The impressive depth of insight that has abounded on the pages of The National Interest since its inception is due to its many talented authors and to Owen Harries, the master editor who alternately welcomed and summoned those authors to his designs. After several years away from Mr. Harries' tutelage, all but kidnapped by a retired four-star Air Force general, I have been chosen to carry on his work. Having paid close attention to the magazine's progress in my recent captivity, I want to use the present opportunity of writing in this space to illustrate what can come of a careful reading of these pages. Here, then, is a sketch of the international circumstances in which the United States now finds itself, and what those circumstances suggest for American strategy; it derives in the main from the labors of others, nearly all of them published in The National Interest.

As several commentators have observed, the period since the end of the Cold War has taken its most commonly applied name--the post-Cold War era--from what it is most prominently not: It is not the Cold War. For obvious reasons, this is not a very satisfying state of affairs for describing the affairs of state, but it has led to an edifying game played by a coterie of policymakers, analysts and journalists to "name that era".

The early frontrunner in this contest was the "new world order", a candidate still in vogue in academia, particularly outside the United States. But being merely a rubric for a series of three speeches, only one of which was ever delivered by President George Bush père, and having so little actual content that it left far too much to the imaginations of cloistered college professors and deadline-panicked newspaper columnists, this contender soon fell out of the running in serious circles.

In due course the field narrowed to three claimants. The first is the "era of globalization", a popular term--as James Kurth argues in this issue--because it points to a cluster of U.S.-promoted technology-driven phenomena that have imposed themselves on international reality in recent years. But much like "new world order" it is variously used and often abused. Not only are many different and sometimes inconsistent meanings attached to it, but reality threatens to tarnish its generally positive gloss. Some thoughtful observers fear that the acceleration in global economic activity wrought by more integrated financial and trade networks may also work in a negative direction, not least because a previous epoch of globalization turned out to come equipped with a powerful reverse gear. So "globalization" has not yet won the competition outright.

The second serious contender is "the unipolar moment" of American primacy, introduced by Charles Krauthammer in 1989. A member of TNI's editorial board, Krauthammer has lately returned to this theme, proclaiming a Bush Administration doctrine of unilateralism. It is not clear if, or to what extent, Krauthammer himself favors this approach to U.S. foreign policy, or whether he is merely describing what he sees. (He has promised to clarify the matter in a future issue of The National Interest.) Also unclear is whether the second Bush Administration has such a doctrine, or whether Krauthammer simply presented it with one as he did in the case of the first. Perhaps he will illuminate this question, too.

Either way, this choice of locution--less sonorous variations include "Pax Americana" or "American hegemony"--is very much in the running. Again, however, it is more popular abroad than it is in the United States because, in practical terms, American policymakers do not feel hegemonic. They know that, despite America's preponderance of power in the world as a whole, they cannot easily have their way anywhere--not even in the Western Hemisphere. This is partly because the balance of interests can be as important as the balance of power, so that U.S. preponderance is offset in particular regions by the larger stakes and more focused attention spans of local protagonists.

It is also partly because American primacy is a function of its capacity to provide common security goods and, by so doing, to reassure others of its generally benign intentions. That being the case, as Josef Joffe points out, U.S. attempts to impose itself on others are frequently self-negating. As another TNI board member, Samuel Huntington, has explained more broadly: The superpower's efforts to create a unipolar system stimulate greater effort by the major powers to move toward a multipolar one, resulting, for the time being at least, in a "uni-multipolar system". This means thatht settlement of key international issues requires action by the single superpower but always with some combination of other states; the single superpower, can, however, veto action on key issues by combinations of other states. In this formulation, American primacy is real enough, but American unipolarity or hegemony is not.

The third candidate is, of course, Francis Fukuyama's declaration of "the end of History". After an initial spasm of mass misunderstanding, it became clear that Fukuyama was no apocalyptic. He was referring to a philosophical legacy, that of Hegel, and he meant something roughly similar to what Daniel Bell had suggested nearly thirty years earlier: the "end of ideology", the end of serious practical argument over first principles of political philosophy. In the 1960s, however, many otherwise intelligent people believed that a homogenizing technological juggernaut would bring about the convergence of capitalist and socialist systems and, in so doing, reduce all questions of value in politics to mere techniques of management. Fukuyama argued in 1989 not that technology had produced political convergence, but that a struggle of titans had left only one system standing, with the result that liberal institutions were in incipient triumph worldwide.

Even understood properly, the end of History thesis has been very controversial. But then so have versions of globalization and assertions of a unipolar moment. Beyond controversy, perhaps there has been a reluctance to choose among the candidates because all three carry a certain appeal.

Indeed, there is an element of truth in the underlying logic of all three propositions. Each hints at a defining characteristic of our time, but a characteristic whose full significance emerges only in relation to the other two. This is perhaps because each of the three bases itself in a different ultimate source of causation in world affairs. Globalization fixes on economic dynamics, American primacy on power politics, the "end of History" on the sway of ideas. Since we know upon reflection that all three sources are in play all the time, perhaps we may synthesize a winner by bringing them together.

In its basic, unadorned definition, globalization is merely a description of how new information technology has stimulated the integration of world financial markets, the refinement of production and marketing techniques, and the expansion of international trade. But it is globalization-as-ideology that accounts for its underlying attraction. As ideology, globalization is the phoenix of functionalism. The idea that economic rationality could, and one day would, overturn the more muscular logic of power politics has maintained a tight grip on the imaginations of Western intellectuals and idealists of all stripes. From Richard Cobden to Norman Angell to John Foster Dulles, the belief that free trade, and the prosperity it would create, was the solvent of war could barely be dislodged from its pedestal despite accumulating and well nigh overwhelming empirical evidence that it was just not so.

It is almost too easy to ridicule globalization-as-ideology as the flip-side of Marxism. Whereas Marxism was a form of economic determinism derived from a combination of 19th-century positivism and Rousseauean ambition, globalization-as-ideology has been described as a form of economic determinism based on the present macroeconomic consensus as contained in the country analyses of the International Monetary Fund. Though glib, such a description is not that far off the mark, and ridicule is not an entirely inappropriate reaction to those who believe that the "golden straightjacket" of Thomas Friedman's imagination will do for global peace in mere decades what thousands of functionalist-minded revolutionaries, preachers and world federalists have been unable to do for centuries.

But to ridicule globalization-as-ideology is to overlook a more fundamental development of which globalization is just a reflection. That development is the emergence of advanced forms of knowledge-based economic systems in which science is harnessed institutionally to market-driven technological innovation. These systems have transformed the very basis of wealth. While one can exaggerate the "de-materialization" of the post-modern economy--and many do exaggerate it--it is nonetheless true that knowledge, social trust and institutional arrangements that knit them to the market have become more important to the overall success of an economy than sheer size, brawn and the mass of physical resources. Just look at places like Singapore and Israel, and then at places like Russia and Congo, and the point becomes clear enough.

As with the "post-Cold War" label, we lack a good term for this transformation--New Economy is the best we have so far. Be that as it may, these structural changes, uneven and gradual as they have been, bear enormous political implications. They have much weakened the historic bond between possession of territory and physical resources on the one hand and national power and military strength on the other. In the past, serious and protracted economic competitions almost invariably led to security competitions--and those competitions led often enough to war. But at least in the advanced parts of the world, national elites no longer credit this bond. Indeed, in those places where economic vitality and competition are defined by the cybernetic age, major war among such countries has become unthinkable--a state of mind that helps to bring about its own reality.

A defining characteristic of the present era thus flows in part from this economic transformation and the growing sense of what it means: the "deep peace", the very low prospect of a hegemonic war that convulses the entire edifice of international security. The unipolar sway of American power contributes to the deep peace (we come to this just below), as does the existence of wildly destructive weapons, but the qualitative transformation of economic (and social) structures--to which John Lukacs alludes above--is a more important source of it.

This recognition, in turn, allows us to see globalization in a proper light. As description rather than as ideology, globalization is enabled by this transformation, which preceded it and gives it its content, so to speak. Since New Economy structures can empower states as well as weaken them, depending on the talents and political institutions of those who govern, major states are not helpless in the face of onrushing economic integration, nor is their sovereignty being significantly eroded by it. The leaders of such states have not become mere economic ciphers; they are as relentlessly political as ever. It is just that they see no security-based reason to resist such integration, while they recognize several economically self-interested reasons to promote it.

The second characteristic of the present era is American primacy, a condition that elides significantly with the environment of deep peace which, as Coral Bell has argued, is likely to persist for at least several decades. The United States is often referred to as a status quo power, and that is true in the sense that it is not revisionist when it comes to global political or security affairs. Certainly, an environment of deep peace appeals to the United States. But while U.S. primacy will tend to reinforce stability at the structural level defined by the interactions of the major powers, it will tend to generate instability at most every level below that. This is because the uneven spread of advanced knowledge-based economic systems bear revolutionary implications for much of the planet. New forms of market-based economics are liable to be even more disruptive of traditional relationships than older incarnations. A certain level of convulsion is to be expected, too, from the introduction of the ideas of self-determination and genuine pluralist politics to societies that have not known them. That the United States is the primary power, and that, in the face of enormous resistance, it supports by word, example and deed the spread of such systems and ideas, suggests general implications that are anything but status quo.

The third characteristic of our age can be summed up with the observation that Fukuyama, whatever second thoughts he himself has had, was more right than wrong. An alternative way of describing the triumph of Western liberal values, as Michael Mandelbaum has done, is as the triumph of Wilsonianism. Mandelbaum argues that the eclipse, by the end of the 19th century, of pre-modern conservatism--support for political absolutism, economic aristocracy, and rigid social hierarchy--and then the defeat of fascism in 1945 and of communism in 1991, has produced a near consensus on what constitutes international "best practice": self-determined national independence grounded in law-based democratic governance, free markets and free trade, and a security regime defined by agreed limits, informal and formal, on the use of force. The sway of such values may be uneven and, in many cases, may be invoked hypocritically, as La Rochefoucauld wrote, as the homage that vice pays to virtue; but no alternative now operates on a global scale. Therefore, as Mandelbaum put it, the name of the current age has been hiding in plain sight: It is the age of Wilson.

The ascendance of Wilsonian values to near universal best practice over the last century, however, would have been inconceivable without the ascendance of the United States as a great power. Similarly, the near monopoly power of those values today is, or ought to be, indistinguishable from the fact of American primacy. As is evident, too, both Wilsonian norms and American primacy reinforce, and are reinforced by, the weakening of the link between economic and security competitions. The unthinkability of major war among advanced democratic countries flows not only from underlying economic changes and from the assurance that American power supports the deep peace; Wilsonian premises work as a powerful cognitive complement to both.

Taken together, these three facets of the contemporary environment define the age of New-Economy American Wilsonianism. Admittedly, the phrase is aesthetically deficient, but it captures what neither globalization nor the unipolar moment nor the end of History can convey by itself. It serves to remind us, too, that economic, power-political and philosophical elements always combine (in varying mixes) to shape an era.

What strategy should the United States adopt for an age of New-Economy American Wilsonianism? In essence, it should adopt one that expands the deep peace, preserves American primacy, and spreads Wilsonian institutions worldwide. With one noteworthy exception, each of these objectives reinforces the other two, just as the phenomena on which they are based reinforce one another. Taken together, they define the enlightened self-interest of the United States in this still new century.

Note the order, however; it is important. Maintaining the deep peace is a realist project, which, if it is not commuted successfully, will prevent the United States from doing anything constructive. It should not be taken for granted. The deep peace is vulnerable because some major powers--and many substantial middle powers with a capacity to cause considerable tension and disorder--have yet to enter the cybernetic age or to build a truly advanced economy. Counting on a new form of economic rationality to trump all other urges is therefore surely premature. Moreover, the present age of globalization has yet to withstand a major economic contraction, and no one knows how the new economic forms that enable globalization will be affected by it. Thus, one does not need a conservative's sense of the tragic to know (though it helps) that a major war cannot be completely ruled out. Northeast Asia is one place where a combination of global recession, nationalism and the historical baggage associated with it might help to trigger one off.

It is also a realist project, at least in part, to maintain American primacy, and there is no reason to apologize for it. It is not immoral, or even amoral, to do well in the world if that is what ultimately enables one to do good. But to the extent that American primacy involves soft power--the attraction of its values and culture--the job of maintaining it transcends the traditional realist calculus (and also explains why American primacy is not ordinarily imperial). As G. John Ikenberry has argued, America has been an "empire by invitation" in which the invitees have been able to borrow American assets without forsaking their own, even as the open and institutionalized character of the American order has minimized the possibilities of hegemonic excess over the long term.

The maintenance of such an order requires a sense of strategy that appreciates the critical role of healthy alliances, and the care and feeding of such alliances among democracies means taking seriously the trans-realpolitik elements that helped to form those relationships in the first place. It also puts a strategic premium on what Joffe aptly calls "supply-side diplomacy" and what others term the provision of common security goods. Such diplomacy often involves American leadership in issues that may benefit others more, and cost them less, than it benefits and costs the United States. But, overall, the United States gains from such efforts the consent of most others to its leadership. We live, then, in a world in which it has become realistic for the United States to do things that are not narrowly realist in character.

Then, finally, there is the project of promoting Wilsonian values. As suggested above, the potential for disruption in political and security relationships on account of economic and social changes afoot is large, and it is larger in some already beleaguered parts of the world than in others. As a result, this third project does not automatically or necessarily reinforce the other two. We could undermine the peace by deploying a one-size-fits-all-circumstances policy on self-determination as collapsing states generate major regional crises. (Rajan Menon examines the potential Indonesian example above, but there are others.) We could jeopardize American primacy by undertaking promiscuous nation-building interventions in places with diplomatic failure written all over them. Such promiscuity would squander credibility, raise resentment, and erode military morale and readiness on a large scale.

We have to approach failed states crises as a category of choice in which we do neither too little nor too much. As usual, selectivity and discrimination will stand us in much better stead than the urge to comprehensiveness and consistency, and one appropriately Wilsonian criterion for selectivity is the prospect for democratic development. The United States ought to take a close interest in the fortunes of new democracies and young market-based economic systems. Leon Aron is right to argue that such polities are better described as pre-liberal than illiberal democracies. In the long run, too, their success will contribute to the achievement of the first two American projects.

But not all developing countries have too little democracy and too few market-based institutions; rather, some have too much or too many too fast. An undifferentiated campaign to hoist the spread of Wilsonian values above all else will make things worse, not better. Besides, successful liberal institutions are almost invariably home-grown, so that it is the capacity for indigenous democratic development that ought to be the first measure of whether particular humanitarian crises are best handled by cautious triage or, very occasionally, by assisting in nation-building.

Otherwise, we need to concentrate effort at two points: problems most amenable to solution through more robust campaigns of preventive diplomacy, and problems so dangerous that we have no choice but to face them. Of the latter sort, most grave is the threat of mass-casualty terrorism. Those parts of the world most roiled by the age of New-Economy American Wilsonianism are natural sources of anti-American resentment. Beyond the possibility of nuclear missile attacks against the United States, it is a matter of serious concern that advancing biotechnology threatens to put very dangerous substances into the hands of rogue states and terrorist groups (including domestic ones) on a scale heretofore unimagined. This is not a problem off to the side of U.S. national security policy but one central to it, for the vulnerability of the American homeland, left unredressed, will severely reduce the flexibility, credibility and political base of any activist U.S. foreign policy.

While the United States does face many dangers, its opportunities are at least as impressive. It is good that senior Defense Department officials are insisting that the country be prepared not just for near-term challenges but for those two decades hence. (That they dare to face down the hidebound and the bureaucratically craven in the process is also to their credit.) At the same time, it has been disheartening to find no evidence of senior State Department and White House officials thinking about what sort of world we want to see 25 years from now, and how to achieve it. More than an eighth of the way through the current administration's term, neither the President nor the Secretary of State has made a speech even touching on America's longer-term international goals. Instead, President Bush has delivered two major addresses, one on missile defense and nuclear military issues and one about a military alliance: NATO. (Secretary Powell has yet to give a major speech on U.S. foreign policy.) As Zbigniew Brzezinski, a frequent contributor to these pages, has pointed out, observers in other countries may be forgiven for wondering why the United States--the most powerful and wealthiest democratic power in history, in the most tranquil security environment perhaps since the Treaty of Westphalia--should be emphasizing publicly threats to itself rather than its positive plans for international leadership. It is a genuine puzzlement to them, and not only to them.

Now, during the Cold War we in the West had books, articles and even political committees emphasizing "the present danger", and in those days that was just the right focus. Those books and articles--"as well as that committee"--did a world of good. We still have books with such titles and, yes, the world is still a dangerous place; but we should be thinking at least as much and at least as creatively about the present opportunity, defined by the historically extraordinary coincidence of the deep peace, American primacy and the ascendancy of Wilsonian values. Such thinking will lead quickly to two general conclusions.

First, it is impossible to conduct an effective supply-side diplomacy unilaterally. Unilateralism will generate gratuitous resentment and prove exhausting, counterproductive and uneconomical in every sense of the term. Sometimes, as a matter of discrete policy choices, the United States will, and should, find itself isolatedâ€"opposition to the International Criminal Court is an excellent case in point. But auto-isolation as a tenet of strategy is harmful to American primacy at a time when, strange though it may sound, we cannot act selfishly without the cooperation of others. That is why it is important to articulate aspirations for a better world that are worthy of the unprecedented opportunity before American statesmen today.

Second, to conduct an opportunity-based strategy successfully, the United States must act without arrogance or self-absorption. It is properly selfish to make it easy for others to associate their interests with the international security and economic system with which the United States is identified, and from which it benefits so handsomely. That requires special attention to tone and an unflagging awareness of the persistence of incompatible perspectives, even among putative friends. Shakespeare put it nicely:

O, it is excellent/To have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous/To use it like a giant.

But, for present purposes anyway, it has been put even better: Success requires an awareness of the intractability of a world that does not exist merely in order to satisfy American expectations.That's the key to the national interest.