Too Much Is Not Enough
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

It should come as no surprise that the author of “The Opportunity: America’s Moment to Alter History’s Course” (Public Affairs, 242 pages, $25) was able to make an effortless transition from George W. Bush’s administration to the Council on Foreign Relations. As this book demonstrates again and again, Richard Haass, a principal adviser to Secretary of State Powell, was never really part of the Bush administration. He must have a very red nose from holding it so much through three long years of meetings with all those yahoos from Texas.
This book is a virtual compendium of conventional wisdom from the very bowels of BoWash Think. And BoWash – loosely defined as lockstep elite opinion on the Eastern Seaboard – takes care of its own. Who knows? After a couple of years as president of CFR, there may be a cushy, career-capping desk waiting for him on Wall Street. Meanwhile, he will reliably dispense the Gospel According to BoWash. And, let’s be fair; he probably even believes this stuff.
This stuff, in short strokes, goes something like this:
Multilateralism is mostly indispensable; unilateralism is mostly bad.
Global warming is indisputably upon us; do something, damn it!
Making the promotion of democracy a foreign-policy doctrine is “neither desirable nor practical.” Take that, Dubya.
Ballistic missile defense is “more a distraction than an answer” to the problem of rogue regimes and loose nukes.
Washington should “reconsider” its interest in developing a new generation of nuclear weapons, designed to penetrate and destroy enemy under ground nuclear facilities.
The administration is “not doing enough to promote” an independent state of Palestine; Islamic terrorists derive some of their impetus from the Palestine issue and from U.S. support of Israel.
There’s more, much more, whence all of the above came. But the kicker doesn’t arrive until page 189, when – after much dancing the Dance of the Seven Veils – Mr. Haass finally allows that a cost-benefit analysis leads to the “judgment that the war against Iraq was unwarranted.” A purely personal favorite appears later, on page 206, when Mr. Haass calls for tax increases to help strengthen the U.S. economy.
This brief and somewhat surprising detour into the debate over tax policy and supply-side economics may be an effort to establish his bona fides with the “fiscally conservative” wing of the GOP. If so, he needn’t have bothered. The naughtier supply-siders refer to these worthies as Root-Canal Republicans, and warn that you better not stand on one foot until one of them gets elected president.
It is regrettable that the devil is always in the details, because the basic premise of this book is both unchallengeable and helpful. As Mr. Haass asserts in his volume’s title, the United States does appear to have an historic opportunity to lead the world into an era of increasing global economic integration and vastly reduced tension among the major powers. He also finds an instructive precedent for the post-Cold War world in the 19th century, when exhaustion from the long Napoleonic Wars produced the “Concert of Europe” and a relatively peaceful and productive epoch.
Mr. Haass presents some very persuasive ideas on the actual and potential effect of increased free trade and economic development. He has some interesting and provocative things to say about India and China, and Asia more generally, which he rightly terms “the most dynamic region in the world.” If he fails to grasp the extent of the sclerosis in Europe, that may be partly the result of poor timing; the book was written before it was apparent just how deeply Europeans feel threatened by and reactionary against economic globalization.
It’s only when he gets to policy prescriptions that Mr. Haass falters, and nowhere more than when it comes to avoiding conflict. In a very confused discussion of detente with the Soviet Union, he allows that arms control treaties and economic dealings may well have “prolonged” the Soviet regime, a favorite theme at the time for many devoted Cold Warriors. But he argues these activities were justified by the higher good of avoiding war.
Perhaps so. But what is one then to make of President Reagan’s massive arms build-up, which is widely credited with driving the Soviets first to distraction and finally to profound regime change? Mr. Haass is strangely silent on this point.
As for the very current scourge of terrorism and its state sponsors, the author goes so far as to argue that the voluntary denuclearization of Libya will “reinforce the argument against the necessity to intervene forcefully.” Excuse me? It’s probably fair to say that people who really were or are a part of the Bush administration – even a few at the State Department – would argue that Libya’s decision precisely illustrates a deterrent effect of deposing the Taliban and Saddam Hussein. Bad guys read the newspapers, too.
Mr. Haass displays the virtues and the flaws of the classic Mandarin diplomat. He would have all the answers on how the world ought to be ordered, if only he could figure out how the world worked.
Mr. Willcox last wrote for these pages on the House Committee on Un-American Activities.