America has a great opportunity to change the world. Will it do it?

Rules of the road are just as necessary in the contemporary era. What is needed, though, are not simply “negative” understandings among the major powers that constrain competition, but “positive” commitments about how to work together to meet pressing challenges. The challenge is not simply to erect an international society with commonly accepted restraints but to fashion coalitions and institutions that promote certain objectives sought by the United States and embraced by others.

Areas for potential cooperation include what to do with governments that either commit genocide against their own citizens or are so weak that they cannot prevent massacres from occurring. Another is how to prevent (or revive) failed states. There is as well the matter of how best to promote open societies and open markets and reduce poverty, disease, and emissions that contribute to global climate change. Also needed is cooperation against terrorism, including rules to prohibit state support of terrorism. And, arguably most important, it is essential that the powers of the day work together to slow or better yet stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction, above all nuclear weapons.

History and realist theory suggest that such talk of sustained international cooperation is unrealistic and that it is only a matter of time before one or more of these major actors (most likely China or an increasingly united and alienated Europe) challenges American primacy. But this is by no means inevitable. Countries tend to challenge the status quo when they see it as being inconsistent with their national aspirations and vulnerable to challenge. The objective for U.S. foreign policy should be to persuade others to work with the United States — and to persuade them that it is neither wise to work against the United States, given its strength, nor necessary to work against it, given its intentions. The administration of George W. Bush has it half right when it comes to this point. It has stressed the importance of maintaining a U.S. power advantage that would discourage challengers. “The United States must and will maintain the capability to defeat any attempt by an enemy — whether a state or non-state actor — to impose its will on the United States, our allies, or our friends. . . . Our forces will be strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military build-up in hopes of surpassing, or equaling, the power of the United States.” There are limits to this approach, however. The United States is not in a position to prevent the rise of other powers. The rise and decline of states has a great deal to do with demographics, culture, natural resources, educational systems, economic policy, political stability, individual opportunity, legal frameworks — all matters largely beyond the control of outsiders. Put another way, there is not a lot the United States could do to prevent the rise of either China or Russia or India or Europe — any more than Europe was able to prevent the rise of the United States in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Any effort on the part of the United States to frustrate the rise of another country would guarantee that government’s animosity and all but ensure its working against U.S. efforts around the world. Nor should the United States want to discourage the emergence of strong countries; to the contrary, the United States needs other countries to be strong if it is to have the partners it requires to meet the challenges posed by globalization. The issue for American foreign policy should not be whether China becomes strong, but rather how China uses its growing strength. The same point applies to India, Brazil, South Korea, South Africa, and others. The United States should also encourage the emergence of a more unified and stronger Europe, as such a Europe has the potential to be a valuable partner in addressing global challenges. And the United States should favor the gradual “normalization” of Japanese foreign policy; only a Japan that sheds many of its post-World II constraints can play a significant role in contributing to the stability of Asia and in assisting war-torn societies.

It is not enough, though, to discourage major power competition or conflict. U.S. foreign policy needs to encourage cooperation. Even if other countries choose not to challenge the United States directly, they could elect to sit on their hands; for the immediate future, noncooperation is likely to be a more frequent and a bigger problem for U.S. foreign policy than direct opposition. The costly and damaging consequences of noncooperation are visible in postwar Iraq: For more than two years, few governments proved willing to commit troops or resources to assist that country’s new leaders and its people recover from decades of tyranny and the more recent war and subsequent disorder. Over time, this kind of passive resistance on the part of other major powers to U.S. policies abroad will drain the resources of the United States or lead to less effective international action against contemporary challenges, or both. Everyone will be worse off.

As a result, the goal of U.S. foreign policy should not simply be to maintain a world defined by U.S. military superiority. Rather, the priority for American foreign policy should be to integrate other states into American-sponsored or American-supported efforts to deal with the challenges of globalization. This can only be achieved through consent, not coercion. As Henry Kissinger has correctly noted, “American power is a fact of life, but the art of diplomacy is to translate power into consensus.” Consent, in turn, presupposes a common view of what constitutes legitimate behavior. American foreign policy, then, should aim to promote a shared definition of legitimacy among the major powers and others, one that reflects a shared view of the proper ends and means of international relations. Against such a common backdrop, it would be possible to integrate other countries and organizations into arrangements that could sustain a world consistent with U.S. interests and values — interests and values that are in no way narrowly or uniquely American. Integration of new partners into U.S. efforts worldwide will help the United States deal with traditional challenges of maintaining peace in divided regions and protecting vulnerable populations as well as with meeting transnational threats such as international terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. It will also help bring into the modern world those billions of people living in dozens of countries who have largely missed out on the benefits of open markets and political systems, a development that would be good in and of itself for humanitarian reasons but which would likely have desirable economic and strategic dividends as well.

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