A Critical Look Ahead

The presidential campaign is coming down to the wire, and that means talk of lipstick and swine have elbowed more serious matters out of the way. Candidates won't be able to dodge the tough questions for long, though. The first debate between Barack Obama and John McCain, which will be held at the University of Mississippi on Sept. 26, will focus on foreign policy. And while pigs and pit bulls have filled the headlines, behind the scenes the Bush administration has recently made several policy tacks that will hand a new set of challenges to the next president.

According to Zbigniew Brzezinski, a professor at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies and a former national-security adviser to President Jimmy Carter, the candidates will have to address the fact that America faces a new era in global politics. He's just coauthored a book with President George H.W. Bush's national-security adviser, Brent Scowcroft, entitled "America and the World: Conversations on the Future of American Foreign Policy" (Basic). He recently talked to NEWSWEEK's Andrew Bast about the global political awakening that's currently underway, the crop of new Bush administration policies and the agenda for a new administration. Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: Why do we need to have discussion about American foreign policy now? Zbigniew Brzezinski: There are two reasons. One, because we are in a historically new era, and we have to rethink some of the basic assumptions that have guided us over the last several decades. Secondly, because the current Bush administration has made such a mess of things—has so undermined American global standing and has so weakened, in effect, American power, reduced American influence and undermined American moral standing—that a critical look ahead is needed.

What defines this historically new era?
The fact that the world is now politically awakened is a totally new reality. It means that we're dealing with a humanity worldwide that is politically activated and interactive, responding to stimuli from all sorts of places, imitating each other's upheavals or revolutions, watching the U.S. on television and both admiring and resenting it. As a consequence, traditional power, which was often applied to politically passive societies, is no longer omnipotent. On top of that, for the first time there are global challenges that transcend national traditional state boundaries and don't fit into traditional interstate politics. I have in mind of course climate, environment, ecology, plus such things as the quest for human dignity derived from a rejection of injustice and inequality in the human condition.

What's an example of this political awakening?
Look at the manifestations of political unrest around the world. They have so much in common. Whether it be the upheaval in Kyrgyzstan, or the riots in Egypt, or the political demonstrations in Bolivia or the recent ferment over Tibet, you have a sense of almost a contagion of imitation involving populist unrest.

With regard to the political scene in the U.S., what's your response to the recent news that U.S. Special Operations forces are now striking with impunity inside the borders of Pakistan?
I think they have done this elsewhere, as well. I think it's troublesome. I am worried about the tendency to overmilitarize the problem that we face in Afghanistan and, by extension, in Pakistan. I'm afraid this may get us bogged down for many more years after the already painful misadventure, the painful war of choice, the unnecessary war in Iraq.