America Should Lead, Not Dominate

By: Bill Clinton

The United States stands at a unique moment in human history, with its political, economic, and military dominance. But within 30 years the Chinese economy could be as big or bigger. The Indian economy could be as well, if they stop fighting with Pakistan and wasting money on armaments. Within 30 years, if the European Union continues to become more united politically and economically, it will in turn grow more influential politically and economically. Then, in an interdependent world, America can lead but not dominate.

The United States will be judged based on how it used this "magic moment". Did it try to drive the world into the 21^st Century? Did it try to force people to live by its vision? Or did it instead try by leadership, example, and persuasion to build a world in which people will treat America in the future the way it would like to be treated because of how it acted at its moment of ascendancy?

Does that mean America should not have a strong military? No. Does that mean it should never use it when force is required to save massive numbers of lives? No. But it does mean that Americans should be humble enough to remember that there are rarely any final solutions in human affairs.

Americans must recognize that global interdependence, while a wonderful thing for those of us well positioned to take advantage of it, is still very much a mixed blessing. Our openness to one another in a world full of political, religious, economic, and social divisions also increases our vulnerability and intensifies the pain and alienation of those who feel shut out from the blessings of interdependence. On Sept. 11, Al Qaeda used the same open borders, easy travel, and access to information and technology that Americans take for granted to kill 3,000 people from 78 countries, including more than 200 Muslims.

What is America's responsibility at this moment of its dominance? I believe it is to build a world that moves beyond interdependence to an integrated global community of shared responsibilities, shared benefits, and shared values.

America must support the institutions of global community, beginning with the United Nations. The United Nations is an organization still becoming, still imperfect. We Americans have not always done our part in it, but it is all we have, and now that we live in an interdependent world, it must have our full support in building an integrated global community.

The United States must have a sound security strategy using the power of America to prevent the actions of and punish the people who mean it harm.

And we must remember the example of General George C. Marshall and the Marshall Plan, of Senator J. William Fulbright and the Fulbright Program, and build a world that has more friends and partners and fewer terrorists. That is the purpose of foreign aid and debt relief, of fighting AIDS and putting all the world's children in school. We should not be too utopian in our expectations, but always utopian in our values and vision.

From the dawn of human society up to the present time, we have been bedeviled by a persistent curse: the compulsion people feel to define the meaning of their lives in positive terms with reference to those who are like them racially, tribally, culturally, religiously, politically, and by negative reference to those who are different. People then feel compelled to oppress those who are different when they are small and powerless enough not to prevent it.

Increasingly wider circles of interdependence, however, have taught people to accept the humanity of those they once degraded. Indeed, the whole course of human history can be seen as a constant struggle to expand the definition of who is "us" and shrink the definition of who is "them".

In 1989, the Berlin Wall fell. So we have had just 13 years to work on finding practical expressions of the dream of an integrated community of nations.

We have no choice but to learn to live together, to choose cooperation over conflict, to give expression to our common humanity by following simple rules: Everyone deserves a chance, everyone has a role to play, we all do better when we work together, we're not as different as we think.

We do not yet have the institutions to run that kind of world. That is the work of politics, and in that work there will always be differences of opinion, conflicts of interest and values, and, as we see today, even in the simple evaluation of the evidence. But, on balance, I think the world is moving in the right direction.