NARRATOR: The history of the 20^th Century -- the American Century -- is written in the blood and the sacrifices of the hundreds of thousands of Americans who died in battle. During the second half of the American Century, the U.S. military played a dominant role in the foreign policy councils of the nation. In large measure, the military did not seek this role. It was thrust on the military by those who attacked our nation and our democratic values.

As we enter the new century, can the United States redefine its priorities and its relationships to minimize war and the casualties of war that the world suffered during the 20^th Century?

ADM EUGENE CARROLL, Jr., USN (Ret.): Hello. I'm Admiral Eugene Carroll for America's Defense Monitor

Over the course of this century, great advances have been made in such critical areas as health, education, housing and medical care. Yet our world is still torn by wars and conflict, still stricken by violence often caused by human greed and the lust for power. In this violent world, Congress, of course, must continue to maintain a navy and raise an army for the defense of the United States. But in the post-Cold War world, the threats to our nation are changing. This dictates that the dominant role of our military forces and current U.S. foreign policy be carefully evaluated.

Today's program looks at some of the new challenges and at some of the options to address them as seen through the eyes of experts and you, the American people.

NARRATOR: In the last 150 years, the increase in speed made possible by inventions such as the steam engine and telegraph have been eclipsed by the jet engine and by the lightening speed of wireless and satellite communications. As national economic structures have shifted outward and embraced global trading partners, they have become increasingly intertwined and dependent on each other.

Even the use of military forces and resources has changed. Governments are increasingly besieged by large-scale humanitarian crises and armed conflicts which often dwarf the ability of all but the largest military organizations to adequately respond.

These conditions have had a profound influence on how nations relate to each other.

JONATHAN LANDAY: I think it's had a profound impact in terms of the relations between states, the way states perceive their interests in the new environment.

NARRATOR: Jonathan Landay is the highly respected national affairs correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor.

LANDAY: It's brought to the fore the area of economic interests much more so than ever before. It's brought information -- the availability of information to peoples and governments and organizations at incredible speeds that never before existed, basically creating a much smaller world, if you would, in which economic and financial interests have almost as much impact on stability or instability as military and political power.

NARRATOR: Indeed, beginning in the 1970s with the policy of detente, the United States has moved steadily, if warily, along the path of negotiated arrangements to lessen the possibility of accidental or deliberate war. The Clinton administration's policy of "Engagement and Enlargement" is but the latest example of this trend.

Nonetheless, eight years after the end of the Cold War, the United States still seems to overemphasize military power even as our closest allies are reevaluating the use of military force in a less confrontational world.

STEVEN KULL: The United States does spend considerably more on defense than the European countries as a percentage of GNP. Or, if you just think about it as one big pie, the U.S. share of that pie is considerably more than half.

NARRATOR: Steven Kull is the director of the highly regarded program of International Policy Attitudes of the University of Maryland. He and his colleagues conduct extensive public policy polls of American citizens about U.S. foreign policy issues.

WOMAN-on-the-Street: The military's beyond usefulness in using force. I think that diplomacy's a better way.

KULL: The kind of solution that they have in mind from a variety of problems are solutions that involve a kind of global system, a multilateral system, a system that addresses the problems of trade, the problems of the environment, security problems, and so on.

NARRATOR: What is becoming more and more apparent as interdependence increases is that focussing too narrowly on the U.S. military as a foreign policy instrument while neglecting other elements of power may unintentionally contribute to national and international insecurity. Where the U.S. might see its actions as benefitting world "stability" -- as in the August 1998 Tomahawk cruise missile strikes against the terrorist training camps of Usama bin Laden in Afghanistan -- others see only dominance, hegemony, and a willingness to unilaterally employ force to achieve American ends.

A GLOBAL VILLAGE

NARRATOR: How can we approach foreign policy challenges in this new era?

MAN-on-the Street: Yes, it's -- it's a smaller world than it used to be.

KULL: There is this perception that the world is becoming smaller. And with this contracting world, there is a growing sense that Americans have to think about problems in a global way. In focus groups, people spontaneously say these kinds of things: That, "Hey," you know, "it's a real global world now." Or, "It's a small world now." And, "We have to think about our fate as being inextricably tied up with the fate of other countries."

NARRATOR: Living in a "global world," has definite implications for policy in the international arena. Military force, or the threat of such force, has always been one policy option.

GARY HUFBAUER: The British were famous for what I would call a policy of using the threat of naval action as a way of dealing with their foreign policy challenges in their heyday, in the 19^th Century and up into the early 20^th Century.

NARRATOR: Gary Hufbauer is the past-Director of Studies as the prestigious New York Council on Foreign Relations. He notes that in the immediate aftermath of World War I, the President of the United State, Woodrow Wilson, attempted a new approach to foreign policy challenges.

HUFBAUER: And he saw the League of Nations as a family of countries which would use economic sanctions as the first tool to stop aggression. Of course, the United States did not become a part of the League of Nations, but the League of Nations did come into being and it did use economic sanctions.

NARRATOR: The problem with the Wilsonian vision as used by the League is that economic sanctions became a substitute for war. Previously, economic sanctions such as embargoes, naval blockades and quarantines were an adjunct of war. When they succeeded it was because they were part of a larger array of foreign policy actions, were targeted at specific countries, and were enforced either through alliances or by threats of military action against any nation that tried to circumvent them.

The failure of the League of Nations, due largely to the refusal of the U.S. to join, ended temporarily the use of economics as a separate punitive measure. Following World War II, the U.S. prodded other nations to develop a world order based on collective military security, as represented by the United Nations, and collective economic security, as represented by institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

Although their full development was initially stymied by the Cold War, the end of the Soviet-U.S. standoff has reenergized the vision on which they were conceived. But the intervening 45 years also made a difference.

KULL: The fact that in the meantime the world economy has become more interconnected, it's become more globalized, that has only enhanced the support for this basic orientation, but it was really very much in place to begin with.

NARRATOR: Washington may believe that collective military and economic security are good things, but others see an ulterior motive at work in how collective security is implemented.

KULL: There's a feeling within the European public as well as European governments that the United States is overbearing and domineering, and so on. And so, the suggestion has been, well, perhaps the United States should carry less of the burden and have the Europeans carry more of the burden, but then let the Europeans have more say, have more influence.

NARRATOR: This perception of a domineering America has some basis in fact. In the post-World War II period, Washington has imposed economic sanctions approximately 100 times on countries including Panama, Haiti, Iran, Iraq, Sudan, South Africa, and recently even threatened one of our oldest allies, France.

HUFBAUER: Economic sanctions have actually become the lead tool, the primary tool of carrying out our foreign policy wishes across a very wide range of subject matter. And this is a departure and the United States is the only country of which this has been true in all of history, so far as I can discern.

NARRATOR: This emphasis on economic sanctions as a major foreign policy tool is not surprising. Following the deaths of 19 American Rangers in Somalia in October, 1993, the American public and the Congress have been extremely reluctant to commit U.S. military forces to assist in defusing potential or actual armed conflicts between and within nations.

But Steven Kull has found that the public's reasons are more sophisticated than a simple reaction to American casualties. Americans seem to understand the limits of military power in the modern world.

KULL: A lot of the problems that Americans are most concerned about when you ask them what's the most important concern you have vis a vis foreign policy -- many of those concerns cannot be addressed through military power, in a more general sense.

The POWER of PERSUASION in FOREIGN POLICY

HUFBAUER: I don't think that sanctions imposed for periods of five years, ten years, and so forth is in any way just, or moral, or effective because the punishment is really visited on the people who are the worst victims, the most suffering victims of the government in question because they are pressed down even further than they otherwise would be.

NARRATOR: If both military and economic power are much less effective in U.S. foreign policy, alternatives will be needed to help direct interstate relations. Rather than forcing others to do what we want, the U.S. should be seeking to persuade others than open, free societies, respectful of human and political rights are more stable, more secure and can be more prosperous in the new global environment.

This alternative to military power emphasizes the power of ideas -- democracy, human rights, and free markets -- to change the way people and nations see themselves and conduct relationships. But like war and economic sanctions, persuasion does not always achieve the ends desired. For this reason, Gary Hufbauer believes that all elements of power must be viewed as part of a continuous curve.

HUFBAUER: I think we should increasingly think or think more often of a force-curve approach, where it starts off with a diplomatic protest, moves to economic sanctions, and if at the end we don't achieve our goals, we go to military. But I'm not saying we always go through the whole force curve. I can envisage, as I said, economic sanctions in select cases, which are really just narrowly targeted.

NARRATOR: Too great an emphasis on a single form of power, such as military force, can actually reduce a nation's ability to respond effectively to international crises. For example, annual U.S. military spending of $271 billion is equal to the combined military spending of the next seven nations: Russia, Japan, China, France, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Italy.

Yet, while spending $271 billion for the military, the administration's spending request for foreign operations -- which includes foreign aid, multilateral development banks, and support for countries in East Europe and the former Soviet Union -- is only $14 billion, or about 5 percent of the Pentagon's budget. Clearly, this is a gross imbalance that hamstrings our flexibility to freely employ diplomatic measures and economic incentives to deal with foreign policy issues.

LANDAY: There is no doubt that American foreign aid needs more funding. There's no doubt that American embassies and American diplomacy needs more money, that they've suffered massive cutbacks. And because of these cutbacks, I think in the past we've tended to emphasize military force where perhaps we may have or should have first concentrated more on diplomacy. So, I think that the question of funding is one that also has to be tackled. It's one that's very serious and one that is increasingly so.

KULL: Americans perceive that the world economy is so interdependent now that foreign aid, development assistance, if it's done properly and not done excessively, is perceived as something that will ultimately benefit the United States because it ultimately creates trading partners. It builds up other economies to the point that they can trade with us and ultimately that will create jobs, and so forth. Almost two-thirds of Americans have that perception.

NARRATOR: Jonathan Landay also questions the utility of pouring so much money into the Pentagon -- 20 times more than into foreign assistance -- when military forces have no role in resolving today's biggest foreign policy challenges, such as the economic and political upheavals in Asia.

LANDAY: If you look at what's recently happened over the last year or so in East Asia, in particular, one can see that the presence of a 100,000 American troops has had little impact on stability both in Indonesia and particularly in other countries that have suffered from economic downturns: Japan, South Korea, or Malaysia, or Thailand. Though none of them have seen the kind of instability that Indonesia underwent with the ouster -- or I should say the resignation of President Suharto, the fact is that the presence of a 100,000 American troops did nothing to ease markets and to ease the financial crises that have led to serious concerns about future stability in that area.

GIVING UP the ROLE of WORLD POLICEMAN

NARRATOR: From stopping the encroachment of communism and the drug trade to retaliating against terrorist acts, three successive U.S. administrations have employed military force unilaterally.

HUFBAUER: The world policeman has to be respected. And we are now sanctioning about half the world's population for one thing or another, but we don't follow through and we're not getting a lot of respect. And that's eroding, I think, our diplomatic posture.

NARRATOR: But using the military as the primary instrument of our foreign policy can undermine the achievement of longer-term goals of policymakers and the American public.

MAN-on-the-Street: You know, we are sort of the world policeman now whether we want to be or not.

KULL: You can discern very consistent underlying values in what the American public wants. And some of those key values are that they want the United States to be engaged in the world. They want a cooperative form of engagement in the world. They want to share the burdens with other countries. They want to pursue collective security. They want an open trading system that includes an international effort to maintain or raise labor standards. They want international efforts to address environmental issues.

NARRATOR: One thing is striking about these priorities: The American public seems to have a broader view of when America should act than do politicians.

KULL: Other arguments that emphasize that we should only think in terms of the national interests are generally rejected. Americans feel that American foreign policy should have a humanitarian dimension, that it should be infused with some universal values.

NARRATOR: It seems the public wants a balance among the instruments of power, an appropriateness in the types and the intensity of American involvement in international affairs.

LANDAY: One always has to maintain this idea that a balance is required, that one has to balance, and that this balance involves weighing the military consequences, weighing the political consequences, and weighing the national interest, as well as whether or not you have the domestic support for your policies.

NARRATOR: This balancing was clearly demonstrated in February, 1998 in the Persian Gulf. Iraq's Saddam Hussein had expelled UN inspectors seeking to verify Iraq's compliance with UN resolutions requiring the dismantling of Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, and long-range missiles programs. When diplomatic efforts and continued economic sanctions failed to force Iraqi compliance, President Clinton moved additional U.S. military troops, ships and aircraft into the region. At what seemed the very last moment, the U.S. postponed military strikes to allow the UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, to resolve the crisis and let the inspectors resume their work.

At the time, the Secretary-General credited America's military buildup with bolstering his negotiating position with Saddam Hussein. But by September, 1998, the UN and Iraq were again at an impasse. This time, however, the U.S. changed its approach, letting diplomacy work.

LANDAY: The United States seems to be pursuing the diplomatic approach this time, which is to put the onus on the United Nations to get the agreement it reached with Saddam Hussein fulfilled and build the case for a military intervention in the future, knowing very well that it's highly unlikely that Saddam Hussein is going to agree to abide by the agreement he reached with Kofi Annan. That gives the military option far more weight if the case can be made that diplomacy has been exhausted.

RESPONDING to TERRORISM

Secretary of Defense WILLIAM COHEN: "Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, and especially families and friends of those we honor today..." [13 August 1998, Andrews Air Force Base, MD]

NARRATOR: August 7, 1998, the day U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania were bombed, was but another reminded that no amount of preparation, military or diplomatic, will ever entirely preclude acts of terror. Nor is it likely that even with the best intelligence we can predict when and where terrorists will strike.

U.S. military retaliation against Sudan and against the training areas in Afghanistan associated with Usama bin Laden came at the conclusion of an intensive intelligence offensive to identify who was responsible for bombing the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Yet no American leader believes that classic military responses will curb terrorism, particularly terrorism that is not state-sponsored and therefore against which there is no point that military power can be consistently applied.

LANDAY: I don't think that it's possible, given the abundance of situations of instability around the world today, that one can have some kind of overarching strategy to address the world at large. I think one has to tailor one's approach to whichever region one is dealing with, simply because of the multi-faceted aspect of today's world.

NARRATOR: As much as the American public supports greater cooperation in dealing with security problems, they want the U.S. to maintain a strong military. But they also do not want military action to be the first response in a crisis.

KULL: Americans don't see that defense is the overwhelming consideration in the design of U.S. foreign policy.

The FUTURE

Secretary of State MADELEINE ALBRIGHT: "Rest assured, America will continue to be present around the world wherever we have interests to defend, friends to support and work to do. America will not be intimidated." [13 August 1998, Andrews Air Force Base, MD]

NARRATOR: America's first 20^th Century president, Teddy Roosevelt, is famous for the saying, "Walk softly and carry a big stick." As America looks forward to the 21^st Century, we are a nation whose power is unmatched in the world. We have the capability, if we use that power wisely, to help shape a world that can reduce the recurrence of the horrors of the 20^th Century. This does not mean we must police the world or intervene in any and all conflicts. Rather, we can pool our considerable resources with those of other nations to solve the root causes of violence and conflict.

But to succeed in creating this world, the president, the Congress, and the American people must work together to recast America's approach to foreign policy. The old way of doing business simply won't work in the future.

LANDAY: We're casting about right now looking for what that new strategy will be. And there are various names given, various labels given, but I'm not sure that anybody really knows yet, and I think that it's unsettled. It's an unsettled question how we are going to make foreign policy in the 21^st Century, simply because we're not sure of what weight to give the considerations that go into making foreign policy, and that's something that's going to evolve, I think.

ADM CARROLL: During the long Cold War struggle between East and West, military might was an essential part of the defense of our nation. Now in the post-Cold War period, terrorism and local power struggles do not pose the same level of military challenges and they often do not have a military solution. In order to create a responsive, effective foreign policy to address the new threats, the president and Congress should put more reliance on our great economic and diplomatic strengths rather than on increased military power. Spending 20 times more for military forces than we spend to support our economic and diplomatic programs suggests that our security efforts are badly out of balance today.

Until the next time, for America's Defense Monitor, I'm Eugene Carroll.