Shaping America's New International Agenda
By 21th century standards, the state of world politics is good. Democracy and free markets have routed totalitarianism and central economic planning. Scores of countries are emerging from backwardness. War-ravaged regions, especially Europe and Asia, are generally peaceful. The leading powers -- the United States, Japan, and the European nations -- are on friendly terms, and the rising power, China, appears likely to join rather than challenge their ranks.
America is now secure from a major international military threat. "Globalization" has brought more gain than pain to American workers, consumers, and stockholders. Expanding flows of information, technology, capital, business know-how, goods, and services are encouraging economic and political reform from Turkey to Thailand.
However, these promising trends have been colored by ominous developments.
- The spread of technology, facilitated by globalization, is placing nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons within reach of regimes such as Iraq and North Korea, who may use them to undermine political stability and economic progress.
- Ethnic violence has metastasized in the Balkans and Africa.
- Information technology is enabling separatist, criminal, and fanatic religious groups to grow bold and efficient.
- Terrorists now have the United States in their sights.
- What began as a banking crisis has become an economic crisis in East Asia and has infected Latin America and other emerging regions.
- Russia is in economic disarray, with weaponry one of its few competitive exports.
- International financial institutions are having to adapt their policies and mechanisms to meet the challenges of an integrated world economy.
- Haves and have-nots, within and among nations, are separated by growing chasms of wealth and hope.
Which is reality: The encouraging trends or the signs of breakdown? Which tendency will prevail? There will surely be some of both -- the welcome fading of power politics but the rise of unaccountable "non-state actors"; the creative force of markets but the diffusion of dangerous technologies; prosperity for some but destitution for others; the American way of life secure, but perhaps not the quality and safety of American lives.
In large measure, the shape of the next century depends on America's ability to engage its democratic friends, in Europe and especially in Asia, in a new partnership to lead. Old patterns of state-to-state and bloc-to-bloc relations have been eclipsed by global concerns such as health, population, human capital, and energy. Long peripheral, these transnational issues could define world politics in the future, thanks to the integration of the world economy.
The agenda of America and its partners is the agenda for RAND's work on global security and cooperation: How to counter the spread of destructive technologies. How to stabilize and transform dangerous regions. How to make China a new partner instead of a new challenger. How to make global markets both free and manageable.
As the line between domestic and global vanishes, RAND will draw on expertise and approaches, honed in both national security and domestic analyses, to identify choices and their consequences and to help decisionmakers link national and global concerns.
No institution in the world can match RAND's contribution to this vital agenda. A half-century of legendary contributions in international work, much of it funded by the Pentagon. Work on arms control and crisis management, some of it funded by RAND itself, that has figured in every arms control agreement of this century. Seminal studies of the sources and evolution of terrorism that established terrorism as a scholarly discipline in the early 1980s. Grasp of the subtleties of international financial markets and institutions. Command of the politics, economics, social structures, and demography of countries that will be key players in America's future -- in the Middle East, in Eastern Europe, in the Pacific Rim. Analyses of environmental issues that integrate scientific, market, and bureaucratic perspectives.
Not since the beginning of the Cold War has America so needed assistance in charting her course. RAND has the ability, and the mission, to help the nation safely navigate these new waters.
What Others Have To Say
Vaclav Havel
President of the Czech Republic
"More than any other such institution, RAND influenced the outcome of the Cold War. Looking toward the coming century's challenges, RAND's brilliance and independence will be more crucial than ever."
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