By James H. Mackey (MALD '00)

It has been ten years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the United States continues to grope blindly for even a basic consensus on the shape of the new international system and the role of U.S. power within that system. Without such a consensus, U.S. policy toward the troubled regions of the world has bordered on schizophrenic: Yes to Iraq, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia and Kosovo; No to the Kurds, Rwanda, the Congo, and East Timor; Maybe to the Asian financial crisis and Russia. The rest of the world is confused and increasingly embittered towards what they see as the arbitrary use of American power, and, in the absence of any consistent policy, the use of bullying tactics by the United States to impose its will on a case-by-case basis.

The failure of U.S. policymakers to articulate a clear strategy is primarily the result of a growing divide between the practitioners of security affairs and the practitioners of diplomacy. In its simplest form, this divide manifests itself in the seemingly perpetual tensions between the Pentagon and the State Department and in their mutual recriminations over the failures of U.S. policy in the last decade. The problem is much more complicated than a mere bureaucratic turf battle, however, as it involves fundamental differences in the two sides' view of the world and of human nature. Moreover, while the State Department and the Pentagon both share a large part of the blame, an equal portion must be placed on the Clinton administration and the Congress, because it is they who, divided along the same lines, have failed to lay out a clear path for the State Department and the Pentagon to follow.

The conflict is primarily a cultural one. The two sides have different views of the world, use different terminology to describe the new conflicts in the international system, and have strongly divergent opinions on the proper use of the military in international interventions. Take, for instance, the role of SFOR in the capture of indicted war criminals in Bosnia. For the diplomatic community, the primary goal is the capture of war criminals, because they are seen as a critical obstacle to both the implementation of the Dayton Agreement and the process of reconciliation in Bosnia more generally. For the military community, the primary goal is to ensure the stability of the security situation in Bosnia and, according to orders from Washington, to avoid casualties. The military could capture the indictees, but not without endangering this security situation, and certainly not without risking casualties. The military underestimates the importance of capturing the indictees, while the diplomatic community underestimates the threat that such capture would pose to the military's primary mission of ensuring stability. This is a recipe for frustration and inaction.

This clash of cultures has lead to a growing disconnect between the Pentagon and State Department approaches to international affairs. Following Kosovo, there has been talk of a "military" way and a "diplomatic" way of dealing with ethnic conflicts, to be used interchangeably, depending on the dynamics of a given situation. Several Congressional staffers with whom I have spoken have identified their theory of two stages of American intervention in ethno-religious violence: the diplomats are given a certain amount of time to bully the parties into accepting an agreement (conflict "negotiation"), but if things get too out of hand (i.e. too many refugees are shown on CNN), then the diplomats are excused from the room and the military takes over to force compliance on recalcitrant groups (conflict "management"). This simplistic approach to the problems of today's international system is ineffective, inefficient, and virtually guaranteed to create an international backlash against the United States.

The fallacy of American foreign policy as it is conducted today is that it is based on the belief that one can separate the military and diplomatic approaches to policymaking. The bureaucratic and ideological differences of the State Department and the Pentagon (and their respective supporters within the Congress and the Administration) have been projected onto American foreign policy as a whole. The U.S. is desperately in need of a more sophisticated approach to attaining its goals in the world, one that sees all aspects of American power (military, diplomatic, economic and cultural) as part of a continuum, rather than as discrete tools to be wielded independently of each other. The idea of a continuum suggests coordinated action on several fronts. While one aspect of power may dominate in a given situation, such action should always take place in coordination with efforts on other fronts.

A critical part of any reformulation of American policy will be an attempt to overcome the gap in perceptions between the military and diplomatic communities. Security policymakers must gain a greater respect for the importance of diplomacy and negotiations in the new international system, in particular the unique role that the United Nations plays as the preeminent source of moral legitimacy in international disputes. People in the security field must also recognize that while force may ensure compliance in the short run, the only solutions that are sustainable in the long run are those that take into account the social, cultural and religious factors at work in conflicts.

Diplomatic policymakers have just as much, if not more, to learn. They must achieve a considerably deeper understanding of the use of force in the international system and the policy goals that force can and cannot achieve. Diplomats need to understand the use of threats of force as a tool of negotiation, but must realize that such threats (and the actual use of force) are an extremely blunt instrument. Threats allow few nuances of policy, they require the will to follow through on them, and they close off most other avenues of influence upon the parties to a conflict.

The United States cannot continue down the path it has followed over the last decade. The conflict between diplomatic and security cultures has resulted in a foreign policy that is at best ineffective and at worst brings the U.S. into conflict with its allies and the rest of the world. Competition and open debate in the formation of policy are good, because they prevent any one group from dominating the process. When this competition and misunderstanding carries over into the implementation of policy, however, it results in gridlock, as a country wastes resources by working at cross purposes with itself. The United States must reconcile the different elements of its power, using each to complement and augment the others. In a complex world, the United States needs a sophisticated foreign policy.

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