The Case for Practical Internationalism

The next president will face unprecedented opportunities—but also unprecedented difficulties—in promoting the national interests of the United States through multilateral diplomacy and international organizations. How the new administration seizes the opportunities and copes with the difficulties will go far to determine whether we face a favorable or hostile world environment as we approach the 21st century.

The opportunities are there if we have the skill and imagination to seize them. Almost everywhere we find a strong objective case for promoting the national interests of the United States and the general welfare of nations through cooperative action in international agencies—from the resolution or containment of regional conflicts through U.N. peacemaking and peacekeeping, to the negotiation of more open markets and the management of financial imbalances through the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the Bretton Woods organizations, to global action on nuclear safety, acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), drug abuse, overpopulation, environmental destruction and under-development through the United Nations’ specialized agencies and special programs. The case for multilateralism will be particularly compelling as we face a new era in which our relative power has declined and we will need to share economic burdens and political responsibility, not just with Europe and Japan, but with emerging power centers in the developing world.

The "creeping moderation" that is now evident in many Third World countries is another reason for cautious optimism about prospects for constructive multilateral cooperation. In a growing number of developing countries, the crucible of hard experience has produced a new interest in free markets, human rights and respect for international obligations. Even in the U.N. General Assembly, after years of unreasoning attacks on the United States and Israel and pursuit of the chimera of a statist New International Economic Order, the tide is beginning to turn, as evidenced by the declining number of votes to deny Israel’s U.N. credentials, the growing support for U.S.-backed resolutions on Afghanistan and Cambodia and the moderation of the 1986 Assembly session on Africa.