Scowcroft Brent - America and the world: conversations on the future of American foreign policy
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How we got here -- Crises of our own making -- Two unsolved problems -- The virtue of openness: China and the Far East -- The state with unnatural boundaries -- The indispensable partnership -- The politics of cultural dignity -- The first hundred days.;The status of the United States as a world power, and the nature of power itself, are at a historic turning point, a time when the nations decisions could determine how long it remains a superpower. It is essential that we understand and adapt to the new security environment in which we find ourselves. Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft, both former National Security Advisors under markedly different administrations, dissect, in moderated conversations, the most significant foreign policy challenges facing the U.S.: the Middle East, Russia, China, Europe, the developing world, the changing nature of power in a globalized world, and what Brzezinski has called the global political awakening. While one author is a Republican and the other a Democrat, they broadly agree on the need to adapt to a new international environment. Where they disagree, their exchanges are always both deeply informed and provocative.--From publisher description.
Scowcroft Brent: author's other books
Who wrote America and the world: conversations on the future of American foreign policy? Find out the surname, the name of the author of the book and a list of all author's works by series.
Steven W. Hook
Brzezinski Zbigniew
Zbigniew Brzeziński
George H W Bush
Zbigniew Brzezinski
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Table of Contents
BRENT SCOWCROFT
CONVERSATIONS
on the FUTURE
of AMERICAN
FOREIGN POLICY
on the FUTURE
of AMERICAN
FOREIGN POLICY
A MEMBER OF THE PERSEUS BOOKS GROUP
NEW YORK
NEW YORK
INTRODUCTION
THIS BOOK IS AN INVITATION to join a conversation with two of the wisest observers of American foreign policy, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft. Over many mornings and afternoons in the spring of 2008, they sat down together to talk through our countrys current problemsand to look for solutions. The result is an intellectual journey, led by two of the nations best guides, into the world of choices the next president will confront.
As readers turn the pages of this book, they should imagine themselves sitting around a big conference table in an office building overlooking Pennsylvania Avenue. A few blocks up the street is the White House, where these two men managed the nations statecraft in their years as national security advisor. They arrive for each session immaculately dressed, as if heading for the Oval Office to brief the president. We start each conversation with a big cup of coffee or maybe a diet sodaand sometimes a jolt of sugar from some cookies or cake brought from homeand then we turn on the tape recorder.
I invite you to listen in as two of Americas most clear-sighted practitioners of foreign policy think about the future.
The starting point for these conversations was their belief that the world is changing in fundamental ways, and that our traditional models for understanding Americas role dont work very well. Both men believe the United States is in some difficulty abroad because it hasnt yet adapted to these new realities. Both question conventional wisdom and received ideasand try to view the world with fresh eyes. Both are fundamentally optimistic about Americas future, as you will see, but only if the country can rise to the challenge of dealing with the world as it now is, not as we wish it to be.
This book was an experiment to see if a prominent Democrat and a prominent Republicanspeaking only for themselves and not for or against either partycould find common ground for a new start in foreign policy. Brzezinski and Scowcroft had special standing for this exercise, since each was a prescient early skeptic about the war in Iraq. They understood before most other foreign policy analysts the dangers and difficulties the United States would face if it toppled Saddam Hussein, and they courageously decided to speak out publicly with their concerns. For that reason alone, we should listen carefully to what they have to say now. Although they differ on some particularsespecially the speed with which America can safely withdraw from IraqI found that in each session, they were converging toward a shared framework.
I came to the pleasurable task of moderating these conversations as a journalist who has been writing about foreign policy issues for more than thirty years. The effort to find common ground is one I believe in. In my columns for the Washington Post, I try to write from the center of the debate: I listen to what people have to say, I provoke them when thats needed, and I try to pose the questions my readers would ask if they were present. Thats what I have attempted to do here.
Brzezinski and Scowcroft were the quintessential cold warriors, and they describe in this book some of the secret history that led to the eventual fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of Soviet communism. But that world is gone, and you will find no triumphalism or nostalgia here. Instead, the two men worry that a cold war mindset persists among U.S. policymakersand that it blinds us to the new balance of forces in the world. The theme that keeps returning through these pages is how much the world has changed since that war ended.
Each reader will sum up this conversation in a different way, but here are some common themes that I found as moderator: Brzezinski and Scowcroft start from national interest; they are foreign policy realists in that sense. But they believe the United States must engage a changing world rather than react defensively to it. Their goal is for America to align itself with these forces of change, wherever possible, rather than stand apart from them. Again and again, they speak of the need for flexibility, for openness, for a willingness to talk with friends and enemies alike.
Most of all, Brzezinski and Scowcroft want to restore a confident, forward-leaning America. They think the country has become too frightened in this age of terrorism, too hunkered down behind physical and intellectual walls. Each time they had to sign in with the guards in the lobby to get a security pass before our sessions, they laughed at the absurdity of our bunker mentality.
Their idea of a twenty-first century American superpower is a nation that reaches out to the worldnot to preach, but to listen and cooperate and, where necessary, compel. Both men describe a political revolution thats sweeping the worldBrzezinski speaks of a global awakening, while Scowcroft describes a yearning for dignity. They want America on the side of that process of change.
During the decades of Americas rise as the dominant global power, there was a tradition of bipartisan foreign policy. It was always a bit of a myth; political battles accompanied every major foreign policy decision of the twentieth century. But there was a tradition of common strategic dialoguea process that brought together the nations best minds and drew from them some basic guideposts about America and the world.
That process swept up a brilliant Harvard-trained professor born in Poland with a gift for speaking in perfect sentences and paragraphs, and an equally brilliant Air Force general from Utah who had the knack for expressing complex ideas in clear language. Brzezinski and Scowcroft accomplished great things during their time in the White House; after they left, they continued to travel and debate and, most of all, to think and observe.
This book brings the two men together for an extended discussion on the eve of the 2008 presidential election. Perhaps it can reanimate the tradition of strategic thinking that Zbig and Brent representand encourage a continuing bipartisan conversation about Americas problems and how to solve them creatively.
David Ignatius
ONE
HOW WE GOT HERE
DAVID IGNATIUS: Let me begin by quoting something General George Marshall said: Dont fight the problem. By that Ive always thought he meant understand the problem, describe it clearly to yourself, and then solve it. But dont fight what it is. So let me ask each of you to begin by describing the problemthe situation in which the United States finds itself as a new president is about to take office, the difficulties we have in a world thats changing, the nature of those changes. Zbig, give me your sense of the problem of the world today, what it looks likeand then well talk about what to do.
ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: I was struck the other day that the president, in his State of the Union message, said the war on terror is the defining ideological challenge of the century. And I said to myself, Isnt that a little arrogant? This is the year 2008, and here we are being told what the defining ideological challenge of the century is. Suppose in 1908 we were asked to define the ideological challenge of the twentieth century. Would many people say right wing and left wing, red and brown totalitarianism? Or in 1808, the challenge of the nineteenth century, how many people would say on the eve of the Congress of Vienna, a conservative triumph, that the nineteenth century would be dominated by nationalist passions in Germany, France, Italy, Poland, and throughout much of Europe?
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