Editorial: The struggle for a new foreign relations paradigm

The current conflict in Kosovo, and the United States military involvement there, is the most intense example of this tension in the body politick. And, nearly a week into NATO airstrikes in Yugoslavia, questions still remain as to whether we should or should not be involved in another nation's internal conflict. But the fact remains - the bombs are falling and the planes are flying, even as you read this.

The conflict in Kosovo is not one of ideologies traditional to the U.S. political conversation. Horrifying as the news of massive displacement and murder of the ethnic Albanian population by Serbian troops is, we lack the bogeyman that has driven American foreign policy this century. The Yugoslav civil conflict is far more ancient and poisonous than any our young nation has the political vocabulary to handle. And so, as we struggle in the short term to grasp new military buzzwords like "exit strategy," there is an opportunity to reflect on the role of our military in advancing our nation's geopolitical aims, and moreover, what our nation's geopolitical aims are in the post-Cold War world.

To be sure, Americans have never worn the mantle of world police officer comfortably. Roosevelt's rhetorical statement on the role superpowers should play in worldwide hot spots has been contentious since its outset, a fact overwhelmed by the tensions of the Cold War conflict between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.

We knew in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s what we, as a nation, were in support of; the only question was what was the best way to, as Wilson said, make the world safe for democracy. The conflict in Kosovo exemplifies our previously unaddressed ambivalence.

Our government supports peace in the Balkan region, but not a peace that involves an independent Kosovo. Thus we are fighting to stop a government from killing its people, yet would not support that same Kosovar population should it seek nationhood of its own.

In a sense, we would have the Balkan region return somehow to the enforced peace that a Soviet-dominated Eastern Europe provided. A difficult goal to say the least, and not, perhaps, one that has anything to do with a world free for people to determine what government they should live under. We are not hanging the Kosovo Albanians out to dry now so that we can, in effect, hang them out to dry later, when the nation's and the government's perspective on foreign relations shifts again. For indeed, if nothing else, from Croatia to Somalia, Bosnia to Iraq, the years since the collapse of the Soviet Union have been marked by rapid shifts in the focus of U.S. political and military might. Opponents of the current administration have called this post-Cold War foreign policy incoherent and meandering, but those statements really miss the point, refusing to acknowledge that our paradigms are dated and our international political vocabulary is frayed.

As it is too soon to tell if the NATO action in Yugoslavia will end with a restoration of peace to the region, it also is too soon to declare U.S. foreign policy in the last seven years a failure. We cannot develop an accurate political perspective out of thin air, just as we cannot withdraw from our role as the sole-standing superpower in an increasingly globalized system of societies.

From China's Most Favored Nation trading status to certifying Mexico in the so-called "War on Drugs" we are struggling to draw a new map for U.S. foreign relations in the next century. Simply put, the transitions of the last 10 years have not ended. Now is the time to develop a way as a nation to have appropriate conversation on our role in tomorrow's world.