American Ambassador Defines U.S. Interests in Post-Cold War World

MADELEINE ALBRIGHT, Realism and Idealism in American Foreign Policy Today (1994)

Speaking at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government commencement in 1994, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Madeleine Albright addressed the pitfalls of developing a foreign policy in a post-Cold War world without the presence of a Soviet threat. Here she offers criteria guiding U.S. intervention overseas, a policy she would attempt to implement during Clinton’s second term when she served as the first female secretary of state.

To be sustainable, American foreign policy must be guided by American interests. But in the wake of the Cold War, a whole category of conflicts has arisen in which the American stake resists precise calculation.…

[T]here is no perfect scale or formula for categorizing what is important to our people. Obviously, there remains an inner circle of vital interests related to the defense of our people, territory, allies, and economic well-being. Here, unilateral action, if required, is warranted and would likely have full support from Congress and the American people.

Increasingly, we also recognize an outer circle of important interests that we share with others. Global issues — such as the health of the atmosphere, stabilizing population growth, controlling international crime, and curbing AIDS — fall within this circle. Here, multilateral action is essential because national action alone is not sufficient.

But between and sometimes overlapping these two is a middle circle — a gray area of regional conflicts and potential conflicts that does not fit neatly into any national security framework but which, if left unattended, could erode the foundation of freedom and threaten world peace. Here, the destructive legacy of the Cold War is most evident and the challenge of organizing the peace most complex. Here, regional organizations and regional powers have an important role. Here, the American stake may shift dramatically with changing circumstance and must be evaluated case by case, day by day.

These regional problems do not affect us equally or in the same way. Some — such as Somalia or Rwanda — are of primarily humanitarian concern. But this afternoon, I will discuss four situations which, if not well-managed, could pose threats to the innermost circle of American concerns. Here, our interests are especially compelling and the risks especially high.…

North Korea

… A nuclear North Korea would threaten regional security in Northeast Asia and undermine the international non-proliferation regime. In so doing, it would affect alliances and interests that bear on the security of our own people. Our firm objective, which we are pursuing deliberately and consistently, is a non-nuclear Korean Peninsula.

Experience informs us that sanctions alone rarely cause even isolated regimes to reverse course. But sanctions are needed now to demonstrate international seriousness and resolve. And they are needed to provide an incentive for corrective action and a disincentive for further backsliding.…

Haiti

Haiti is another country where we have turned to the tool of economic sanctions. Here again, our preference is to resolve a difficult situation peacefully. Our goal is to pressure General Cedras and other military leaders to leave so that democracy may return. Both the UN and the OAS have authorized tougher sanctions and improved enforcement.… To further isolate the military and prepare for what may happen in the future, we will seek approval of a UN peace-keeping force to provide training and to promote calm once the military leaders have left.

Clearly, the status quo in Haiti is not tenable. The longer the current impasse continues, the greater the potential for violence, the more severe the suffering of Haiti’s poor majority, and the more irreversible the environmental degradation caused by scavenging for fuel.…

It is a goal of this Administration, as it has been of previous ones, to help emerging democracies. We are doing so in cooperation with others in every corner of the world — from Mozambique to Cambodia to South Africa to Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Obviously, we cannot insulate every new democracy from the plots of usurpers. But Haiti is in our own backyard. The Haitian people deserve to live in freedom, and we are determined to see that they do.

The Balkans

In the Balkans, we see another challenge that engages our interests and where current tragedy could grow still worse. The conflict there knows no natural boundaries. The fuse of potential violence lies like a coiled snake across the region.

A wider conflagration could threaten us strategically by undermining new democracies in Eastern Europe, dividing our NATO allies, and straining our relationship with Russia. We have a humanitarian interest in opposing the brutal violence — including acts of genocide — that has outraged the conscience and uprooted hundreds of thousands from their homes. And we have a political interest in opposing Serbia’s efforts to use its Bosnian surrogates to undermine a sovereign state.…

To discourage aggression, we have supported tough enforcement of economic sanctions and sent peacekeepers to the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. We have used NATO air power to restore a semblance of normal life in Sarajevo, to lend belated credibility to the concept of safe havens, and to maintain a humanitarian lifeline that has kept hundreds of thousands alive despite the bitter fighting.

In the name of justice, we are backing the war crimes tribunal for former Yugoslavia.…

And to promote peace, we have increased our diplomatic engagement. We helped broker an agreement between government and Bosnian Croat factions that has stopped the fighting in central Bosnia and improved prospects for Bosnia’s survival as a multi-ethnic state. Americans have an important stake in the viability of that state, for we derive our own identity from the conviction that those of different races, creeds, and ethnic origins can live together productively, freely, and in peace.

The New Independent States

A fourth example of the challenges we face in this new era and another place where multi-ethnic states are being tested is the former Soviet Union.…

[W]hile the infrastructure of empire is unraveling, the infrastructure of democracy is not yet fully built.… U.S. policy is to buttress the sovereignty and independence of the new states, while promoting constructive relations among them and with Russia. We are using active diplomacy — economic and humanitarian aid that will amount to almost $2.5 billion this year — and a frank and open dialogue with the leaders of Russia and the other republics.…

Although Russia desires stability, there have been troubling aspects to its policy toward the new republics. Russian military units stationed in Georgia and Moldova have exacerbated local conflicts. Instead of cooperating fully with international bodies, Russia has often pursued a “go-it-alone” strategy toward negotiations in Nagorno-Karabakh. And Russia has occasionally used its economic clout, especially in the energy sector, to pressure its neighbors.…

The people of the New Independent States will bear — as they know they must — the primary burden. Our task is to work with them, not impose upon them — to help them to build their own societies and to establish relationships based on shared recognition and respect. In so doing, we validate our own values, preserve our own interests, and secure the gains of freedom for which so many — in the West and East — sacrificed so much.

U.S. Engagement: The Need and the Means

In each of the areas I have cited today — Korea, Haiti, Bosnia, and the former Soviet Union — the UN Security Council has a key part to play. The end of the superpower rivalry has made cooperation possible. So peace-keeping and sanctions — little-used previously — have moved to center stage. Each entered to high expectations; each has since received mixed reviews. The Administration’s strategy has been to use these tools assertively to supplement diplomatic, political, and military initiatives we have taken on our own. We have sought, at the same time, to hone these tools — to make sanctions a more precise instrument of policy and to make UN peace-keeping more disciplined and more effective.

Although our effort to reform UN peace-keeping has bipartisan support, there are some in Congress who either would pull the plug altogether or so restrict funding as to make the management of peace-keeping impossible. Last month, an amendment was offered in the House of Representatives that … would have brought about the virtual collapse of UN peace-keeping.… It is sobering that an amendment so contrary to American interests and traditions could have been offered and only narrowly defeated. Our ability to manage the problems I have discussed today in Haiti, Bosnia, and the former Soviet Union would be seriously undermined if UN peace-keeping were no longer an option. And the chances of gaining support from other countries for our policy toward North Korea would also diminish.…

If we are going to meet the challenges of this new era, we will need to use every tool available — a strong defense, strong alliances, vigorous diplomacy, better UN peace-keeping, more effective multilateral sanctions, and firm support for the requirements of international law. We need to understand … that international peace and security depend not on a parity of power but on a preponderance of power that favors the peacekeepers over the “peace-upsetters.” …

We have a responsibility in our time … to be pathfinders; not to be imprisoned by history but to shape it; to build a world not without conflict but in which conflict is effectively contained; a world, not without repression but in which the sway of freedom is enlarged; a world not without lawless behavior but in which the law-abiding are progressively more secure.…

Madeleine Albright, “Realism and Idealism in American Foreign Policy Today,” U.S. Department of State Dispatch 5, no. 26 (June 27, 1994).

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