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

The current period is not the first time the United States has emerged from a major war blessed with great power and the opportunity to make the world more secure, prosperous, and in general, better off. Following World War I, the United States (and both France and Great Britain) could and should have done much more to prevent the rise of German power that over the course of two decades led to World War II. A foreign policy that does too little can be as dangerous as one that aims to do too much.

Even more, though, the current period resembles the era just following World War II. Then, as now, the United States emerged from years of intense struggle as the most powerful country in the world. Then, as now, the United States emerged triumphant from one struggle only to face another. Then, as now, the United States needed partners in order to meet the new set of challenges it faced. It did so after World War II in an extraordinary fashion; for good reason did Dean Acheson, President Harry S. Truman’s secretary of state, title his memoirs Present at the Creation. It truly was a creative time, one that gave rise to the United Nations, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (or GATT, the precursor to the World Trade Organization [WTO]), theories and polices of nuclear deterrence, and, in the United States, the national security council system and a modern intelligence community.

The obvious question is whether the United States will prove to be equally creative now. This is a time for new thinking: about sovereignty, about how to view other major powers, about the purposes of foreign policy. It is also a time for new programs and arrangements: to contend better with terrorism, to stem the spread of nuclear weapons, to decrease the number of innocent people around the world at risk from internal conflicts and disease, to help the Arab world modernize its societies so it no longer produces legions of alienated young men and women all too eager to die rather than live for their causes.

All of which brings us back to the fundamental argument of this book, that of opportunity. The question is what Americans and others make of this moment. Time, resources, and potential have already been squandered. A different foreign policy, one based on promoting the world’s integration while the opportunity to do so still exists, is urgently necessary.

From the book “The Opportunity: America's Moment to Alter History's Course,” by Richard N. Haas.” Copyright ©2005.  Reprinted by arrangement with PublicAffairs, a member of the Perseus Books Group.

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