Foreign policy begins at home : the case for putting America's house in order

155 Pages·2014·1.06 MB·English

by  Haass

FOREIGN POLICY
BEGINS AT HOME
ALSO BY RICHARD N. HAASS
War of Necessity, War of Choice
The Opportunity
The Reluctant Sheriff
The Bureaucratic Entrepreneur
Intervention
Conflicts Unending
Beyond the INF Treaty
Congressional Power
EDITED VOLUMES
Honey and Vinegar
Transatlantic Tensions
Economic Sanctions and American Diplomacy
Superpower Arms Control
FOREIGN POLICY
BEGINS AT HOME
The Case for Putting America’s House in Order
Richard N. Haass
BASIC BOOKS
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Copyright © 2013 by Richard N. Haass Published by Basic Books,
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Haass, Richard.
Foreign policy begins at home : the case for putting America’s house in order / Richard Haass.
pages; cm Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-4650-6596-7 (e-book) 1. United States—Foreign relations. 2. United States—Politics and
government. 3. World politics. 4. International relations. 5. Security, International. I. Title.
JZ1480.H32 2013
327.73—dc23
2012049203
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Dedicated to Brent Scowcroft
CONTENTS
Introduction
PART I
THE RETURN OF HISTORY
Brave New World
American Primacy
China’s Rise
A Post-European World
The Wannabe Major Powers
The Global Gap
Reason for Optimism
Reason for Worry
The Middle East Morass
The Consequences of History’s Return
PART II
RESTORATION ABROAD
Doctrines and Democracy
Saving Lives
Taking on Terrorists
Integration
Restoration
A Defensible Defense
PART III
RESTORATION AT HOME
The Deficit and the Debt
Energy
Education
Infrastructure
Immigration
Economic Growth
Politics
Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
Introduction
This relatively short book is predicated on a consequential idea: The biggest
threat to America’s security and prosperity comes not from abroad but from
within. The United States has jeopardized its ability to act effectively in the
world because of runaway domestic spending, underinvestment in human and
physical capital, an avoidable financial crisis, an unnecessarily slow recovery, a
war in Iraq that was flawed from the outset and a war in Afghanistan that
became flawed as its purpose evolved, recurring fiscal deficits, and deep
political divisions. For the United States to continue to act successfully abroad, it
must restore the domestic foundations of its power. Foreign policy needs to
begin at home, now and for the foreseeable future.
Foreign Policy Begins at Home is a book that I never imagined writing.
Sandpaper off the nuances and subtleties, and this is a book that argues for less
foreign policy of the sort the United States has been conducting and greater
emphasis on domestic investment and policy reform. For someone such as me, a
card-carrying member of the foreign policy establishment for nearly four
decades, this borders on heresy.
What got me to this point? More than anything else it began with the second
Iraq war (begun in 2003) and the Afghan troop surge initiated in 2009. I mention
both because my differences over the trajectory of American foreign policy are
not with a single party. Many participants in the foreign policy debate in both
parties appear to have forgotten the injunction of former president and secretary
of state John Quincy Adams (that America “goes not abroad in search of
monsters to destroy”), along with the lessons of Vietnam about the limits of
military force and the tendency of local realities to prevail over global
abstractions. As was the case with Vietnam, neither Iraq nor Afghanistan (as of
2009) was a war of necessity; more important, neither was a justifiable war of