November 20, 1997

Superpower Saga
By Daniel Yergin

In the period after World War I that was dubbed "not nostrums, but normalcy" by Warren Harding, a small group of disappointed internationalists launched a journal called Foreign Affairs. Its purpose was to promote the discussion of international affairs in a country that was turning isolationist. It quickly became, and continues to be, the pre-eminent journal of international politics, though more diverse and dissident than its establishment reputation would suggest.

Now, to mark its 75th anniversary, its editors, James Hoge Jr. and Fareed Zakaria, have gathered 42 essays in a book that illuminates much of the century. "The American Encounter" (Basic Books, 644 pages, $35) is not history per se but the raw material of history, though highly refined in prose style and argument. It captures the voices of our time, from people who did not yet see the disasters or triumphs that lay ahead -- unlike historians who know how things turn out.

In the very first issue of Foreign Affairs, the editor, Archibald Cary Coolidge, contributed an article on the new Bolshevik regime under the pseudonym "K"--beating by 25 years the magazine's most famous article, the one propounding "containment" that George Kennan wrote under the name "Mr. X" (perhaps because "K" had already been taken). Much earlier, around the turn of the century, Coolidge had published a book titled "America as a World Power." That theme--and the questions that go with it--animates the entire collection.

Statesman Elihu Root framed part of the problem in that first issue--the complex interaction between U.S. public opinion and foreign policy. "When foreign affairs were ruled by autocracies or oligarchies, the danger of war was in sinister purpose," he wrote. "Ruled by democracies, the danger of war will be in mistaken beliefs." Years later Henry Kissinger would argue for European-style realism. Who shapes foreign policy remained a perennial concern. In 1967, Irving Kristol warned against leaving foreign policy to intellectuals, a type "who speaks with general authority about a subject on which he has no particular competence."

World War I broods over this work, as it did over much of the century. The German socialist Karl Kautsky wrote forebodingly in 1922 about how damaging the reparation clauses of the Versailles Treaty--Germany's "imprisonment for debt"--would be, as if foreseeing the conditions out of which something terrible could emerge. Perhaps the effect of World War I ended only with the collapse of communism. For without World War I, Lenin might well have died in obscurity with, as we've just learned, only $70 in his Swiss bank account.

The Cold War is the other great theme of this collection. It is striking to see how often the U.S. appeared to be the country on the ropes--even during the Eisenhower years. The spring and summer of 1960, wrote historian A. Whitney Griswold that year, were, if not totally "disastrous," at least "among the most disconcerting in the annals of American diplomacy."

Despite all, containment worked, as Kennan had prophesied. In 1947, Mr. X thought the result would be either "the break-up or the gradual mellowing of Soviet power." As it turned out, the mellowing preceded the breakup. But, as Richard Pipes argued, real reform could not work. Once it started, it would undermine the legitimacy of the system.

When the Cold War was all over, Zbigniew Brzezinski masterfully assessed its twists and turns. Credit for the "winning strategy and for forging the victorious coalition," he wrote, "must go to one man above all: Harry Truman." He added: "The West might have won sooner"--in the period 1953-56--"but at a higher cost and with a greater risk of war."

Now the U.S. is the last superpower. But it is hard to say what, exactly, the job description of a superpower is these days. Certainly human rights has, with the easing of the nuclear threat, come to the fore. But what else will drive foreign policy? Will it be capital flows and information technology? Or will it be, as Jessica Mathews suggests, Internet-enabled NGOs ("non-governmental organizations")? Or will it be Samuel Huntington's "clash of civilizations" (which first resounded in the pages of Foreign Affairs)?

The collection does not quite come to grips with why things turned out so differently from what might have been expected. If, as Mr. Brzezinski reminds us, the Soviet Union in the 1970s seemed on "a historical roll," why did the world eventually turn to markets--and away from state economic control? The collapse of communism is one reason, but Marxist socialism was also discredited by success elsewhere, particularly East Asia. That a recent crisis involving the Thai baht could affect Wall Street, rather than vice-versa, signals a sea change in world affairs.

The U.S. becomes ever more entwined in the world economy, yet the interest in international affairs seems to wane. The founders of Foreign Affairs, so concerned with educating the public, would have been puzzled by this paradox. Perhaps it's time for a new Archibald Cary Coolidge to update "America as a World Power." Of course, that's what the journal Foreign Affairs does--six times a year.