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Introduction: Foreign Policies in the New World Order
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19057 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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1 / 1991 |
653 Words |
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The fast-paced events of the last three years have turned the international system upside down. And while there is much to celebrate, as at the end of any war, the exact nature of the post-Cold War world depends on the policies forged in this critical transition period.
The possibility of a "new world order," as Presidents Bush and Gorbachev called it at Helsinki, has captured the imagination of a war-weary world. Scholars have compared it with Metternich's "spring of nations," while some have even proclaimed that we are at the end of history and that democracy has triumphed. But the world in transition has often proven to be a dangerous place.
Whenever the world has moved form a bipolar to a multipolar balance of power, chaos has often ensued. However, today's world is characterized by significant stabilizing forces. The world is more interdependent economically than ever before. Viable international organizations and laws are available to curtail regional and national conflicts. Major powers are working together to solve economic, political, and military problems. Clearly, the Persian Gulf crisis is a major test of whether the new order is a chimera or a reality. In the following special report, The World & I asks international academics to examine the emerging foreign policies of the superpowers and their likely impact on the new world order.
In "The United States: Managing Global Responsibilities," Harvard scholar Joseph Nye, Jr., compares foreign policy to the planet's geology: "The great tectonic plates shift slowly until tension builds and we experience a quake." Nye sees events in Eastern Europe and Kuwait as parts of the quake, but "it is unlikely the tremors are over." So, how can the United States respond? U.S. strategy must consider geopolitical continuities as well as changes. For instance, the United States must help manage the international economy by discouraging trends toward protectionism. Additionally, the United States must support existing, or develop alternative, multilateral institutions to cope with the transnational agenda. And all the while, counsels Nye, the United States cannot afford to neglect its problems at home.
Precisely the same challenge of balancing domestic and foreign priorities confronts the Soviet Union. In "Soviet Strategy Transformed," Sovietologist Herbert Ellison writes that at no time since World War II has any major power's foreign polities been altered as dramatically as have the Soviet Union's. This process should not be taken for granted, cautions
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