Steve Coll has a good post outlining thinking from last weekend's conference on “The Next World: How Should the United States Respond to Rising Powers?” As Coll says, and another attendant related to me, a lot of the conversation drifted from multipolarity to a new understanding of threat assessment. According to the various speakers, "the very definition of American 'national security' is changing—or should change—to account for problems such as climate change, the need for a government-stimulated transition away from fossil fuels, the challenges of global disease epidemics, and the need to construct a national education system that might allow the United States to maintain its relative standards of living during a sustained period of economic competition with China and India." This is actually a more important point than it's often given credit for. Countries have a tendency to spend a lot of money to defend against yesterday's threat. In the 90s we were pumping cash into a military built for the great power conflict of the Cold War. Then we got hit by a major terrorist attack that germinated in the autocracies of the Middle East. So now we're spending incredible amounts of money to defend against terror attacks and overturn Arab (and maybe Persian) regimes that we sense to be a threat. John McCain has decided to focus his foreign policy on creating conflict with Russia. But the next major blow -- and we're talking larger than 3,000 dead and our sense of security shattered -- is fairly likely to be a pandemic or global economic dislocation stemming from global warming or a sustained reduction in American living standards as we find ourselves incapable of competing as the global labor force doubles. But none of these issues are actually attracting sustained political attention or real money because they're possible threats rather than proven ones. But a danger is only proven once its harm has been inflicted. Better by far to preempt that harm, but that means planning for tomorrow rather than just riding the political currents of today.
