'Like a Swiss Army Knife'

Posted by Andrew Zajac at 3:30 p.m. CST

Call it practical internationalism.

The Princeton Project on National Security Wednesday unveiled
a report that outlines a long-term foreign policy strategy that re-focuses the U.S. on a multi-lateral approach to global problem-solving.

The report, a bi-partisan effort shepherded by Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, calls for a combination of reform of old alliances and institutions like the UN and NATO, and the creation of new ones, including a "Concert of Democracies" to coordinate security issues among the world's liberal democracies.

Although it points to George Kennan's post-World War II anti-communist vision of containment of the Soviet Union as a model for the kind strategic thinking that's needed, the report emphasizes that the variegated 21st century foreign policy landscape requires strategy that is "multidimensional, operating like a Swiss army knife."

It sees the major challenges as: upheaval in the Middle East, global terror networks, nuclear weapons proliferation, the rise of China and India, the threat of a global pandemic, the geopolitical and environmental consequences of oil consumption and the need to reform public education and other facets of national infrastructure.

The path to peace and prosperity, according to the report, is through the promotion of liberal democracies, those which are PAR - Popular, Accountable and Rights-regarding, in the argot of the report.

It's mostly a broad-brush document, with only a few specific recommendations, like expanding the UN Security Council to include Germany, Brazil, India, Japan and two African states, and adding a $2.50 per gallon gas tax over the next ten years.

It will require convincing a country that has operated with the expectation of tax cuts and unilateral action on the global stage that there's another, better way of doing business.

G. John Ikenberry, who co-directed the project, said its authors plan to take the report on the road over the next year for a a series of town hall meetings to try to spark a debate on "this moment of opportunity for Americans to re-think national security."

"The post-9-11 foreign policy era is waning," Ikenberry said in an interview Wednesday. "We are at an historic moment. We have to do something. In the past, America has risen to these challenges."