THE PALMERSTONIAN MOMENT
www.nationalinterest.org/Article.aspx?id=16518
Richard N. Haass (President, Council on Foreign Relations)
Reviewed by Francis P. Sempa (Contributing Editor)

As American statesmen continue their attempts to formulate and implement a successful grand strategy in the post-Cold War world, they would profit from carefully reading Richard N. Haass' “The Palmerstonian Moment,” which appears in the current issue of The National Interest. Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations and a former policymaker in the administrations of both President George H. W. Bush and the current President Bush, offers the latter and his immediate successors some sobering advice.

The structure of twenty-first century world politics, Haass explains, is not as neat and orderly as during the Cold War. In that long struggle, Americans had, for the most part, reliable and identifiable allies and adversaries. That is no longer the case. Instead, writes Haass, “we are entering an era of American foreign policy and indeed international relations … where countries are not clear adversaries or allies with the automaticity or predictability of either.” The United States has, observes Haass in the manner of Lord Palmerston, "neither permanent friends nor permanent enemies - just permanent interests."

Haass foresees the foreign policy challenges of the twenty-first century emerging from the effects of globalization, and urges U.S. policymakers to approach those challenges in anticipation of “selective cooperation” from other countries. For example, China may help us in dealing with the North Korean nuclear threat but clash with us over Taiwan. Sometimes and on some issues, traditional Cold War allies, such as Germany and France, will be partners with the United States, but at other times on other issues they will be rivals. Similarly, the United States will be able to work cooperatively with former adversaries, like Russia, on some issues, but on other issues our interests will diverge. Under such circumstances, Haass admits, “[n]avigating this reality will be anything but easy….” He urges our policymakers to “create a cooperative relationship” among the world's significant powers; a policy he calls “integration.”