The Foreign Service Journal, December 2008

to a standstill. And within a decade the peace was destroyed. Today, after six decades of remarkable growth and truly extraordinary technological achievement, tensions are increasing as the world seeks to adjust to the rise of China and India. Our alliances at the United Nations Security Council and North Atlantic Treaty Organi- zation have weakened. Al-Qaida and similar terrorist groups hostile to Western values seek through violence to change the world according to their ideology; our financial institutions are under great stress; and high energy costs and the credit squeeze have led to steady layoffs. Against this backdrop, elected representatives are claiming that open trade is costing our nation millions of jobs and are pledging to vote against trade agreements already negotiated and to pull out of others. Restrictive legislation has been introduced in the 110th Congress on matters ranging from penalizing outsourcing to curtailing Chinese imports, and its members have passed a farm bill increasing subsidies in the face of relatively high com- modity prices. Efforts to limit foreign competition risk repeating the policy mistakes that have cost us so dearly in the past. Failure to integrate developing nations into the global trading system will not only limit our own future eco- nomic opportunities, but will alienate the excluded pop- ulations encouraging them to side with those who would do us harm. With the rhetoric of the campaign behind us, our great country must marshal the political will to lead the world in lowering global trade barriers to create new eco- nomic opportunity for all nations, including our own. That will require our public and private sectors to work hard to rebuild a domestic constituency that understands what is at stake and will take the steps necessary to ensure that our nation can continue to compete vigorously in the 21st century. F O C U S 52 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