INDONESIA IS A nation of islands—more than seventeen thousand in all, spreadalong the equator between the Indian and Pacific Oceans, between Australia and theSouth China Sea. Most Indonesians are of Malay stock and live on the larger islands ofJava, Sumatra, Kalimantan, Sulawesi, and Bali. On the far eastern islands like Ambonand the Indonesian portion of New Guinea the people are, in varying degrees, ofMelanesian ancestry. Indonesia’s climate is tropical, and its rain forests were onceteeming with exotic species like the orangutan and the Sumatran tiger. Today, those rainforests are rapidly dwindling, victim to logging, mining, and the cultivation of rice, tea,coffee, and palm oil. Deprived of their natural habitat, orangutans are now anendangered species; no more than a few hundred Sumatran tigers remain in the wild.
With more than 240 million people, Indonesia’s population ranks fourth in the world,behind China, India, and the United States. More than seven hundred ethnic groupsreside within the country’s borders, and more than 742 languages are spoken there.
Almost 90 percent of Indonesia’s population practice Islam, making it the world’slargest Muslim nation. Indonesia is OPEC’s only Asian member, although as aconsequence of aging infrastructure, depleted reserves, and high domestic consumptionit is now a net importer of crude oil. The national language is Bahasa Indonesia. Thecapital is Jakarta. The currency is the rupiah.
Most Americans can’t locate Indonesia on a map.
This fact is puzzling to Indonesians, since for the past sixty years the fate of their nationhas been directly tied to U.S. foreign policy. Ruled by a succession of sultanates andoften-splintering kingdoms for most of its history, the archipelago became a Dutchcolony—the Dutch East Indies—in the 1600s, a status that would last for more thanthree centuries. But in the lead-up to World War II, the Dutch East Indies’ ample oilreserves became a prime target of Japanese expansion; having thrown its lot in with theAxis powers and facing a U.S.-imposed oil embargo, Japan needed fuel for its militaryand industry. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japan moved swiftly to take over theDutch colony, an occupation that would last for the duration of the war.
With the Japanese surrender in 1945, a budding Indonesian nationalist movementdeclared the country’s independence. The Dutch had other ideas, and attempted toreclaim their former territory. Four bloody years of war ensued. Eventually the Dutchbowed to mounting international pressure (the U.S. government, already concerned withthe spread of communism under the banner of anticolonialism, threatened theNetherlands with a cutoff of Marshall Plan funds) and recognized Indonesia’ssovereignty. The principal leader of the independence movement, a charismatic,flamboyant figure named Sukarno, became Indonesia’s first president.
Sukarno proved to be a major disappointment to Washington. Along with Nehru ofIndia and Nasser of Egypt, he helped found the nonaligned movement, an effort bynations newly liberated from colonial rule to navigate an independent path between theWest and the Soviet bloc. Indonesia’s Communist Party, although never formally inpower, grew in size and influence. Sukarno himself ramped up the anti-Westernrhetoric, nationalizing key industries, rejecting U.S. aid, and strengthening ties with theSoviets and China. With U.S. forces knee-deep in Vietnam and the domino theory still acentral tenet of U.S. foreign policy, the CIA began providing covert support to variousinsurgencies inside Indonesia, and cultivated close links with Indonesia’s militaryofficers, many of whom had been trained in the United States. In 1965, under theleadership of General Suharto, the military moved against Sukarno, and underemergency powers began a massive purge of communists and their sympathizers.
According to estimates, between 500,000 and one million people were slaughteredduring the purge, with 750,000 others imprisoned or forced into exile.
It was two years after the purge began, in 1967, the same year that Suharto assumed thepresidency, that my mother and I arrived in Jakarta, a consequence of her remarriage toan Indonesian student whom she’d met at the University of Hawaii. I was six at thetime, my mother twenty-four. In later years my mother would insist that had she knownwhat had transpired in the preceding months, we never would have made the trip. Butshe didn’t know—the full story of the coup and the purge was slow to appear inAmerican newspapers. Indonesians didn’t talk about it either. My stepfather, who hadseen his student visa revoked while still in Hawaii and had been conscripted into theIndonesian army a few months before our arrival, refused to talk politics with mymother, advising her that some things were best forgotten.
And in fact, forgetting the past was easy to do in Indonesia. Jakarta was still a sleepybackwater in those days, with few buildings over four or five stories high, cyclerickshaws outnumbering cars, the city center and wealthier sections of town—with theircolonial elegance and lush, well-tended lawns—quickly giving way to clots of smallvillages with unpaved roads and open sewers, dusty markets, and shanties of mud andbrick and plywood and corrugated iron that tumbled down gentle banks to murky riverswhere families bathed and washed laundry like pilgrims in the Ganges.
Our family was not well off in those early years; the Indonesian army didn’t pay itslieutenants much. We lived in a modest house on the outskirts of town, without air-conditioning, refrigeration, or flush toilets. We had no car—my stepfather rode amotorcycle, while my mother took the local jitney service every morning to the U.S.
embassy, where she worked as an English teacher. Without the money to go to theinternational school that most expatriate children attended, I went to local Indonesianschools and ran the streets with the children of farmers, servants, tailors, and clerks.
As a boy of seven or eight, none of this concerned me much. I remember those years asa joyous time, full of adventure and mystery—days of chasing down chickens andrunning from water buffalo, nights of shadow puppets and ghost stories and streetvendors bringing delectable sweets to our door. As it was, I knew that relative to ourneighbors we were doing fine—unlike many, we always had enough to eat.
And perhaps more than that, I understood, even at a young age, that my family’s statuswas determined not only by our wealth but by our ties to the West. My mother mightscowl at the attitudes she heard from other Americans in Jakarta, their condescensiontoward Indonesians, their unwillingness to learn anything about the country that washosting them—but given the exchange rate, she was glad to be getting paid in dollarsrather than the rupiahs her Indonesian colleagues at the embassy were paid. We mightlive as Indonesians lived—but every so often my mother would take me to theAmerican Club, where I could jump in the pool and watch cartoons and sip Coca-Colato my heart’s content. Sometimes, when my Indonesian friends came to our house, Iwould show them books of photographs, of Disneyland or the Empire State Building,that my grandmother had sent me; sometimes we would thumb through the SearsRoebuck catalog and marvel at the treasures on display. All this, I knew, was part of myheritage and set me apart, for my mother and I were citizens of the United States,beneficiaries of its power, safe and secure under the blanket of its protection.
The scope of that power was hard to miss. The U.S. military conducted joint exerciseswith the Indonesian military and training programs for its officers. President Suhartoturned to a cadre of American economists to design Indonesia’s development plan,based on free-market principles and foreign investment. American developmentconsultants formed a steady line outside government ministries, helping to manage themassive influx of foreign assistance from the U.S. Agency for InternationalDevelopment and the World Bank. And although corruption permeated every level ofgovernment—even the smallest interaction with a policeman or bureaucrat involved abribe, and just about every commodity or product coming in and out of the country,from oil to wheat to automobiles, went through companies controlled by the president,his family, or members of the ruling junta—enough of the oil wealth and foreign aidwas plowed back into schools, roads, and other infrastructure that Indonesia’s generalpopulation saw its living standards rise dramatically; between 1967 and 1997, per capitaincome would go from $50 to $4,600 a year. As far as the United States was concerned,Indonesia had become a model of stability, a reliable supplier of raw materials andimporter of Western goods, a stalwart ally and bulwark against communism.
I would stay in Indonesia long enough to see some of this newfound prosperityfirsthand. Released from the army, my stepfather began working for an American oilcompany. We moved to a bigger house and got a car and a driver, a refrigerator, and atelevision set. But in 1971 my mother—concerned for my education and perhapsanticipating her own growing distance from my stepfather—sent me to live with mygrandparents in Hawaii. A year later she and my sister would join me. My mother’s tiesto Indonesia would never diminish; for the next twenty years she would travel back andforth, working for international agencies for six or twelve months at a time as aspecialist in women’s development issues, designing programs to help village womenstart their own businesses or bring their produce to market. But while during my teenageyears I would return to Indonesia three or four times on short visits, my life andattention gradually turned elsewhere.
What I know of Indonesia’s subsequent history, then, I know mainly through books,newspapers, and the stories my mother told me. For twenty-five years, in fits and starts,Indonesia’s economy continued to grow. Jakarta became a metropolis of almost ninemillion souls, with skyscrapers, slums, smog, and nightmare traffic. Men and womenleft the countryside to join the ranks of wage labor in manufacturing plants built byforeign investment, making sneakers for Nike and shirts for the Gap. Bali became theresort of choice for surfers and rock stars, with five-star hotels, Internet connections,and a Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise. By the early nineties, Indonesia wasconsidered an “Asian tiger,” the next great success story of a globalizing world.
Even the darker aspects of Indonesian life—its politics and human rights record—showed signs of improvement. When it came to sheer brutality, the post-1967 Suhartoregime never reached the levels of Iraq under Saddam Hussein; with his subdued, placidstyle, the Indonesian president would never attract the attention that more demonstrativestrongmen like Pinochet or the Shah of Iran did. By any measure, though, Suharto’s rulewas harshly repressive. Arrests and torture of dissidents were common, a free pressnonexistent, elections a mere formality. When ethnically based secessionist movementssprang up in areas like Aceh, the army targeted not just guerrillas but civilians for swiftretribution—murder, rape, villages set afire. And throughout the seventies and eighties,all this was done with the knowledge, if not outright approval, of U.S. administrations.
But with the end of the Cold War, Washington’s attitudes began to change. The StateDepartment began pressuring Indonesia to curb its human rights abuses. In 1992, afterIndonesian military units massacred peaceful demonstrators in Dili, East Timor,Congress terminated military aid to the Indonesian government. By 1996, Indonesianreformists had begun taking to the streets, openly talking about corruption in highoffices, the military’s excesses, and the need for free and fair elections.
Then, in 1997, the bottom fell out. A run on currencies and securities throughout Asiaengulfed an Indonesian economy already corroded by decades of corruption. Therupiah’s value fell 85 percent in a matter of months. Indonesian companies that hadborrowed in dollars saw their balance sheets collapse. In exchange for a $43 billionbailout, the Western-dominated International Monetary Fund, or IMF, insisted on aseries of austerity measures (cutting government subsidies, raising interest rates) thatwould lead the price of such staples as rice and kerosene to nearly double. By the timethe crisis was over, Indonesia’s economy had contracted almost 14 percent. Riots anddemonstrations grew so severe that Suharto was finally forced to resign, and in 1998 thecountry’s first free elections were held, with some forty-eight parties vying for seats andsome ninety-three million people casting their votes.
On the surface, at least, Indonesia has survived the twin shocks of financial meltdownand democratization. The stock market is booming, and a second national election wentoff without major incident, leading to a peaceful transfer of power. If corruptionremains endemic and the military remains a potent force, there’s been an explosion ofindependent newspapers and political parties to channel discontent.
On the other hand, democracy hasn’t brought a return to prosperity. Per capita income isnearly 22 percent less than it was in 1997. The gap between rich and poor, alwayscavernous, appears to have worsened. The average Indonesian’s sense of deprivation isamplified by the Internet and satellite TV, which beam in images of the unattainableriches of London, New York, Hong Kong, and Paris in exquisite detail. And anti-American sentiment, almost nonexistent during the Suharto years, is now widespread,thanks in part to perceptions that New York speculators and the IMF purposelytriggered the Asian financial crisis. In a 2003 poll, most Indonesians had a higheropinion of Osama bin Laden than they did of George W. Bush.
All of which underscores perhaps the most profound shift in Indonesia—the growth ofmilitant, fundamentalist Islam in the country. Traditionally, Indonesians practiced atolerant, almost syncretic brand of the faith, infused with the Buddhist, Hindu, andanimist traditions of earlier periods. Under the watchful eye of an explicitly secularSuharto government, alcohol was permitted, non-Muslims practiced their faith free frompersecution, and women—sporting skirts or sarongs as they rode buses or scooters onthe way to work—possessed all the rights that men possessed. Today, Islamic partiesmake up one of the largest political blocs, with many calling for the imposition ofsharia, or Islamic law. Seeded by funds from the Middle East, Wahhabist clerics,schools, and mosques now dot the countryside. Many Indonesian women have adoptedthe head coverings so familiar in the Muslim countries of North Africa and the PersianGulf; Islamic militants and self-proclaimed “vice squads” have attacked churches,nightclubs, casinos, and brothels. In 2002, an explosion in a Bali nightclub killed morethan two hundred people; similar suicide bombings followed in Jakarta in 2004 and Baliin 2005. Members of Jemaah Islamiah, a militant Islamic organization with links to AlQaeda, were tried for the bombings; while three of those connected to the bombingsreceived death sentences, the spiritual leader of the group, Abu Bakar Bashir, wasreleased after a twenty-six-month prison term.
It was on a beach just a few miles from the site of those bombings that I stayed the lasttime I visited Bali. When I think of that island, and all of Indonesia, I’m haunted bymemories—the feel of packed mud under bare feet as I wander through paddy fields;the sight of day breaking behind volcanic peaks; the muezzin’s call at night and thesmell of wood smoke; the dickering at the fruit stands alongside the road; the frenziedsound of a gamelan orchestra, the musicians’ faces lit by fire. I would like to takeMichelle and the girls to share that piece of my life, to climb the thousand-year-oldHindu ruins of Prambanan or swim in a river high in Balinese hills.
But my plans for such a trip keep getting delayed. I’m chronically busy, and travelingwith young children is always difficult. And, too, perhaps I am worried about what Iwill find there—that the land of my childhood will no longer match my memories. Asmuch as the world has shrunk, with its direct flights and cell phone coverage and CNNand Internet cafés, Indonesia feels more distant now than it did thirty years ago.
I fear it’s becoming a land of strangers.
IN THE FIELD of international affairs, it’s dangerous to extrapolate from theexperiences of a single country. In its history, geography, culture, and conflicts, eachnation is unique. And yet in many ways Indonesia serves as a useful metaphor for theworld beyond our borders—a world in which globalization and sectarianism, povertyand plenty, modernity and antiquity constantly collide.
Indonesia also provides a handy record of U.S. foreign policy over the past fifty years.
In broad outline at least, it’s all there: our role in liberating former colonies and creatinginternational institutions to help manage the post–World War II order; our tendency toview nations and conflicts through the prism of the Cold War; our tireless promotion ofAmerican-style capitalism and multinational corporations; the tolerance and occasionalencouragement of tyranny, corruption, and environmental degradation when it servedour interests; our optimism once the Cold War ended that Big Macs and the Internetwould lead to the end of historical conflicts; the growing economic power of Asia andthe growing resentment of the United States as the world’s sole superpower; therealization that in the short term, at least, democratization might lay bare, rather thanalleviate, ethnic hatreds and religious divisions—and that the wonders of globalizationmight also facilitate economic volatility, the spread of pandemics, and terrorism.
In other words, our record is mixed—not just in Indonesia but across the globe. Attimes, American foreign policy has been farsighted, simultaneously serving our nationalinterests, our ideals, and the interests of other nations. At other times American policieshave been misguided, based on false assumptions that ignore the legitimate aspirationsof other peoples, undermine our own credibility, and make for a more dangerous world.
Such ambiguity shouldn’t be surprising, for American foreign policy has always been ajumble of warring impulses. In the earliest days of the Republic, a policy of isolationismoften prevailed—a wariness of foreign intrigues that befitted a nation just emergingfrom a war of independence. “Why,” George Washington asked in his famous FarewellAddress, “by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle ourpeace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor orcaprice?” Washington’s view was reinforced by what he called America’s “detachedand distant situation,” a geographic separation that would permit the new nation to“defy material injury from external annoyance.”
Moreover, while America’s revolutionary origins and republican form of governmentmight make it sympathetic toward those seeking freedom elsewhere, America’s earlyleaders cautioned against idealistic attempts to export our way of life; according to JohnQuincy Adams, America should not go “abroad in search of monsters to destroy” nor“become the dictatress of the world.” Providence had charged America with the task ofmaking a new world, not reforming the old; protected by an ocean and with the bountyof a continent, America could best serve the cause of freedom by concentrating on itsown development, becoming a beacon of hope for other nations and people around theglobe.
But if suspicion of foreign entanglements is stamped into our DNA, then so is theimpulse to expand—geographically, commercially, and ideologically. Thomas Jeffersonexpressed early on the inevitability of expansion beyond the boundaries of the originalthirteen states, and his timetable for such expansion was greatly accelerated with theLouisiana Purchase and the Lewis and Clark expedition. The same John Quincy Adamswho warned against U.S. adventurism abroad became a tireless advocate of continentalexpansion and served as the chief architect of the Monroe Doctrine—a warning toEuropean powers to keep out of the Western Hemisphere. As American soldiers andsettlers moved steadily west and southwest, successive administrations described theannexation of territory in terms of “manifest destiny”—the conviction that suchexpansion was preordained, part of God’s plan to extend what Andrew Jackson called“the area of freedom” across the continent.
Of course, manifest destiny also meant bloody and violent conquest—of NativeAmerican tribes forcibly removed from their lands and of the Mexican army defendingits territory. It was a conquest that, like slavery, contradicted America’s foundingprinciples and tended to be justified in explicitly racist terms, a conquest that Americanmythology has always had difficulty fully absorbing but that other countries recognizedfor what it was—an exercise in raw power.
With the end of the Civil War and the consolidation of what’s now the continentalUnited States, that power could not be denied. Intent on expanding markets for itsgoods, securing raw materials for its industry, and keeping sea lanes open for itscommerce, the nation turned its attention overseas. Hawaii was annexed, givingAmerica a foothold in the Pacific. The Spanish-American War delivered Puerto Rico,Guam, and the Philippines into U.S. control; when some members of the Senateobjected to the military occupation of an archipelago seven thousand miles away—anoccupation that would involve thousands of U.S. troops crushing a Philippineindependence movement—one senator argued that the acquisition would provide theUnited States with access to the China market and mean “a vast trade and wealth andpower.” America would never pursue the systematic colonization practiced by Europeannations, but it shed all inhibitions about meddling in the affairs of countries it deemedstrategically important. Theodore Roosevelt, for example, added a corollary to theMonroe Doctrine, declaring that the United States would intervene in any LatinAmerican or Caribbean country whose government it deemed not to America’s liking.
“The United States of America has not the option as to whether it will or it will not playa great part in the world,” Roosevelt would argue. “It must play a great part. All that itcan decide is whether it will play that part well or badly.”
By the start of the twentieth century, then, the motives that drove U.S. foreign policyseemed barely distinguishable from those of the other great powers, driven byrealpolitik and commercial interests. Isolationist sentiment in the population at largeremained strong, particularly when it came to conflicts in Europe, and when vital U.S.
interests did not seem directly at stake. But technology and trade were shrinking theglobe; determining which interests were vital and which ones were not becameincreasingly difficult. During World War I, Woodrow Wilson avoided Americaninvolvement until the repeated sinking of American vessels by German U-boats and theimminent collapse of the European continent made neutrality untenable. When the warwas over, America had emerged as the world’s dominant power—but a power whoseprosperity Wilson now understood to be linked to peace and prosperity in farawaylands.
It was in an effort to address this new reality that Wilson sought to reinterpret the ideaof America’s manifest destiny. Making “the world safe for democracy” didn’t justinvolve winning a war, he argued; it was in America’s interest to encourage the self-determination of all peoples and provide the world a legal framework that could helpavoid future conflicts. As part of the Treaty of Versailles, which detailed the terms ofGerman surrender, Wilson proposed a League of Nations to mediate conflicts betweennations, along with an international court and a set of international laws that would bindnot just the weak but also the strong. “This is the time of all others when Democracyshould prove its purity and its spiritual power to prevail,” Wilson said. “It is surely themanifest destiny of the United States to lead in the attempt to make this spirit prevail.”
Wilson’s proposals were initially greeted with enthusiasm in the United States andaround the world. The U.S. Senate, however, was less impressed. Republican SenateLeader Henry Cabot Lodge considered the League of Nations—and the very concept ofinternational law—as an encroachment on American sovereignty, a foolish constraint onAmerica’s ability to impose its will around the world. Aided by traditional isolationistsin both parties (many of whom had opposed American entry into World War I), as wellas Wilson’s stubborn unwillingness to compromise, the Senate refused to ratify U.S.
membership in the League.
For the next twenty years, America turned resolutely inward—reducing its army andnavy, refusing to join the World Court, standing idly by as Italy, Japan, and NaziGermany built up their military machines. The Senate became a hotbed of isolationism,passing a Neutrality Act that prevented the United States from lending assistance tocountries invaded by the Axis powers, and repeatedly ignoring the President’s appealsas Hitler’s armies marched across Europe. Not until the bombing of Pearl Harbor wouldAmerica realize its terrible mistake. “There is no such thing as security for any nation—or any individual—in a world ruled by the principles of gangsterism,” FDR would sayin his national address after the attack. “We cannot measure our safety in terms of mileson any map any more.”
In the aftermath of World War II, the United States would have a chance to apply theselessons to its foreign policy. With Europe and Japan in ruins, the Soviet Union bledwhite by its battles on the Eastern Front but already signaling its intentions to spread itsbrand of totalitarian communism as far as it could, America faced a choice. There werethose on the right who argued that only a unilateral foreign policy and an immediateinvasion of the Soviet Union could disable the emerging communist threat. Andalthough isolationism of the sort that prevailed in the thirties was now thoroughlydiscredited, there were those on the left who downplayed Soviet aggression, arguingthat given Soviet losses and the country’s critical role in the Allied victory, Stalinshould be accommodated.
America took neither path. Instead, the postwar leadership of President Truman, DeanAcheson, George Marshall, and George Kennan crafted the architecture of a new,postwar order that married Wilson’s idealism to hardheaded realism, an acceptance ofAmerica’s power with a humility regarding America’s ability to control events aroundthe world. Yes, these men argued, the world is a dangerous place, and the Soviet threatis real; America needed to maintain its military dominance and be prepared to use forcein defense of its interests across the globe. But even the power of the United States wasfinite—and because the battle against communism was also a battle of ideas, a test ofwhat system might best serve the hopes and dreams of billions of people around theworld, military might alone could not ensure America’s long-term prosperity orsecurity.
What America needed, then, were stable allies—allies that shared the ideals of freedom,democracy, and the rule of law, and that saw themselves as having a stake in a market-based economic system. Such alliances, both military and economic, entered into freelyand maintained by mutual consent, would be more lasting—and stir less resentment—than any collection of vassal states American imperialism might secure. Likewise, itwas in America’s interest to work with other countries to build up internationalinstitutions and promote international norms. Not because of a naive assumption thatinternational laws and treaties alone would end conflicts among nations or eliminate theneed for American military action, but because the more international norms werereinforced and the more America signaled a willingness to show restraint in the exerciseof its power, the fewer the number of conflicts that would arise—and the morelegitimate our actions would appear in the eyes of the world when we did have to movemilitarily.
In less than a decade, the infrastructure of a new world order was in place. There was aU.S. policy of containment with respect to communist expansion, backed not just byU.S. troops but also by security agreements with NATO and Japan; the Marshall Plan torebuild war-shattered economies; the Bretton Woods agreement to provide stability tothe world’s financial markets and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade toestablish rules governing world commerce; U.S. support for the independence of formerEuropean colonies; the IMF and World Bank to help integrate these newly independentnations into the world economy; and the United Nations to provide a forum forcollective security and international cooperation.
Sixty years later, we can see the results of this massive postwar undertaking: asuccessful outcome to the Cold War, an avoidance of nuclear catastrophe, the effectiveend of conflict between the world’s great military powers, and an era of unprecedentedeconomic growth at home and abroad.
It’s a remarkable achievement, perhaps the Greatest Generation’s greatest gift to us afterthe victory over fascism. But like any system built by man, it had its flaws andcontradictions; it could fall victim to the distortions of politics, the sins of hubris, thecorrupting effects of fear. Because of the enormity of the Soviet threat, and the shock ofcommunist takeovers in China and North Korea, American policy makers came to viewnationalist movements, ethnic struggles, reform efforts, or left-leaning policiesanywhere in the world through the lens of the Cold War—potential threats they feltoutweighed our professed commitment to freedom and democracy. For decades wewould tolerate and even aid thieves like Mobutu, thugs like Noriega, so long as theyopposed communism. Occasionally U.S. covert operations would engineer the removalof democratically elected leaders in countries like Iran—with seismic repercussions thathaunt us to this day.
America’s policy of containment also involved an enormous military buildup, matchingand then exceeding the Soviet and Chinese arsenals. Over time, the “iron triangle” ofthe Pentagon, defense contractors, and congressmen with large defense expenditures intheir districts amassed great power in shaping U.S. foreign policy. And although thethreat of nuclear war would preclude direct military confrontation with our superpowerrivals, U.S policy makers increasingly viewed problems elsewhere in the world througha military lens rather than a diplomatic one.
Most important, the postwar system over time suffered from too much politics and notenough deliberation and domestic consensus building. One of America’s strengthsimmediately foll............