and thereby ignores the two great advances of the later 20th century — a non-Soviet Russia and the European Union. It thus transforms NATO from an asset into a liability for both the U.S. and for Europe. The Obama administration should quietly seek a more creative security structure — one that acknowledges and builds upon Eurasia’s double transformation. To do that will require a genuine NATO enlargement — bringing Russia in rather than keeping her out. It will also require an internal evolution of the European Union — to devel- op further its own military dimension. The aim would be a tripartite security structure. Certainly, the old pyrami- dal command structure — with an American general always serving as the supreme commander — has long been obsolete. A new tripartite arrangement might rotate commands. Transforming NATO from an alliance focused on a giant enemy into an interstate system for collective secu- rity might encourage comparable arrangements in Asia and Africa. Such a revitalized NATO, perhaps building a new relationship with the U.N., should find it easier to marshal the military support and political consensus needed to sustain order in the increasingly diverse and pluralistic world of our new century. So far, the American political imagination has been unable to generate the vision that would help us build such a world. Instead, as events spin more and more out of control, we remain spellbound by our success of six decades ago. F O C U S 46 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 8