US Reframing Objectives Abroad

Strategic experts suggest restructuring US national security interests so
only the "vital" ones come out on top. The quest for an interest-based
national security and foreign policy is a response to what many authorities
agree is America's post-Cold War descent into policy improvisation. A
group of strategic experts from Rand, the Nixon Center, Harvard and other
prominent institutions has concluded, for example, that an interest-based
national security policy would require hardy US defenses, both active and
passive, against missile-borne WMD (weapons of mass destruction). Today,
military and security experts speak of a post-Soviet world of "no bear, but
many snakes".

A host of specialists under the mantle of the Commission on America's
National Interests distills the US vital security objectives to just five..
Vital means just what the dictionary says it means: "essential to the
existence or continuance of something indispensable." The group complains
that government officials throw the adjective around at will, whenever some
hot spot flares up, however evanescent. This devalues the meaning of
vital. The commission says that term is applied promiscuously to second,
third and fourth-tier issues, either out of political opportunism - to
galvanize first-row attention to a back-row issue - or out of basic
inability to rank priorities. "Interests exist independently of specific
opportunities and threats", says the commission, "but the three often
commingle because of the temptation to use a vivid threat to call attention
to an unnoticed or unattended interest."

VITAL US INTERESTS
Vital national interests are conditions that are strictly necessary to
safeguard America's survival and well being in a free and secure nation.

1. Prevent, deter and reduce the threat of nuclear, biological and chemical
weapon attacks on the US or its military forces abroad.
2. Ensure US allies survival and their cooperation with the US in shaping
an international system in which we can thrive.
3. Prevent the emergence of hostile major powers or failed states on US
borders.
4. Ensure the viability and stability of major global systems (trade,
financial markets, supplies of energy and the environment).
5. Establish productive relations, consistent with American national
interests, with nations that could become strategic adversaries, China and
Russia

EXTREMELY IMPORTANT U.S. INTERESTS

Extremely important interests are conditions that, if compromised, would
severely prejudice but not strictly imperil the ability of the US
government to safeguard and enhance the well-being of Americans in a free
and secure nation.

1. Prevent, deter and reduce the threat of the use of nuclear biological or
chemical weapons anywhere.
2. Prevent the regional proliferation of WMD and delivery systems.
3. Promote the acceptance of international rules of law and mechanisms for
resolving or managing disputes peacefully.
4. Prevent the emergence of regional hegemon in important regions,
especially the Persian Gulf.
5. Promote the well-being of US allies and friends and protect them from
external aggression.
6. Promote democracy, prosperity and stability in the Western Hemisphere.
7. Prevent, manage and, if possible at reasonable cost, end major conflicts
in important geographic regions.
8. Maintain a lead in key military-related and other strategic
technologies, particularly information systems.
9. Prevent massive, uncontrolled immigration across US borders.
10. Suppress terrorism (especially state-sponsored terrorism),
transnational crime and drug trafficking.
11. Prevent genocide.

IMPORTANT U.S. INTERESTS

1. Discourage massive human rights violations in foreign countries.
2. Promote pluralism, freedom and democracy in strategically important
states as much as is feasible without destabilization.
3. Prevent and, if possible at low cost, end conflicts in strategically
less significant geographic regions.
4. Protect the lives and well-being of American citizens who are targeted
or taken hostage by terrorist organizations.
5. Reduce the economic gap between rich a poor nations.
6. Prevent the nationalization of US-owned assets abroad.
7. Boost the domestic output of key strategic industries and sectors.
8. Maintain and edge in the international distribution of information to
ensure that American values continue to positively influence the cultures
of foreign nations.
9. Promote international environmental policies consistent with long-term
ecological requirements.
10. Maximize US GNP growth from international trade and investment.

SECONDARY U.S. INTERESTS

1. Balancing bilateral trade deficits
2. Enlarging democracy everywhere for its own sake
3. Preserving the territorial integrity or particular political
constitution of other states everywhere.
4. Enhancing exports of specific economic sectors.

The 21st century is seen as an arena for "borderless war" and the blurring
of standard military combat with terrorist warfare and criminal networks.
In response, the Pentagon undertook the revolution in military affairs
(RMA), which has rendered combat operations much more cosmopolitan with the
aid of global networks and the emergence of cyber warfare. One trend is
simply the multiplying number of US military deployments. They have been
gathering pace for more than a decade, since the days of the Bush
administration's interventions in Panama and the Persian Gulf.

US armed forces have been ordered overseas with much higher frequency in
the past 10 years than during the near half-century after World War II. In
the decade since 1990, deployments numbered more than 60. They totaled
fewer than 50 in the entire 45 years from 1945-90, according to
congressional figures. Also fueling the surge in interventions, and
integral to them, is the ascendance of RMA technology, which, so far at
least, seems to permit low-casualty combat. The US-led NATO air campaign
last year to liberate Kosovo was emblematic of this trend. Chief
executives are thought to be less reluctant to act militarily when they can
assure the public that deaths will probably be few. In this sense, RMA's
impact has been more political than technological, says Michael Ignatieff,
author of Virtual War: Kosovo and Beyond. The commission delivers a pithy
warning: "While American foreign policy has always reflected domestic
politics, it risks becoming only an extension of domestic politics."

What experts are after is ridding US strategic culture of vague assertions
that the greatest power in world history must take on responsibilities
everywhere, more or less all at once "from the Balkans to pandemics and
Taiwan," in the words of the monograph, which was drafted by the Nixon
Center, Rand, and Harvard. "Because the US is so predominant in the
economic, technical and military realms, many politicians and pundits fall
victim to the rhetoric of illusion", the commission states." "They imagine
that as the sole superpower, the US can simply instruct other nations to do
this or that, and expect them to do it." Riding in tandem with this
preference for quick in-and-out military action are policy flip-flops that
stem from a government divided between a Democratic White House and a
Republican Congress. Exacerbating these erratic shifts is a dramatic
cutback by philanthropic foundations and by television, and most of the
rest of the media, on things "foreign." Aside from a largely preoccupied
public, staunch leftists deride the US as morally unfit to lead the world,
and staunch rightists deride the world as unworthy of US leadership.

As policy experts struggle to plot durable criteria for overseas
engagement, their military counterparts debate what Ignatieff calls
"historicist" and "technicist" interpretations of RMA's strategic impact.
Historicists believe that, despite dramatic technological advances, wars
will be won in the future as they were in the past, with exceptional
leadership and traditional warrior spirit and skills. Technicists believe
superior military technology will increasingly prove decisive, and
preponderant over the human element. At root, he says, the RMA debate is
between people who believe technology can take the tragedy out of warfare,
and those who believe that tragedy is intrinsic to the military art.
Unfortunately, as the commission warns, "Neither a hierarchy of interests
nor technology can neutralize the tragic because they cannot eradicate
human nature."
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