Remember Vietnam? It has been over thirty years since the last Marines made their ignominious helicopter exit from the rooftop of the U.S. Embassy in a Saigon on the verge of collapse. Last week, with barely any Americans noticing, the World Trade Organization (WTO) announced that after nearly twelve years of grueling negotiations and reforms, our former communist enemy had completed the necessary steps to go to the WTO's General Council on November 7 for an up-or-down vote on membership.
The United States, which only lifted its fruitless trade sanctions against the country in 1994, was late to the game in Vietnam, and American companies have lost out to European competitors as a result. (They have gained ground over the past five years, however, with U.S.-Vietnam trade having grown by 400 percent.) Congress still has to approve "permanent normal trade relations" in order to give Vietnam the status of a full WTO member.
What should we think of Vietnam's journey? The country is by nobody's definition a democracy, though its abysmal record on human rights has improved somewhat in recent years. But its rapid growth (second only to China in Asia) has bettered the lives of millions of Vietnamese, to the point that the country is well ahead of schedule in meeting the UN's Millennium Development Goals. Vietnam's integration into the global economy represents a victory for Vietnamese reformers -- but also a triumph for the philosophy of liberal internationalism. For the WTO, founded in 1995, is the newest of a web of multilateral institutions that together entice responsible countries to gradually reform their economies and political systems. And those institutions can work.
Recently here on TAP Online, Shadi Hamid and Spencer Ackerman debated what should serve as the lodestar of a progressive foreign policy vision. Hamid argued that the United States should make the promotion of democracy the centerpiece of its foreign policy, while Ackerman advocated that human rights take that role. Such questions will very likely become more relevant after Tuesday, if Democrats gain more power in Congress. But neither Hamid nor Ackerman offered the correct answer. As the small example of Vietnam helps to illustrate, the United States ought to be redirecting its energies toward renewing its strength and expanding the postwar liberal world order. Do that, and the rest -- democracy, human rights, liberal reforms -- will eventually follow.
Ronald Beisner's new biography of Dean Acheson, this philosophy's most able practitioner, tells the familiar story of this world's creation from the perspective of its key founder. Although Secretary of State Acheson was a lawyer, not an economist, and his president Harry Truman a haberdasher rather than an international trade expert, their instincts were sound. Together with visionary European statesmen such as Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman, they led the creation of a postwar order that has brought the world to unparalleled levels of peace and prosperity. Acheson's main concern was to create a liberal system on what he later called the "half a world" that the United States had come to dominate, facing off against the Soviet bloc. Economic openness, and ever-closer economic integration in Europe, were the primary drivers of this new system.
There is much for all sides of foreign policy debates to draw upon in Acheson's public service. Though their ideological predecessors slammed him as soft on communism while he was in office, contemporary neoconservatives see Acheson's calls for strength, rejection of negotiation with the Soviet Union, and disdain for the United Nations as affirmation of current Bush administration policies. Realists applaud Acheson's deep appreciation for the role of power relationships in foreign affairs and his willingness to overlook allies' domestic indiscretions when strategic priorities took precedence. Liberals point to Acheson's midwifing of multilateral institutions such as NATO, the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and the European Coal and Steel Community (which later evolved into the European Common Market and then the European Union) as evidence that he was one of them.
For a policymaker such as Acheson, however, these artificial typologies were beside the point. Acheson was first and foremost a pragmatist, constantly evaluating policy in light of the evidence. When the facts changed, so did his views. The best example, which Beisner elucidates in meticulous detail, is how Acheson rapidly transformed from a cautious advocate of sharing nuclear technology with the Soviets to a stalwart Cold Warrior who sought to use "situations of strength" to compel better behavior from them. Stalin's attempted encroachment on Turkey had proved to Acheson that talking to the Soviets was a waste of time, and that they could only be contained by military might for the time being.
Today, the United States faces no rival on par with the Soviet Union in its prime, and liberal democracies have spread to nearly every corner of the globe. Yet major challenges remain: we are bogged down in a losing, costly effort in Iraq, while the broader Middle East reform agenda is in chaos and the war on terrorism is going badly. The Doha Round of trade negotiations is on the brink of failure, primarily due to a dispute between developing and developed countries over agricultural subsidies. Iran, meanwhile, seems energized by the New Middle East and defiant regarding its nuclear program. North Korea, the frightening hermit nation, just tested its own primitive nuclear device. Russia is slipping further into old authoritarian ways. Global warming is accelerating at an alarming pace.
The key to any viable doctrine is that it offer comprehensive guidance on the whole range of foreign policy problems. The Bush Doctrine has failed spectacularly (though this may not yet be clear to all just yet). Hamid and Ackerman's alternatives fall short: how does promoting democracy and/or human rights help us deal with the diverse challenges listed above? Acheson's approach to the world offers a way forward: a pragmatic liberal internationalism underpinned by renewed American strength. In practice, this means extricating ourselves as honorably as possible from Iraq, creating new security structures in the Middle East and Asia to deal with the threats of the Iraqi civil war, Iran, and North Korea, and incorporating the counterinsurgency lesson so painfully learned in Iraq into military doctrine and practice in Afghanistan. Equally importantly, it means reinvigorating American leadership on global economic issues such as the Doha Round, and working with Europe to devise a more realistic, multilateral approach to Middle East reform. These and other vital priorities are hardly likely to be addressed properly under the Bush presidency, so they will be up to the Democrats in Congress and in a future administration to tackle.
And who knows? Some day, we may see Iraq join the WTO.
Blake Hounshell writes and blogs for The American Prospect Online. He recently returned from Cairo, where he worked for an Egyptian NGO. He also maintains his own group blog on foreign policy, American Footprints.
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