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by Richard N. Haass , Director, Policy Planning Staff

The 2002 Arthur Ross Lecture, Remarks to Foreign Policy Association New York, April 22. I'm delighted and honored to be here this evening. I can think of no better forum for a discussion of America's role in the world than the Foreign Policy Association. Under your leadership, Noel, the Foreign Policy Association has continued and strengthened its role as a valued conduit linking policy makers, foreign policy thinkers, and the American people - not that the these three groupings are mutually exclusive. From your Global Forums to your Great Decisions program, you have helped us understand our rapidly transforming world, while communicating that understanding in innovative ways here in New York and around the country.

I can also think of no better occasion for this discussion than the Arthur Ross Lecture. The name Arthur Ross is synonymous with philanthropy in the cause of public service. Arthur Ross has devoted his time, his energy, and - yes - his resources to fostering the best new thinking in the service of foreign policy for the American people. When I was at Brookings, I benefited first-hand from Arthur's generosity and vision. Thank you again, Arthur, for your commitment to making the world a better place.

I returned to government service a little over a year ago to head up the State Department's Policy Planning Staff. Now, as you know, government officials rarely, if ever, have time to ponder history or look too far ahead. The Policy Planning Staff, though, is privileged. It's part of our job to step back from the day-to-day decisions, to discern the relevant lessons of history and to apply them to shape the future.

It would be difficult for me to escape history even if I wanted to. Every day members of the Policy Planning Staff are reminded of our own history when we gather under the photographs of our predecessors. We try to heed the final guidance that Secretary of State George Marshall gave to George Kennan when he called upon Kennan to create the Policy Planning Staff 55 years ago. In his characteristic direct and concise manner, Marshall offered two words of advice: "Avoid trivia".

Living up to that advice remains our mission on the Policy Planning Staff. That is also my task this evening. So let me not mince words, but go right to the heart of one of the most important challenges before us today - defining American foreign policy for what my boss, Secretary of State Colin Powell, likes to call the post-Post-Cold War world.

A successful foreign policy begins with an understanding of the particular challenges of the day, one informed by a historical perspective. As the "Post-Post-Cold War" label suggests, we can understand the challenges we confront today only if we know-how we got here.

Cold War era

For those of us who came of age during the Cold War, its key features are etched in our memories. For almost five decades, from the late 1940s until the demise of the Soviet Union, the Cold War defined the main contours of the international landscape. It was, at its core, an ideologically charged confrontation between the West, that is, the United States and its allies, and the Soviet Union and its satellites. Americans accepted that the stakes involved were nothing less than the preservation of our way of life.

Our main security relationships in both the Atlantic and the Pacific emerged in this context. The prospect of a nuclear holocaust gave both sides a stake in maintaining a stable balance of terror, a balance both codified and symbolized in a series of arms control agreements. Direct military confrontation between the two superpowers was avoided. Instead, we engaged in a long struggle on the periphery of the world in places such as Korea, Vietnam and Central America. Eventually, the United States and its allies triumphed by containing the Soviet challenge until the Soviet Union collapsed under the weight of its own internal contradictions.

Of course, these years were also marked by other international developments, most notably the rise of nationalism and European withdrawal from much of Africa and Asia. But it was the Cold War struggle that shaped our priorities and our responses to such developments.

post-Cold War interlude

With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, we embarked on the post-Cold War interlude. We see now that this was a decade of transition defined by uncertainty as we groped to determine the American role in an international system not defined by a single existential threat.

American primacy was unprecedented and uncontested. Russia declined as it struggled to overcome the legacy of over seven decades of Communist misrule. Europe consolidated and NATO expanded.

For a time, it seemed that American primacy was enough. The most important traditional security concern of the past - the prevention of a major power war - dissipated. U.S. policy seemed to be guiding important regional disputes, such as those in the Middle East and on the Korean Peninsula, toward settlement.

But, in the absence of a defining idea for American policy, this transitional period became a time of one step forward, one step back. For example, we made significant progress on the international economic front with the launch of the North American Free Trade Agreement and the World Trade Organization (WTO), only to confront the expiration of Fast Track authority, financial meltdown in many parts of the world, and the debacle of the 1999 WTO meeting in Seattle. Democracy spread as never before, yet in many places its roots remained shallow and vulnerable to disappointment and backlash.

In the 1990s, the wars of Yugoslav succession and the dilemmas posed by "failed" states, such as Somalia and Haiti, moved the issue of humanitarian intervention to the top of the foreign policy agenda. We saw relative successes like Kosovo, and complete failures like Rwanda. There was confusion over both the goals and means of policy.

Still, despite the lack of clarity, most Americans perceived a seemingly inexorable positive trend in international developments. From the American perspective, therefore, foreign engagement appeared to be a matter of discretion - of choice, not necessity.

With the demise of the Soviet Union, the oceans once again seemed to afford us privileged security. Even in the face of growing transnational threats from the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, infectious diseases, and environmental degradation, we continued to feel secure in our homeland. Preserving our way of life against external threat seemed a low cost, second order proposition.

Intersection of the Transnational and the Traditional

Then came the tragic events of September 11. The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon did not create the post-Post-Cold War world. But they helped end the decade of complacency. They forced Americans to see clearly that foreign policy still matters, and that our oceans and our ICBMs [intercontinental ballistic missiles] alone do not make us safe.

They brought home the stark reality that if we do not engage with the world, the world will engage with us, and in ways we may not like.

So, on September 11, our innocence ended, and we entered the post-Post-Cold War world, a period when increasingly potent transnational challenges intersect with still important traditional concerns. The attacks were a grim reminder of how the march of globalization has raised the stakes from transnational threats. The murderers used cell phones, e-mail and the Internet to communicate. They moved money via wire. And they turned civilian airliners into flying missiles that killed 3,000 unsuspecting people right here in our homeland.

Transnational threats can present a clear and present danger to our way of life. They require a resolute response. At the same time, we do not have the luxury of focusing exclusively on transnational threats.

Traditional challenges are still with us and still possess the potential to do great harm. They largely belong to the security realm and involve matters of war and peace, mostly although not exclusively between nation-states. A partial list of such challenges would include the situations in the Middle East, between India and Pakistan, on the Korean Peninsula, and in Colombia, as well as the threat posed by an Iraq in possession of weapons of mass destruction.

Why doctrine matters?

U.S. foreign policy, therefore, will succeed or fail in the post-Post-Cold War world by how well it copes with this era's diverse security challenges, traditional and transnational alike.

You will note that I said "foreign policy" - singular - not "foreign policies" - plural. On the international front, we have to move in one direction, not many. Our programs and initiatives must work in concert, not competition. Policymakers and the public alike need a compass to give strategic direction to avoid being incessantly pulled to and fro when dealing with everyday events and unexpected crises. We need a considered, reasoned approach - an approach that might eventually evolve into a doctrine - to help us navigate in the post-Post-Cold War world.

Why do we need a doctrine? A doctrine not only gives overall direction to policy, but it also helps establish basic priorities. It can help shape, size, and direct the allocation of resources, while allowing policymakers to conserve that most precious of all resources, their time. It also signals to our allies and our adversaries abroad, and to our Congress and public at home, where our policies are heading, what they will entail, and what can be expected from American leadership. A doctrine offers strategic clarity.

It is especially important for the United States to have a cogent foreign policy approach because the United States is - and will remain into the foreseeable future - the world's preeminent power according to every metric - military, economic, political or cultural. The United States will continue to affect the shape of international relations and their trajectory more than any other country.

This is a fact, not a boast. The decisions we make or fail to make, what we do or don't do, and what we say or don't say, will have widespread repercussions. Whence doctrine?

But strategic clarity does not come easily. To be successful, a doctrine cannot be just a clever turn of phrase or neat academic construct. It must emerge as much from experience as from intellect. Doctrine is discovered more than invented. And this takes time.

The case of "containment" is instructive. George Kennan first popularized the term "containment" in his famous "X" article in Foreign Affairs in 1947. But containment did not spring fully formed from the mind of Kennan alone. And it did not gain acceptance overnight. We easily forget that at the time of Truman's election to the presidency, in November 1948, the majority of Americans still could not define what was meant by the phrase "Cold War".

Containment's success was a cumulative development. Kennan's ideas originally resonated within government because they helped make sense of what had already occurred and the trajectory policy had begun to acquire. Like Moliere's Monsieur Jourdain, who was delighted to learn that he had been speaking prose all of his life, American officials had already been speaking containment without knowing it.

Containment evolved. Interpretations of its meaning varied. Errors and excesses were committed in its name. It did not prescribe policies for every international development.

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