Center Op-ed: Diplomacy is the Better Investment – Concord Monitor

December 5, 2007 | Tom Vogel

Nation must rebuild its foreign alliances

By CHARLIE BASS and DICK SWETT For the Monitor

With the New Hampshire primary just weeks away and the candidates heading into nail-biting time here in the Granite State, there are two absolute certainties.

One, which will come as a surprise to no one, is that the two of us will not vote for the same candidate. But the other is something we hope our fellow New Hampshire voters will reflect carefully upon as they assess the positions of the various candidates – and that is our shared belief that whoever wins the White House must implement a new, strategic vision for U.S. global leadership in the 21st century.

The next president will face extraordinary challenges in redefining America’s role in the world and restoring our country’s leadership and global respect. It will not be enough to be simply a fresh face on the world scene. Our foreign and national security policies must be reassessed and reinvigorated to reflect global realities that cannot be wished away. The first of these realities is that military power alone will not keep America safe.

Our military and intelligence communities understand this. General David Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Iraq, has pointed out that war is “80 percent political action and only 20 percent military,” while the 9/11 Commission Report, the 2006 Department of Defense Quadrennial Review and the 2006 National Security Strategy have all said that we must focus more on diplomacy and foreign assistance to ensure global stability and guarantee American security.

The second reality is that “going it alone” is not a policy option for the United States in the 21st century.

We cannot reverse the technology that has made it possible for ideas, goods, capital and people to flow across international borders. Nor would we want to. This has been good for New Hampshire, with more than 2,000 companies in the state – most of them small and medium sized businesses – exporting $2.5 billion in goods to nearly 160 foreign markets.

But a more interconnected world also makes it easier for terrorism and infectious diseases to cross borders and pose risks to us here at home.

We cannot hope to keep America safe when millions of infants around the world are dying of preventable diseases, 77 million children are not attending school and more than one billion people are lacking clean water.

The third reality is that our non-military tools of global engagement – particularly diplomacy and development – are underutilized given the challenges before us.