Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, January 1, 1993 TAG: 9301040284
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Staff
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
FOR THE NEW YEAR, COURAGE TO CHANGE
THE NEW YEAR dawns at a time of palpable transition for the United States. The election of a 46-year-old Democratic president ends more than a decade of GOP residence in the White House and replaces, as the nation's leader, a World War II veteran with a baby boomer.More important, 1993's entrance witnesses a growing realization among Americans that we need to address hard, perplexing changes wrought in our country by the globalization of the economy, and in the world by the end of the Cold War.
America's New Year resolutions ought to reflect the challenge Bill Clinton posed during his presidential campaign: Muster the courage to change.
Change is occurring in any case, and demands creative response. The disappearance, forever, of high wages for low skills - a combination that since World War II has raised millions of American working families into the middle classes - demands new economic thinking.
Similarly, the end of the U.S.-Soviet rivalry - which since World War II has shaped foreign policy - demands new thinking about nationalism, ethnic violence, collective security and the groundrules for intervention.
Some change in tone and direction can be expected simply from the ascendance of a new generation. Differences in life experiences between President Bush's generation and Clinton's underscore the transition: from limitless economic growth to an era of limits, from the Good War to Vietnam, from sexual innocence to AIDS.
For the future, more changes will result from efforts to rethink our challenges. Because so much of our lives is shaped by the economy, and so much of the economy is now shaped by global forces, Americans need to become more comfortable with innovations in management and industry, and extend such innovations throughout society.
We need to understand reinventing bureaucracy and empowering people. We need to realize that quality is the critical ingredient, whether in cars or high school graduates, and adaptability a supreme virtue.
We need to discover that relearning and retraining, not union contracts or corporate loyalty, are the best guarantees of employment, while competitiveness is the ultimate test of success.
We must appreciate the huge implications of decentralized decision-making. We must accelerate our absorption of new technology.
Which is not to say we must become faceless technocrats and automatons. Americans need to reach out to their fellow citizens who are struggling, impoverished, falling behind. We need to engage the spiritual dimensions of our inner lives, and re-engage with our communities. And imagination has become a precious commodity for interpreting and revising the world.
We need all such understandings and skills to be as open as possible to change. We can ill afford old ideological arguments that define by dividing us, or the paralyzing assumption that anything a government does will always make matters worse.
The courage to change requires confidence that policy-making can be an instrument of problem-solving, that it is worthwhile to search for solutions of common benefit. Workable ideas are available:
The economy? Invest in infrastructure, but in fiber-optic cables as well as roads. Invest in research and development, but not so much for the military. And work on promoting exports and expanding free trade.
Health care? Managed competition to extend coverage to everyone while holding down costs. Schools? Radically improve their quality, and restructure them to emphasize critical thinking, problem-solving and teamwork. Anti-poverty? Establish a pact that if you work, you won't be poor. The environment? Introduce more market incentives, such as tradable permits, for reducing pollution and recycling waste.
Government? Overhaul it to promote entrepreneurial solutions, focused on prevention rather than reaction, and results rather than rules.
The question is: Will the Clinton administration, and all Americans, muster the courage to act on, rather than merely mouth, such ideas?
Clinton seems most at home with domestic policy, which may help explain why he was elected. But the world won't allow him the luxury of ignoring events abroad. Besides, as Clinton emphasized during his campaign, economic security and national security are inseparable.
New thinking and new arrangements are needed here as well. When should we intervene? What's the proper role for NATO? For the United Nations? Every major decision the Clinton administration makes could become, in effect, a new foreign-policy doctrine.
Overseas, two areas should be concentrated on: resisting nuclear proliferation and helping to define a new role for the United Nations.
Even as the superpowers cut their arsenals, the threat remains - and grows - of nuclear weapons spreading to smaller, unstable countries that may be less cautious about thinking - and doing - the unthinkable.
Even the extraordinary START II agreement doesn't require the destruction of nuclear warheads or the nuclear material within them. An abundance of nuclear material is troubling, given the eagerness of many Third World nations to acquire nukes.
There is, meanwhile, a dilemma in America's relationship with the United Nations. The United States is the only nation apparently prepared, or willing, to intervene in cases such as Iraq or Somalia, or at least to lead intervention.
Yet, as a price of its leadership, the United States insists on full control of the endeavor. This may have the effect of undermining the United Nations while reducing opportunities to share the burden of policing the world.
The solution is for the Clinton administration and for all Americans to support a larger role for the United Nations, including the development of a permanent U.N. police force.
For that is, increasingly, the nature of the conflicts that arise: They require police actions, not traditional war-fighting. Just as, in our cities, we should be committed to community policing methods that focus on prevention rather than response to crime, so should a U.N. police force focus on addressing conflicts before they become wars.
There may seem to be a cost in U.S. independence. But there are more limits on us when we act alone than when we act in concert. And we have to live and work with others in any case. We can't always do just as we please. Adults learn this.
In the new world order, investing in teaching and training for conflict-resolution and mediation may prove as useful as any War College seminar.