GLOBAL ROLE

...Solvency, reminds us...

...Such interests do not require "a huge increase in arms," nor would they benefit from "a foreign policy centered simply on anti-Sovietism...

...Committed to the restoration of Robber Baron capitalism on the home front and gunboat diplomacy abroad, the Reagan Administration and its fundamentalist myrmidons do not seem ready to accept such limits...

...Chace is managing editor of Foreign Affairs, a journal published by the prestigious Council on Foreign Relations...

...Like most denizens of boardrooms and think tanks, Chace rejects the anarchy of laissez-faire for the comparative security of state capitalism...

...Nor will liberals and radicals find Chace's program very appealing...

...Leftist critics of the Council have portrayed it as an imperial brain trust...

...For its part, the Left blames capitalism, racial and sexual discord, and imperialism...

...Ill-advised global adventures and excessive military spending programs have sapped the country's economic strength, he contends...

...At the very least, it represents the U.S...

...In turn, a foundering American economy has eroded the ability of the United States to defend its "vital interests" in the world...

...Society at large, both at home and abroad, has grown disorderly...

...gradually, balance-of-payments deficits have mounted, the dollar has been weakened, and American productivity has declined...

...If nothing else, Solvency underscores the simple-minded nature of the militarist prescriptions which currently emanate from Washington...

...foreign policy "establishment" and constitutes a major recruiting ground for the official guardians of America's world power...

...Consequently, "the central question for American foreign policy is how to manage our domestic and foreign affairs in order finally to bring about a solvent foreign policy...

...A responsible political leadership in the United States, he remarks, would long ago have acted to end America's dependence on foreign oil...

...Like the isolationists of the 1930s, a few "realist" writers of whom he is fond (such as Walter Lippmann), and some modern critics of the Pentagon (such as Seymour Melman), Chace sees U.S...

...Rejecting both approaches, Chace focuses instead upon a diffuse American profligacy—a "consumer society" which will not face up to the necessity for responsibility in production and consumption...

...At times I think I live in a ruined city," he remarks...

...Unlike Secretary of State Alexander Haig, Chace does not view all of America's global problems as consequences of Soviet villainy, nor does he think that the United States is in a position of military inferiority to the Soviet Union...

...At the same time, he favors continued pursuit of nuclear arms control agreements, not in the quest for detente, but as a means of restraining the arms race and avoiding global destruction...

...Accordingly, Chace calls for upgrading America's conventional weapons systems, reinstituting the draft, and using foreign aid to secure Washington's international objectives...

...Those on the Right attribute the emerging crisis atmosphere to the welfare state, labor unions, the decline of religion and the family, and communism...

...Such, however, is not the case, as James Chace's new book...

...In searching for some kind of order...

...Limiting America's military and international commitments provides only one way to balance the books...

...Lawrence S. Wittner (Lawrence S. Wittner teaches American history at the State University of New York, Albany...

...Violence has grown random...

...Yet he does favor government action to stimulate industrial productivity, control inflation, enhance America's "competitive position" in world markets, and coordinate economic planning...

...Nevertheless, Chace's book—like the writings of George Kennan, the trilateral experts, and other avatars of the national security establishment—illustrates how divided elite opinion is with respect to America's global role...

...Trouble can come from anywhere...

...The refurbishing of the Cold War by Washington policymakers may give observers the impression that, among America's national security elite, a hawkish foreign policy consensus has been reached...

...For Chace, America's "vital interests" encompass "the defense of the homeland, the integrity of those countries we see fit to defend, such as Europe, Japan, and Israel, and access to our markets and sources of supplies abroad, including, at least for a time...

...State Department, with which it is so closely intertwined, the Council exudes an air of sophisticated and respectable old wealth...

...Even so, he does consider Russia "an unsatiated power," driven into dangerous international gambles by its armed might and "the ideology of international communism...

...As might be imagined, Chace, as a representative of the American upper class, expresses not the slightest hint of a desire for egalitarian reform, much less socialist measures...

...the Persian Gulf...

...In calling attention to these intimations of chaos, Chace is hardly unique, for a similar alarm has been raised clear across the political spectrum...

...I am haunted by the possibility of a world where laws are not obeyed, where the state is predatory or disintegrating, where terrorism has replaced large-scale warfare and the balance of power among nations has broken down with nothing to replace it...

...They will probably turn elsewhere—toward the United Nations, alleviation of world poverty, the banning of nuclear weapons, and the sharing of global resources—when formulating their own foreign policy agenda...

...Like the U.S...

...The specter oppressing Chace—and, presumably, a portion of elite opinion as well—is that of social, political, and economic disintegration...

...another is reviving the economy...

...foreign policy and the American economy linked symbiot-ically...

...If this nation is to endure and thrive, he argues, there must be a better balance between its power and its commitments...

...Certainly this is a recipe for American security that departs rather markedly from that which has been capturing recent headlines...