America's Cross-Eyed Diplomacy
GEWEN, BARRY
Writers & Writing AMERICA'S CROSS-EYED DIPLOMACY BY BARRY GEWEN Two recent books, a Carnegie Endowment collection of essays entitled Estrangement: America and the World (Oxford, 347 pp., $19.95),...
...His final chapter offers a series of recommendations, carefully numbered one through 19 and covering everything from arms limitations to Third World debt to ecological reform...
...must adjust to a more heterogeneous, less orderly world...
...Frances FitzGerald notes "solipsism" in the outlandish "standing tall again" celebration that took place after the Marines successfully invaded a sparsely defended Caribbean island the size of the District of Columbia...
...It takes a minimum of two to produce a falling out, after all, and autarky seems to be spreading around the globe these days with the speed of an infectious disease...
...Richard H. Ullman enumerates the international bodies, including the World Court and the Contadora Group, that the Reagan Administration has "scorned" in the pursuit of its particular aims...
...Moreover, the bill of particulars indicating an isolationist trend that can be culled from these two works is troubling to say the least...
...Most common to the pieces is the notion that conditions have changed profoundly from the postwar era, when America's political, economic, military, and moral dominance was unchallenged .Several authors stress—unarguably—that the U.S...
...There is no single message in Estrangement...
...The burden of prescription falls on Ullman's concluding essay, "Paths to Reconciliation," and it cannot bear the weight...
...So many proposals clearly provide room for disagreement, and Schmidt himself recognizes that "the list could be varied greatly...
...has been slower than its allies to accept the reality of a global economy...
...Ullman emphasizes the need to ease U.S.-Soviet tensions, writing: "Washington has an interest in persuading Moscow that it poses no military threat to the communist [make that 'Communist'—B.G.] regimes inEastemEurope...
...Ali A. Mazrui observes that the rest of the world (the exceptions notwithstanding) has been more receptive to American culture than we have been to other cultures...
...The temperature of his prose rises several degrees as he discusses Paul Nitze's "walk in the woods" arms compromise, rejected by the two superpowers without consulting their allies...
...He also reminds us that Soviet divisions are stationed only an hour's drive from his home, five minutes by air, so that while Europeans have every reason to fear the Soviet presence, they know as well thattheymustlivewithit...
...His perception of the Soviets is grounded in an ethnic conflict dating back centuries, giving his views a depth and stability we tend to lack, but also a grim determinism that is alien to us...
...More optimistic, if more naive as well, we are prone to believe that everyone is basically the same, that lurking underneath the encrustations of tradition and culture are universals making us all part of one human family...
...One reads Schmidt feeling that here is someone who speaks seriously to the true issues...
...Had this book appeared a few months later, one or more of the contributors would no doubt have included the disquieting public enthusiasm for Rambo, followed by the President's own tasteless words of approval for the Sylvester Stallone School of Foreign Policy...
...and its anti-abortion stand at a 1984 International Conference on Population...
...They do not voice this loudly, because they do not wish to appear to be having a dispute with their most important ally, but everyone in Paris or London or Bonn and everyone in Washington knows very well that there is no basic agreement in the alliance on the American Strategic Defense Initiative...
...By this he means the search for spheres of cooperation with Moscow coupled with whatever initiatives are necessary to ensure security against Soviet pressures...
...sometimes they even have a passion for suffering...
...More unsatisfactory is Ullman's recommendation that in the event of future Eastern European eruptions, we restrict our support to empty words or, at best, "boycotts and other economic instruments...
...He should talk things over with James Chace, who begins the chapter that follows by crisply announcing: "The United States has never been isolationist...
...Still, as the foremost superpower and putative leader of the non-Communist world, the U.S...
...We are less suspicious and cynical about others, more sentimental, more moralistic...
...They expect no quick fixes...
...His European sense of history allows no illusions about the USSR's intentions...
...SCHMIDT, it seems to me, strikes the proper balance...
...He is appalled at the return to Cold War posturing, and continues to advocate detente...
...In a strangely reactionary essay, "The Adams Doctrine and the Dream of Disengagement," Philip L. Geyelin locates the "enduring soul of the Republic" in the period when the nation consisted primarily of a few million Protestants from Northern Europe and a lesser number of slaves, ignoring the millions of Irish, Italians, Slavs, Jews, Hispanics, and Asians who later altered and continue to alter the nature of the country...
...He expresses concern about "one of the great mystifications," America's conviction that the world has recovered economically when the truth is that "there is greater misery today than there was 10 years ago...
...The former German Chancellor mentions the two embargoes against the Soviet Union unilaterally declared by the United States, the first on grain by Jimmy Carter, the second on equipment for the natural gas pipeline by Ronald Reagan...
...And his repeated criticisms of the Star Wars proposals not only raise questions about the depth of the White House's commitment to trans-Atlantic cooperation, they subvert Administration claims of foreign support: "European governments have great misgivings about the Star Wars program...
...That "enduring soul" Geyelin identifies as "semi-isolation" or "disengagement...
...Schmidt's own list, coming from a supremely authoritative source, is especially worth pondering...
...Arguing that its long-range goals are primarily geopolitical, not ideology-inspired, he points out that since the 15th century, under tsar and commissar alike, "Russia has grown and grown and grown...
...must reasonably accept a larger share of responsibility than others for the West's disarray...
...No American would ever write, as Schmidt does, in explaining the durability of the Soviet system: "The Russians are the greatest sufferers in the world...
...Onewould have thought that this issue had been settled in Hungary in 1956, if not before...
...Others point to polls showing a declining interest in foreign affairs and to the ever smaller numbers of students taking foreign language courses...
...The easing of tensions every sensible person desires can never erase the genuine differences between East and West...
...Quoting Galsworthy, Schmidt remarks: "Idealism increases in direct proportion to one's distance from the problem...
...I would still buy his formula at the drop of a hat," Schmidt declares...
...Writers & Writing AMERICA'S CROSS-EYED DIPLOMACY BY BARRY GEWEN Two recent books, a Carnegie Endowment collection of essays entitled Estrangement: America and the World (Oxford, 347 pp., $19.95), edited by Sanford J. Ungar, and Helmut Schmidt's 1985 Henry Stimson lectures at Yale, A Grand Strategy for the West (Yale, 159 pp., $12.95), deal with essentially the same theme—the United States' increasing go-it-alone posture in international affairs...
...There is blame enough for everyone— France, Italy, Israel, Japan, even far-off New Zealand...
...Both volumes may strike readers as rather one-sided or unfair, since they devote the major portion of their space to pointing fingers at Washington's alleged high-handedness...
...Neither do they see any profit in denunciations of "evil empires...
...He is the classic Good European, whose thinking, free of both petty nationalism and apocalyptic designs, is directed to crafting a policy of coordination among the allies, a "Grand Strategy...
...Admittedly, there is little the West can do in such cases, and righteousness does not rest with those who urge resistance to Russian tanks down to the last Czech or Hungarian...
...Nonetheless, it is as fine a basis for discussion as one is likely to see...
...In Estrangement, Ungar cites three "stark" examples of America's separatism: its opposition at a 1981 World Health Organization meeting to a code of ethics on marketing baby formula in less-developed countries...
...Just how different Schmidt's time-sense is from the average American's is captured in his comment that Hamburg's trade has expanded beyond Europe " only in the last400years...
...The level of thinking in the different pieces varies considerably, and despite the overarching theme, the authors tend to ride off on their particular hobby-horses, sometimes contradicting each other in the process...
...It is this stance which gives the book its intellectual force...
...They are stronger on pronouncements, though, than concrete proposals...
...Yet within the limits reality imposes, we surely have a moral obligation to offer any feasible assistance...
...Oddly, American readers may register their most profound disagreement with A Grand Strategy for the West at the point of Schmidt's greatest strength, his historical consciousness...
...If Schmidt has a single lesson he wishes us to take from his thoughtful, wide-ranging little book, it is: "Do not let us look at the world from a purely American viewpoint, with North America as the center of the world...
...Yet there is no denying that at the deepest level, far removed from problems of debt and missiles, our aspirations and theirs may diverge...
...Our concern about human rights, though it sometimes masks simple realpolitik, is heartfelt...
...Lester Thurow warns that the U.S...
...The circumstances of history have placed us on the side of the Germans in their ages-old struggle with the Russians, and we have much to learn from the stoical, tragic stance experience has compelled them to...
...its 1982 vote against a law-of-the-sea draft treaty...
...Later episodes in Berlin, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Afghanistan certainly suggest that the strategists in the Kremlin do not lose sleep worrying about nato bridgeheads across the Elbe...
...It suffers from the lack of coherence that afflicts most collections of this sort...
Vol. 69 • February 1986 • No. 3
