Dealing with Despots

Virginia Postrel from the March 1993 issue

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In the not-so-long run, there are much bigger threats than Serbia. Within the next few years, China may become a seriously expansionist power. Given its population, geographic position, increasing wealth, and nuclear capability, that is a troubling possibility. Those of us who face West feel far more connection to the Asian Pacific than to the Balkans, however Caucasian their inhabitants may be.

The most valuable tactics against an expansionist China are not, at this point, military. They are cultural and economic–the dreaded forces of "bourgeois liberalism." China need not be subdued. It can be seduced.

Strategy dictates, then, that the Clinton administration not cut off trade with China, despite its violations of human rights. Trade corrupts the perpetrators of those crimes and opens the country to outside influences. It creates centers of wealth and power outside the central government.

It is tempting to analogize between economic and foreign affairs, to see the appropriate role of the U.S. government as similar in either case. The Clinton campaign did this often, suggesting that just as we had a plan in Desert Storm so we need a plan for the economy.

But the analogy is mistaken. Domestically, government should serve as a referee–allowing private players to compete freely within predictable rules. In such a system, individuals and private enterprises set their own strategies and make their own plans.

Libertarian isolationists, who rightly believe the government should allow private strategizing at home, make the opposite mistake. They point to bad foreign-policy strategy or disappointing outcomes to prove that the U.S. government should play very little role in foreign affairs. But the mere occurrence of error doesn't prove anything. Businesses adopt bad strategies every day.

In the international arena, liberal states cannot be mere referees. They must be players. International affairs isn't the NBA. It's the playground. It has no referees, only players who compete, argue, form teams, and discipline those who cheat. Even on the playground, however, it's helpful to have more than three plays. Before he starts fiddling with the economy, America's new point guard should work on his foreign-policy playbook.