The United States may remain the world’s single strongest military and economic power, but we will no longer be overwhelmingly the strongest.
What is more, we can no longer afford to be. Although politicians will continue to blather about the United States being the greatest country on earth, that will be an increasingly qualitative rather than quantitative claim.
I believe the U.S. has reached the limit of its ability to project and exercise power internationally. We have for many years neglected our infrastructure, our environment and the need for cleaner, cheaper energy, and paid for our international adventures by borrowing. My sense is that the willingness of the American people to put up with this inversion of priorities has reached its limits.
Am I suggesting that the Foreign Service will fade into irrelevance as Fortress America turns away from the rest of the world? Not at all. Regardless of which party is in power and what policies the U.S. government adopts, we are inextricably involved with the world and will become more so over the next half-century.
Understanding Islam
One critical area of specialization required in the American Foreign Service in the years ahead is Islamic studies. It doesn’t take a crystal ball to see that a once largely stag-nant part of the world is waking up and changing before our eyes—but into what exactly?
There are 1.6 billion Muslims who are going to play a much more important part in world politics than they have in the last 50 years, and we, as a country, and as a foreign service, know very little about them.
I would like to see the National Foreign Affairs Training Center create a course in Islamic studies that every officer would be required to take.
Security Threats
I do not think China is going to attack its best customer and largest debtor.
The major security threat to the United States, and specifically to our embassies and diplomats abroad, is terrorism that is not state-sponsored. I think that will remain true as far as I can see into the future.
Much as I regret and deplore the concrete bunkers that house our embassies and the security precautions that limit our ability to move around and meet people, I don’t see them going away over the next 50 years. It’s a dangerous world and getting more so, not least because technology has put us so much more in each other’s faces.
The Limits of Power
Our country has wielded great influence around the globe and will continue to do so. But look at Egypt, Libya, or Syria if you want to see the limits of American power in 2011. Look at Tibet. And in our own hemisphere, consider Venezuela and Cuba.
I’m not saying that we will lose our ability to affect events. But, as Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Remnick has written, “A calculated modesty can aug-ment a nation’s true influence.” I believe the United States can continue to lead throughout the next 50 years, because of our continued significant (but not monopolistic) power and, I hope, because of our continued moral authority.
So who, or what, gradually replaces the United States as the Lone Ranger? Multi-national cooperation, as in Libya. In 2061 we may still be primus inter pares, leading the organization of international efforts, contributing substantially to their funding, negotiating the objectives and terms of the intervention. But multinational cooperation will not just be decorative icing on the cake. It will be the cake.
Human Rights
Some colleagues from my generation were not at all comfortable with “interfering in the internal affairs of other countries,” and some saw it as a peculiarly Latin American or Soviet-bloc issue. But now human rights are a recognized part of the international agenda, and there’s no shortage of cases requiring international cooperation and leadership—leadership the United States is uniquely qualified to provide.
If I had been thrust into the Foreign Service of 2011 when I was first sworn in, I would have found it wondrously strange. I’m sure that any of today’s officers who suddenly found themselves in 2061 would find it just as strange an institution: wondrous in its technological marvels; discour-aging, perhaps, in the persistence of unresolved problems and issues; and, I hope, reassuring in the continuity of this country as a beacon of hope and leadership—even from a position of relatively diminished power.
Edited and excerpted from “Speaking Out: The Next 50 Years,” published in the January 2012 edition of Foreign Service Journal. Ambassador Jones was a Foreign Service Officer from 1956-1995, deputy chief of mission in Chile and Costa Rica in the 1980s, and ambassador to Guyana from 1992-1995.
