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A Policy of Selective Engagement
| Article
# : |
15901 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
Date : |
7 / 1997 |
2,908 Words |
| Author
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Daniel Goure
Daniel Goure is deputy director of political-military studies
at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in
Washington, D.C. |
After a war, one expects to live in peace, at least for a while. It is unsurprising, therefore, that the American people, having emerged victorious from a 50-year cold war that pitted one half of mankind against the other, expected a time of peace in which they could tend to their own needs and the well-being of the nation.
Americans were promised as much in the election of 1992, when candidate Bill Clinton took as his campaign theme the belief that "it's the economy, stupid" and promised to focus "like a laser beam" on that subject. One would think that if ever there were a time when America could relax its vigil, reduce its military activities abroad, and rely on others to police the expanding borders of the community of democratic nations, it would be now.
To the contrary, however, we find ourselves confronted with a world steeped in chaos. From Iraq, Somalia, and Haiti to Bosnia, Liberia, Chechnya, and Zaire, we see explosions of ethnic violence, civil wars, nationalistic squabbles, and outright international aggression.
No continent seems immune to this new wave of disorder and destruction. In addition to local wars, the so-called new threats--proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, international criminal cartels, and transnational terrorism--are growing steadily. Some of this new local violence is the result of the collapse of Soviet communism, and with it the USSR and the network of allies Moscow had sustained by liberal trade arrangements and lavish doses of cheap weapons.
Still a troubled
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