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变革型领导错在何处？

Mar 8, 2012 Joseph S. Nye

美国剑桥—今年的美国大选有一个特点：奥巴马的潜在共和党挑战者无不要求对美国外交政策来个彻底变革。竞选口号总是比最后的落实要极端得多，但世界各国应该仍会对美国外交政策变革感到担忧。事情并不总能遂人愿望的。

在2000年美国总统大选中，外交政策几乎没有起到任何作用。2001年，小布什开始了他的首个任期，一开始，他对外交政策并不感兴趣，但在2001年9·11恐怖袭击之后倒向了变革型外交。与伍德罗·威尔逊、富兰克林·罗斯福和哈里·杜鲁门等前任一样，当危机来临时，布什高举民主大旗，振臂一呼，应者云集。

比尔·克林顿也曾谈及要在美国外交政策中加大人权和民主的作用，但大多数美国人在20世纪90年代追求的是正常化和后冷战时期的和平红利，而不是变化。相反，被称为布什主义的2002年国家安全战略高调宣布美国将“挖出并清除恐怖主义者，连同他们所依赖的制度一并消灭，无论他们藏身何处。”解决恐怖主义的办法是将民主输送到世界各地。

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0 Comments on this paragraph, 3 in all 3 Comments on this article

Zsolt Hermann Mar 13, 2012

There are two problems with transformational diplomacy these days:
1. It suggest a certain level of arrogance, as the party suggesting a transformation for another one considers itself superior, in other words that party is certain that it has something to export to the other party as if its own system would be perfect. Nowadays through experiences of the global crisis and the revelations that our western style system is neither free nor democratic we would be deluding ourselves if we thought we have much to offer to other nations, continents or cultures.
2. In a closed, global, interconnected and interdependent system nobody can force its own ideas on others. We are so overlapped on multiple levels, that our system resembles a machine where countless cogwheels connect to each other in very intricate ways.
At the moment we simply have no idea about this system, about its depths, and how it works, thus pushing ahead with changes, transformations causes the countless problems and damage we observe each day as our leaders are running around like headless chickens obliviously.
Thus what the article suggest regarding the principle "First do no harm" is the right foundation. First of all we should stop trying to "correct the world" and take a step back, examining ourselves, the system we exist in, and then after we figured out the laws governing our integral system then we can start slowly moving the cogwheels in a way that it is beneficial for the total system.
Today we need visionary leaders who instead of their own legacy are capable of looking at the whole system in a humble, selfless way, and they are capable of bowing their heads before the vast natural system we live in and use its fundamental principles and forces in a positive way. We already have all the scientific data necessary for it all we need are the selfless personal who are truly able to serve others.
Andrés Arellano Báez Mar 13, 2012

Are you crazy? Of course that can be blamed and he should be blammed. Why? Because there were a lot of intelligence that said that the weapons of mass destructions didn´t exist. He decided wrong when he believed in the wrong intellingence.
Paul A. Myers Mar 12, 2012

The overarching goal of American foreign policy should be to promote stability and reduce risk of disruption. Stability permits the prosperity of commerce to do its beneficial work of rising living standards and promoting cooperative conduct. The Marshall Plan and NATO were foundation stones in promoting stability and reducing risk through the portfolio approach of having many countries contribute to mutual defense.

Promoting democracy, depending upon context, may promote stability or it may be destabilizing. In particular, democracy can diminish human rights in many situations.

A sitting president with sufficient sophistication to assess the foreign policy terrain realistically would have to chose strategies, both large and small, that would aim at incrementally improving or containing situations. If a multitude of incremental improvements can be made over time in some concerted manner, then one could probably say that a grand strategy was pursued. But the success of the incremental steps would be crucial to any overall effectiveness of the larger game. Most of President Bush's intermediate steps failed and so the grand strategy, if that's what you want to call the public relations stunting of those people, has failed.

President George Bush, ideology's plaything, was "transformational" because he was personally and intellectually lazy and his public-relations-obsessed White House liked the "messaging."

Condoleezza Rice famously wrote that the 82nd Airborne was not for escorting children to kindergarten. She certainly solved that problem. The Clinton administration's successes in Bosnia (eventually) and later Kosovo were two of the most technically accomplished foreign policy successes of the postwar era. Ms. Rice could not appreciate that. Why? Possibly because she was a Russian studies student, possibly the only truly failed academic discipline in the public policy area in the postwar era: a bunch of emigre professors with axes to grind, the perfect background for a Bush administration "foreign policy professional." Mr. Brzynski is of course the beautiful exception which proves the rule, a man masterfully at home with the complexity of the international situation.

The American public seems to grasp the desirability of stability in the international arena at this time, more so than much of the foreign policy establishment which clamors for confrontation with Iran and others who want to continue the "big battalion" presence in distant countries.

Skill, not mediocrity, should be the touchstone for picking future foreign policy leadership to promote the country's interests.

And lastly, the three transformation leaders cited as examples were leaders of movements advocating large-scale change, not leaders of bureaucracies tending the overgrown gardens of competing interests.

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