James M. Goldgeier

Revitalizing the U.S. National Security Strategy

Strategy is an act of imagination. That is the fundamental insight from Carl von Clausewitz, the nineteenth-century Prussian theorist who in his classic book, On War, wrote: “... if the whole is to be vividly present to the mind, imprinted like a picture, like a map, upon the brain, without fading or blurring in detail, it can only be achieved by the mental gift that we call imagination... If imagination is entirely lacking it would be difficult to combine details into a clear, coherent image.” Strategic planning is important because it forces a fragmented policy bureaucracy to think imaginatively about how the world works and what their nation can achieve. Strategic planning creates space for leaders to articulate priorities and match diverse capabilities to overarching goals. When done well, it allows powerful governments to become forward-looking international agenda-setters, avoiding the all-too-frequent tendency to react to emerging crises in piecemeal fashion. Strategic planning sees order and opportunity in the chaos and threats of daily politics. Clausewitz famously called this the “inward eye” (coup d’oeil) of leadership. Imagination does not necessarily correlate positively with power; in fact, the two attributes might have an inverse relationship in the modern world. The history of the last quarter-century shows that the United States has had trouble imagining how to use its power to promote order in an increasingly complex

A Communitarian Future What Can the EU Experience Teach Us

Amitai Etzioni has provided a vision for developing a future global civil society. If his communitarian approach has any hope, its starting place will be modern Europe. The continent’s bloody rivalries of the past are history. By creating a larger community, Europe has achieved what Etzioni seeks on a global scale. How has Europe done it? Can Europe’s success be a model for other parts of the world, just as its development of the modern nation-state became the model for political life in previous centuries? And will Europe itself be likely to survive as a thriving community, or will it fail in the end to sustain its own model? This article explores the basis for Europe’s remarkable developments of the past 60 years and the possibilities that Europe can lead the way forward for the achievement of Etzioni’s vision.