Send in the "Reconciliation Corps"!

Senator Hatfield’s call for a politics of reconciliation is a worthy response to President Bush’s request for a new strategy for the superpowers. Barriers that just a few short months ago seemed unbreachable are coming down—most dramatically in Berlin, more slowly in South Africa and Nicaragua. Now we must allow a similar crumbling of our mental walls. The senator rightly insists we need to move beyond either the old-style realism or the old-style idealism to grasp adequately the possibilities—and avoid the dangers—inherent in this new situation.

What opportunities does the shift in international alignments offer for those who take up a politics of reconciliation?

Senator Hatfield’s central idea is that “the scriptural norm of reconciliation has become a matter of national interest and strategic necessity.” Americans have historically responded best to an enterprise that appealed both to our moral impulses and to our self-interest. The Marshall Plan, in our previous great window of opportunity, is still one of the proudest achievements of American foreign policy. We live in a spiritual universe. Reconciliation releases spiritual energies to bring political accommodation within reach, and evil is undone.

Today reconciliation is imperative because the costs of continued enmity are becoming prohibitive. With increasing technology, minor conflicts can quickly escalate to major proportions. Casualty figures in the Iran-Iraq war approached those of World War I. India has a nuclear capability, and Pakistan is not far behind; the implications for a fifth Indo-Pakistani conflict are chilling. Libya and Iraq are both manufacturing chemical weapons, whether for their own use or for export to sympathetic states and movements.

The end of the Cold War exacerbates the dangers inherent in those trends. One of the main restraints on earlier Third World conflicts was the fear that the superpowers would get dragged in. Both Washington and Moscow, anxious to avoid such an unsolicited confrontation, held down the military enthusiasm of their client states, as was seen in the restraint then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger imposed on Israel in the Yom Kippur War.

The removal of this restraint, along with access to higher levels of military technology by smaller nations, suggests that Third World military conflicts will become more difficult to deal with. Thus a note of caution must also be sounded. In such an environment, the joint U.S.-Soviet peacekeeping role suggested in Senator Hatfield’s proposal may require some modest increase in limited war forces. But cutbacks in more expensive strategic procurement categories should more than offset these new charges.

The specific benefits of “prudent partnership” that Senator Hatfield cites are intriguing. The long-desired end of Cold War tensions in the Caribbean could easily be accomplished if the U.S. and the Soviet Union were to coordinate a joint “carrot and stick” policy towards Cuba. As the Soviet Union curtails subsidies and withdraws political support, the United States would open the door towards a more positive relationship, conditional on reciprocal constructive behavior from the Cuban government. Coupled with the recent defeat of the Sandinista government in the Nicaraguan elections, this would transform the Caribbean from an area of confrontation into one in which cooperation could become the norm. It would also isolate the remaining trouble spot, El Salvador, thus reducing the conflict there to more manageable proportions.

Fighting Evil With Good

The senator’s call for joint action against terrorists and drug pushers could only be a benefit to the whole world. The present difficulties in both areas stem from the fact that drug rings and terrorist networks, though international in scope, are nonstate actors. As long as the world is divided between two ideological camps, there are always governments such as Libya and Syria willing to shelter terrorists from both Western and Eastern countermeasures. But if all major states make it clear that international criminal behavior will no longer be tolerated, there will be no place for terrorists or drug lords to find sanctuary. While this alone will not cure either problem, it will greatly enhance the ability of governments to move against them.

The idea of a “Reconciliation Corps,” to give a name to the senator’s idea, is a third concept that suggests an exciting departure from past thinking. In the last 20 years we have been restricted to deploying the military—who could apply force effectively but were ill equipped for a civic-action mission—or relying on the Peace Corps, which accomplished much but lacked the coercive ability that in a sinful world is often required to evict entrenched evil. The precise roles and missions of such a “third force” would have to be worked out with some care to preserve the balance between civic action and coercive functions. Much would depend on the particular circumstances into which they were deployed. But there are useful precedents. UN peacekeeping forces, the so-called soldiers without enemies, offer one analog, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers another, with Army Ranger and Green Beret experiences with civic-action programs in the early days in Vietnam providing a third model for the type of force the senator suggests.

Who Gets Our Peace Dividend?

Both the U.S. and the USSR have too many pressing economic needs to continue the costly diversions of national energies and resources that went into the Cold War. We may argue over the relative priorities of cutting the deficit, providing for the homeless, covering the costs of the savings-and-loan bailout, or strengthening the nation’s schools and health services, but few would disagree that it is time to reorient our spending priorities.

If there is anything to quarrel with in the senator’s proposal, however, it would be in his emphasis on the Third World as the major beneficiary of the new international order. The needs are not overstated, nor is the moral imperative lacking. The problem is that even with the best of international restructuring, resources at the disposal of national governments will remain in short supply. Judged against the needs of the underdeveloped world, hard choices will have to be made. In such an environment, effective stewardship requires that we consider carefully where tight resources will have the most impact.

The Soviet economy is so primitive, and the importance of Soviet economic development to world stability so important, that one could hardly fault the Soviets if they essentially cut off all involvement with the Third World (positive as well as negative) to concentrate on their own restructuring, and actively sought Western investment as well. Eastern Europe also needs extensive economic revitalization, and, as one of the world’s most heavily polluted regions, a hardly less-essential ecological renovation. Eastern Europe can probably be brought up to Western standards of development and democracy relatively quickly, judging from the success of European reconstruction in the 1950–60 period, but it would require a decade or more of heavy outside investment. Japan will be similarly taken up with the economic development of the Pacific rim, to say nothing of China.

This means there will be relatively little left over for Africa, the rest of Asia, or Latin America. And given the overwhelming nature of the needs, nothing short of a massive infusion of capital can be more than a palliative. In light of these unhappy realities, the slightly musty flavor of Third Worldism that clings to the Hatfield proposal seems somewhat outmoded.

The world today is like a family moving into a new house. Once we are settled, our collective life will proceed along whatever patterns we shall lay down in the next months. We need to see to it that the world’s new dwelling is as amply furnished as possible with works of mercy, peace, and justice. This would indeed be a politics worthy of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Senator Hatfield’s plan offers a stimulating beginning, and we can only hope that President Bush and President Gorbachev take active note of it in their future discussions.

For 10 years, John Lawyer served in the Pentagon as a specialist in arms-control negotiations. He currently teaches political science at Bethel College in St. Paul, Minnesota.

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