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Despite the present intractability of atavistic conflicts, they may ultimately be mitigated by the transforming promise of economic progress, of a better life, as happened in Europe. That will not be brought about by radical policies (in the case of the Middle East throwing out the oil monarchs or fighting Israel or the West), the sort of policies that have failed everywhere, but only through a process of economic growth and integration.
But that process will continue to be at odds with nationalism, an imprecise term that covers both the self-assertion of various ethnic groups within states and the patriotic claims of the nation-states themselves.
Because the former are increasingly in conflict with the latter, many nation-states are becoming obsolete; the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, India and others demonstrate that their artificial Nationality does not satisfy their nationalities. Nation-states are apt to be too small and ineffective to cope with the global economy and yet too large and insensitive to cope satisfactorily with local problems.
Ideally, the world needs a new view of sovereignty and new structures that would give peoples a sense of autonomy and identity, but within larger regional and rational economic groupings. The U.S., which gave a huge push to the formation of the European Community, can help develop such structures.
Many impoverished, debt-ridden Third World countries are only just beginning to make their way along the only path forward -- the free market, painful and politically explosive though that is. Again, why should the U.S. care? Even though Marxist revolutionaries and guerrillas still carry on their archaic battles in many places, the danger of such countries' "going communist" is sharply diminished. But the developed world needs Third World countries as markets. Also, economic turmoil would put heavy pressures on the U.S. and other Western nations, not least through growing streams of emigrants.
The U.S. cannot engineer, let alone finance, the success of the free market everywhere. Nor can it be the Good Samaritan to the whole world, although well-targeted foreign aid should continue. But the U.S. must help by seeking an open trading system in which underdeveloped countries can sell their products. Above all, the U.S. must push for economic and political reforms, offering advice and entrepreneurial guidance; one can imagine the Peace Corps being followed by a Development Corps.
This will have to go hand in hand with the building of democracy. Skeptics argue that it cannot be exported, but surely the U.S. has influenced the drive toward democracy and the development of free institutions in a great many nations. We must continue and expand that activity.
But can we afford all this when our Cabinet members are traveling the world, hat in hand, soliciting contributions to our gulf operation? When we are fighting desperate budget battles and haggling over Social Security and health care, Head Start and parental leave?
In recent years foreign assistance has equaled less than 5% of our defense outlays. It is unbelievable -- and unacceptable -- that the richest and most productive country in the world, which we still are, cannot find the relatively modest means to exert international leadership while simultaneously improving its own society.