The United States must not let the “clash of civilizations” become the dominant characteristic of the post–Cold War era. As Huntington observed, the real danger is not that this clash is inevitable but that by our inaction we will make it a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we continue to ignore conflicts in which Muslim nations are victims, we will invite a clash between the Western and Muslim worlds.
One such conflict that must be marked down as one of America’s most unfortunate and unnecessary foreign policy failures is the carnage in the former Yugoslavia, where three years ago communist hard-liners rising from the ruins of Marshal Tito’s artificial nation-state mounted a naked effort to destroy the democratic government of Croatia. From the beginning of the war there have been excesses on both sides, but the cycle of violence began as a result of Serbian aggression against other former Yugoslavian republics—aggression for which the United States and its allies have consistently and repeatedly failed to exact a price. As early as 1991, along with a number of other observers, I called upon the United Nations to lift the embargo against the victims of Serbian aggression. The United States, the United Nations, and the European Community vacillated, equivocated, orated, condemned, and ultimately did nothing to counter effectively the Serbian onslaught. The massacre of scores of shoppers and their children in Sarajevo in February 1994 would almost certainly not have occurred had the West acted sooner.
Following the massacre, the United States and its NATO allies agreed to issue an ultimatum to the Serbs to withdraw their weapons from around Sarajevo, which for the time being lifted the siege of one city without depriving the Serbs of the territorial spoils of years of aggression elsewhere in Bosnia. It is unfortunate that the United States did not take action in this protracted struggle until it was forced to do so by a public reaction to bloody images on television.
It is an awkward but unavoidable truth that had the citizens of Sarajevo been predominately Christian or Jewish, the civilized world would not have permitted the siege to reach the point it did on February 5, when a Serbian shell landed in the crowded marketplace. In such an instance, the West would have acted quickly and would have been right in doing so.
The siege of Sarajevo can have a redeeming character only if the West learns two things as a result. The first is that enlightened peoples cannot be selective about condemning aggression and genocide. When the communist Khmer Rouge massacred two million Cambodians in the late 1970s, Americans’ outrage was muted compared with the anguish we justifiably suffered over the massacre of six million Jews in the Holocaust. The situation in Cambodia, it seemed, was too fraught with contradiction, especially for those Americans who had opposed our efforts to defeat the communists who carried out the massacre.
The other lesson is that because we are the last remaining superpower, no crisis is irrelevant to our interests. If the United States had been willing to lead, a number of steps short of the commitment of ground forces—for instance, revoking the arms embargo—could have been taken early in the Bosnian crisis to blunt Serbian aggression. Our failure to do so tarnished our reputation as an evenhanded player on the international stage and contributed to an image promoted by extreme Muslim fundamentalists that the West is callous to the fate of Muslim nations but protective of Christian and Jewish nations.
The nightmare scenario invoked by some, of fanatical Islam on a collision course with the West, will come true only if fundamentalist forces take over the Muslim world. But most of the Muslim world does not march to the beat of the fundamentalist drum. Fundamentalist regimes are still a minority, comprising only 10 percent of the Islamic world’s total population. If the peoples of the Muslim world are able to chart their own destinies, extreme fundamentalism will not triumph. Modernist regimes range from open societies such as Turkey and Pakistan to relatively open countries such as Egypt and Indonesia. All seek to combine the best of the Muslim and Western cultures, rather than to turn back the clock to the twelfth century. They provide a compelling alternative to extreme fundamentalism for those who seek a better life.
Whittaker Chambers wrote that communism was a faith and that it was only as strong as the failure of all other faiths. Muslim fundamentalism is a strong faith. Its appeal is religious, not secular. It appeals to the soul, not the body. Secular Western values cannot compete with this faith. Neither can secular Muslim values. In the clash of civilizations, the fact that we are the strongest and richest nation in history is not enough. What will be decisive is the power of the great ideas, religious and secular, that made us a great nation. Though the West and the Muslims have profound differences in their cultural and historical development, we can learn from each other, studying the reasons for our past successes and failures.
The twentieth century has been a period of conflict between the West and the Muslim world. If we work together we can make the twenty-first century not just a time of peace in the Middle East and the Persian Gulf, but a century in which, beyond peace, two great civilizations will enrich each other and the rest of the world—not just by their arms and their wealth but by the eternal appeal of their ideals.
The Developing World: Freedom’s Last Frontier
The term “Third World” is obsolete. With the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and with China rapidly becoming more capitalist than communist economically, only two “worlds” remain. One comprises the countries of the developed world, primarily nations in the Northern Hemisphere that are rich or becoming rich, and the other those of the developing world, primarily nations in the Southern Hemisphere that are poor and in some cases actually becoming poorer. Although the Southern Hemisphere no longer represents a strategic priority for America, it would be a profound mistake for the United States to ignore the dangers and the opportunities in the developing world, where two thirds of the world’s people live.
Since the end of World War II, corrupt government officials and disastrous economic policies have stunted most of the nations in Latin America, Africa, the Mideast, and South Asia. With the end of the Cold War, two changes have dramatically improved the chances for economic and political progress.
For forty-five years, many of the nations in the developing world were pawns in the East-West struggle. The aid they received depended not upon their needs or the quality of their economic and political policies but upon which side they supported in the struggle between East and West. Now the only test is whether they have adopted economic and political policies that have a chance to advance economic progress and freedom.
Even more significant, a number of nations in the developing world have learned the secret of the West’s economic progress. For the first time since the end of World War II, the nations of the developing world have a realistic chance of breaking out of the cycle of poverty and political instability that has throttled economic growth and development.
The success stories in what was formerly the Third World point the way to progress. What is the secret of East Asia’s phenomenal economic progress? Economic policies that rewarded private initiatives; major investment in education; low tariff barriers and low inflation; and a stable legal framework that attracted private investment from at home and from abroad. Just as important, the nations that enjoyed economic progress rejected a major economic role for government. They recognized the fundamental truth that private rather than government enterprise produces progress.
In East Asia, the four tigers—Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore—have adopted free-market economic policies that have produced explosive growth. Malaysia and Thailand are now rapidly moving in the same direction. Indonesia is starting to develop the huge potential of its human and natural resources.
India is beginning to move away from statist policies that would have doomed a nation that will be the most populous in the world in the twenty-first century to continue to be one of the poorest. The stakes are enormous. We have a profound interest in India’s success in implementing free-market economic reforms. In Russia, the question
is whether democratic capitalism can compete with China’s communist capitalism. The jury is still out. In India, the question is whether democratic socialism can compete with China’s communist capitalism. The verdict is in. The latter wins hands down. In this competition between the world’s two most populous nations, India deserves support because it is trying to achieve economic progress with democracy. But it will not succeed unless it abandons socialism.
In Latin America, recent experience has shown that democracy alone is not enough. During the 1980s, twelve nations in Latin America moved from dictatorship to democracy. Yet the GNP of Latin America fell during that same period because of the failure of democratically elected leaders to abandon statist policies and adopt free-market economic policies. As a result, the 1980s became known as the lost decade.
An exciting new story is being written in the 1990s. Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico, Peru, Venezuela, and even Bolivia, the poorest country in South America, have joined Chile in adopting free-market policies that are producing substantial growth in their economies and in the per capita incomes of their people. David Rockefeller, who has closely followed developments in Latin America for decades, has observed, “It is clear now that a new mood of pragmatism and enterprise is abroad in these lands.”
Historically, the developing world has been an economic and political sinkhole. I vividly recall my first visit as Vice President to one such nation, Indonesia, over forty years ago. President Sukarno, dressed in an exquisitely tailored white uniform, welcomed Mrs. Nixon and me at the presidential palace. The superb cuisine and the service at the state dinner he hosted for us matched that of any Western country. But as we drove through the streets of Jakarta, then the world’s most densely populated city, we saw open sewers emptying into canals. Children were swimming in the filthy water. Women were doing their laundry in it. Those who complain about the evils of industrialization and who speak nostalgically about how much better life was for people before industrialization should visit some of the nations in the developing world not yet “contaminated” by economic progress.
In many parts of the developing world, very little has changed. The combined GNP of the entire African continent south of the Sahara is less than that of Holland. Because the end of the Cold War has eroded the desire of major nations to buy friends in Africa, foreign aid has dropped. Sub-Saharan Africa is the only region in the world likely to experience an increase in absolute poverty over the next decade. Throughout the developing world, more than 192 million children suffer from malnutrition. The annual population growth rate has been 2.5 percent over recent decades, more than five times higher than the growth rate in developed countries over the last ten years. In most of these countries, per capita income has barely increased since the 1960s.
The West is not responsible for the problems of the developing world, but we have a unique responsibility and opportunity to try to help solve those problems. Without our assistance, efforts to break the cycle of poverty will fail. With our help, they have a chance to succeed. While we cannot become the world’s welfare agency, we have an obligation to help these countries find solutions to their problems.
Our policies of assistance to the developing world are based not solely on altruism but also on self-interest. There are three major areas where our interests are affected by our policies toward the developing world: our economy, our security, and the ominous increase in the number of refugees clamoring to come to the United States.
Increased economic growth in the developing world will lead to increased economic prosperity in the United States. Our exports of goods and services to Canada, a vital interest of the United States and a developed country of twenty million people, were $108 billion in 1992. Our exports to Mexico, a developing nation with five times the population of Canada and also a vital interest, were $50 billion. Mexico’s move up from poverty will create thousands of jobs for Mexicans and thousands more in the United States, where more than eight million jobs depend on foreign trade.
From Somalia and Bosnia we have learned that the end of superpower conflict does not mean the end of regional conflict. Instability in the developing world will continue to pose a significant threat to U.S. interests. Three of the world’s five largest armies are in the developing world. All countries now seeking to become nuclear powers are in the developing world, and most of them are not friends of the United States. The nightmare of a nuclear war beginning in the developing world could become a reality.
But as the Cold War has ended, doors have been opened for diplomatic initiatives that had no chance of succeeding when the Soviet Union was opposing them. The most graphic example of this is the prospect of Mideast peace. There have been five wars between Israel and its Arab neighbors over the past forty-five years. One hundred thousand lost their lives in those wars. There have been four wars between India and Pakistan in that same forty-five year period. Over five million lost their lives in those wars. The Soviet Union played the spoiler’s role in the five previous Arab-Israeli wars. Now Russia supports the peace process, giving it some chance for success.
Two of the poorest nations in the world—India and Pakistan—spent more than $11 billion a year for the purpose of waging a future war. The conflict has its roots in profound religious differences, but it has been exacerbated by the fact that the Soviet Union supported India, and China supported Pakistan. Now a window of opportunity has opened for progress on negotiations between the two. In a process similar to the Middle East negotiations, the United States, Britain, Russia, and China could help broker the peace.
Poverty in the developing world will continue to produce millions of refugees. Throughout the world, people from underdeveloped countries are moving into developed countries. On our border with Mexico, an estimated sixty thousand Mexicans cross illegally into the United States every month, putting an enormous burden on federal and state budgets that are already struggling with welfare, crime, and unemployment problems. In Europe, this economic exodus is causing increased social tensions and xenophobia in the host countries. Unless the economies of the Southern Hemisphere grow, this flood of refugees from the developing world will become a deluge.
Both the developed and developing nations must change their policies. Foreign aid is not the answer. Since the end of World War II, the United States has provided $450 billion in foreign aid to the nations of the developing world. The results have been dismal. Too often, foreign aid only reinforced the inefficiencies of statist governments, encouraged corruption, and promoted protectionism. Foreign aid was supposed to produce prosperity. Too often, it subsidized poverty.
During the Cold War, most of our foreign aid was tied directly to our security interests. Foreign aid in the period beyond peace must stand on its own: Does it serve our interests and the interests of the people of the recipient nation? The United States should continue to be generous in providing humanitarian aid where we have the capacity to do so. But foreign aid should not be used to prop up and subsidize governments that refuse to adopt political policies that promote peace, freedom, and economic policies that have a chance to succeed. Successful growth in the twenty-first century cannot be achieved by relying on the failed statist policies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
We should promote free trade with these countries rather than continuing to dole out unlimited amounts of foreign aid. As The Economist pointed out before the summit of the industrialized democracies in Tokyo in July 1993, “If rich countries abolished all their barriers to Third World goods, the increase in developing nations’ exports would be worth twice what they receive in aid.” Lowering trade barriers is indispensable if the nations of the developing world are to have any chance of achieving economic growth. The United States should take the lead in implementing agreements like NAFTA and GATT because they open up our markets to developing countries as well as create markets for the capital and consumer goods and services of developed countries. A major reason for supporting free trade with the devel
oping world is not economic but political. Some oppose free trade with Mexico and other countries because they believe U.S. industry would be put at a competitive disadvantage. Others oppose trade with nations in the developing world that are not Western-style democracies. But free trade with these countries would do more to spark political reform than any unilateral action the U.S. government could devise.
The most important lesson the developing countries can learn is to ignore the advice of those in the United States and Western Europe who still believe that only the socialist road leads to economic paradise. The last refuge of Marxists is the economic development institutions that see state-dominated rather than market-based solutions as the key to growth. They supported high tariffs against Western goods, state subsidies to struggling industries, and a mercantilist trade policy. They thought that state-led economic development would lead to economic independence. Instead it leads to an economic dead end.
Forty years ago, as Vice President, I visited all of the countries of Asia except communist China. Political leaders, journalists, teachers, and students in newly independent nations were debating what policies would produce rapid progress. Some were enamored with the Soviet model; others with the communist Chinese model; still others favored the democratic socialist model then gaining popularity in Western Europe. Now it is no contest. The communist model has been rejected by the people of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. The Chinese still have a communist government, but they have used free-market economic policies to create spectacular growth. Democratic socialism has been tried and found wanting in countries as diverse as Sweden, France, and India. Free-market economic policies are the wave of the future, but they do not produce instant or uninterrupted prosperity. Nations with free-market policies go through periods of recession, slow growth, and too rapid growth. A free-market economic policy will inevitably have its successes and its failures. But the free market is the only system that can unleash the productive potential of a nation.
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