Against 'Nation Building'

Against 'Nation Building'
Finally, a coherent post-Cold War foreign policy.
BY CLAUDIA ROSETT
Thursday, September 27, 2001 12:01 a.m. EDT

So, President Bush has declared war on terrorism. What does that mean, and how can we win?

Lots of debate is now revolving around these questions, and much of it makes the mission sound impossibly ambitious--as if victory requires the U.S. to patrol every back alley in creation, replacing wicked governments and dispensing modern Marshall Plans until the whole globe is so fat, happy and sane that no one would ever want to do evil again. Nice, in its way, except even America does not have the powers of God, so that kind of world salvation project won't work.

Fortunately, America's new mission is simpler than that. If you actually listen to what Mr. Bush keeps saying, this war is not a utopian quest to fix every problem on the planet, or even to redeem most of the sadder nations. All the signs are that Mr. Bush has a plan more focused, and more viable. This is a fight to establish civilized international codes of conduct and persuade all relevant parties that they will pay an unbearably high price for such rogue behavior as helping terrorists. This is a war to define and enforce some clear and overdue rules for the post-Cold War era.

In two brief lines at a press conference Tuesday, Mr. Bush summed up this policy: "We're not into nation building. We're focused on justice."

That's a crucial distinction. Nation building entails America trying to construct an entire way of life for others. And though building a free and democratic world would be a wondrous thing, experience suggests that for any nation it is a vastly complex project that must come mainly from within. America can serve as an example and an ally. But we cannot reliably reengineer other societies, and we risk enormous resentment when we try.

Justice, on the other hand, is about enforcing a code that forbids barbaric attacks on others. Mr. Bush clearly aims to raise greatly and consistently the cost of terrorist assaults on the U.S. and its allies. And in such talk we have the stirrings, at last, of a sound U.S. foreign policy for the new world order.

That's a big departure from most of the past decade, shaped by Bill Clinton's presumption that he was gifted with the powers and privileges of some higher deity. In the priorities of his administration, his own vast concern for himself simply dwarfed the need to chart a clear course for our country. Instead, the U.S. developed a foreign policy so looped around grandiose Clinton projects and photo-ops that it neglected large chunks of reality, including some of America's most immediate and vital interests.

Bill zoomed around the world, glad-handing, nation-building and peace-processing. By the time he left office, we were left with such stuff for all our pains as continuing havoc in (remember this one?) Haiti, rekindled conflict in the Middle East, and no credibility to U.S. threats against terrorists.

When Mr. Clinton launched his unsuccessful missile strikes against Osama bin Laden in 1998, no one could avoid the thought that they looked mainly like a handy one-off distraction from his Monica problem. It was an administration more focused on peace talks and pardons--or, if you like, on possible Nobel Prizes and cash donations--than on actually chasing down, as promised, the folks responsible for such atrocities as the bombings of our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and of the USS Cole. All this was not only horrendous for our country; it was enticing to our enemies. It was dangerous. More than 6,000 civilian lives later, we are seeing just how dangerous.

Mr. Bush, by contrast, had a pretty good grip on the problem way back during last year's presidential campaign, in which he was already articulating the ideas now shaping this war on terrorism. In the second campaign debate, we heard a lot about amorphous nation building and world saving from Al Gore, who was preparing to inherit the Clinton mantle. Mr. Bush sharply disagreed, saying the job of the president was specifically to protect U.S. interests and to preside over a military prepared "to fight and win a war."

This difference is no accident. It is a basic difference in worldview. The liberal mindset Mr. Clinton exemplified turns on the idea that those in power can somehow reengineer the nature of mankind. That if you talk enough about peace, you'll get it; if you tell people to love each other, they will; and if you just ladle enough cash and hyperbole into troubled countries, you may have time to pose for the press and then get out of town before they start burning the American flag.

The conservative approach is to assume that you can't just wish away evil, or micromanage individual free will. But you can lay down a set of rules for all, offering rewards to those who observe them, and imposing heavy costs on those who break them--or help others to break them.

No amount of social or political engineering can produce a paradise in which evil urges will never intrude, and though a more widely free and benign world order would produce fewer monsters, we can hardly arrange that within the week. But if we cannot quickly fix all creation, we can at least minimize the opportunities and maximize the penalties for evil actions--something we have not done for a decade now.

We can do that by setting out clear rules that have been badly lacking. We can demonstrate that a Saddam Hussein, a Taliban regime, an Osama bin Laden--any who practice unjust assault or help it along--will pay a price that makes such stuff far less tempting to others. In so doing, we can more safely carry on with the business of spreading democracy and enriching the world through commerce and example. It sounds less grand than nation building, but it has the advantage that it might actually work.

Ms. Rosett is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board. Her column appears Thursdays on OpinionJournal.com and in The Wall Street Journal Europe as "Letter From America."