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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.

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. Yet containment endured as our doctrine through the Cold War because it proved an enormously successful framework for relating our interests and values to the main trends shaping the world. Containment proved itself by meeting the pragmatic standard in his own right - it worked.

Toward a doctrine of integration

Is there today a doctrine that encompasses the complexities of this era defined by the intersection of traditional and transnational security concerns, a doctrine that points the way forward for U.S. foreign policy? There clearly is a consistent body of ideas and policies that guides the Bush Administration's foreign policy. Whether these ideas and policies will evolve into a formal doctrine with a name, I'll leave to history to decide. But this coherence exists and can be captured by the idea of integration.

In the 21st century, the principal aim of American foreign policy is to integrate other countries and organizations into arrangements that will sustain a world consistent with U.S. interests and values, and thereby promote peace, prosperity, and justice as widely as possible. Integration of new partners into our efforts will help us deal with traditional challenges of maintaining peace in divided regions as well as with transnational threats such as international terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. It will also help bring into the globalized world those who have previously been left out. In this era, our fate is intertwined with the fate of others, so our success must be shared success.

We are doing this by persuading more and more governments and, at a deeper level, people to sign on to certain key ideas as to how the world should operate for our mutual benefit. Integration is about bringing nations together and then building frameworks of cooperation and, where feasible, institutions that reinforce and sustain them even more.

It is important to point out that the ideas I am talking about - what President Bush has termed "the non-negotiable demands of human dignity: rule of law, limits on the power of the state, respect for women, private property, equal justice, religious tolerance" - are not narrow American values that benefit Americans only. To the contrary, they are universal values that people everywhere would benefit from.

Nor is integration merely a defensive response to the world we live in. Integration is in fact a profoundly optimistic approach to international relations. As Secretary Powell likes to point out, we live in a time of historic opportunity. With war between great powers almost unthinkable, we can turn our efforts from containment and deterrence to consultation and cooperation. We can move from a balance of power to a pooling of power.

Integration reflects not merely a hope for the future, but the emerging reality of the Bush Administration's foreign policy. Indeed, akin to the experience of containment over five decades ago, we have in a way been speaking integration without knowing it.

We can see this clearly in our relations with the other major powers. We are on the road to a vastly changed relationship with Russia. President Putin's response to the attacks on the United States accelerated a trend already under way toward a relationship based on common interests. We are cooperating on a range of transnational issues, and it is no longer fanciful to speak of the day when Russia enters the WTO.

This historic shift was reaffirmed just last week, when in his annual speech to the Duma, President Putin tied Russia's future to integration into the world economy and stated that the greatest threat to the international community - of which Russia is a part - is terrorism. Indeed, Secretary Powell coined the phrase "post-post-Cold War world" in the context of our strengthened relationship with Russia.

Our relationship with our European allies is also evolving in this time when there is no Soviet threat to reinforce our unity of purpose. While the bonds across the Atlantic remain strong, they are being stretched in new ways - and, yes, even strained at times - as the Europeans search to develop a common approach to international affairs consistent with their power and interests, and as we seek to enlist European cooperation in the world beyond Europe. Our relationship with Europe is not at risk. But the issues we deal with, and the ways we deal with them, are evolving.

The same holds true for allies elsewhere, such as Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Thailand, and Australia, especially as we try to define a security architecture for Asia that meets our needs in the post-post-Cold War world.

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